Great review of “Turning Left at Albuquerque” (Back from Summer Break)

August 10, 2009 in Uncategorized

alwaysgoright

AlwaysGoRight.com reviews “Turning Left at Albuquerque”

Since first starting to podcast “Turning Left…” as an audiobook I’ve received some very encouraging emails and comments.  A few weeks ago* the audiobook podcast was reviewed on AlwaysGoRight.com, a well-established website that covers all things geek. I meet the author, Karnatos, through our shared love of the webseries The Guild. We’ve been in contact  for a year or so and I always appreciate his finely-honed sense of humour. We talked via Skype about the podcast, but I hadn’t realised at first that he intended to officially review it – that was a more-than-pleasant surprise!

Reviews matter

When you are creating something and putting it out there for people to enjoy it’s a pleasure and a risk. A pleasure because you hope that they will enjoy it as much as you do and that it will entertain and transport them, and a risk because they might not like it, or just plain ignore it. Being ignored is hard because you are creating in a vacuum. You need feedback to know whether what you are doing is having the desired results. I’ve been lucky because people have told me they enjoy the podcast and the story and when we’ve had to delay posting I’ve had emails asking why! A review, though, is different. It’s an assessment of your work and an opinion on whether it the reviewer liked it or not. This helps other people decide whether they are going to give it a try, too.

Which reviews matter the most?

At this stage in my writing career I know it’s unlikely that a well-established author with an impressive range of published books to their name is going to be commenting on my work. That’s okay, I can afford to wait for them to offer to do a blurb for “Turning Left…”. The review in AlwaysGoRight is important to me for several reasons:
  • Firstly, it is on a blog that is well-established and has a growing reputation for bringing the geek home to many people. There are reviews and opinion pieces about a wide-range of topics.
  • Secondly, it is a review from someone I respect as a writer and who wanted to review my work – this is incredibly powerful. Although I’ve known Karnatos online for a while and we have talked about writing, I would never presume to ask him to review my work. Yet he chose to do so because he enjoys the podcast. Wow!
  • Thirdly, it is a validation that we’re doing the right thing. Karnatos is enjoying the story, the narrator, the length of the episodes and the audio quality. If he had had any issues it would be an opportunity to look again and make improvements.

Luckily we seem to be on track:

“… At first I was not exactly sure what she was talking about when she started promoting a chapter from something she called “Turning Left at Albuquerque”, but as usual my curiosity wins and this time I struck gold – I am really enjoying this series…Mary certainly gets the feeling of dread that one experiences when they’ve been let go; having been through it myself, it’s both haunting and entertaining to listen to. And despite it being a very somber setting, her writing keeps things mostly upbeat by allowing humour to show through… You should add this audiobook series to your weekly podcast regiment; I really do feel that you are missing out if you are not tuning in to find out what is in store for poor Jason. Each chapter of this story is entertaining, and the 25 minute episodes go by fast….”


No spoilers

The review is quite in-depth but there are no spoilers, so please take the time to go and read it and then look around the Always Go Right website. It’s my first review and it made me feel very proud, and a little humble.

We’ll be publishing chapters 41-45 today of “Turning Left…” and you can listening to and download all the episodes so far on turningleft.podbean.com. You also subscribe in iTunes or any other podcatcher from there, too.

*Why has it taken me so long to publish this if the review was weeks ago? That is simple – I thought this had been published before I went on summer break and it hadn’t! I have no idea why – I would have sworn it was up already. So, a salutary tale in CHECKING THINGS.

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