The main character Liam is a bi-curious college student who thinks he’s straight until he catches the attention of his dorm roommate Gianni. Gianni is everything Liam isn’t, sophisticated, spoiled, and self-assured, while Liam is an emotionally wounded farmer’s kid who sill isn’t sure what he wants to be. But once Gianni has taken an interest in him, his course is set to become a monster as ruthless as Gianni.

I like all the characters, even the bit characters like James, Madison and Aldo. I very much liked the kind of vampires covered in this story, and the romantic scenes were certainly attention grabbing. Liam’s swift change raises him to delirious happiness, but his positive outlook doesn’t last long before he begins to question what he’s becoming. He rejects Gianni rather harshly and returns to his family, and there he learns that he can’t really go home before Gianni arrives to take him back.

There’s some other stuff that happens after this point, but the story seems to walk away from a major plot point and never comes back to it. I can’t say what without spoiling it, but once this seeming threat is introduced, the story wanders off in a different direction, and there’s only a few fleeting references made to it again.

I know this is a first book in a series, but the ending left me feeling like there should have been another hundred pages or so. There’s a couple of introductions of conflicts, but only one of these gets resolved. The other much bigger conflict is left hanging, and I felt like sputtering, “But…but what about Aldo?” And for that matter, I wonder if book two will get back around to Madison. I rather liked her. But even if it doesn’t, I wanted to know more about this other mysterious faction of vampires that are running a cult in the middle of nowhere.

Overall I liked the characters, but I felt like story was all ramp and no jump. I liked the ride, and I’ll be looking for the next book in the series. It is a small kind of complaint, “I wish there was more to it.” But setting that aside, this is a bloody vampire tale with sometimes sympathetic monsters and lots of rough sex between consenting guys. I give Liam 4 stars, and would recommend it to fans of Anne Rice’s work who wish Lestat could have had a hot romantic relationship with a hotter, prettier clone of himself. So, like 200% more hot sex and maybe two-thirds less existential blues and self-pity. And that’s not a bad combination for me.

This is a little hard on my hips and lower back, but I know I need the exercise, so I just slip on my headphones, get lost in the music, and let my mind wander. Sometimes I think about stories I still want to write, and sometimes I think about the books I’m reading from other people. And sometimes I just watch other people and wonder what their stories are like.

I’ve been trying to read my manga too, with limited success. Part of my problem in picking up Italian is, I’m rarely outside of the house, and I only talk to hubby, who reverts to English whenever he’s home. It’s weird how I can get the gist of conversations I hear, but I can’t speak or write the language very well. Reading is extremely challenging because it seems I’ve only just begun when I get a kind of pop in my brain, and then I’m mentally fatigued and in need of a nap.

Writing doesn’t do this to me, but I get get the same mental fatigue when I’m editing. It’s like writing takes place in an undamaged part of my brain, and learning or working on recalling the myriad rules of grammar and style taxes part of my brain where I’ve got plaque scars.

Anywho, reading for pleasure doesn’t do this to me either, but I read to “study” other books and I have noticed how that can also tire me quickly. Plus, despite lots of practice, I don’t read any faster. So I actually write books faster than I read them. If it didn’t take so long to edit them, I could probably drop out a story a month.

Speaking of writing, I want to get back around to the romance WIP. I’m up to 48K and although my muse is joking about turning the main character into some kind of supernatural creature in a “shocking” final twist, it’s not a paranormal story. I wanted to make a story with a romantic triangle that didn’t end in a “choose one” plot, and I didn’t want the characters to be mega rich, or all chiseled perfection. While I was at it, I didn’t like “fading to black” to avoid sex. These things are all fine, and I know why they sell well. I just wanted to do a story that didn’t follow those guidelines.

What the muse has turned over is a story about Robert, a plain looking guy who plays D&D with his friends twice a week and works as a game programmer. He’s been in a long-term relationship with a cheerleader he met during his final year at college, and Maria makes Robert feel like the luckiest man in the world. Maria lives in another apartment in the same complex to give Robert space for his “nerdy habits,” and they have a comfortable relationship that makes Robert the envy of his friends, and the object of scorn with Maria’s conservative parents. Robert’s mother isn’t too happy with his choice not to get married or have kids, as Robert and Maria have been together for over three years. But as a couple, they’re still happy to have their own individual habits, even though they share several hobbies.

