{Blog Tour + Giveaway} Guest post from George O'Connor!

Hi, readers of Sare-endipity! My name is George O’Connor, and I’ll be your guest blogger today as part of my ongoing blogcrawl.  I’m celebrating the release of my new book, Aphrodite: Goddess of Love, the sixth volume of my graphic novel series Olympians, which retells classic Greek myth in a graphic novel format. The eponymous Sarah has graciously (and bravely) allowed me to park myself here and write about anything I’d like.

So I admit it. I have an ongoing Google vanity alert that sends me notifications whenever some soul out there on the interwebs mentions a combination of the words ‘George’, ‘O’Connor’ and ‘Olympians’, I get a little email sent to me with a link to the aforementioned mention. Recently I received a link to this very site, a little article entitled “The Olympians (The First 6 Books)”.

Hey cool, thunk I, this is about me.

It was one of those reviews that anyone who has ever had anything they’ve worked on been reviewed loves to read. This reviewer just got my books. She understood them and dug them and said oh so many nice things about them. And at the end of the review, a promise of a special post on Olympians in a couple of weeks! Cool! It’s only then I realized that the special post she was referring to would be this very one you’re reading now, written by me.

Meta.

I’m being a little silly here, and more than a little longwinded, but what I wanted to talk about today was the act of putting yourself out there in a creative endeavor, and the joys and perils of reading what other people think about your work. A cartoonist friend of mine was recently lamenting the horror of reading his entry on Goodreads, and in truth it can be a dispiriting endeavor. I feel I’ve been pretty lucky so far in the review game. I definitely feel I get more positive reviews than negative. I tend to be a real 4 star type guy on Goodreads—judging from my reviews, a lot of people like my stuff, but it’s a more select few who love it. Critically speaking, I’m like a solid ballplayer, a strong performer with a good on-base percentage, but one who seldom makes it to the all-star game. 

I guess this is why I was so excited by Sarah’s Olympians review on this very site. I create Olympians for an all-ages audience—I want everyone from six to six hundred to read them and enjoy them—but, truthfully, the audience I create this series for is myself. Olympians is the series that I wanted to read when I was growing up, Olympians is the series I want to read now. I am so lucky to be able to be creating these books for myself and everyone else, and I’m glad that most people who read them like them. And when I encounter that review that really just gets what I’m doing, who seems to just love it—It’s amazing. It’s meeting a new friend, or a kindred spirit.

I’ve always wanted to write a piece about reviews and awards, but I’ve never figured out a way to do it without sounding like I was wallowing in sour grapes. I’d love it if Olympians won a big award, some sort of Caldecottian Newburyish affair, the sort that drives new readers to discover my little series, but I’m also just so happy to occupy my comfortable little ecological niche. A series enjoyed by many, but beloved by a comparatively select few, a select few whom I am truly proud to call my audience.

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HUGE thanks to George for stopping by on his blogcrawl :)  You can read my review of Olympians here.

I'm also super excited to be able to offer a Giveaway!  To win a copy of Aphrodite, just leave a comment with your  favorite character in Greek Mythology and why.

This Giveaway will run until 2/28/14.  Winner will be notified soon after.