Then, after having such a wonderful day brightener, it got even better. Denise’s 12-year-old daughter (pictured to the left – isn’t she a doll?), who also read Misfit McCabe posted a comment on the family blog, which she gave me permission to post below:

The best part of this for me was not that she loved the book, which is still fabulous, but how she expressed the connection she made to the words and the surprise that a book could cause that level of emotion. I think Jewelz and I must be much alike when I was her age, in that I could not cry in front of others about anything that had to do with me. My tears were private and emotion was buried as far as I could get it. Except when reading or watching a movie, which then allowed me to vicariously let go of the emotions I had been harboring inside. One of the comments I hear frequently about Misfit McCabe is you made me cry hurled like an accusation. I am delighted to hear it because it means I have effectively done my job and struck a chord within the reader. (Sorry guys, not going to say sorry for making anyone cry.)

I was recently challenged by another Twitter friend, Monica Pearce (@MonicaEPierce) and had to tell her why I feel my books are important because she called me out when I called them simple stories. Jewelz encapsulated it perfectly in the surprise that a book could cause that level of emotion. I write stories so readers like Jewelz can connect with my characters and know that they are not the only ones who feel that way and make mistakes and it’s okay to feel the emotions. In this complicated world, the task of growing up is filled with pitfalls and uncertainty and by reading about characters who experience similar issues to their own, it helps the path to feel a little firmer under foot. Or, at least, it did for me and this is what I hope to pass on to my readers and why I write.

Thanks to Jewelz for her comments – she has truly made my day & probably my week.

How did this come about?  Well, as you know I submitted by book, Misfit McCabe for review and Shannon Yarbrough, Lulu Book Review owner and author of Stealing Wishes, gave it a very nice review.  Through that process, Shannon and I had several communications back and forth, both to do with the review itself plus winning the marketing book give away that the Lulu Book Review sponsored.  Shannon gave me a copy of Stealing Wishes along with the marketing book, so I wrote and posted a review here, as well as on Amazon.com and Lulu.com of Stealing Wishes, which prompted more correspondence back and forth.

I admire what Mr. Yarbrough has set out to do and has accomplished with the Lulu Book Review because I feel it is important to encourage my fellow authors and to help promote self-publishing as another means to getting your work published, while retaining control of your work.  Publishing is changing and there is definitely a place for the self-published within the publishing world.  So during the course of our correspondence, I offered to assist in writing some of the reviews for the Lulu Book Review and Mr. Yarbrough graciously accepted.  I think it will be an arrangement that will work out for both of us because I will have the opportunity to read and critique other work, which ultimately will serve to help me improve my own work, and the Lulu Book Review will benefit from having an additional “voice” for the reviews.

And so, I am now a part time book reviewer, in addition to all of the other projects I am working on.  So, stop on by the Lulu Book Review to check out the reviews, and if you are a fellow self-published author through Lulu, ask for a review.  I’d love to see your work.

Anyway, the intent of the article was to hopefully entice some authors to take a look at the site and maybe, if they felt it was right for them, to submit their own work for review. Let me make very clear, that I am not affilitated with the Lulu Book Review site in any way at this time, and was simply helping someone who is helping out authors (as I see it).

Wouldn’t you know, but the first comment posted to the article was by someone who advised that they personally would not use the review site because there are so many nasty people out there, and if you get a bad review it sticks like mud.

Well, I did post a response back to that, but here is my candid response. If the person posting the comment had actually look at the site and read some of the reviews (as was my recommendation in the article), then they might have noticed that the reviews on the site are positive, and in fact there is a post stating that no negative comments would be posted to the site. A little ironic perhaps that a person cautioning against negativity is doing so in a negative fashion.

I would expect that anyone who would submit their work for review would first do an assessment of the review site, because not every review site is for every author. you need to make sure that you are submitting your work to a party who appreciates/reads your genre. For example, I would NEVER submit my work to a site which had an emphasis on romance/erotica because that is not what I write. Generally the people reviewing those do not necessarily read Young Adult, which is my main area.

Now to work.