Yesterday, I posted the link to Piers Anthony's review. Today, I promised I would share his entire email. Here it is:
"I have now read Coming From Nowhere, which manuscript we had to rescue from nowhere after we lost track of it. Maybe this happened because it arrived in the month of NoRemember.
I will include a draft of my review for the February HiPiers Column. Apart from that, I note a certain awkwardness with some words. Once you use "your" where you mean "you're", "breath" where you mean "breathe", and you spell "complement" as "compliment". They are two different words, one being used for things like troops, the other as a favorable comment. I feel JD is too apt to strike out physically, and she doesn't take advantage of her shapely body to help persuade men to her viewpoint. As a female man she is less appealing. This is nevertheless a hard hitting story, and I wish you well with it."
The review was included, but I omitted it because you can read it in his newsletter. On the surface, it seems like he might be a little nit-picky. Yeah, there were some misspellings, but that happens in books. No one is perfect. But in the scheme of things, if this was all he found to be upset about, then I didn't do too badly.
My friend Tamara and I were chuckling about how he didn't like JD's character; how he thought she should use her sexuality more to get what she wants. It all has to do with female stereotypes and the genre. Remember, Piers Anthony helped shape and define the sci fi/fantasy genre, and he was writing "back in the day." Women characters weren't supposed to be strong. I actually like the fact that he didn't like JD. One of my goals in writing is to take conventions and stereotypes and turn them on their heads, and I hope I accomplished that.
Plus, this email shows the honesty and time he put into his review. He could've just skimmed the story, got the main points and wrote something really quick, but he didn't. He dove into it, found misspellings and gave a thoughtful response to what he read. It was extremely flattering. Piers Anthony is just an awesome, fabulous guy. I hope some day I can be as cool as he is.
