Goodreads Badreviews

I’m a pretty thick skinned individual. I’ll admit it. When people talk about me in a negative way, I shrug it off pretty easily. One thing that I will not tolerate is when someone speaks ill of my kids or the person that I love. I get all snarly and growly when that happens. Being thick skinned is a pretty handy trait if one decides to become an author. It can be a pretty cruel world. It seems like for every BAD review you get, It takes a hundred GREAT reviews before you stop questioning your desire to continue being an author.

I’ve had a few bad reviews. I usually shrug them off as, “Well, you just can’t please EVERYBODY.” Individuals have different tastes. It’s what makes us human and I’ve always respected that. Take Stephanie Meyer for a prime example. She’s sold like 52 bajillion copies of the Twilight Saga. Have you ever heard anyone say, “It was okay.” No. The twilight books are a love/hate relationship. You either love it or you hate it. I personally don’t care for sparkly vampires with bushy eyebrows, but again, that is my opinion. To each his own.

I’ve been noticing a trend lately and I don’t mean with just me. I’m friends with a TON of authors out there on both Facebook and the Twitter. It feels like lately people are just going around posting horrible reviews  for the sake of being different, just to be negative, or even out of fun. It’s been happening a LOT lately. A friend of mine on FB who is REALLY selling a LOT of books, had one person from Germany just flat out say the book is garbage don’t buy it. My friend had Amazon do a little inspection of the review and as it turns out, the person never even bought the book. Um…okay?

I don’t claim to be the world’s most best or most exciting writer. I like to think I tell an exciting, enjoyable, funny, scary story. My first book Origins was released just over a year ago and has been on Goodreads the entire time. It’s been reviewed by a BUNCH of great folks give me some even greater reviews. It made me really proud. Up until today it’s received 31- 5 star ratings, 10- 4 star ratings, 1- 3 star rating, and 1- 2 star rating with a total of 23 reviews that made me sooooo proud. A couple of months ago I did a giveaway on the site. I gave away 3 signed copies. Today one of the people who won posted a 2 star rating and a review that shoved a dull rusty spoon through my heart.

I won this book through Goodreads first reads giveaway.
I felt like the book dragged on and on and it took me months to read it. I just got really bored with the characters. It had the potential to be really great but Ashley was so childish and the way her character was written seemed poorly executed. It picked up a bit towards the end but I was still rather unimpressed. I think it spent too much time in Ashley’s head with her rather droll and unintelligent sounding monologue rather than focusing on an exciting world of vampires and other supernatural creatures

Yeah. Ouch.

What killed me about the review is it was the COMPLETE opposite of what everyone who’s ever read it told me what they loved MOST about the book. The character’s in Origins were fun and funny. They loved the dialog between the MC and her partner. Etc, etc, etc.  Maybe this reviewer either just had her own opinion, which I completely respect. Maybe she just likes posting negative reviews. I know for certain I’ll probably never know. I’m good with that. One thing I do wish though, if you ARE going to post a negative review of my work, PLEASE, at least get the main character’s name right. I might feel you actually read the book.

Have a Manuscript and Don’t Know What To DO?

I looked high and low for a publisher for my works.  I can tell you one thing, after searching for months for agents, months for publishers, and losing a good portion of my hair, I finally stumbled across Echelon Press.  “Who are they?”  Yes, I’ve heard the question before, so let me tell you exactly what I’ve told everybody else.  They’re my new family.  The president of the company, Karen Syed, actually cares about her authors, is probably one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met, and is a pleasure to not only work with, BUT WORK FOR AS WELL.  You heard me right.  I loved the company so much, I got a job.

They are currently looking to publish experienced authors and new upcoming authors as well.  So GO TO www.echelonpress.com, click on the submit tab, and follow the submission guidelines!

