New atheist novel

[pauldavis]

Members of this forum may be interested in the new novel I have published, called Get Real.  
It's the story of a 15-year-old girl who learns through a bitter experience just how dangerous religion can be.  The trauma of her experience propels her from a shy, high-school volleyball player into a passionate orator who becomes a national celebrity.  In that process she discovers something about herself that neither she nor her best friend ever knew and which changes both her and her boyfriend's lives again.
Critiques, both here and elsewhere, are most welcome!

[LoneMateria]

[pauldavis]

Sorry, no offense intended.  I thought it might be of interest.

[Whitney]

Sorry, no offense intended.  I thought it might be of interest.

They might be interested...but we get a lot of people posting here trying to sell stuff and/or promote their own websites then we never see them again.  I told a Christian author earlier

but just using the forum as an advertising billboard doesn't tend to win over the membership.

Basically, you are coming in on the heels of another author who managed to annoy/upset the members more than normal.

Anyway, you book sounds like it could be interesting...  I think the price might keep people from wanting to read it though...they can, after all, get a Dawkins book for that price.

Please note...since I'm also getting annoyed by people posting links to things here and leaving, I do make a practice of removing the hyperlinks in posts made by people who post one or two times then never return.  This is just an FYI, it's not meant to be rude.  This obviously won't apply to you if you continue to participate on the forum.

[pauldavis]

Sorry, no offense intended.  I thought it might be of interest.

Anyway, you book sounds like it could be interesting...  I think the price might keep people from wanting to read it though...they can, after all, get a Dawkins book for that price.

You've tangentially touched on a point that I find generally interesting, and by bringing this up I don't mean to be passing or implying any sort of judgment, since I'm sure it applies to me at least as much as anyone else.  That is the inertia factor involved when something new enters the marketplace.  

I'm that way when I choose a movie -- I'll much more readily pay to see one starring actors with whom I am familiar.  And, to perhaps illustrate my point vividly, had I been in Liverpool around (what was it, now?) around 1963 maybe, I probably would have much more readily paid big bucks to have seen some big-name group on a big stage than to have gone to some dinky, dingy nightclub and paid the same thing in a cover charge to take in some silly, new act called "The Beatles".

When we look at it rationally, we can see that this sheep-like tendency, although it is useful (and perhaps unavoidable) in screening out an enormous amount of garbage that comes our way, also inhibits the proliferation and growth of really valuable work too.   Valuable new work usually only finds its way past that screen and onto center stage by being detected first by a small coterie of people who have some special interest in or sensitivity to what has been or is being created.  They then tell their friends, friends tell friends, and before you know it you have what the critics call a "breakout hit" or a "cult favorite".

Which leads me back to the price comparison between a "Dawkins book" and Get Real.   Non-fiction works by Dawkins et al are coming at us at an increasing pace, and they sell well because, of course, their authors are highly credentialed, clearly talented, and widely known.  On the other hand, as far as I've been able to ascertain, the marketplace of fiction works promoting the same ideas are, to borrow and paraphrase from one of the characters in my story, "about as easy to find as the Pope sitting cross-legged in an ashram chanting the Vedas in Sanskrit".

To sum up, then, your objection to the work based on the price comparison could be a valid one.  Or, it could be that Get Real, given its (perhaps) unique position in the marketplace, would be a bargain at twice the price.  It would all hinge on how well the story conveys its message(s).  How well does it do that?  I can't tell you that.  You'd have to decide.