Week 19

The final chapter, eh? Sometimes I despaired of ever getting here. The weird thing is, I’m really going to miss posting the chapters each Friday.

This week I sent out the ARCs (advance reviewer copies) to the winners of LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers offer, and now the nail-biting starts. The process is a bit like a blind date that can go terribly wrong though, to be fair, LibraryThing does use an algorithm to try to provide a good match between novel and reader. I’ve noticed that it helps if, as an author, you already have a bit of a pedigree. The people bidding on your book have some idea of what they can expect from you.

Believe it or not, a review has already been posted—the fastest ever! And woohoo! It’s four stars. It calls Gooseberry “a fast-moving, rollicking and compelling read, conjuring up the atmosphere of Victorian London and its underworld”.

I’m still nervous, however, especially of how fans of my other novels will take to it. So, fingers crossed—at least, whenever I’m not trying to rip away another shred of already non-existent fingernail, that is!

Till next week,
Michael


Michael Gallagher’s Gooseberry launches on Friday November 21st, 2014. Pre-order it today at Amazon and Smashwords.

Michael Gallagher is the author of The Bridge of Dead Things and The Scarab Heart, as well as the popular non-fiction title Why the Victorians Saw Ghosts.

Photograph: November Effigies by John Thomson, used courtesy of the London School of Economics’ Digital Library under a CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence.