The review of my novel came in, so it’s time to face the music. I would have gotten to this earlier, but the fires in Los Angeles had me hopping around a bit.

Here’s the review:

In his exciting new novel, Bote Manchas Metro, Karl Fandkin brings to life his rendition of a Gotham-like city deeply entrenched in crime and violence. Instead of a masked vigilante, he employs seemingly unremarkable citizens and brings their distinctly remarkable lives to the forefront – a venture that is echoed in his author’s notes where he writes about being “interested in the accomplishments of more ordinary people”.

The novel opens with a brief history of how the city of Bote Manchas came to be – its evolution from a missionary settlement to the present-day iteration of a metropolitan – before making a neat segue onto route 36 and a bus carrying its first pick of passengers for the day. Each chapter delivers a peek into the life of all the people on that bus, one troubled individual at a time – a clever nod to the sentiment of nothing being as it seems on first glance.

Fandkin works an intriguing play of identities to portray what could easily be just another day on the commute for most of us, sitting beside office workers, professors, seamstresses, real professors, and a few we think we know nothing about, only to realize it’s everyone we know nothing about. Introduced as plain monikers from the perspective of a rude, misogynistic bus driver, all the characters (including the driver) come into their own over the course of the book with seemingly diverging trajectories eventually intersecting in the most curious ways.

The novel rejects the constraints of genre in an intriguing blend of satire, philosophy and thriller fiction. Using different voices from different strata of society, the writer presents the disconcerting reality of crime, workplace harassment, extreme prejudice and religious fanaticism – an ambitious undertaking that flows in an impressive balance for the most part, except for the tricky bit of the reader potentially losing track of plot events owing to the narrative choice of multiple points-of-view. But that’s only a minor setback for what is an exhilarating roller-coaster of a story.

I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who likes fast-paced crime thrillers that are much more than just fast-paced crime thrillers. I’d also like to mention a few trigger warnings for references of violence and sexual abuse in the book. On the whole though, this novel is a fantastic read, and I can’t wait for more readers to explore it.

By Abha S

Some of this is hype which is probably encouraged by Reedsy Discovery. They promote their review service as a way to help authors launch novels, so let’s take phrases like “In his exciting new novel” and “ this novel is a fantastic read” with more than a grain of salt.

When I looked at the reviewer through her website links, I saw that she has two books on her currently reading list, both are written in Sanskrit. Combined by the fact that this blog had several hits from India last week, I think it safe to assume a few things like: She is from India; she has come to this blog and may return and read this entry; English is not her first language and she is not familiar with American culture.

That said, she knows literature. Her perception that this novel ignores genre is spot on. I never really got a grip on genres and their features. Many novels today blend genres. I simply ignore them. Her comment “… echoed in his author’s notes where he writes …” shows the extent of how far afield I have gone.

Let me explain. I use Libre Office as a protest against MicroSoft wanting hundreds of dollars for Office each time I buy a computer. A downfall to Libre Office, however, is that it doesn’t seem to recalc as often as it should. I used the spreadsheet to keep track of word counts. As I neared the end of the novel, I thought I was too close to 80k words for comfort, so I wrote a “For those who have to know” section that reveals character’s fates beyond the end of the novel. Good editing usually cuts ten to twenty percent of the text. I also threw in some comments about how there could be a sequel, but that I was not interested in writing about gangster in a turf war and that I was more interested in more ordinary characters.

The developmental editor picked up on that line as well. He did not like the original final chapter. He thought it too anticlimactic. I did not feel the “for those who have to know” part was worth keeping, I was well over 80k words. The editor recommended that I cut the final chapter or at least cut it down. It contained an important plot point: The arrest of Ralph Batogne for the murders he committed before the story began. I ended up merging the two chapters and kept the chapter title “For Those Who Have to Know.”

The comment “ … Gotham-like city …” reveals a cultural divide. Bote Manchas is clearly a west coast city near the Mexican border, that is to say, a stand-in for Los Angeles. Gotham has been a stand-in for New York ever since Washington Irving.

Another failing, although more my own, is shown in the comment “The novel opens with a brief history of how the city of Bote Manchas came to be …” The actual title of this chapter is: Boring Background History Most People Skip Over which was written as a high school essay by one of the novel’s characters. I couldn’t figure out how to make it a preface with page numbers in Roman numerals. I hoped the chapter title would cue readers in and they would start reading at the next chapter.

The comment: “… sitting beside office workers, professors, seamstresses, real professors …” shows the problem of having two very similar characters. Dr. Jeremiah Tyler is called The Professor of Practical Philosophy. His foil is Dr. Jefferson Ford who the bus driver calls Real Prof. The poor reviewer got caught making a list of characters based on the chapter titles without realizing that real professors are professors and do not need to be listed twice. Had she paid more attention and wanted to show she read the book thoroughly she would have written “self proclaimed professors and real professors,” or something like that.

Her comment: “Introduced as plain monikers from the perspective of a rude, misogynistic bus driver …” The first chapter introduces Ralph Batogne. The original title for this chapter was Misanthropic Bus Driver. He seems particularly mean to Angelic Choi (That Face) and Eunice Underwood (Proselytizing Bitch), but he is also hostile to Hector Manning (Mumbling Bob) and pretty much indifferent to everyone else. To finish the line, “… all the characters (including the driver) come into their own over the course of the book with seemingly diverging trajectories eventually intersecting in the most curious ways.” The word “curious” has me concerned. Given the cultural divide, it could be a good thing.

“… an ambitious undertaking that flows in an impressive balance for the most part, except for the tricky bit of the reader potentially losing track of plot events owing to the narrative choice of multiple points-of-view. But that’s only a minor setback for what is an exhilarating roller-coaster of a story.” Here the reviewer gives me too much credit. Bote Manchas Metro doesn’t have a plot in any conventional sense, or it has too many. I put the novel through a developmental edit two years earlier. That editor treated it like a copy edit. It was an awful experience and I scrapped the novel for a year. That editor, however, couldn’t decide if the book was a story-cycle or a collection of short stories. It aint exactly either. There a some stories that need to be read in order, and some that don’t. In my mind, it is a mix-tape of characters. Well, mostly. There are a couple of framing chapters. One chapter introduces the characters and it is not named for any of the characters. Another chapter brings most of the characters together again for the stories climax, again not named for a character.

For the most part, each chapter is a short story, or would be, except not all chapters end where a short story would end. If I wrote them as short stories, they would have a better resolution. Some chapters are resolved in a later chapter, and at least one chapter resolves in the For Those Who Have to Know chapter.

Well, time presses. I need to get bottled water and the lines are long. Please forgive me not proofing this entry, not even trying.