It’s to the readers that I now speak. You bought my book(s), whether in ebook or paperback form, with your hard-earned money, and I hope you felt it was well-spent. Some of you are in the group I mentioned above, that is, you put your thoughts and impressions of the book into a review and put it up on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or LibraryThing or whatever.

Some of you, however, have elected not to write a review. I know your time is valuable and perhaps you just don’t care to do it. I get it. But I want to ask you to reconsider for the following reasons.

I don’t seek reviews for ego purposes. Yes, it’s uplifting when someone I don’t know writes something nice about my novel. That, however, is not the purpose of a review. The more reviews any of my books get, especially if they’re good reviews, it will show potential readers that other folks just like them have tried my books and (I would hope) liked them. The greater the number of reviews a book can display on its Amazon page, the greater the chance that someone will buy that book. It’s really that simple. That’s one of the best ways to create buzz.

So I would humbly ask, if you liked any of my books, please go to Amazon and write a brief review of it. It can be as long or as short as you want, and it doesn’t matter that you’re not really a book reviewer. Neither are 99% of the people who write Amazon reviews.

Here are the pages you can go to. Find the page for the book you read and go there. On Amazon, you just scroll down and you’ll see “Create Your Own Review” on the right side. On Barnes & Noble, scroll down and you’ll see “Write a Review”. If you can spare a couple of minutes to do this, it would mean a lot to me. I thank you in advance.

Setup On Front Street / Amazon, Barnes & Noble

Bloodstains On The Wall / Amazon, Barnes & Noble

The Take / Amazon, Barnes & Noble

See you there!

Anyway, if you’d like to read it, go here and leave a brief comment at the end, okay? Thanks.

Now, I know most of us haven’t read five first novels that were published last year, so if you find yourself with an empty slot or two in that category, how about jotting down my little noir opus called The Take? I know this seems a little brazen, but hey, who’s gonna blow my horn if I don’t do it first?

Besides, you only get one chance at a best first novel.

Vicki Hendricks gave it a blurb (which you can read here), so I figure I must’ve done something right. Right?

And here’s another one.

Here’s a blurb for The Take, which appears on the back cover of the just-released print edition. It’s from the high priestess of noir, Vicki Hendricks:

Dennis writes true noir. The Take is a fast-motion train wreck from page one, twisting the reader’s heart for the desperate souls on a ride they never chose.

I consider this to be among the highest compliments I could ever hope to get for this novel. Vicki Hendricks has written some outstanding noir novels, such as Miami Purity, Cruel Poetry, Voluntary Madness, and her latest effort, a superb collection of short stories called Florida Gothic Stories. I’m really very proud to have her comments on the cover of my novel.

The Take is currently available in both print and digital formats. You can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble online, Fictionwise, and AllRomance (don’t ask me how it got there).

Now, apparently the reviewer does not quite get the world of noir and its population of characters with less than stellar IQs. And he certainly didn’t think he was reading The Maltese Falcon, but hey, I’m not complaining. He liked my novel and that’s good enough for me.

The review is also going to appear in their newsletter, which goes out to some 90,000 librarians. And if they don’t start ordering the book for their libraries, I’m calling Charlie Stella to get Jimmy Bench-Press after them.

You can read the full review here.

Of course, it’s also available in print on Amazon, Barnes & Noble online, and electronically on Kindle and All Romance ebooks.