The first ever official review for my debut novel.

I haven’t been awaiting this moment with a combination of terror, excitement, hope, and dread. No, really. I haven’t. I haven’t been imagining how nice it would be to receive a glowing first review and at the same time fearing that the critic in question would attack my novel with the gleeful viciousness of Anton Ego.

So when I clicked on the wonderful horror website Dreadful Tales this morning, I never expected to find the review I found—my very first official review as a novelist.

I’ll let the reviewer do the talking—she does an amazing job capturing so much of what I hoped readers would feel, think, and be entertained by in my novel—but I will share a couple of my favorite passages:

“…The Sorrows is really a vicious, sexy beast of a novel.”

“Not only can you draw strong parallels to the Dreadful Tales God ‘O Literature, Laymon, the violent eroticism is also reminiscent of Richard Matheson’s Hell House…”

And just in case you’ve never heard of Richard Laymon or Richard Matheson, I’ll just say that they’re two of the best authors the genre has ever seen and two of my most important influences.

So the question is, Have you bought your copy of The Sorrows yet? And if you have, have you told your friends to do the same? And if you haven’t, is it because I just sounded like an infomercial for an unwanted body hair remover?

Thank you to Dreadful Tales, and thanks especially to Meli, the author of this incredible review.

I’m humbled. And happy.