Chateau Lloyd

I suppose it's my own fault for not keeping up on all the book reading stuff, but I really didn't know much about Goodreads.  I joined a few weeks ago out of curiosity but never dug deep into the site.

Then the other day I was recommending my books to an acquaintance and he responded that Battle Officer Wolf got terrible reviews, so he probably wouldn't read that one.

I shook my head in disbelief.  "No, it's got 4.7 stars on Amazon.  How is that terrible?"

He pointed out that it is only 2.5 stars on Goodreads.

Yikes!

I'm not sure why there is such a large discrepancy, but it is annoying to have people leave negative ratings (or luke-warm ones) without offering a word of explanation.  The one written review knocks me for not using enough "contemporary" terms for women's breasts.

I admit I didn't really think about that because the story is actually a sci-fi horror piece about horrible man-eating monsters on a space station and a hero who turns up to fight them.  I suppose I was sloppy on other descriptions because they simply weren't that important to me.

I have to wonder how many of those reviews have less to do with the work itself and more to do with the genre.  I don't much like romance novels (yes, I know) so I try to stay away from the genre.  Were I to read a book for whatever reason, I'd grade it on a curve, that is judging it for what it is supposed to be, not what I want it to be.  I think that is why the Amazon ratings are better:  People knew what they were getting and were happy that they got what they sought.

Bad reviews come with being an author, and I suppose it was inevitable that I'd run into people that don't like my work. 

I don't have to like it, though.

Last week Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame threw a link out to Battle Officer Wolf.

I've been reading him for years and there was an surge of sales, so I'm happy to publicly thank him for the plug.

That was my first novel, and if you happen to have read it, you know that it doesn't cover the entirety of the Beowulf saga, only the events with Grendel and company at Heorot.

I did that on purpose because it was kind of a leap to write a book back then without any clear way to sell it.  Nevertheless, I always intended to finish the saga if there was enough interest, so please let me know if you're interested and I'll start to work on the second half.

In other news, I've started the fourth (and hopefully final) book in the Man of Destiny series.  No idea when I will finish, but the other two books will be coming out in the next few months as I get them edited and formatted.