Editor Sneak Peek

Hello all,

One of my beloved editors, Chris Mikkelson, wrote a beautiful review of my book, and I wanted to share it with all of you! Here it is:

A Trip Down "The Middle of the Sidewalk"

Editor's sneak peek by Christopher Mikkelson

At a glance:
Author: Brittney Cooney
Type of Work: Novel
Date of Publish: In progress!
Genre: Literary Fiction
Synopsis: A young boy, recovering from the loss of his brother, struggles to learn to love himself.

                  It was not hard to draw me in to walk down "The Middle of the Sidewalk," and that's not just because I've known the author and seen her writing develop since we were both in the 8th grade.  No, what really kicked off the journey was my curiosity; her first 400 words (which can be found here) are spoken from one of the most exact perspectives I've read.  I felt as if I were traveling to an alien world, a world precisely like my own except that everything had a place.  As I read on, I learned that world was within the mind of 12-year-old boy Cory Becker.

                  As the story continued, that perspective became a personality, and that personality became a person, and an entire city fanned out around him.  Perhaps more impressively, the world went further inward than outward; Cory's mind, past, and personal flaws are all laid bare to the reader, inviting them not just into his life, but to live it.  Cory's tragedies and triumphs become the readers', and I found myself intensely involved in sharing one particular triumph: meeting Andy, the new girl in school whose brand of oddness threatens to break Cory's ordered world.

                  "The Middle of the Sidewalk" asks a lot of very, very important and interesting questions, and uses the incomplete perspective of a child to answer many of them.  Many, mind you, not all; Brittney respects the reader enough that she leaves many of them for the reader to answer for themselves.  Questions like, what is normal?  How do you define sanity?  And of course, what does it really take to be happy?  I seldom stopped to ponder these questions within the pacing of the story, and when they all hit me when I'd read the end, I found myself happy to be asking myself some questions I'd never pondered before (and as those who know me are aware, that is saying something).  In addition, I realized near the end of the book that while I thought I'd been reading about Cory's life the whole time, the themes in the book expand well as a metaphor for conflicts from a nation-vs.-nation scale, to the battles we all go through within our own minds.

                  The story is a work in progress still; I'm working with the author about letting the reader look past Cory's gaze a bit to see more of the periphery of his life.  As usual, Brittney had an answer for all of my questions, and in fact knows so much about her characters that she could write a separate book about each one.  If she did, I'd be happy to read them, after being allowed to see through Cory Becker's eyes as he walked down "The Middle of the Sidewalk."

Onward and Upward,