Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Lies, damn lies, and reviews

Where would art be without criticism? Smoking a cigarette in a Manhattan coffee shop and complaining about being poor and misunderstood, that's where.

It's part of the creative process. Working in a vacuum gets you nowhere (except the aforementioned Manhattan coffee shop, which overcharges for muffins anyway). Feedback--friendly or not--makes you a better artist.

That includes writing.

So far, I've seen three reviews of "From the Depths," --in Booklist, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly--and they all had positive things to say. Of course, they all have negative things to say, too. That's what these two cliches were invented for:


-What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
-There's no such thing as bad publicity.


So, as a not-dead and publicized author, my advice to you is to do the rational thing and go buy the book, if you haven't already, to gauge how accurate the reviews were. And send them nasty letters if you'd like to register a complaint.

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