Indie Authors and Criticism

Ran across a couple items the last few days - and faced a conundrum - all to do with reviews and criticism. One was a review that's been passed around betwixt indie authors by a blogger, but it's not the review that was interesting, oh, no...it's the author's response. On her behalf, I am MORTIFIED, and again, not by the review. The review stunk. It was a 2 of 5 stars, and it was very honest, direct, and cited examples about why the book received a 2 instead of any other number of stars. (Apparently the book just sucked.) Now, keep in mind we all have our different ways of rating things. 5 stars for me is a book I thoroughly enjoyed. 4 is one I liked, but little things about it bothered me. 3 is decent and recommendable, and so on. For an author friend of mine, Adrienne Monson, 5 stars go only to her FAVORITE EVER books...meaning about half a dozen books in the world. If it was REALLY REALLY good - just not her favorite - it gets 4 stars. If it was a good book, but not one she'd re-read a bunch, it's a 3...and so on again. (In other words, we all do this differently!) That said, 2 stars still isn't great. The reviewer gave an author 2 stars, and she jumped on the comments and LET RIP. She was rude, foul, self-important, and just plain angry. She came across like a Tasmanian devil on speed, and JUST...KEPT...GOING. 100-some comments later (from her, of course, and from people telling her to shut up because the hole she was digging for herself had become a grave), she finally pulled some of her more-inappropriate comments...you know, the ones with strings of 4-letter words attached. I was truly appalled.
So then while perusing Goodreads, I just had to check out a 1 star review given to another book that had virtually all 5 stars. It was well-written, cited examples, as well, and was just plain honest. This time it wasn't the author who blasted the reviewer...it was the author's friends. LOTS of them. "How can you say something that mean?" "Don't you know she's a first-timer and that sort of review hurts people's feelings?" "What are you, a professional critic, you $*%&^$#?!" (I kid you not.) (And on a side note, none of their retorts were well-written.) They ripped her stem to stern for not enjoying a book riddled with poor grammar, typos, poor formatting, and plotless...with flat characters, mind you. It was unreal.
Finally, I recently faced a conundrum: what do you do when you're asked by another author for a review exchange, and they give you 5 gushing stars...but their work is shoddy at best? I confess, I completely caved and gave the author 4 stars, even though it was painfully tempting to offer 1 or 2.
I have regretted that review every moment of every day since I gave it. It was a lie. I am a liar. And not only am I now a liar, everyone who sees that review will see my name tied to it, and likely assume that my indie books are on par with that author's indie books. What was I thinking? Why did I cave??? UGH!
So there you have it...the background for this:
Dear Fellow Indie Authors:
If you're going to put yourself out there, PLEASE make sure you're offering your best work. And if your very best work SUCKS, PLEASE print your own copy and DON'T try to market it. If you don't know whether or not your best work sucks, pay to have it looked over by an editor. If it only sucks a little, pay that editor to help you fix it so that it's your best work. Then pay a proofer to fix your terrible horrible awful grammar, misspellings, and typos. (Didn't you know that the vast majority of us give up on a book half a dozen typos in? We expect it in a proof copy, NOT in a book we paid for!)
Assuming you've done all that and put yourself out there, BRACE YOURSELF: not everyone has the same standard for reviewing, and not everyone is going to love your work. In fact, if you have 200 5 star reviews and NONE that are something different, everyone will figure out that you roped all your friends into perjuring themselves for your sake. If you're willing to expose your work to the public, you have to be prepared for the public to reject it...nay, to HATE it. You don't deserve an A for effort, you don't deserve 5 stars for a NaNoWriMo project that you uploaded to lulu without editing, and you don't deserve the pedestal you've placed yourself on just for "writing a book." Grow up. Bad reviews come, and if you don't learn anything from them, you'll never, ever improve (since it's clear you never put in the work for improvement anyway).
Furthermore, dear Indie Authors, you're MAKING THE REST OF US LOOK BAD. And thank you very much, I don't need any help making myself look bad! I WOULD appreciate the opportunity to appear credible, however, and when your work stinks, I am painted by the same "Indie Author" brush just by virtue of having self-published.
When bad reviews come - because they will - shut up. Please. Just smile, shrug, and either dismiss them as personal preference or go back and revise (you CAN; you're self-published!). Either way, you'll look more like a professional and less like a putz.
Affectionately,
Jess

I'm baaaaaaaaaaack.

Amazing how quickly an author will give up on their blog with they've got a world of other poo on their plates.

