I got a copy of the fall release catalog from Feiwel & Friends today, and I was very impressed with the look of the magazine, and especially with the soon-to-be-released titles on the list. Of course, I turned directly to pages 28 - 29, where my editor had inserted a note card with a very nice message she'd written me.
What an amazing couple pages they put into Ghost Medicine. Forgive me if I sound a little like Troy (the main character) here, but I really have a hard time convincing myself I deserve words like these. Here's what the folks at Feiwel & Friends say about Ghost Medicine:
"There will be blood. We braced ourselves to read this manuscript. We weren't looking for a "serious" novel about guys who ride horses and are sorting through the friends and enemies in their lives (think The Outsiders meets All the Pretty Horses). But these kinds of surprises are what we love about our jobs, and we sure knew, right away, that we had to have this book. Here's a fine, fine debut."
And, while I'm on the subject, I kind of hate giving away the advance galley copies I received... like I'm saying, "Here, read my book!" And I don't want people to feel obligated to do that, either. But I did get asked by a very nice lady who runs a local book club with some very interesting people in it about my book, so I gulped and gave her a copy... and I received some very nice emails from her over the course of the next few days. She said:
I began reading it Wednesday morning and I am almost done. It is absolutely wonderful. I find that I cannot stop reading it.
In October I will be "choosing" it for our book club to read.
...And, when she finished reading it, she wrote:
I woke up at 4am and finished "Ghost Medicine". Incredibly powerful. My stomach clenched when...
Such a marvelous read. Thank you for sharing it with me.
Congratulations on doing such a superb job.
I left out the stomach-clenching part for the benefit of future readers... but, thanks for saying that, 'cause my stomach clenched when I wrote that part, and then again, like getting slugged, every time I went back through it for the editing, too. I swear I thought writing that part of the book was going to kill me.
And, finally, from one more email I've received:
This is not an empty compliment. I have read many books in my lifetime.
I loved the title and the way you explained it in the book. And especially reinforced it again at the end.
It definitely will make a good movie.
I loved it. You did a super job...and the lessons we all learned from an ambitious and a very disciplined undertaking... Congratulations...and continued blessings in all that you pursue... you are very brave to share your soul with us.
Thanks for letting me one of the first to read it.
I was sitting in a restaurant in Pismo Beach with my son, having breakfast... just the two of us, last weekend, and I even got a phone call from someone who'd just finished the book and was eager to tell me her opinion on the book.
I'm still scared about people reading it, but now that it's out there I guess I'm scared about people not reading it, too. Like it or not.
