Seeing stars: Amazon Reviews

I admit it. I was the kid in class that reminded teacher that he or she had forgotten we were supposed to have a quiz that day. This made me wildly unpopular. It was just part of who I was/am.

Besides, my main motivation was to get those wonderful little “A”s sketched across the top of my page of loose leaf. If I were to look at them now, I’d recognize them as the scrawl of an exhausted teacher and ultimately useless. But at the time, those precious “A”s looked like tiny Rembrandts, my personal masterpiece and evidence that someone approved of something I had done.

So I find myself reminded of those times when it comes to the reviews of my book on Amazon. There are even stars, just like 4^th grade. A means of arbitrary categorization. It’s very cool to get 5 stars, mind you. It means someone had a great time reading your story. A very flattering experience. For a while, I was getting a mess of those.

Then it happened, as it was bound to, a two star rating with a review that was a little on the vicious side. Contextually, I saw this two star review just as I was still internally snoopy-dancing about the fact that Allies and Enemies: Fallen had received the top 50 for military scifi onAmazon. (Totally cool seeing my book cover on the same screen as some of the “rock gods” of the same genre.) So, to see this was a bit of a let down.

My gut tells me this one bad review is exactly what it was: my book just wasn’t their cup of tea. It’s going to happen. Even Stephen King gets bad reviews and I have been his “number one fan” forever.

But it begs the question: Do I address it? Ignore it? How do other authors deal with negative reviews? I’ve become a big fan of Lindsay Buroker, having encountered her steampunk books. She’s got some nice advice about dealing with this:

http://www.lindsayburoker.com/tips-and-tricks/tips-for-dealing-with-bad-book-reviews/

Ultimately, I choose to have faith in the readers out there browsing for a new adventure. They’re intelligent folks that can make their own decisions, weighing the good against the bad. I accept the fact I can’t change everyone’s mind and it reminds me that with each word or agonized-over passage I grow as a writer.

What do you think? Leave a comment.

Book Review: Break Away by Jeff Favreau

So, this week I'm trying something new. I'm going to start posting book reviews for my fellow indie authors. My first victim, Jeff Favreau's Break Away. It's the first of a two parter, horror/thriller with Darryl Dixon's favorite cross bow playpal, zombies...

If the zombie apocalypse were to arrive tomorrow, any Walking Dead fan probably has mused how they would react. Some may envision themselves as heroes, rising to the challenge of fending off the hordes of living dead. Others might fantasize about taking shelter in a deserted shopping mall until the affair blows over. (Anyone that's seen the movie how well that goes.)

I’m fairly certain that, although I’d like to think I’d become Sarah Connor and kick undead butt, I’d just end up a delicious snack. (Honestly, in the height of panic at a fun house attraction, I once shoved my mother in law, a tiny 4 ft nothing woman, directly into the path of a man in a xenomorph suit in a bid at escape. Not my best moment. In my defense, the alien suit was very convincing.)

As it so happens, “zombies” featured in Break Away, the first book of the Jordan Rose Duology by By Jeff Favreau are not exactly reanimated corpses, but living hapless victims of an insidious viral infection that’s stumped the CDC. These baddies are more like the Quarantine or 28 Days Later variety of “zombie” and about as cuddly.

Thankfully, there some well-developed protagonists in a small town in Maine to help steer the reader through the story with consistent use of point of view. The style is very descriptive in terms of visualization and engaging the reader’s senses.

Elements of the narrative did seem to slow in pacing to accommodate some essential exposition. However, I tend to read space opera where exposition can really lag a story if it intrudes into the narrative. So, no problems there!

Horror stories do not usually require a great deal of exposition/world building so it’s easy for the pacing to unfold quickly. And, at just south of 160 pages, Break Away is a quick read that keeps the action running.

As suggested by the title the action promises to continue with the second in the line-up in this thrilling two-parter. I look forward to enjoying the second installment in this series.

Check it out on Amazon. Part two of the series, Homecoming, is available as well. And I'll have a review for that up soon.