That’s the lead from the most recent review of A Roomful of Monkeys posted on Amazon’s web page featuring my book. Along with “playful” from the Kirkus Review, those two words sum up precisely what I was intending to achieve with my first comic novel.

  To say I was relieved to see words like those associated with Roomful would be an understatement. I could barely breathe waiting for the manuscript’s acceptance, the first round of edits and, finally, publication day. Why? Because, as with almost everything I write, I start with the premise that here is where I reveal myself to be the fraud I’ve always thought I was. It’s never turned out that way, mind you, but that has never stopped Reid from being Reid either. But now a novel? Something I had just about given up ever being able to pull off (outside of a widely regarded disreputable genre, and one I expect Project 2025 to take dead aim at if ever enacted, that is).

The Kirkus reviewer opined that I had fun writing it, and he was dead right

  The other aspect of the actual writing of Roomful was its free-flowing unfolding on my laptop. I won’t say ease of writing, though that’s what I fear best describes the process, but there was a naturalness to the writing that is the way I’ll officially describe it. (The Kirkus reviewer opined that I had fun writing it, and he was dead right,) Each day, six days a week, I arose excited about the day’s prospects for progress. That all began about a year ago, and to date I have a published novel, a completed second manuscript (PM me if you’d like to sign on as a beta reader) and a third manuscript undergoing a second draft. Now, I’m no Stephen King or Ray Bradbury when it comes to being prolific, but three full length novels in a year is nothing to sneeze at. But it might still have been something to laugh at rather than with or about.

  Which is why these two reviews mean so much to me. Maybe I’ve hit upon something that, for me, works.

  See for yourself. See my book page on this site, and click on the buy button.

  And write a review if you are so inclined.

  Thanks to those who’ve done so already.