>The reality is, few of these fellow writers ever read
ANY of some
>stranger's book. The worst is Ellroy, who always gives
some over-the-top
>"Ellroyism" to countless books I KNOW he never reads.
A quote from the
>Dog is a joke ...
>
That may well be true in some cases, but my experience is
that the reverse
is true. If you are an unknown author of fiction, about the
only way you
are going to get the qulaity of blurbs that start buzz is
because people
are enthusiastic about your writing.
Several months ago I was asked to read for comment the
manuscript of a very
hardboiled first novel - God is a Bullet by Boston Teran. The
writing was
so good it knocked me on my ass. I called Billl Diehl and
said, "You have
to read this manuscript." He did. He loved it and called his
friends and so
on. Now all these people are raving about it and it hasn't
been published yet.
That's how it works.
God is a Bullet should be out later this year (Knopf), and
I'm going to be
standing in line to buy a copy when it does. I don't know
Teran. We don't
share agents or publishers and so on.
The rest of life is just like a big version or rara-avis in
that people
like to tell other people about books they like. If we were
all that
cynical, we would have found a career that actually paid
money.
Fred
----
Down on Ponce a novel by Fred Willard
http://www.mindspring.com/~fwillard
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