ECHELON:

Echelon is seeking submissions for ALL eBook divisions. Please visit our site for guidelines. http://echelonpress.com

EXPLORATIONS:

Echelon Explorations is seeking submissions for eBook publication. Guidelines at http://echelonexplorations.com

SHORTS:

Echelon Shorts is seeking submissions for eBook publication for all genres. Guidelines at http://echelonshorts.com

Deadline for Holiday submissions 11/10/10. Guidelines at http://echelonshorts.com

QUAKE:

Quake is seeking submissions for eBook publication for all genres. Guidelines at http://quakeme.com

Deadline for Quake Holiday Shorts submissions 11/10/10. Guidelines at http://quakeme.com

My Very First Blog

I don’t even know if anybody is going to read this, but here it goes. I am a writer. Nothing wrong with that except by day i work for a small telecommunications company splicing fiber optics. Doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for doing what i want to do most, tell stories. Writing is always something i wanted to do full time, but getting married, having kids, and watching them grow up kaboshes a lot of hopeless dreams. The problem is that we don’t realize at the time that dreams are NOT hopeless, you just have to work at them. Last year i finally sat down and forced myself to write. I’ve always been an avid reader and remember always thinking (except for a few authors who were born to do their craft) i could do better. I finally sat down last year and tried it. The words flowed into sentences, the sentences poured into paragraphs, chapters formed, and eighty-thousand words later i had myself a book. WOW, i thought, NOW WHAT?

If anybody asks what is the hardest part about writing, tell them the answer is simple. Writing is cake, getting published is a stone cold bitch. You see movies on television about how people sit down and write what happens in their lives and the next thing you know its a made for TV miniseries. It could happen, but you might want to stick to something with better odds, like those silly little lottery tickets. “You can’t win if you don’t play”. Well you also cant get your stories published without due diligence and working your ass off.

I wrote my first novel “Origins” in about eight months in my spare time (all 1 hour a day) and finished it at the turn of the new year. That’s when the fun began. I began researching how to get published. I could devote several hundred terabytes on the nasty, evil, companies out there trying to get you to do horrible things such as “self publish” and “Joint venture publish”. I will say one thing and it is the greatest lesson I learned, and in no way do i consider myself to be an expert, if a company asks you for money to get your work edited, published, or marketed, run. Run fast and run away. Block their emails, stop taking their calls, and basically treat them like they have the plague.

The next pitfall on the road to getting published is finding a reputable “LITERARY AGENT”. If you’re writing non-fiction, you might have better luck than i did. To this day, i still don’t have an agent. When you write fiction, just getting someone to READ what you have written is damn near impossible. I queried around fifty literary agencies. I know what you’re thinking, “WOW, your book must suck.” It might, I’ll be honest, but everyone who has read it has either given me great feedback or is horribly, horribly afraid of me. Either way, 99.9% of the responses i received from said agents is “We are way to busy to take on any previously unpublished authors at this time, thank you for your interest.” (insert trombone wa-wa-waaa here)

So how do you get published without an agent? Simple, go directly to the publisher. If you send your work to them without hearing from them first, i can tell you your book will end up in whats called a slush pile in some dark hobbit filled cavern right next to an evil dragon. The chances of somebody actually reading it are right up there with finding a literary agent and winning the lottery, but there are alternatives. There are some great websites out there like duotrope digest. Whoever runs this website has a special place for them reserved in the nicest hotel in heaven. They not only list publishers, but also links to their submission guidelines, the kinds of work they are looking for, submission contact emails, basically everything you need to know about publishing companies. Get a load of this, the even DELETE the publishers who go out of business, or no longer respond to emails, WOW.

The next step is FOLLOW THE SUBMISSION GUIDELINES on the publisher’s websites. They like that. Some are pretty picky about query formats, submission formats, attachment formats, what color underwear you wear on Tuesdays, the religious backgrounds of your second grade teachers, and well I’m sure you get the idea. I know i saved my book in about seventeen fonts, fourteen font sizes, and about thirty-eight formats. DON’T GET FRUSTRATED. The easier you make it on them, the easier it will go on you. Some require a query and an invitation for you to submit. Give it a shot, it works.

I finally received an invitation to submit, and they liked my book. It will be in publication soon, in eBook format. I’ll take what i can get. If it sells enough copies i hope to see it in actual lets kill a couple thousand tree format. Keep your fingers crossed. That’s where I’m at right now. I received my contract in the mail and sent it back all signed with a smile on my face and hope in my heart. I’ll keep you posted as to publish dates, etc. If you actually read this and it helped you in ANY way, you just made my day.

Thanks!