You Be the Judge

Home Inspection has been available as an e-book on Amazon for 8 days now, and it's been available as a free download for 2 days, and will be available for free until Wednesday at 9 PM Eastern time (midnight, Pacific time).  It's sold a few hundred copies to date. 


So far, 4 reviews on Amazon with the full range 1, 2, 4, 5 stars.

• bsw says it's a great read.

• Sacco says it's fiction for low-brows (it's not enough to insult the author, ya get the reader, too)-- fluff at the 2nd grade level.  A second Amazon reviewer also called it fluff, but noted they'd seen worse writing.

• Rob and Tigermom have both emailed me saying they like it.  (I'll omit any details beyond this because they were private emails).

• Sarebear enjoyed it and had mixed feelings about reading the therapist's perspective on therapy (Is that a fair summary) and was kind enough to point out some typos to me that I fixed.

• Meg, with her doctorate from Harvard, stopped after 5 chapters to put an endorsement up on her Facebook page.

• A says the sample chapter of my other novel was annoying with bad grammar, spelling errors, no plot, and unsophisticated writing, so this book must be the same.

• A Critic found the beginning stiff, compares it to In Treatment, but is now enjoying.

• Anonymous, also a publisher, is hooked and says it's well-written, happy to have it free

• A couple of people have mentioned that the healthy has too many problems, and people seem to have feeling about his sexual issues.

 So you know, I wrote this novel about 10 years ago, well before the In Treatment series.  An agent represented it, but couldn't sell it to a major publisher.  I tried small publishers, and one asked to meet with me to tell me what was wrong with it: he suggested it would read better if the story was told in first person, and so I re-wrote it, changed the names of the patients, and retitled it Patient Pursuits and began another round of looking for agents.  At some point, I surrendered, wrote another novel and that was so bad, even I couldn't stand to read it.  Somewhere in there, I wrote a children's book, Mitch and Wendy: Lost in Adventure Land, and then Double Billing-- which I hoped would have more commercial appeal.  I forgot about Home Inspection, and then remembered it. I thought this would be a good time to pitch it because of it's similarity to In Treatment.  How I watched seasons of In Treatment and didn't think "hey, I wrote a book with this format," ....I'll never know.   Roy convinced me to give Amazon's publishing a try, and so I'm starting with this novel, but the other two will go up soon, hopefully later this summer.


Is it good?  Is it fluff for second graders?  You be the judge.  I think what's unique about it is that it's a healthy's view of psychotherapy, and while it's not all completely on target because it is fiction, the give-and-take, and how the shrink's thoughts wander, do have a realistic feel.  


Chat here, if you'd like, but please also put your reviews on Amazon.  And I'd be very appreciative if you'd tweet, blog, and link it on Facebook so others can find the free promotion.