I did not discover Dying For A Living in my local bookstore. Neither was it recommended to me by a friend nor found through a Google search. I 'found' Dying For A Living simply by being followed and directly contacted by its author, Kory M. Shrum, on Twitter.
Kory takes full advantage of social-media to promote her book and she is a complete sweetheart that will take the time to reply to whatever you want to ask/tell her. How does she manage that with eighteen-thousand-plus (and counting) Twitter followers? I do not know, but I admire her tenacity.
I admire her pretty face too, but I digress from the main point.
I purchased Dying For A Living from the only place that (I believe) it can be purchased - Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/Dying-Living-Jesse-Sullivan-Novel/dp/099121580X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top). I would have gone for the Kindle version had my tablet not given-up-the-ghost and I am currently unwilling to purchase a new one. Again, I digress, but the point I am making is that I purchased a paperback copy and it is a well-made, high-quality book. I believe it is a self-published book as I can find no information on the Timberlane Press publisher label. This could also explain why Ms. Shrum is pushing the social-media envelope so hard. No one is advertising for her, so she has to do it all. Again, I admire her tenacity...and her pretty face, but I will end that before it gets old ("Too late," says the reader.).
For me, the downside of this novel was the editing and/or typesetting - whichever was the culprit for the numerous — no...'numerous' is too harsh...various...various is better — various typos and missing words I found through the text. Now, let me explain that I am an ultra-picky editor when it comes to my own work and I know that it is very easy to miss things. There may be typos or missing words in this review and my brain will not notice them until I re-read it a month from now.
This is mostly my way of saying, "Kory, let me edit your next novel in the Jesse Sullivan series!"
While I did notice enough errors in the text to distract me, they did not distract me for long. Once the story picked up — somewhere around chapter 4 or 5 — the errors were easy to fill in/gloss over/ignore (truth is, I was caught by the story enough to stop noticing errors) as this actually is a well-written and enjoyable story.
One other writing technique threw me off. I am not certain if it is right or wrong, but it did throw me a couple of times. There are times in the book where a lot of time passes by, e.g. most of a workday, within a few sentences and it took me a minute to realize that is what happened. Personally, I would have broken the text at that point and done a break (line break, ***, line break, new paragraph) to indicate that time had gone by. Again, I am not certain if Ms. Shrum's technique is actually in error as this is probably a style preference.
One other writing technique threw me off. I am not certain if it is right or wrong, but it did throw me a couple of times. There are times in the book where a lot of time passes by, e.g. most of a workday, within a few sentences and it took me a minute to realize that is what happened. Personally, I would have broken the text at that point and done a break (line break, ***, line break, new paragraph) to indicate that time had gone by. Again, I am not certain if Ms. Shrum's technique is actually in error as this is probably a style preference.
Dying For A Living is an urban-fantasy genre novel. For those of you who may not know what urban-fantasy is, it is best explained as the taking of fairy-tale creatures and elements (werewolves, fairies, vampires, witches, magic, etc.) and placing them into modern, Western society. Many television series, movies, and books are making gobs of money by providing watchers and readers with these modern takes on the legends of old.
Ms. Shrum has followed a slightly different vein of the urban-fantasy genre by twisting the current social obsession with zombies and using science and military technology to create/explain the world found in Dying For A Living. I believe that this works well as it raises the plausibility of the scenarios found within the book and it is pleasant to see 'zombies' as living, breathing, 'normal' people who just happen to have a genetic defect that prevents them from staying dead unless they are decapitated.
I do not wish to delve into the plot of the story at this point as I am certain that there are better reviews than mine that get well into the meat of this book. I will not give this book a star rating as that is a highly-questionable and subjective thing to do.
I will say that I enjoyed the new slant to the classic zombie. I will say that I enjoyed/loved that the Church is the "bad-guy" as I can relate to that. I will say that I think Lane is a jerk and that Jesse should be with Ally. I will finally say that I enjoyed reading this book and my highest-compliment is to say that I will read it again and I am looking forward to reading more of Jesse's adventures in future novels.
Well done, Kory. I wish you the best and hope your hard work pays dividends.
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