Dog Ears

If it moves away from you, it's food. If it moves towards you, you're food. I picked up a sampler of Weepers  by Nick Chiarkas at Madison Author Daze back in June (and didn't get around to reading it until recently because my brain has decided to prioritize YouTube above all else). I had a chance to speak to Nick at the event, and between his pitch and the back of the book, he convinced me that this story would be worth my time. Here's the blurb on the back of the book for you: The 1957 murder of an undercover cop in a New York City housing project has unexpected ties to the unsolved disappearance of a young father walking home in those same projects with his son, Angelo, on Christmas Eve six years before. The only witness to the cop killing is Angelo, now 13, while on his way to seek his own revenge in the early morning hours. The killers know he saw them. A series of gripping events forge a union between a priest, a Mafia boss, a police detective, and Angelo,...

Until about a month ago, I didn't know handing out free chapters was a thing that authors did, but honestly, it's a great idea. The first chapters are the most important ones in the whole book, they determine whether or not the reader keeps going. They're the hook, the trap, that pulls readers into the story, or they're the reason why the reader puts the book down.  TL;DR first chapters are really important.  I grabbed a couple sample chapters at a local author event last month and figured "hey, I could judge these chapters and talk about whether or not I'd keep reading." Thus, the first chapter gauntlet was born. Here we go.  One of the samples I nabbed was Hope(less)  by Melissa Haag (who I got to talk to at Author Daze and is really nice). The sample I got contained the first four chapters of the book, but I focused on the very first one. That was plenty, though, a LOT happens right off the bat.  We are introduced to a girl who has the po...