Hi, all. How are ya? I've missed you. Allow me to recap the last 6 months, if you will. Here goes nuthin':

1. The school year ends this Friday. Summer, here we come.
2. We have more chickens. I'm hoping they're girls, but it'll be a little while before we know for sure. We also have a new coop, since the one my brilliant husband built was not built with treated wood and warped in the rain/wind/miserablehotsun.
3. We will be eating any of the chickens that are male...and maybe very soon, if they either begin to crow or WON'T STOP BITING MY ANKLES!!!!!!! (It's just two of them that try...and they're both soon to be toast if they don't quit it.)
4. I came out of the proverbial closet a few months back in support of medical marijuana. There are many, many ways to take it - read: it doesn't have to be smoked, and you don't have to get high! - and it turns out that it's a virtually side effect-free medication that mitigates almost EVERY SINGLE fibromyalgia symptom I have. I don't advocate its legalization, I won't protest that it's safer than booze - even though it is - I just "came out" because I live in CA, and it's a) "legal" here (medicinally) and b) being widely persecuted in the area where I live, meaning it's VERY difficult to attain the NON-smoking versions...not to mention from a reputable establishment where I feel SAFE. Yes, I use medical marijuana - generally TINCTURE, to be specific - but other than being generally pain-free, migraine-free, IBS-free, panic-free, and my short term memory returning (woohoo!), I'm not "pushing" it on anyone, only asking that if you live locally, you'll support safe access to safe medicine from those of us who sincerely benefit.
5. My Mom's book, The Very Name of Christmas (by Martiele Sidles), will be OUT THIS WEEK! Her website is still heavily under construction, (www.theverynameofchristmas.com,) but you'll be able to buy a copy from amazon, smashwords, kindle, and the like very, very shortly! What is it about, you ask? It's the long-awaited sequel to Charles Dickens's immortal A Christmas Carol, and it follows Tiny Tim - now Dr. Tim Cratchit of the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital - after his college education (funded in part by his dear old Uncle Ebenezer, of course). They say that no one recognizes a prophet in his own land, and as a teen, I had no interest in reading my mother's book. As a self-publisher, though, I wanted to have a look-see, and my mother has allowed me to go ahead and put it in print. I can honestly say it's a PHENOMENAL work, and coming from a daughter, I think that's a double-compliment; under normal circumstances an author's child might roll their eyes as Mommy's work. It's 5 star all the way; a Dickensian-style literary masterpiece. Hang tight. If you're a close friend or family member, you'll probably be getting a copy from me for Christmas!
6. Oh, yeah...I have a second book out. #2 in the Unbound Series, to be exact, and it is entitled Sun is Burning. It's available from smashwords, itunes, B&N.com, diesel, sony, kindle, and, of course, Amazon. The reviews (for both books) are really rolling in. Check 'em out if you get a chance. Even the bad ones make me happy! :) (Not that there are that many, but it's always nice to know that people feel strongly one way or the other!)

Hoping to get back in the game here, people. You know: chicken updates, self-publishing info, books, books, books, and all that rot. I wouldn't mind a little encouragement (blog comments are always welcome!), and if you've read Hazy Shade of Winter and/or Sun is Burning, please do me the great favor of rating and writing a quick review...on goodreads, amazon, smashwords, barnes and noble...anywhere there's a place to review it...but please be HONEST. (How can we authors improve if everyone just tells us "Good job!"???)

That's all for now, friends. Enchiladas for dinner, and I've yet to thaw the chicken! (I suppose I could just go grab Ankle-Biter, but that's a lot of blood and guts to clean up on a Tuesday afternoon...) More soon! Jess :)

Hazy & Industry

It's been a while - trust that that's because I'm hard at work on Book 2! - but my brilliant cover artist Eithne was recently interviewed for an industry article on the importance of book covers, and the doll mentioned Hazy Shade of Winter! Aaah, the joys of finding your name in unexpected places!

Have a read HERE.

Needless to say, I can't wait to see what she comes up with for Book 2 - tentatively titled Sun is Burning - or Book 3 (a year or two from now), for that matter!

Enjoy the article, and while you're at it, see Eithne's newest works HERE.

Happy Saturday, and lots of Book 2 news to come!

The Slow Road to Recovery: Farewell, Chickens

I have not been able to bring myself to write this blog entry until now. I apologize for having been gone so long, and I wish I could say it was because the summer was busy, the kids are now back in school (they are...as of yesterday), and I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off..............

Oh, that came out wrong. Entirely wrong.

Look. Quick summation: We bought 4 chickens. All were supposed to be New Hampshire Reds, and 85% were supposed to be female. 4 was playing the numbers: we had a 15% chance of getting a rooster, which was too close to 25% for comfort, so to ensure our flock birds would have a flock, we went with 4. A couple weeks ago we learned that what we GOT were two New Hampshire Reds and two Buckeyes. This wasn't such a bad thing for 3 seconds: Buckeyes are a heritage breed, and more expensive than others as a result. Plus they have more fat than other birds, and prettier feathers.