Then there’s Maria’s sister, Tina, who’s just returned from four years at a private all-girls high school in New York. Tina’s the opposite of her cheerleader sister, being shorter and stockier, and thus less popular. She’s a big fan of black fabric, and she’s a cosplay and comics nerd, allowing her to have a circle of like minded friends. But returning to Texas means losing all of her friends, which is why Maria initially suggests that Tina come to game with Robert’s group. Maria makes the offer to give Tina a place to get away from her parents, and Tina gets along great with all of Robert’s friends. But over time Tina and Robert become more attracted to each other, leading to the start of a romantic triangle.

There’s several subplots working around this main plot, and both the central conflict and the subplots feel realistic to me. Robert’s a faithful guy, while Tina loves her sister and isn’t trying to steal her guy. They try to avoid each other, and Robert tells Maria the reason why immediately. After a few chance reunions, Maria ultimately decides to share Robert with her sister. This has not resolved the relationships yet, and while Robert and Tina aren’t hiding their affection for each other around his friends, the trio unanimously decided not to tell their parents yet. Obviously, that’s going to come out somewhere near the end. The other problem is, Robert’s still not sure about becoming more intimate with Tina, even with Maria giving her permission. To him, it still feels like cheating, and he’s worried about losing Maria even if he can’t deny his growing feelings for Tina. Tina’s conflict is, she has to eventually explain to her parents that she’s dating her sister’s lover, a man they already don’t like to begin with.

Well, anyway, I’m enjoying watching the story play out. It’s something new that I’ve never done before, and this probably means it’s guaranteed to flop. BUT, I want you to witness the majesty of this belly flop. Note the spread-eagle pose, the come-hither smile as the crushing metaphorical waters of failure awaits a high-impact collision with the metaphorical body of naive expectations.

Have I ever mentioned that I once belly flopped off the high dive board at a public pool in Denison? No? Yeah, I was nine at the time, and that high board scared the living shit out of me. So one day, I said, “Screw it, I’m going to climb that ladder and jump off!” So I got up there and just about lost my nerve. But I jumped and spread out my arms, and on the way down I saw the lifeguard waving his arms and doing that slow-mo “Nuh-ooooooooooooo!” And I thought, Aw crap this is gonna—

And it hurt like a motherfucker. Like being slapped by Mom when she was super pissed, but ALL OVER MY BODY. I curled up in a ball, and I learned a valuable lesson that day: that I am a moron who does stupid things. (I swam out on my own and didn’t need a lifeguard, but my body was a bit reddish for half an hour after that.)

The other thing I learned is that flopping hurts. The funny thing is, flopping for real still doesn’t prepare one for soul crushing book flopping. That’s like sending out a message in a bottle, and right when it’s floating out on the glittering horizon, a glimmering speck among sun-lit diamonds in your teary indie eye, that’s when the USS Mainstream cruise-liner runs over the bottle and sinks your little message right to the bottom of the Don’t Give A Shit Ocean. And you cry out, “Why, Mainstream? Why you got to be like that?”

And really, the USS Mainstream never even saw your message, nor did they realize they’d sunk it under their awesome weight. They never even slow down to see what they hit. They’re like, “What is that crazy person on that indie island screaming at us for? Oh never mind, probably trying to sell us a trashy porno novel. Another Martini, Mr. King?”

But you know, I am kind of getting used to the art of the majestic flop. Okay, I don’t live anywhere near the mainstream, but at the end of the day, I write a lot, and I really am doing something different with each experiment. Maybe most of it doesn’t sell. Okay. But hell, I can’t grow as an artist if I’m not willing to branch out and try new methods of telling stories.

Plus, I rambled about this book on Twitter a few times, and there have been a few people who said they’d definitely want to buy this book. Two, actually. But that’s still better than no one, right? Right?

