Some squee

[jpskewedthrone]

So while surfing Amazon I of course had to check out my own books and my own rankings and while there I noticed I had a bunch of new reviews I hadn't seen before. I approach reviews with a sense of dread. In general, I know I can't please everyone when I write, no matter what I write, so I know there will be bad reviews out there. And in general a bad review sends my confidence plummeting and I don't feel like writing for a few days. But then I recover and I shove the bad review aside. And I just can't not read a review, because I want to know what people think. So . . .

I'm happy to say that every new review for all three of the books was GREAT! Hahahahaha! I'm now giddy. I doubt I'll be able to sleep. (At first.) *grin*

Check out Magical Words tomorrow for a writerly guest post by mwah about inventing a religion for your world. Just some rambly thoughts of my own on the subject. I'll remind everyone tomorrow. This is a site run by some authors, including madkestrel and davidbcoe. Check it out!

Addendum: And apparently mizkit is part of the site as well. I didn't realize!

Comments

[jeffpalmatier.livejournal.com]

Congrats on the positive reviews!

Most of the feedback I've gotten on my writing so far has been either from editors, or family and friends. I've often wondered how I would react to feedback from readers on sites like Amazon. It's easy to tell somebody else not to let a bad review get them down, but I already realize that when its your own writing that's getting criticized, then it's a whole different ballgame. The closest I came to that was when some people found an unpublished story of mine that featured the group R.E.M. I used to have up on my website and they discussed it on a R.E.M. fan messageboard. Although they said they thought it was weird (and it was!), nobody said it was written badly, and they were nice to me when I responded to their comments.

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And it sounds like you got off lightly on the review thing. I've had some reviews of my books that were HORRIBLE. I didn't write for days and days after reading those. It's not pretty.

[dynastic-queen.livejournal.com]

Terrific news, jp!

Just reading about you walking the review gauntlet that's out there makes me freaking nervous. :) I've come a long way thickening my skin over the years with friends, critique-mates, family, and an editor or two, as jeff said. But somehow, I know that no matter how ready I feel I am, that first ugly Internet review is going to hit me like a cinder block and absolutely nothing will comfort me when it happens.

Ah, well. Full speed ahead.

Again, congratulations!

[jpsorrow.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And yeah, that gauntlet is daunting. But you survive. It's to the point now where if I read a bad review I suffer for at most a day or two, and then I'm back to my usual self. That wasn't true about 2 years ago though.