I Hated This Book! Or, Coping With Negative Reviews

By Rosalind James

To be honest, I thought this one would be easier. I have thousands of reviews on Amazon alone, and a pretty good average. I should be able to dismiss the negative ones as outliers, or shrug and say, “can’t please everyone,” right? Alas, it’s not so easy. It’s like somebody telling you your baby is ugly. It still hurts. Here’s what I’ve found:

People love it or hate it for the same reasons. For example, JUST FOR NOW is a tender, funny story about family, without a lot of external drama. It is many readers’ favorite of my books. But other readers haven’t been crazy about it, for the exact same reason. Too much family, too much about the kids, not enough excitement. It’s personal taste.

 Is it helpful? It’s one thing to examine your negative reviews, or negative comments within positive reviews, for anything that is truly HELPFUL. Was the ending rushed? Do you have grammatical errors that need to be fixed? That’s helpful. That your book didn’t appeal to someone’s personal taste—not helpful.

Your mileage may vary. I’ve written 14 books, and just in my little critique circle, everyone has a different favorite! My readers share the same diversity of opinion, because everybody brings their own tastes and life experiences to a book. When I think about my own favorite authors, I don’t love all their books equally. Some of them I don’t even care for very much. I’ve never been a huge fan of “Mansfield Park,” because Fanny Price is kind of a drip, isn’t she? And she and Edmund seem set to have a mighty virtuous and boring life. And yet I’ve read it at least three times, because Jane Austen writes so well. 

It goes double for sex and violence. Think people’s opinions differ about your heroine? Get reviewers going about the sex or violence in your book! I’ve had people say, about the same book (that feel-good one above—the one with recipes in the back):

“Nothing but sweet gentle loving with not much described.” (and they weren’t happy about that!)

“A kinky sex-fest.”

Bottom line (so to speak), there is a huge variation in steam levels in romance, and violence in thrillers and mystery (and literary fiction, for that matter).  When your books are just getting known, people are finding out if they like the way you write. You’re finding your audience. And that ain’t everybody.

The acid test. I realized, after wrestling with the “ping-pong ball” effect, where I’d think: “It’s good!” “No, wait, it’s bad!” “No, it’s good!” after every review, that the REAL question was, “Did I write the book I wanted to write?” And in all 14 cases, I answered, “Yes, I did.” That is all I can do. And it’s all that matters. On to Book 15.

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Rosalind James, a publishing industry veteran and former marketing executive, is a contemporary romance and romantic suspense novelist published both independently and through Montlake Romance. Her first book, JUST THIS ONCE (Escape to New Zealand) is a 2015 Audie finalist for Best Romance Audiobook, and her latest, JUST IN TIME, has just debuted as part of Brenda Novak’s SWEET TALK collection for diabetes research. Rosalind started writing down one of the stories in her head on a whim three years ago while living in Auckland, New Zealand. Within six weeks, she had finished the book, thrown a lifetime of caution to the winds, and quit her day job. She attributes her surprising early success to the fact that "lots of people would like to escape to New Zealand! I know I did!" Website: http://www.rosalindjames.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosalindjamesbooks Twitter: @rosalindjames5

Writing Inspired Ideas

By Brenda Novak  

The one question I am asked far more than any other is, “Where do you get your ideas?”

When I first started writing, I had THE GREAT IDEA. It was based almost entirely on a title that popped into my head one day—OF NOBLE BIRTH. This title lent itself to a very specific theme: whether one is noble depends on the heart and not the pedigree. That was the message I wanted to convey, and I knew the best backdrop for a story with such a message would be a historical setting where the caste system was firmly in place.

After five years spent researching the Victorian time period and teaching myself the craft of storytelling, I managed to sell that book to HarperCollins. The publisher even let me keep my precious title from which all else had sprung. But with OF NOBLE BIRTH finally finished and sold, I soon realized that was NOT the only book I would ever need to write if I wanted to make my living as a published author. In order to build my career, I had to write another story, and another, and another. That meant I had to develop my imagination, turn it into a deep well of ideas from which I could draw time and again.

I didn’t know how I was going to do this but, fortunately, our brains are very adaptable. The more I demanded that my imagination deliver IDEA NUMBER 2, the harder it began to search. Before long, my mind turned into a “sifter.” It sifted through everything that came my way, every conversation I overheard, every funny anecdote I was told, every movie I saw, every newspaper article I read, every true crime show I puzzled over—until I could pull an attitude from one character I’d come to know via a TV show, mix it with a situation my mother had mentioned to me the week before, throw in some of my personal experience and…I was off and typing.

Some days, I still fear I’ll run out of ideas. After I wrote my last suspense trilogy (INSIDE, IN SECONDS & IN CLOSE), my work came to a grinding halt. “What should I do next?” I asked myself. And there was no answer! I thought my imagination had failed me after thirty-something novels. But it just wanted to go in a different direction. Once I realized that I was craving a return to my contemporary romance roots, a juicy drama started to take shape in my mind about a group of friends (both male and female) who have grown up together and currently live in a small gold country town in the Sierra Nevada Foothills (like those not far from where I live). I could easily conjure up the setting and the type of people my characters would need to be to remain fast friends for so long.

With that, I was able to write brief story outlines. One book after another began to take shape until I had a yet-to-be-written inventory of twelve books, beginning with a digital prequel called WHEN WE TOUCH, which kicks things off with a bang. (Actually, it all starts with a wedding—but not the wedding everyone’s been expecting. What would be the fun in writing about that?) Since then, I’ve written seven of those twelve books. The latest, COME HOME TO ME, is available.

So…where do you get your ideas?

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New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Brenda Novak writes contemporary romance as well as historical romance and romantic suspense. She also runs an annual on-line auction for diabetes research every May at www.brendanovak.com. To date, she’s raised over $2 million to help her son and others like him and is currently gearing up for the fundraiser's ten-year anniversary. Brenda considers herself lucky to be a mother of five and married to the love of her life. Website: www.brendanovak.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BrendaNovakAuthor  Twitter: @Brenda_Novak