My novel’s cousin is The Silver Star by Jeannette Walls!!!

Who is your novel’s cousin? What famous author do I coincidentally write like? I had a computer tell me.

So I succumbed to the ads I was receiving and purchased the analytics of my novel, Bread for the Table. It is one thing to browse the likes of Goodreads and Amazon, lovingly looking for stories that mirror my story, another to leave it up to a computer. I signed up and signed on. I  excitedly wondered what authors would I most emulate with my writing style. I had not had any thought of a specific writer when I wrote this novel, but I have always loved a strong female voice. It took me longer to type my synopsis and select my excerpt than it did for my results. So I waited less than five minutes and then I received my answer. “Analysis for Bread for the Table indicates…   The author who you most closely match has averaged sales of 30,000-40,000 books per title across all of the titles published in their career. Key drivers of your books future success include self-promotion, your publisher’s marketing support, and the correct genre classification of your book in the retail marketplace.”

1. Ok…check… Self-promotion…I am all over social media with FB, Insta & Twitter.
2. Ok…check…Publisher’s marketing support…me again…see #1.
3. Ok…check…genre…Women’s Fiction was what a rep told me…and I was thinking Literary Fiction.

So I was sent a Ratings Key that included Authorial Vocabulary, Expressive Complexity, Grammar and Tonal Quality. I thought I was reading Cliffnotes!

 

The first book was a suspense thriller, the next horror/occult/psychological and the last general fiction.

After reading all of the selections, each novel had a string of my story. The first story begins with an encounter with an “enigmatic stranger”…like Tomas in BFTT.

My next novel cousin by a Pulitzer Prize-winning author has a father dealing with the loss of his daughter. Well Rose-of-Sharon does die in BFTT, her father cannot drag himself away from the beautiful words of John Steinbeck, can we say dissociative and borderline abandonment.

The last novel cousin shares the same 1970’s spirit, although this is a small town in California and BFTT takes place in Echo Park in Los Angeles. There are two girls in the other book, but poor Sage is all alone(because her sister has been killed) as a survivor in a restricted and controlling home. Both mothers have abandoned these homes.

 

Ding…ding…ding. Honestly I must admit that I had never heard of all three of these novels. But now I will read my novel cousins. And it does not hurt that Cousin #3 has a movie based on her novel(not my novel cousin) coming out with Woody Harrelson and Naomi Watts.