One Judge's Take on My Lost Summer

Mark and I got back the evening of Thursday, January 4 from our three weeks in New Zealand. We had only three voice mails waiting for our attention, and the first one was from a woman who read an article in the local paper about My Lost Summer. Nice (though I’m not real happy about people calling my home about the book).
In our three-weeks of back mail, among the Christmas cards and bills, from Writer’s Digest I received a certificate of participation for submitting my book to the publication’s Self Published book contest. I put the certificate in the pile of papers to be recycled because, really, at about the end of junior high school, I stopped keeping a scrapbook in which to file the minutiae of my accomplishments. The piece of mail from WD was not pointless, however, because also with the certificate were the judge’s comments on the book.

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning “poor” and 5 meaning “excellent,” please evaluate the following:

Structure and organization: 3

Grammar: 3
Misspellings and some awkward phrasing.

Cover design: 5
Very arresting image.

Judge’s commentary:
1. What did you like best about this book?
I feel like the book really comes alive when you begin to write from your own perspective in Chapter 10. Reading about the world through the eyes of someone with severe brain damage is fascinating.

2. How can the author improve this book?
Be aware of tense shift in back cover description.

That’s it. Those are one person’s thoughts on My Lost Summer—though I must say nearly everyone has told me the cover is awesome. Thanks, Kathy, my graphic designer.

On Saturday I got an e-mail from a man in Illinois who read my book. This is how the message started: “I just finished your book "My Lost Summer, and I enjoyed it, and learned from it.”

I’ll resist the urge to explain my typos and defend my organization and just take the bad with the good.