*Sigh* Okay, back to the keyboard. Gotta finish this story this week so I can get to a vacation and some quality reading time.

Now that I’m done, I have to wonder what’s wrong with that poor woman who would wish bad karma on readers for liking this book, because I can’t really find anything offensive about it. I can’t say it blew my mind or that it was the greatest book ever, and there were some parts of the character development that bugged me. Often the later chapters made me roll my eyes for how contrived the plot became, and for the dialogue becoming strained. But there was never an eyelid twitching scene, nor a “throw the book down” moment.

As far as YA goes, I found it to be a nice change of pace. It had third person perspective, and it had a heroine who wasn’t perfectly pretty. The story centers around Clary Fray, a girl who goes to a nightclub with her best friend and witnesses a murder that no one else can see. When she gets home, her mother is acting very strangely, and after having a fight, Clary leaves and goes to hang out with her friend. She meets one of the killers again, Jace, and he tells her that he has to take her to “The Institute” because she can see him, and “Mundanes” aren’t supposed to be able to see Shadowhunters. Clary gets a call from home just before her mother is kidnapped, and when she looks around, Jace has vanished again. So Clary runs home to a trashed apartment and an ugly monster.

When Clary first encounters a demon in her home, she manages through blind luck to kill it herself, and she doesn’t need Jace to act like the hero to jump in and save the day. Also unique is how there was no instant attraction between the hero and heroine. Jace certainly does all the insulting and self-centered bragging that you’d expect from YA male characters, but Clary doesn’t melt over him, nor does she feel like there’s “just something about him.” At one point, she even slaps him for being a jerk, and I was thinking, “Hey, for once, a YA story might break the mold. How novel!”

And then the romantic triangle was briefly thrown in. I say briefly because by the end of the book it’s clear that Jace and Clary will NOT be together, and for good reasons which I will not spoil. (But if they do get together in book two, I might see why some people would be mad.) The other point of the romantic triangle, Simon, is a longtime childhood friend, and the love he feels for Clary is unrequited throughout most of the story. So there wasn’t really a strong romantic angle. Again, not that I mind, and I liked that the main plots were more about finding Clary’s mother and finding out what the big bad guy wanted from her.

One thing I didn’t like is that both Clary and Jace are victims of child abuse, but neither one sees it that way. Jace is treated worse by his father, but in the story it comes out that Clary’s mother is erasing her mind every two years to cripple her. Both Clary and Jace feel badly for the other’s abuse, and yet neither seemed to acknowledge that they’re both victims. Shades of Stockholm syndrome? There’s five books in the series, so I suppose eventually this might be treated with more concern. But it was really bugging me when Clary was telling Jace, “You were abused,” and he’s all, “No, it made me tougher, so it was a good thing.” And at the same time, Clary already knows she was mind-fucked routinely, but that’s somehow different, and she’s able to readily forgive her mother’s monstrous abuses. I just don’t see much difference here. Both parents are kinda douchey.

Then there’s the fact that Clary rarely doesn’t need a dude to help her out. Despite rescuing herself in the first fight, almost every other encounter with baddies, a dude is coming to her rescue. And okay, she throws a dagger at a werewolf and it actually hits the target. But to escape that chase scene, she still has to rely on a dude. Well, two dudes, really….three dudes—NOBODY EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION! Ahem. Anywho, it got a bit repetitive, to be honest.

And in the final chapters, the dialogue is really bad in places. It’s just struggling too hard to be cool or funny, and it all falls flat for me. Also, the ending is both tragically convenient, with everyone knowing everyone else, and no one at the all-knowing magical agency is aware of all this fuckery. Basically, the Clave is all-knowing when it’s inconvenient for the protagonists, and they know nothing about the antagonists because it’s convenient for the writer. Lazy, lazy, lazy. This really dragged down my enjoyment of the story, and that’s why I’m taking off a star. This book was going so well in the intro and middle, and it turns into a mess near the end.

