Faith,
f
Faith,
f

thefinishers.biz

Frank Creed.com: the official site of Flashpoint: Book One of the UNDERGROUND

The Finishers.biz: Polishing Manuscripts until they Shine

There are more reviews on the way, but since the reviewers are busy-bees and do this voluntarily, I don’t push anyone. I wish I had the time to review more books (or even read them, for that matter) so I could get the numbers up myself.

The Guild Review offers only editorial reviews. We wanted to get away from personal taste (or other types) and provide professional third-person reviews a la the library or journal reviews. Those appearing on this site can be placed by publishers, for instance, in the editorial review section of amazon.com. So, screening reviewers and each review that comes along is part of the package — but we do need more reviewers willing to use the format. This is another reason we have so few reviews.

GR reviews more than just LGG-member books. We review all Christian and Biblical speculative fiction, however, we give priority to novels that are either published by: small presses, independent presses (those not affiliated with the CBA or ECPA), and self. While we don’t discriminate (totally!) against books from the large Christian houses, we’ll review them too, we give priority to the others because they don’t have equal access to promotional venues like the big book blog tours, many book review sites; even the library and literary journals won’t even consider a book submitted from other than a big house. Like the highly respected Midwest Book Review, we want to provide promotion for everyone–not just the big guys.

Truth be known, we get very few books submitted to us because we don’t advertise nor solicit openly. If we had the number of active reviewers necessary, it would be a different story. For now we are building slowly to show that the GR is more than just a site for “badly written POD books” (not my words, but certainly the impression that many people hold.

I thank you for taking the time to look through the Guild Review and for so many kind comments and great suggestions. I appreciate them all.

c

My intent was to keep the Guild Review site as organized and uncluttered as possible, also to organize it in such a fashion that future posts would be easy-peasy to handle (templates for the review page items, for example). I had thought of placing a quick “fact” item beside each cover on the front page, but dismissed it as adding to clutter. However, I see merit in your idea and here is what I think I will do: most Christian speculative fiction is geared toward young adults (which I think is unfortunate, but a whole other issue) so instead of providing a lot of details, I will indicate that unless a book is labeled “adult” readers can assume it is written for a young adult audience. Second, behind each title, in parentheses, I can indicate subgenre.

You also mention links. Yes, the Guild Review is a part of the Lost Genre Guild group, but it is also separate in that we review more than just LGG member books (or would like to). I didn’t want to discourage people from visiting us if they figured that all the information we had available was at the main LGG site — so why bother with the GR? It needed to be a stand-alone site but one that could be reached through either the main website or the blog. I do see that I need to put up a warning page that says “You are now leaving the main LGG site” or “the LGG blog” or something.

Alas, if only I could find the time to do everything right!

c

Becky