Monday, February 13, 2012

My Reaction to My First One-Star Review

I knew it would happen eventually – a one-star review for Saint Peter Killed God on Amazon.

I’ve been begging Christians to give me low reviews saying things like, “I just don’t agree with the premise that Christianity must change.”  I must have asked a dozen people, but they were all too polite.  So when the reviewer said that obviously my friends had stacked the reviews in my favor, I saw his point.  My book needs some balance in its reviews.  Having ten nice reviews to one bad one, well, that’s pretty good odds and I deserved to be called on it.

Most of the review I can live with.  Skipping pages to get to what was happening in the psych hospital, etc. – all fine.  The one thing that got me was the claim of grammatical mistakes.

I recently got into an argument with a blogger.  He asked for my permission to post a review blasting my book for its horrible punctuation.  He didn’t know the rule about speeches.  It’s kind of an odd grammatical rule.  If you have one person speaking for more than one paragraph, there are no end quotes at the end of the paragraph but new quotes at the beginning of the next one.  I remember learning about that rule when I read To Kill a Mockingbird.  Atticus Finch closing remarks are punctuated that way. 

I wonder how many people even know that rule.

The blogger finally figured it out and apologized.


And I wonder if that’s why the reviewer gave me one star.  Did he not know the rule?  I say that because he blasted my book – and yes, I’m sure there might be errors within the book.  But nothing that warrants such criticism (I did panic when it was first published and my wife caught more than a dozen errors – after it was edited twice professionally).   And while this review doesn’t make me panic, it does frustrate me.

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Saint Peter Killed God - Update

First - thanks to Daily Cheap Reads for promoting my book here: http://dailycheapreads.co.uk/2012/02/07/saint-peter-killed-god-contemporary-fiction-1-02/

Also, Saint Peter Killed God will be available as a paperback book by March 1st.  It really should have been much faster.

Nothing major to report - sales are up and down. Thinking about offering SPKG for free for five days to promote it...

On the home front, Xavier keeps growing.  And I am thinking about writing another book - Living in Spain Without Speaking the Language.  Of course a dozen or so ideas have popped into my head and haven't seen the light of day - I'm hoping this one does.

Thanks for visiting and say hello in the comments and I'll try to pop by your blog sooner or later,
KJ