Their roosters also have pea combs...which are teeny tiny little combs that mimic the hens of a standard breed. Buckeye hens have NO comb. Our beautiful brown CROWING Buckeyes were NOT Buckeye hens. They were Buckeye roosters.

So of course they had to go, and I ran into the same problem I did with Rooster: give away an adolescent rooster to a farm with other roosters, and cock fights will break out...meaning the smaller animal dies. Violently. And Buckeyes are naturally small. Other half of the problem: keep it, and your HOA will come after you for pissing off the neighbors, and the city will come after you, take your roosters, and fine you $1,500.00 per animal for having roosters in the city limits.

Solution: your roosters become dinner.

I wasn't ready for that, though. With Rooster, I had time. With Runt and Redbeak - "Beaky" - there was no adjustment period, no "okay, I can do this," no "it must be done," just "OH CRAP." We discovered that two of our three remaining hens weren't hens on a Wednesday; Thursday morning I woke up to their crowing believing that I could make it 'til Saturday and have Hubby help me dispatch them then. But they crowed. And crowed. And crowed. From 5:30 to 6:30 AM...straight. Food didn't shut them up. Chasing them didn't shut them up. Grabbing them to freak them out didn't shut them up. NOTHING shut them up. When one would finish the eeeeeeeeeeerrr of the classic "Er, er-er, er-eeeeeeeeeeeeeerrr," the other would start from scratch, overlapping the first. FOR AN HOUR. Long about 6:15, a neighbor two houses behind us screamed "SHUT UP!" at the top of his lungs.

It was confirmed: the roosters could not last 'til Saturday.

I prepared quickly, heated the scald water, filled a pluck bucket, made a vinegar-ice water bath, got out my tools and whatnot, and farmed out the kids to our friends the Kerbers, God bless them...and then it was time. Runt went first, then Beaky. It was awful. I hadn't had time to adjust, to accept what I had to do. I just did it.

And here's my horrible, horrible, horrible confession: I flubbed up Runt. HORRIBLY. NO gory details, but the bottom line was rigor mortis set in immediately and I could do nothing with him...except dispose of him. I was nearly hysterical. Truly. And you can imagine how much I wanted to move on to Beaky...which is to say, NOT AT ALL. The whole ordeal was awful, and I wept through most of it.

A few days later we ate Beaky. I couldn't bring myself to retain the innards this time, which I recognize is a TOTAL and UTTER waste...but I just didn't have the strength to utilize them. After making Coq au Vin - which no one particularly liked, even with The Barefoot Contessa's stellar recipe - I used the bones and carcass to make stock, then squash soup...which went to friends. The leftovers from the Coq au Vin went to a neighbor as an apology for many, many mornings of being awakened as sunrise by a slew of roosters.

3 roosters, actually...all of whom we were hoping were female, and two of which were supposed to be a different breed. ...................... I need to point something out real quick...something you probably noticed: I swapped back and forth just now between "whom" and "which". Bloody hell.

The bottom line, people, is that I...am...crushed. Utterly, totally, completely crushed. I didn't need those animals for food. I just needed them to die with dignity...and I absolutely flubbed it with Runt. My poor, sweet Runt, who feared people, was smaller than everyone else, and who had a deformed breastbone and preferred eating while sitting. I am devastated over that. The saving grace for me with Runt is that once I made the initial cut, I then popped the knife back through his beak and into his brain. He was brain-dead when I made a mess of it all, and I thank God for that.

But it's all been a failure. I'd like to say it's through no fault of my own - I was told I had an 85% chance of getting girls, and if that had been the case and I'd had hens, we'd have eggs next month (or thereabouts) - but I sort of don't believe it. I should've known somehow. (Shut up, I just should've.) Now I have no hens, no eggs, only an empty backyard with a failed garden and an empty coop.

Yes, an empty coop. Why? You did the math. You figured out that 4 - 3 = 1 poor, lonely Hen. But that's what she was: a poor lonely hen. After the deeds were done, I let her out of her coop to wander and she ran about the yard looking frantically for her friends...who were not there to find. She then found the spot in the yard where I had dumped the pluck water - the spot that stank (to me) of feather oils and sebum where the water had soaked into a pile of dirt - and sat in the murk. For two hours. With her head down. I could not tempt her away even with collards from the garden...her favorite food. So I gave her to Da-Le Ranch, where Dave and Leslie had so kindly and gently and sensitively taught me to kill a rooster. They sell eggs, you see, and she can ultimately settle in with other happy hens and turn a profit for them over the next few years of her life. They took her in and gave me a dozen eggs - plus 3 duck eggs - in exchange for Hen. They didn't have to; it was a considerable kindness they granted me, and it serves to remind me that there really are down-to-earth, wonderful people left in the world, God bless them.

