Reviews sell books. Reviewing a book is easy.

What do you want to be when you grow up? I’ve addressed this issue before. What I never realized when I was young was that I would want to be so many things.

I also never considered that, over the course of my life, the goals I yearned for would keep changing. Proof? If you’d have told me I would spend two decades in a high school classroom, I would have scoffed. Yet, here I am, two years away from retiring after 20 years.

And what do I want now? After being a sports broadcaster and a print reporter and a sports official in football, baseball, ice hockey, soccer, and basketball, as well as a teacher, it seems I should sit back and be content. But, I’m just not wired that way. (I’m working on that relaxing-thing, but it continues to be a struggle.)

My aspiration now is to make a living as an author, a career goal almost as daunting as that sportscaster idea back in the 70s.  Thanks to the advent of the personal computer, somewhere between 600,000 to 1,000,000 books are published in the US every year. Finding any of my sweet babies – yes, we authors tend to think of our books as our children – in that pile is like locating that proverbial needle in a haystack.

And here’s where you come in. Amazon – love or loathe the great behemoth – is the place authors careers are made. It is the word-of-mouth of yesteryear. So, I’m asking for a favor. It is reviews that sell products on line. And reviews are especially important when selling books. Leaving one is easy. Go to the page for The Scent of Rain: https://www.amazon.com/Scent-Rain-Anne-Montgomery/dp/0996390146. Click on customer reviews. The cover art will appear next to five stars. Click on the number of stars you think the book is deserving of and you will get an option to make comments.

And this is really important! You must be totally honest. If you don’t like the book, that’s perfectly OK! How can an author improve without honest criticism? We cannot.

So, if you’ve read The Scent of Rain and feel called to comment, I thank you. I can’t tell you how much every single review matters.

Now, I’m putting my author cap back on. It’s time to start a new story.

Anne Montgomery’s novel, The Scent of Rain, tells the story of two Arizona teenagers whose fates become intertwined. Rose flees into the mountains to escape from her abusive polygamous community where her only future is marriage to a man older than her father. Adan, whose only wish is to be reunited with his mother, is on the run from the cruelties of the foster care system. Are there any adults they can trust? Can they even trust each other?  The Scent of Rain is available at https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780996390149 and wherever books are sold.