Pj McIlvaine

Well, boys and girls, it’s been quite a week.

Last Friday–August 18th–the book of my heart officially came in to the world. I was a puddle of emotions: fear, anxious, nervous, apprehensive. And so much more.

I’m only one person. I can do only so much. And I can reach only so many. Which was I decided early on to hire an independent literary publicist to help me hopefully avoid my debut adult contemporary psych crime thriller from Bloodhound Books sinking deep into an Amazon bog, forgotten in a sea of new releases.

The pre-order phase seemed to go well. But were people really hearing me? I had no idea.

And then reviews began to trickle in on Goodreads, thanks to my publisher’s ARC group. Five and four star reviews. I was encouraged. At least readers weren’t lambasting the book. And no one brought up what I thought might prove to be, shall we say…controversial aspects that I feared would bring out the pitchfork crowd.

The book began to climb in the Amazon rankings, but it was still early days. Very early days. Nothing to get excited about.

But in all honesty, the review I feared the most was from Newsday, my hometown newspaper. When my publicist told me that the Newsday book editor had agreed to review A GOOD MAN, I burst into tears. And then the doubts crept in. What if the critic hated the book? I mean, really hated it? I twisted myself into knots obsessing about it. The night before I knew the review was to appear, I had a mini crisis of faith. What if my book wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be? Great and wonderous things happened to other people. Why oh why couldn’t it happen to me?

That morning—Sunday—I could barely sleep. I remember looking at the alarm clock at 4am and thinking that the paper was already printed and out for delivery. And then a terrible thought came to me: what if they decided to pull the review at the last minute because the book was garbage?

Finally, I got out of bed before everyone else, took Luna out to pee, and grabbed the morning paper. The long, slow walk back to the house was like bracing myself for the electric chair. I told myself that if the review was negative, it wasn’t the end of the world. Maybe no one would notice it. I mean, it was going to be a small, throwaway review in the Sunday book section. A courtesy review because I’m a local author, in other words.

Even so, I procrastinated a bit before opening the paper. Finally, I gathered my courage and opened the paper to the book review section. And I nearly had a coronary.

A GOOD MAN was the lead review. Not only that, it was a full page. A FULL GODDAMN FUCKING PAGE, as Brooks Anderson would’ve said. And when I read the first paragraph comparing my Brooks to characters of Martin Amis, Philip Roth, Mickey Spillane, and Dashiell Hammett, I burst into fresh tears, unable to read further. Barely coherent, I woke my husband up in a tizzy. MARTIN AMIS! PHILIP ROTH! I was a sobbing mess.

The review was something out of a dream. Was this a prank? Uh, no. Read for yourself.

https://www.newsday.com/entertainment/books/a-good-man-pj-mcilvaine-rtssrbkx

To say I was over the moon would be an understatement. As my publicist joyfully said, this wasn’t just a five star review. IT WAS A REALLY BIG DEAL

A week later, I’m still in shock, still processing it all. But it also got me to thinking that maybe I wasn’t a an imposter after all. That the hard work and bitter rejections and doors slamming and me stubbornly sticking to my blind faith had lead to this moment. But it was just a moment. Would it last? Was momentum growing for my gritty thriller?

I don’t know. It’s still too early to say. What I can say is that a week into publication, A GOOD MAN is in the top 1en of hot new releases on Amazon and has been consistently in the the top 10 and 100 in several categories. To be frank, I thought it would take weeks, if not months, to achieve this. If it ever did.

I’m in awe and disbelief.

Mind you, this was the book that a top agent told me in no uncertain terms was “unpublishable” and gave me notes that would’ve watered down everything about it that made it unique. Thankfully, I ignored the notes.

Shortly after this, Bloodhound Books offered me a contract. In their view, my book was “brilliant” as it was. And aside from two minor spur of the moment plot changes I made in the final proofreading phase, Bloodhound Books published A GOOD MAN exactly as I wrote it. WORD FOR WORD.

I know what Brooks would say: UNFUCKINGBELIEVABLE.