Hey, congrats on this Andy! Wishing you the best.
He’s kinda dangerous, though. 
Thanks very much! If you’re a sci-fi fan, I hope you give the book a try.
I know when I’m looking for new books, the 3 star reviews tend to be the most useful. 5 starts are often shills or fanboys, whose opinions are unreliable, and 1 stars are usually the people who hate it for some reason unrelated to its actual quality, like they don’t like violence, or gay people, or swearing, or something.
3 star reviews usually actually put some thought into it, and point out both what you might like and dislike about the book, making the decision to try it more effective.
Very good point. I think any sort of thoughtful reviews, whether positive or critical or a combination, can only help an author, as well as helping help potential readers.
Hint hint…
Just finished Spindown Andy, and I thought it was a good read. Well written overall, nice plotting, nice nod to somewhat ‘realistic’ space travel without getting too bogged down in ultra-hard scifi.
If I had to come up with any criticism, I found a small handful of times where your turn of phrase was a bit awkward to my ear. Could just be me, and it was nothing of major substance anyway.
The key to me was it held my interest more than enough to keep reading, and any book that can do that is a plus.
Curious as to how you envisage Aotea is pronounced?
Fantastic! Thanks so much for giving it a read, and I’m very glad you enjoyed it.
Aotea is actually a mythical seagoing vessel in Maori mythology – the canoe that supposedly brought the Maori’s ancestors to New Zealand. I’ve always assumed it’s pronounced “ay-oh-tay-uh”, but I’m not a Kiwi.
Your assumption looks like a pretty good approximation to this Pakeha (European ancestry) Kiwi.
I think the Maori pronunciation is a bit more “ow-a-tay-uh”.
“ow” as in how, now, or cow, followed by a very short “a”… almost swallowed… a bit like the “u” in up.
(Sorry, I’m sure someone with some linguistics experience could explain that much better.)
Thanks for the info!
Indie book blog “Tome Tender” did a feature on Spindown with a fantastic (and positive!) write-up and review! Tome Tender: Spindown by Andy Crawford
Congratulations on your new novel. Curious, how long did it take you to write it?
Thanks! This one took me about a year to write, and nearly another year to revise and edit.
Do you plot out your books or do you write “by the seat of your pants?”
Sorry I missed this question! I plot out my books in advance (aside from my first book… and not plotting that one before writing was a mistake), though sometimes I run into things that I end up changing while I’m writing.
A really lovely and very thoughtful (and bilingual! French and English) new review was just posted on the book blog “One More Fantasy Blog…” (the blogger is based in Benin, which is pretty cool): [Review] Spindown by Andy Crawford | One More Fantasy Blog
A snippet:
Just finished it and left a 5* review on Kobo. Great classical SF and full of surprises. Some questions.
How many of the 20,000 did you imagine died in the war? Does the fact that these people selected as pacifists were perfectly willing to engage in warfare not show the flaw in the original premise? Does this show–I think it does–that the violent nature of humanity is baked in to our genes? How did anyone expect that the gene pool, selected much more randomly than the actual travelers, would grow up less prone to force and violence than the actual inhabitants?
Thank you so very much! Reader reviews are so, so important to any chance of success for indie books like mine. I couldn’t find the review so it may not have posted yet, but I’ll check back and I look forward to reading it. If at all possible, I’d greatly appreciate if you could also copy the review to any other ebook sites you have an account with (especially Amazon, and Goodreads too if possible).
Taking into account all of the violence and “accidental” deaths, I think the death toll was well into the thousands – perhaps as many as a quarter of the total compliment. And yes, I think that the mission of the conspirators was a fool’s errand – there’s no way to eliminate the violent nature of humanity, IMO. They were true believers in a long line of true believers who were willing to do violence and even things they knew were evil in service of what they fanatically believed was a greater good, unaware that this “greater good” was impossible.
Yeah, about what I expected. Will there be a sequel?
Sorry kobo is the only site I belong to.
Not sure yet about a sequel. If it becomes a big hit (still hoping!), then probably; if not, then maybe not. Do you have a link to your review? I still haven’t been able to find it.
I don’t understand it either. I wrote a review three times, but the Kobo site still shows no reviews. I must be doing something wrong, but the boxes for the reviewers are unclear. “Title” is title of what? The review, the book; I’ve tried both. “Display name” is whose name? Yours, mine, the man in the moon. Anyway, nothing works.
The cover is great, but doesn’t seem to have much to do with the story. No one goes out in space in a space suit.
Well thanks for trying! I appreciate your efforts, and hopefully it will eventually show up. I’d love it if you could post it here in the meantime, if you don’t mind.
Yep. The artist had a few ideas and this was by far the best one once it was drawn. I think it does a very good job of representing the tone of the story, even if there’s no scene that it matches.