Tuesday, February 02, 2010

The Good, the Bad and the WTF??????

So the reviews are starting to come in for my March release, Don't Kill the Messenger, and I am pretty darn excited. Romantic Times gave the book four and a half stars! I've never gotten four and a half stars from Romantic Times. Four, yes. Four and a half, never. I am thrilled.

Then I found out that Publishers Weekly gave it a STARRED review! I've had one previous Publishers Weekly review and let me tell you, I was excited about that. Having a starred review? Put me right over the moon.

So that's the good and honestly, there isn't much bad yet. I've found most review sites would just as soon ignore a book they don't care for as publish a snarky review. There will be something, though. Someone will post something unpleasant on Amazon and someone trying to be helpful will tell me about it and I will break my rule about never ever reading Amazon reviews to go look at it and then be upset by it. But that's later.

As for WTF, well, Harriet Klausner reviewed my book. This is not a surprise. Harriet reviews every book or at least it seems like she does. She posts hundreds of reviews on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and several other websites every month. In hushed back room circles, people complain about the numerous errors in her reviews and about her willingness to give away major plot points.

Case in point, she got the title of my book wrong in my last review from her. This time, however, she says that my book, " is a fun lighthearted formic even with blood flowing freely on the California streets."

What's a formic? According to dictionary.com, it means "of or pertaining to ants." There are no ants in my story. There is one aunt, but she's a tertiary character at best. I'm guessing she meant "frolic" or "comic" or maybe even "frolic comic," but she has plastered "formic" all over the freaking Internet.

And all I can say is WTF????

11 comments:

Kristen Painter said...

Maybe you should write some ants into the next one.

Karen W said...

Ahh, don't dress it. You got 4.5 stars, a STARRED PW review - don't stress about Harriet's. We all understand about her reviews anyway. Heck, now I'm going to take my fanny to Amazon and see if your book is in Kindle format. If it is, I'm going to order it. All is good. I promise

Kwana said...

Congrats on the great reviews. Sure there are no ants? LOL.

Anonymous said...

Cannot wait to read this book, loved your description of it when you first started blogging on DWT, and now am thrilled that you are getting great reviews..

Eileen said...

Thanks, guys. To be honest, I'm way happier about the good reviews than I am upset about Harriet's. Still . . .

You know . . . I do have one character who has delusory parasitosis in the sequel that I'm writing right now. I could make it so he thought ants were crawling all over him. Then my book would be at least a little bit formic!

Karen, Don't Kill the Messenger is available in Kindle, now that you mention it. Hustle that fanny! :-)

Maureen McGowan said...

WTF is right. **Maureen starts plotting her ant book**

Congratulations on the great reviews, Eileen!!! A starred review in PW is HUGE.

Cannot wait to read this book.

Eileen said...

Maybe I'm wrong about angels. Maybe the Next Big Thing is going to be ants. Or . . . Ant Angels??????

Maureen McGowan said...

Hey, if Harriet likes ants I'll write about ants. ;)

speaking of angels... Have you read JR Ward's Covet yet?

Eileen said...

Don't hit me, but I've yet to read JR Ward. She's totally on my list, but I always seem to run out of time! Does Covet have angels?

Maureen McGowan said...

Yup. Angels. The start of a new series. More UF than romance. But still had hot sex.

But the angels weren't that "angely". I never thought I'd be interested in writing an angel book, because I'm not into religion enough to want to immerse myself in all the mythology.. but she didn't seem to do that much.

Eileen said...

Just put it on reserve at the library. If my timing is good, it will be available at about the time I finish reading my Rita books.

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