More Reviews of Mrs Darcy and Stuff

One of the things they don’t tell you when you’re trying to get a book published (or – to be fair – it’s one of the things they do tell you but you blithely ignore) is how difficult it is to grab the world’s attention, even when your book has a decent-sized initial print run and has found its way into a fair proportion of the nation’s bookstores and you’ve got a massively eye-catching cover.

So I’m pleased to announce that there have been a number of victories in that area in the last few days. First of all, I managed to get myself interviewed by not one but two local papers – first the St Albans & Harpenden Review and then The Herts Advertiser (no online link to the story). Impressively, both papers seemed to get the facts pretty much spot on, so it can definitely be said that the noble art of journalism is alive and well in the provinces at least.

The reviews on Amazon are also trickling in nicely. Inevitably at this stage they are from people I know to a greater or lesser extent online, although I should add that I have only met two of them in real life, and then only once each. In fact, I’ve only come to know Jane Travers at all since I started serialising Mrs Darcy, so I am particularly chuffed that she likes it. And what I’m really pleased about is the extent to which every single one of the reviewers “gets” Mrs Darcy.

However, any writer who wants to take himself seriously isn’t writing for his family or his friends and acquaintances. It’s all about complete strangers. And on Sunday, my first complete stranger tweeted me to say how much she was enjoying the book. Then it turned out she had a review channel on YouTube:

Which is all pretty amazing. All I need now are a few more thousand complete strangers, and my life will be complete. So if you know a complete stranger, do urge them to buy the book.

Meanwhile, we have a few entries for the Tweet Treats prize giveaway, but NOTHING LIKE ENOUGH. Come on, people of the internets, I am disappointed in you! *stern face*