New review: "Tony nails it - a rare ear for dialog"

A new review of "Blood Picnic and other stories" is up at Amazon, Goodreads and elsewhere. In it, Jeff Posey compares my handling of dialog to that of John O'Hara, noted novelist and playwright:

That's a lot of dialog for only $2.99!

My biggest impression is of Tony's ability to capture dialog. He reminds me of John O'Hara, who could carry a deeply emotional and descriptive story through dialog alone, even without tags to indicate who is speaking. That generally works only with two characters in conversation, and Tony does that in a highly skilled way with the story "Intervention." Nothing but quoted material. Not a single "he said" or "she said." The acid test is reading it out loud. Tony nails it. The guy has an ear for dialog that is rare. Very rare.

High praise, indeed! Dialog is something I enjoy writing, and I'm glad that shone through. I will note that the Wikipedia entry has this to say about John O'Hara:

He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue. O'Hara was a keen observer of social status and class differences, and wrote frequently about the socially ambitious. His Novel BUtterfield 8 was made into a movie starring Elizabeth Taylor that won an Oscar in 1960. A controversial figure, O'Hara had a reputation for personal irascibility and for cataloging social ephemera, both of which frequently overshadowed his gifts as a storyteller.

While I can't necessarily lay claim to such a degree of skill with dialog and insight into the social Other that John O'Hara possessed, my own personality is as sweet as timothy honey and as universally inoffensive as bunnies in sunshine. So I think I might have a leg up on that score.

The review (4 out of 5 stars) goes on to note some formatting and copyediting mistakes in the text. Note to self: punch copyeditor in the mouth as soon as finished with this blog post. The overall conclusion of the review is that:

"As long as you're willing to hang on and take some rather bizarre twists and turns (and you don't mind a little blood with your picnic), you'll enjoy the ride."

Why not pop over to Amazon to take a look at this review, along with all the others? "Blood Picnic and other stories" is $2.99. You can find it for many formats at Smashwords, and in device-specific formats at Amazon, Amazon-UK, Amazon-DE, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Diesel Books and other e.book outlets.


===== Feel free to comment on this or any other post.

p.s. *punch* Ow!