The latest review is at Night Owl Reviews. Check it out. I am unreasonably happy about it, and I’m trying not to grin foolishly while I type this post.
Publishing is very like taking a piece of your soul, wrapping it around a jewel, and heaving it off the top of Mt. Everest. The chances are fairly strong it will smash to powder in a chasm, and leave no mark on the wider world.
You never know for certain until the royalty statements come in (and sometimes not even then, if you have a crappy publisher) if people are buying. Or reading. There have been times when I grudgingly hoped the massive pirating of my debut novel, Moro’s Price, meant that someone was reading it.
And then, a few months after publication, I saw that people were reading. Commenting. Arguing. Fangirling. Over something that I wrote as a dark experiment in three months, while taking a breather from the huge uber-complicated epic fantasy I thought would be my actual debut novel. (Yeah, authors can be idiots, and believe me, Moro’s story is simple in comparison.)
I got actual reviews: positive, negative, mediocre drive-bys, and solidly in-the-middle reasoned critiques. I’ve explained before why it’s important for authors to avoid responding to reviews. The only time I’ve done it directly, I posted a link on my Amazon page, to a glossary that I hope will help smooth out the welter of names-places-things in Moro’s universe.
I cherish all my reviews and try to learn from them. I may snark on the side, but I’m thrilled my readers thought enough to respond.
Because that means someone caught the jewel on the way down.