Not just "Meh." Very "Meh."

One of the bravest things I’ve seen on writer blogs happens over at Kim Paffenroth’s excellent Gospel of the Living Dead site, where he (at one time, anyway) posted the worst reviews of his books he could find. So in that spirit, I wandered over to Barnes and Noble’s website the other day for the first time to see that many readers of my free stories have taken the time to rate them on a scale of 1-5.

One reader actually took the time to write a brief review of my St. Pete-centric zombie short, Nearly Dead, which reads:

It's a (very) short story, not a book. by Benzpyrene
Customer Rating: 1 star

This is not a book. It's a very quick and mildly amusing read. Would probably be more fun if you know the St. Pete, FL area, as the author does not really flesh out anything. It comes across as a "Hey, I have an idea for a story" kind of story, but with very little effort put into the telling. Very "Meh".

And ya know, I can’t argue with any of it.

In happier news, while at B&N I noticed that Applewood is currently available for pre-order. That’s kind of cool.

Noticed too that someone on Goodreads.Com recently read Hopetown and gave that a 4-star review.

Funny (and I’ve mentioned this before) but I had very little faith in that book, my first attempt at a thriller. What I tried with it was to have as normal a guy as possible get caught up in events beyond his control, to see how he’d handle it. I couldn’t be more pleased (and surprised, actually) that most folks who read it seem to kind of like it.

At the very least, they don’t think it was a waste of time.

That’s the thing I find most terrifying about this fiction writing thing, that I would be guilty of wasting the most precious resource any of us have . . . time.

And with that, I won't waste any more of yours!