GOODREADS GIVEAWAY FOR PERSISTENT GUILT

For the next month, PERSISTENT GUILT, the third March and Walker Crime Novel, is being featured as a special giveaway through Goodreads, the world's largest online site for readers and book recommendations.

An unbelievable 100 Kindle copies of the novel are available to residents of the USA who follow the link below to enter the giveaway.

Don't miss your chance to read outstanding Canadian crime fiction for free! And remember, if you're one of the lucky recipients and you enjoy reading PERSISTENT GUILT, please leave a review to encourage others to try the March and Walker series as well.

Best of luck to everyone who enters!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Persistent Guilt

by Michael J. McCann

Giveaway ends September 19, 2018.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

CHARACTER LISTS: COMPARING BURN COUNTRY TO PETER ROBINSON'S AFTERMATH

In a recent post, I examined the police procedural sub-genre in terms of its characters and approach to characterization. As a noted authority on the subject explained, "To be a police procedural, a novel must have a set of police characters and--preferably detailed--descriptions of their work as they investigate one or more crimes."

When police characters are added to family members, witnesses and/or suspects, non-police characters involved in the investigation (coroner, forensic pathologist, etc.), and others, the list of characters appearing in a police procedural will be somewhat longer than, say, a private eye novel or a cozy mystery featuring an amateur sleuth in a small town.

Are there too many characters in BURN COUNTRY? To answer this question, it's important to compare its character list to other procedurals, so that apples are being firmly compared to other apples.

To do so, I chose one of Peter Robinson's Inspector Banks novels, AFTERMATH (2002), pulling it off the shelf more or less at random. I charted the characters in this novel using the following criterion: I only counted characters who are named by the narrator and have a speaking part in the story. I excluded unnamed characters who speak, including several SOCOs who interact with Banks or Annie for at least a page, and I excluded characters who are named but do not actually appear in the story. Fair enough? I then charted BURN COUNTRY and compiled a comparable list.

The results? There are 53 characters in AFTERMATH, 18 of which are police characters. On the other hand, there are 48 characters in BURN COUNTRY, 16 of which are police characters.

Are there too many characters in AFTERMATH? This novel has 7442 ratings in Goodreads, 40 of which are 1-star ratings. None of the 1-star reviews mention the number of characters. (Interestingly, fellow crime fiction author Val McDermid gave it 1 star!) Additionally, there are 113 2-star ratings, and none of these reviews mention too many characters. In fact, several have solid praise for Robinson's characterization. There are 837 3-star ratings, and I could only spot one review that complained about the number of characters. Et cetera, et cetera.

The point? Readers who enjoy police procedurals understand that novels in the sub-genre contain more characters than novels in other mystery sub-genres, but they appreciate them for the richness they bring to the story!

It's Goodreads Mystery Week!

In case you haven't already heard, let me be the first to tell you that this week, May 1 - May 7, 2017, is Mystery & Thriller Week on Goodreads!

Goodreads was launched in December 2006 as a literary social network platform. If you're not familiar with the site and you're wondering what the big deal is, here are just a few numbers to tickle your fancy. Goodreads now has 55 million members, it has 1.5 billion books added to its lists, and it carries more than 50 million book reviews. Staggering numbers!

Wondering what Goodreads can do for you, book reader? Their "About" page suggests:

A Few Things You Can Do On Goodreads

• See which books your friends are reading.
• Track the books you're reading, have read, and want to read.
• Check out your personalized book recommendations. Our recommendation engine analyzes 20 billion data points to give suggestions tailored to your literary tastes.
• Find out if a book is a good fit for you from our community's reviews.

In the spirit of Mystery & Thriller Week, I'm currently running a Goodreads giveaway promo for BURN COUNTRY, the second March and Walker Crime Novel. For a chance to win one of five autographed paperback copies, bang on this link and get yourself entered in the draw:
https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/233295-burn-country

Good luck, and Goodreads!

BURN COUNTRY is Now Available for Review!

BURN COUNTRY, the much-anticipated sequel to the 2015 Hammett Prize finalist SORROW LAKE, is now available for review.

The Plaid Raccoon Press is pleased to make review copies available in paperback or eBook format (mobi for Kindle, ePub, or PDF).

If you are a journalist who reviews books for print or electronic media, an online book blogger who reviews crime fiction, or a fellow published author interested in providing a testimonial, please contact us at the e-mail address below to obtain a print or eBook review copy.

If you post reviews to Amazon, contact us and we will arrange to send you a courtesy review copy for your Kindle device.

If you post reviews to Goodreads, send us an e-mail and let us know which eBook format you'd like!

Contact us at theplaidraccoonpress@mjmccann.com and let us know you're interested!

Read the back cover blurb here: http://michaeljmccannsblog.blogspot.ca/2017/02/burn-country-whats-story.html

Hiatus

We'll be taking a break from our four weekly blogs, The Overnight Bestseller, Behind the Walls of Nightmare, Open Investigations (Goodreads), and Writing in Retirement (Goodreads). We expect to be back in the fall with lots of news for our readers.

We'll continue to post reviews as part of our commitment to introduce new works to our readers.

Thanks to all of you who support us by following our blogs.

SORROW LAKE - Early Returns on the ARC Review Process

As you may know, the Advance Reading Copy of Sorrow Lake, the first March and Walker Crime Novel, is now available for review through NetGalley. If you're not a NetGalley account holder and would like access, it's free to sign up and free to download a copy of Sorrow Lake. Not a bad deal, right?

