DONIS CASEY: Write Errant

The reviews for The Old Buzzard Had It Coming are starting to come out. Thus far I’ve seen the Library Journal review and the Kirkus review. Every time a new review comes to my attention, I’ll post it on the “Books” page of this site. Both the reviews I’ve seen have been good, which is gratifying. Will there be less than flattering reviews? One can only wait and see. Will I post them, if there are? It depends on how self-confident I’m feeling and how good my sense of humor is at the time.

One thing I’ve noticed about readers and reviewers is that often what they say about your work tells you as much about them as it does about your book. (To date, I’ve learned that my reviewers have good taste). Very often I discover that readers see something in my characters or story that I didn’t have in my mind at all when I wrote it. I’m always interested, enlightened, and often bemused by what readers find in the things I write.

For instance, what does Alafair look like? All I said in TOB is that she has uncooperative dark hair and dark eyes. Yet one reader described her to me as looking like Ma Joad and another as resembling Sigournie Weaver. Quite a range.

And are the Tuckers poor? Actually, for the time and place, the Tuckers are fairly well off. If they lived in the same situation today, they’d be considered next to destitute.

Of course, all this doesn’t mean that the reader’s interpretation is wrong. Once the author’s story leaves her hands, it becomes the reader’s story.