Having said that, it’s not the worst book I’ve read recently, and I’m always looking for new paranormal series to get into. So while I give City of Bones 3 stars, I can say that I will be getting the next book in the series, City of Ashes. I kind of like Clary, and I’d be interested to see how this fight will escalate in later volumes. Nothing is really resolved in the first book, and the ending is open without being all that positive. Since I don’t see this kind of thing very often, with no happy ending offered, I kind of like it, even if the chapters leading up to it were a bit weaksauce.

So, I’d recommend City of Bones to fans of paranormal fiction looking for a new series to jump into about demon hunters. I’m not normally into this kind of story because the hunters are always cast as the ultimate good guys, but I think that’s what I like here, that the demon hunters are deeply flawed, and that their job in tracking down rogue mystical races isn’t so cut and dried as it is in some other books.

And now this review is getting a bit long, so I’ll shut up and let you decide whether you want to read it or wish doom and bad karma upon me for not hating it vehemently.

I probably shouldn’t, but I want to point out that despite having nothing but glowing reviews, The Life and Death of a Sex Doll still doesn’t move many units. It’s ironic in that I used the term sex doll in the story to convey a certain prejudice against artificial companions, and that people in meat space seem to be opposed to reading this because they see Sex in the title and think “porn.” *Shrug* eh, people are still hung up on sex, I guess.

Moving on, the second thing I want to mention is, Friday, I got a message from a friend on Facebook that my former roommate is now accusing me of stalking someone, and of using their image on one of my book covers. Both of these claims are false. The person he’s talking about, I haven’t looked for or lurked around. I was told to leave them alone roughly ten years ago, and shock of shocks, I did. I do still think of them and miss them sometimes, but I also regret being a bad influence on them, and I don’t long for a reunion. They have their own life to live without my crazy ass making problems for them, and I hope that they’ve since grown up happy and healthy.

I do not have any photos of this person, and all my book covers were made using stock images from Shutterstock, where I have an annual membership to buy five images before I need to pay for a renewal. I would not ever use someone’s image without their permission, and I would NEVER use this person’s image because I respect their privacy.

Around the same time that this stalker thing flared up, I also got a HUGE spike in visitors to my confessions posts. To put this in perspective, I usually get around 39-45 visitors a day here on the main blog, and 5-10 visitors on the mirror. I’m not big on the internet, as you can see. That one day surge went up to 375 on the main blog, and 75 on the mirror.

At first I thought I knew where these were coming from, but the blog I expected to be referring traffic had sent over only two visitors, and the rest, I cannot account for. There’s nothing in my search engine results to explain this spike, and nothing in referring URLs. So it’s kinda freaking me out wondering who all these people are who’ve suddenly taken an interest in viewing the worst details of my old life.

I’m not about to take those posts down, because I feel it’s important to be honest about my past, even if it risks alienating potential readers. I do not feel it’s better to pretend that I’m a good person and hide my past when it’s entirely possible that my past could one day bite me in the ass. Should there come a day when the cops change their minds about prosecuting me, or someone I knew does, I want to at least be able to say, “I never hid this, and I never stopped feeling regret for my past.” It won’t mean much to anyone else, but it’s another part of what keeps me honest and on the path of recovery. It’s my belief that the day I say “I’m a good person” will be the day I start making excuses for my actions, and that will lead to a backslide into old habits. So, best not to go there.

Lastly, I wanted to update numbers for April. As you know, I’m not doing any promotions for my stuff for April and May, so I fully expected April’s numbers to be close to nil. Actually, I sold 18 books, with 17 on Amazon, and 1 on Kobo. Amazon was surprising because I sold multiple copies of my floppiest books, and people didn’t ask for refunds on them. Kobo still isn’t doing so hot, and I won’t get any royalties from them until I hit $100. But I suppose I’ll worry about promoting Kobo more in June. For now, I’d still prefer to stay off the “buy my book” shtick.

And that’s it for now. As always, thank you for your continued support, and for putting up with my crazy ass.

But very early on, the story began falling into a pattern that turned me off from Breena, and then from all of the characters. Once I’d lost my like of them, nothing else clicked for me.