If you're interested, click on the cover image on the left, or on the link below. It will take you to a special sign-in page authorizing your free copy.

Not sure if you'd be interested in a crime novel set in Canada featuring homicide investigators from the Ontario Provincial Police? Take a look at the early response to the novel by NetGalley reviewers:

Blogger Mallory wrote: "A really inventive and deeply-characterized mystery/police procedural with a finely-delineated background of rural Ontario, SORROW LAKE is the first of a series, which I can tell will be one of my favorites. The characters are peeled down to the grain, and it's wonderfully gratifying to read of individuals who might be our friends, our neighbors--or even ourselves."  This review has also been posted on Amazon and in Goodreads, for which I'm very grateful.

Librarian Rosemary wrote: "I am thrilled that this is the beginning of a new series. McCann is a new author that I will now be following. And who doesn’t love the name of that publisher?" This review is also posted in Goodreads. Needless to say, the Raccoon is blushing and will probably have a swelled head for a while.

Reviewer Tracy wrote: "An exciting Canadian police procedural mystery that had me hooked from the very first page. A great strong female lead and a nice male counterpart just learning the ropes of homicide. Twists and turns I never saw coming especially leading up to the ending. I would and will recommend this book to friends and family, even strangers should the time and place present itself." Tracy also posted this review in Goodreads. Thank you, Tracy.

I'm also pleased to note that the voting on the cover design is going nicely. NetGalley viewers have so far given it 17 thumbs-up and 0 thumbs down. Thanks!

Now it's your turn, faithful followers of The Overnight Bestseller. Click on this link to find out for yourself why Sorrow Lake is going to make a lot of noise for Canadian crime fiction in 2015!

https://www.netgalley.com/widget/open?widget_id=63547_81503_1427823721551adc69b418a_9781927884034_US

SORROW LAKE - Advance Reading Copy Now Available

The Plaid Raccoon Press is pleased to announce that the Advance Reading Copy of the new Canadian crime novel Sorrow Lake is now available.

The ARC is available in e-book format through NetGalley, the online service that allows all publishers, large and small, to distribute review copies of new books to reviewers.

If you would like an e-book copy of Sorrow Lake, simply click on the cover image on the left or on the link below. If you have a NetGalley account, simply sign in and you will be taken directly to the Sorrow Lake page, where you may download a copy. It's available in .epub, .mobi, and .pdf formats.

If you don't have a NetGalley account, you can register with them free of charge. There's also no charge, of course, for downloading a review copy of Sorrow Lake.

What's the catch? There's only one -- if you like the book, we'd appreciate it very much if you'd let the world know by publishing a short review in your blog or column, or on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble or wherever you like to go to spread the word about a book you've enjoyed.

Here's the link: https://www.netgalley.com/widget/open?widget_id=63547_81503_1427823721551adc69b418a_9781927884034_US

Thanks very much for your interest. I hope you enjoy the story!

The Uni Project

Photo courtesy of Uni website

The April edition of the Goodreads newsletter has an interesting article on the Uni project, which is bringing books to the people by setting up reading rooms and seating in public places, including parks, farmers' markets, and city plazas. Currently the project is placing pop-up reading rooms at various locations in New York City. The project is non-profit, and it provides high-quality books and knowledgeable staff. Moreover, the reading rooms can be shipped across the world.

For more information on the project, including how to donate books, please click here.

It's always nice to see books shared among readers.

Prize-Winning Books More Apt to Receive Negative Reader Reviews

As reported in The Guardian, a study undertaken by two academics indicates that books winning such prestigious prizes as the Booker or National Book Award are more apt to receive negative reader reviews after the fact. The study is based on an analysis of almost 39,000 Goodreads reviews.

The authors of the study believe this phenomenon is the result of a mismatch between reader and novel: readers assume that a book is "good" because it has won an award, but what is "good" depends largely on individual taste. If the prize-winning book is not to a reader's taste, s/he may be disappointed, thus giving it a negative review.


For the full text of The Guardian article, please see http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/21/literary-prizes-make-books-less-popular-booker.

I'm not really surprised by these findings because if you look at random at Goodreads and Amazon reviews of novels generally considered to be literary classics, you'll find the same trend towards negativity if the book does not accommodate the reader's taste. (For my earlier post on this subject, please click here.)

Selecting An e-Book

I came across an interesting article recently that talks about the criteria for selecting an e-book. It was written by a prolific reader/reviewer. She notes the following factors: price, subject matter, and reviews. With regard to the first criterion, she mentions her annoyance when she discovers e-books priced comparably to physical copies, says that she gets most books free, and never pays more than $5 for an e-book. The second criterion, subject matter, is pretty straightforward. She prefers non-fiction and sees reading as a means of escaping the mundane. (If her view is shared by the majority of readers, this would account for the popularity of romance, urban fantasy, and paranormal romance these days.) With regard to the third criterion, she prefers the reader reviews in Amazon and Goodreads as being more indicative of an honest and open opinion, as opposed to “professional” reviews and bestseller lists.

For the full text, please see http://www.undergroundbookreviews.com/3/post/2013/04/ten-things-or-maybe-less-i-look-for-when-picking-an-e-book-by-tamara-tipton.html?utm_source=Weekly+Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=84c11f862a-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN.

I would enjoy receiving your comments on what sells an e-book to you: do you agree with price, subject matter, and reviews as the primary criteria? Do you enjoy downloading freebies or are you wary of their quality? What about cover design? Is this important to you?

I look forward to hearing from you.