Nearly a year ago author Peter Cawdron took and dropped a gem on the indie book scene with Anomaly. The story of an under-achieving teacher who goes from field trip spectator in downtown NYC to over-achieving armchair scientist in the blink of an eye and thrusting himself into the biggest moment in human history, first contact.
WARNING! SPOILERS BELOW.
In January of this year I read and reviewed this story [LINK] and gave it 4 1/2 stars out of 5 or an A- overall. Last week the author shot me an email that he had updated and expanded the ending and asked me to take a look at how it had changed. Mr. Cawdron stated,
“There were two reasons behind the rewrite. Firstly, the [UN] invasion didn’t come off as plausible, and understandably so, but the second reason was more important. Like a lot of writers dabbling in science fiction, I made the plot bigger than the characters. In rewriting the ending, I tried to focus on building some depth of character, wanting to ground the story and give the reader someone to relate to.
The chance to revise and improve a story is not something many authors consider, whether it was feedback from comments and reviews on Amazon and Good Reads or just plain not 100% happy with their own work. Continue reading
Before Christmas the prospect of me reading a book by an indie author was slim-to-none. Not that I wouldn’t care to read a book not written by an author not named King, Asimov, Poe or Dickens, but for a person that shops within his comfort zone of large retail book stores and his local library how would I find something so obscure. When I look for a book I hit the new release racks and browse the bindings, familiarity is what would catch my eye, and frankly if I had to choose between a no name and Grisham, I am reading Grisham every time because the likelihood of disliking the book is much like my earlier chances, slim-to-none.
88 mph to Roswell 