Fucking awesome, Jilli! Whoot!

Jilli, it looks fantastic! Congratulations to you again! I can't wait for my copy to arrive.

Jilli - that looks amazing!!!

I can't wait either to have it either.

So I took a shot a couple of months back and sent BREATHE into the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award that's sponsored by Penguin. First prize was a nice contract so I figured what the hell. First step in the contest was submitting a "pitch" of your story. Got through that phase Second step was having a five thousand word excerpt reviewed by two Amazon Vine reviewers. These are their "top reviewers" the people who apparently have nothing better to do with their lives than review products on amazon-- they were invited based on their years of experience, plus they had incentive. If they completed all of the reviews they were given, they would receive a Kindle.

Well, I didn't progress to the next phase, which would be where Publisher's Weekly reviewers would read the entire manuscript, plus the Penguin editors would as well. Scuttlebutt is that many of the reviewers this year apparently had a bias against first person POV. Anyhow, the reward for the poor schmucks who didn't move on was that we got to see our "expert" reviews.

Looks like I stuck to my usual pattern of one reviewer really liking it and the other one acknowledging that the writing is good, but not liking aspects of it. I think the second reviewer had to have based their scores on where they thought the story was going to go, rather than on what they read. Also, the dislike of Nick. And they were grossly wrong in their assumptions. Feh.

ABNA Expert Reviewer These are just excerpts. Are they SUPPOSED to make our eyes well with unfallen tears that blur the monitor?

(trying for no spoiler) That scary monster is cropping up all over, so much so that Centers need to open in major cities, filled with the latest experts and monster-killers, and accessible to all. Whether they grow from the air or from our food and wastes, I'll never know; I just know that I'm tired of seeing them all over.

That said: "Breathe" is a look at the monsters from the outside, not from the inside. A whole different set of victims. The story does draw you in and, really, nearly made me cry. Damned monsters, messing up our lives.

The excerpt is good and I'd like to read more. I also think that this would be marketable not to first-degree victims, but, rather, to second-and third-degree... depending on how the story plays out, it may help the outsiders understand, just a little better.

ABNA Expert Reviewer This plot seems to me to be veering into guilty adultery-romance territory, which I sincerely hope it does not. Libby seems an engaging and sympathetic character thus far, but Nick is inconsistent. From the outside he seems like a numb wreck, on the inside he's just a fount of burbling awe at how amazing Libby is. I'm not sure how helpful his POV will be. The story could easily become mawkish if they hook up and then wallow in guilt about it.

Some quite good writing, and very compassionate depiction of the situations they find themselves in. I was struck by all these people with ardently Anglo names speaking Spanish for apparently no reason, but I'm sure it all gets explained in good time.

(For the record, the characters names are Libby Santos Walker & Nick Azarias. Guess I should have gone with Lupe and Paco. *rolling eyes forever*)

Eh, Barb. So many people have no idea what a melting pot many Spanish speaking countries are and that immigrants to America may look no different than them. I worked with one guy from Puerto Rico named Werner Robles, had a vague resemblance to Heinrich Himmler. Not necessarily a name or a contenance that you would associate with someone who spoke Spanish right off the bat. German maybe, but not Spanish. The same with Norm Fitzpatrick. Looked and sounded whitebread America until you found out he was born and raised in Spain by a US Marine father and a Spanish mother. It wasn't until I heard him speaking very dialectic Spanish to the locals that I even thought to ask him his background. I definitely learned not to take names/looks for granted. I attribute that to the fact I was in the Navy for 14 years and really got around (the world, people, the world!) It gave me much more of an opportunity to be exposed to a very wide assortment of cultures than most of middle America ever has the chance. I'm afraid, Barb, that you will be running into that over and over again.

Whenever I hear of people with German names speaking Spanish, I htink of all the folks who left Germany during/after World War II for South America.

I still remember learning about Bernardo O'Higgins in 7th grade history.

And there are a number of Japanese. Not to mention an entire colony of Confederate sympathizers who moved to South America after their defeat.

I once worked in a playreading group with an Irish-Mexican-American woman named Mari Osuna, and she said she'd never, ever once walked into an audition run by standard-issue Anglos without everyone expressing great amazement that she wasn't Japanese.

I'm afraid, Barb, that you will be running into that over and over again.

Eh, I know, Sail. I knew going in that as long as I wrote with a distinct cultural slant, yet one that wasn't noticeably "exotic" that I'd run into this sort of attitude. It seems to be one of the most difficult things for many readers to get-- the idea that there can be characters that are fully assimilated yet still retain a strong sense of cultural identity It's as if a character has to be one or the other.

It's headdesky, but I've more or less come to accept that it's going to happen.

It seems to be one of the most difficult things for many readers to get-- the idea that there can be characters that are fully assimilated yet still retain a strong sense of cultural identity It's as if a character has to be one or the other.

I'm sadly unsurprised, given the number of people I see outside of reading contexts who make the same wacky assumptions. The one bright side is that work like yours can be a major part of the cluesticking.