I thought, driving home, that maybe I should hop back on the horse and keep riding. I looked into buying chicks from a reputable online hatchery, but you have to buy a minimum of 25, and my neighbors (not to mention the HOA) would kill me. I asked around to see if anyone wanted them, offering to pay for the chicks and give them away, and even dispatch and process the roosters at 8 weeks if they proved to be roosters...but I had no takers. So I'm stuck. And I sure as hell ain't goin' back to Kahoots for chicks.

Did I get attached to them, then? Did I love them like pets instead of farm animals meant to produce and become food? Perhaps. They're so individual, it's hard not to SEE them as individuals. I think I always viewed them as beasts fit for consumption, but they were fascinating creatures, all chicken-y and fun. I'm sad when I go outside and they're not there. I was sad when I power-washed the back concrete and the traces of my birds were washed away...gross as that seems. I'm sad around 8 or 9 at night when I don't need to go outside and close them into the coop. I had great plans for them, you see: I was going to be collecting eggs from my hens in due time, and was eager to see my work and devotion and eagerness and, yes, experiment pay off. It didn't. It won't. And again, I'm devastated.

And I have now killed four animals: three of my own, and one of Da-Le Ranch's. I am officially a serial killer, and I can't even do that well or consistently. The whole thing is heartbreaking.

But it gives me a completely new insight into why it's important to eat meat sparingly. I thought it was all about our health, you see: less fat, less animal protein, more fruits and veggies in their season and whole grains and legumes and...well, stuff that keeps your body going. All of that is true, of course...but there's something more. I walk in to a grocery store now, and the butcher counter sickens me. We have no connection to the animals that are sacrificed for our sake, no understanding of what exactly goes into our meat. I'm not just talking hormones and feed corn and antibiotics...I'm talking about death and blood and evisceration. We are so far removed from what it takes to put an animal on our table, it's obscene. A butcher block tray of chicken breasts doesn't just mean that 40 animals lived in miserable little cages for only 6 weeks eating feed corn and being pumped full of antibiotics; it means 40 animals DIED. 40 little individual lives were taken in a very inhumane sort of fashion...and their other body parts wound up elsewhere. (After all, you're just there for the breasts, right?)

This doesn't mean I'm becoming a vegetarian. It DOES mean that I've learned that eating meat sparingly isn't just about not wanting to kill. Killing animals to live off their flesh is part of life. If you're going to eat meat, an animal had to die. It's about wanting to retain our humanity. It's about the NEED we have - whether we want to think about it or see it as a need or not - to remember that life is sacred. Even the life of a deformed little chicken that darts away when you get too close. We can treat that life as sacred and still sacrifice that animal for the sake of filling our bellies and keeping ourselves strong and healthy...but when you forget that the burger you're eating was at one point a cow, you lose your humanity.

I would love to type more right now, but I'm in tears, and struggling to keep it together and keep it quiet for the sake of my kids, who are upstairs even as I type this putting on their jammies. This has been a lesson, a struggle, and a revelation to me.

Let's just leave it here, and suffice it to say that I am on that slow road to recovery, still missing my chickens, wishing it had turned out differently, and determined to try again...someday...and probably some years from now. I'm not giving up...I'm just taking a break, licking my wounds, and taking a deep breath while I wipe my eyes. Life goes on.

And sometimes it's even beautiful.

Chicken Woes

Yesterday I posted a status update on facebook: "Dear Hen: SHUUUUUUUUUUUUUT UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP!!! You're a HEN, NOT a rooster! Get it through your thick skull, you stupid bird!!! Affectionately, Jessica PS: If you keep this up, I will be forced to give you away...or eat you. Just so you know."

A few hours later, my dear friend Cami posted a reply: "Dear Hen House Mistress, not only have you "disappeared" our fine feathered, sexy rooster who entertained us daily with his rooster dance and serenaded us every morning and evening, you have left us to fend for ourselves against marauding c...anines and slithering reptiles. I have been forced to relinquish all my feminine attributes in order to bring some level of comfort and security to my poor sisters. I am certain that you understand our need for the presence of a well built, articulate male, and implore you to bring us a new rooster, preferably with a sizable wattle and comb. Love Butch, formerly known as Henny Penny."

I am still laughing!