Authors and reviewers

One of my fellow writers, Jenny Twist, wrote an article on ‘Blak Rayne Blog’ about reviews. I tried to leave a comment on that site but after trying three times without any results, I gave up and, since I thought the article was interesting for writers, I decided to put it on my own blog and ask for anyone interested in the article to come and read my comment here.

This is what I wrote:

Hi Jenny. Every writer wants to write a masterpiece. Nobody writes with the intention of producing rubbish. Time is just too precious. We spend weeks, months, often years weaving our dreams and thoughts into our stories. Sometimes we are even a bit shy about sharing them. Tastes are different, and there will always be those who will say, “This was crap.” It can be devastating to a budding author. We have to live with those negative comments. If the majority of readers like our stories then that is good enough. I remember one of my books received 5 stars from one reader and 1 star from another. Go figure. Some reviewers are kind. They won’t publish a review if they didn’t like the story. Perhaps they should write the author a short note explaining why they didn’t like it. That would help and not hurt so much.

Looking ahead

This past week I sent to my publisher Melange Books the final edited and accepted fifth book in my 'The Xandra' series. Escape from Paradise is scheduled to be released by the end of this month.
I also did something I've been thinking about for quite some time. I have several short stories in various digests. Some of them are probably not selling anymore. So I pulled them from my archives and read them again, edited errors and even did some rewriting. Then I put them together into a new Anthology, gave it the title 'Time Flares', after one of the stories in the Anthology, and wrote an introduction to every story. It includes my very first published story 'The Anniversary Gift', now out of print. That was the story that started my career as a published author and also gave me an idea what readers buy on the internet. Another story included is a very short story (3000 words) previously not published anywhere. The story is called 'An Act of Mercy', something I wrote for a contest but it didn't make it. I believe it is a good story for its length. You can't really develop much of a plot or get into the characters with a short story like that.
Before I did all this work I contacted my publisher and she thought it was a good idea to put them into an Anthology. I finished it yesterday and sent it away right away. It has been accepted and will probably be released in July 2012.
Now I'm ready to continue working on Book Seven of 'The Xandra' series. So far I've written around 10,000 words. The story is in my head, but there are a few other things I need to do before I really get into writing it. I have nothing planned for after I'm finished writing Book Seven, but something will come up. I've been suppressing a few ideas because I wanted to finish my other works first. I like to concentrate on one project at a time and give it my full attention. I'm thinking maybe a second mystery novel featuring Private Eye Frank Hummer, the protagonist in my book 'Bullet of Revenge', to be published in June. We'll see how it is received by the reading public. It contains no erotica.