Honest reviews

I love honest reviews. The good and the bad. Reading both are guilty pleasures of mine, but I’m going to call out a recent one because I think it does a great job of highlighting one of my absolute biggest disappointments about Lucifer’s Odyssey. Here’s the last paragraph:

Honest Opinion: After reading “Lucifer’s Odyssey”, I probably would not have bought “The Goblin Rebellion”. The writing style is simple and direct, and leaves the story feeling like a skeleton. That would have been a mistake. “The Goblin Rebellion” is worth reading, but one cannot begin to comprehend the storyline without the events in “Lucifer’s Odyssey”.

Lucifer’s Odyssey was my first novel, and I paid for an extensive edit of the novel from someone who had worked with David Dalglish and other authors I trusted. Since it was my first novel, I didn’t trust myself or my impression of the book, and I wanted to learn more about editing and really listen to this editor. I knew the story was controversial, and I really wanted to do it justice. The editor ended up recommending that I focus on show not tell and completely rewrite the book and try to make the characters not ramble on about what was going on in their heads or “preaching” about the meaning of what was going on. I was worried, but I was also completely invested. I agreed to rewrite, and for the most part, he really did help the book be more fun. I think the action of the book especially went to another level.

However, Lucifer’s Odyssey was always a meta fiction. There were plot lines and underlying themes that really shouldn’t have been left to “show not tell”, and it was, I think, unfair to readers. There was a complex multiverse underneath and a lot of characters. This was not the kind of book that should have been almost purely show and not tell.

I’ve gone back and made small changes to try to help fix what was done during editing–to let people know that if they can stick with the first book and see their way into The Goblin Rebellion and Shadows of Our Fathers, then I think they’ll really enjoy where the story ends up and the style of writing is more my own and not my original editor’s. As the 2nd and 3rd book were being written and I was processing feedback from readers and friends, I grew more of a backbone and stuck to my guns on the internal dialogue of characters and reiterating major trains of thought. I think it’s for the best. Shadows of My Fathers is my favorite book that I’ve written. I feel like it is more of the style that I hope to write in, with more thoughts from characters and a more natural story flow. The problem is that it is the THIRD book in a series, and the first book is more stressful to read than I think it should be because of our editing decisions.

Oh well, work still continues on the new series. High Fantasy. Elves, orcs, humans, kings and queens, intrigue, plots, necromancers and paladins. I’m not going to promise the series will be “normal”. When you see the eventual book blurb, you’ll see my penchant for enjoying bad guy characters who do good things.

Other things that are going on: giveaways

So, another day, another free giveaway on instafreebie. I know, I know. You may have to send yourself an epub from that site to your kindle account, and that’s inconvenient, but for many, that may be an acceptable amount of work. I sure hope so, because these authors have undoubtedly put a lot of work into writing their novels. Like I mentioned in the last post, I’ll be on the lookout for other sites to be a part of. What’s nice about instafreebie is that it’s inexpensive and helps authors build newsletters and ways to promote their books.

Anyway, last day of this giveaway. There’s a lot of books that seem to lean more into the romance category, but there are also some interesting military sci-fi, space sci-fi, and other genres that I like. Let me know if you find something fun and interesting in here!

Website Link, in case the above image doesn’t work.

Anyway, to those of you who review books honestly, good and bad, thank you. You do a great service for readers, and we authors really do appreciate it!