I am looking for four beta readers for my new book. This means you're the first people to give it a reader's assessment and I can get a sense of anything that is or isn't working before I sign off and send it to print.
Provisionally called The Matchmaker, the book is about Angelica, a 14 year-old who lives with Mum (Molly) in an old hotel on a peninsula in Donegal. Deciding it's her fault that her mum is single, Angelica reasons that she can't rightly have a boyfriend herself until she fixes Molly up. So she sets up a dating website to matchmake her mum. All goes well, for everyone else in the town, except for Molly. A comedy of errors, coming of age story.
What I would be hoping to get is your thoughts on the book. In return, I can give you a reference for your CV if that's of use, a signed copy when the book comes out and my lifelong and earnest appreciation.
Here's the opening, so you can see if it would interest you to read:
My name is Angelica Moone. I’m neither a vampire with gold
eyes and the need to drain cute boy-bands of blood nor a werewolf. You could
say my father was a whale but even that’s pushing it a bit. I live with my mum,
Molly, in a private flat above the lobby of a hotel called The Drisogue Arms.
It stares out over a rugged peninsula that elbows into the Atlantic on the most
westerly coast of Donegal. This is the most westerly part of the west of
Ireland, which is pretty far west, Europe-wise.
This makes for a lot of wind, rain and storms. We found an
empty coffin once and a beach full of mannequin arms, all left handed… I’m sure
there have been drugs washed up too and maybe a body or two but nobody will
admit it.
Apparently, I’m “too young”.
Pointless to say I’m fourteen. People who say I’m too young
smile when I say this, as if my response proves to them that they are
completely right. But then they don’t know me. It’s not their fault.
(Pix courtesy of Creative Commons.)
No comments:
Post a Comment