You might think that this is a small thing: a personal and professional no-brainer.  To me, it's a big deal, which is how it is with so many anxieties.  One person's no-problem is another's ponder-it-obsessively.  I have no problem with something like risking rejection or hamming it up (see photo below), but I worry about making myself less available and accommodating.

Okay, here it is:

I decided today to hold off on taking any full-length book critiquing work until my new novel Cobalt Blue is well-launched.  I'll continue during this time offering feedback on chapters, short stories, letters, etc.  And  I will go back to critiquing whole books probably around the first of June.

Moreover, I'm going to raise my critique rates a bit in the interim.

I'm near dizzy with the shock of such a brash move.

Also, with the whirlwind of preparations for what fellow novelist Carrie Knowles and I are calling The Crazy Ladies Book Tour. We both have new novels coming out soon, each of our books with a (different) fairly loony woman as a main character.   Much much more on this later.

(photo by Karen Tam)

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