I'm a pretty thick skinned individual. I'll admit it. When people talk about me in a negative way, I shrug it off pretty easily. One thing that I will not tolerate is when someone speaks ill of my kids or the person that I love. I get all snarly and growly when that happens. Being thick skinned is a pretty handy trait if one decides to become an author. It can be a pretty cruel world. It seems like for every BAD review you get, It takes a hundred GREAT reviews before you stop questioning your desire to continue being an author.

I've had a few bad reviews. I usually shrug them off as, "Well, you just can't please EVERYBODY." Individuals have different tastes. It's what makes us human and I've always respected that. Take Stephanie Meyer for a prime example. She's sold like 52 bajillion copies of the Twilight Saga. Have you ever heard anyone say, "It was okay." No. The twilight books are a love/hate relationship. You either love it or you hate it. I personally don't care for sparkly vampires with bushy eyebrows, but again, that is my opinion. To each his own.

I've been noticing a trend lately and I don't mean with just me. I'm friends with a TON of authors out there on both Facebook and the Twitter. It feels like lately people are just going around posting horrible reviews  for the sake of being different, just to be negative, or even out of fun. It's been happening a LOT lately. A friend of mine on FB who is REALLY selling a LOT of books, had one person from Germany just flat out say the book is garbage don't buy it. My friend had Amazon do a little inspection of the review and as it turns out, the person never even bought the book. Um…okay?

I don't claim to be the world's most best or most exciting writer. I like to think I tell an exciting, enjoyable, funny, scary story. My first book Origins was released just over a year ago and has been on Goodreads the entire time. It's been reviewed by a BUNCH of great folks give me some even greater reviews. It made me really proud. Up until today it's received 31- 5 star ratings, 10- 4 star ratings, 1- 3 star rating, and 1- 2 star rating with a total of 23 reviews that made me sooooo proud. A couple of months ago I did a giveaway on the site. I gave away 3 signed copies. Today one of the people who won posted a 2 star rating and a review that shoved a dull rusty spoon through my heart.

I won this book through Goodreads first reads giveaway.

I felt like the book dragged on and on and it took me months to read it. I just got really bored with the characters. It had the potential to be really great but Ashley was so childish and the way her character was written seemed poorly executed. It picked up a bit towards the end but I was still rather unimpressed. I think it spent too much time in Ashley's head with her rather droll and unintelligent sounding monologue rather than focusing on an exciting world of vampires and other supernatural creatures

Yeah. Ouch.

What killed me about the review is it was the COMPLETE opposite of what everyone who's ever read it told me what they loved MOST about the book. The character's in Origins were fun and funny. They loved the dialog between the MC and her partner. Etc, etc, etc.  Maybe this reviewer either just had her own opinion, which I completely respect. Maybe she just likes posting negative reviews. I know for certain I'll probably never know. I'm good with that. One thing I do wish though, if you ARE going to post a negative review of my work, PLEASE, at least get the main character's name right. I might feel you actually read the book.