I should mention that there’s nothing wrong with the writing itself. There’s no mechanical errors, nor did I come across any typos. Were I to judge a book solely on the mechanical writing quality, this is a top notch perfect effort.

BUT the first problem remains the biggest for two thirds of the story. Early on, Bree comes home to find her drunk foster father about to rape her younger sister Jenny. Bree suddenly manifests witch powers that stun Stan, and after a short stay with a vampire, Myles, Bree is kicked out of the house by her foster mother, Norma.

So far no problem…except from this moment forward the story runs on an infuriating pattern. Bree thinks, I have to worry about Jenny, who is living with an abusive foster mother and foster sister, and a potential rapist foster father. AND YET, whenever Myles or Orin appear in the story, all she can think is Ooh, hot guy. Maybe I can get some. I only wish I was exaggerating about how often this happens, but seriously, it’s the MAIN CONFLICT for two thirds of the book. The first few times this happened, I had to put the book down for several weeks because I wasn’t sure I could handle this. And having finished the book, I sometimes wish I’d just stopped back around chapter 12 and given up.

This is the biggest problem I had, but the story is littered with problems. The writer seems to be bound and determined to give the reader NOTHING about the plot until the final 20% of the book, and when the answers for what’s going on come out, I spent every other page alternating between shouting “Are you kidding me?” and various multi-chained cuss words. Nothing about this story is worth the time I invested in it. The world building is lazy and sloppy. The side characters are cardboard cutouts, and the dialogue bounces between vaguely serviceable and “dear God, they didn’t really say that out loud, did they?” The resolution of the main conflict is dreadful, and the subplots are handled just as poorly. Oh, and of course everything is left open-ended for a sequel.

I really cannot say how much I hated that Bree’s concerns for the safety of Jenny, and indeed, even for her own life, always took a back seat to “which hot guy should I fall in love with?” I know romantic triangles are a staple of romance, and sometimes they work fine. But the triangle is handled badly here, and both boy toys are sad wish fulfillment for a female Harry Potter, a “chosen one” who does absolutely nothing right, so the bad guy shows up at the end of the book to monologue and explain all the clues she missed. But unlike Harry Potter, NOTHING is truly resolved. This book might as well be subtitled Episode 1. But for sure, I’m not interested in bothering with whatever comes next. This story was handled so badly, I’d be hard pressed to read anything else from the author.

For these reasons I give Witch Way to Turn 1 star, and I would not recommend it to anyone. I really wish I’d dropped this sooner and moved on to books that didn’t try my patience with every single chapter.

I also got interviewed by Rebecca Scarberry. So if you haven’t seen that yet on Twitter, go ahead and take a look.

I’m taking a two month break from promotions on Twitter, but it’s not done much for my nightmares problem. I’m now going on two straight months with no relief, and nothing I do seems to help get rid of the nightmares. Dropping promotions has helped to reduce my stress levels, and while my sales are kind of suffering for it, they didn’t die off completely. So there is that.

Plus, I sold copies of my flops, Bran of Greenwood and the Scary Fairy Princess, A Bard’s Tale, and Mmmm…Crunchy! And even more shocking, no one asked for refunds…on those titles, that is. Almost everything I sold in the UK Kindle store this month was returned. Which is a little depressing. I haven’t had this many refund requests before, and it’s not even the offensive books being returned. So I don’t know what went wrong. Maybe the straight readers got offended reading about trans and gay main characters. *Shrug*

Anyway, despite the slower sales and there being no improvement with my nightmare problem, I’m still not going to do any promotions for May. I really do need a break, and June will be hard enough on me when I have to start promoting Thicker Than Blood and the rest of the Peter the Wolf series. I just hope to have enough other projects done so I can devote most of my energy to the promotion push instead of dividing my time between writing, editing and selling.

And…I think that’s it for now. Along with everything else I’m doing, I’m also trying to catch up on my reading, and I’m starting my balcony garden again. I want to do another another video game review, but the last 3 Vita games I bought, I hated so bad, I dropped them too early to give a fair assessment of the games. But at least I’ll have some new book reviews relatively soonish.

Oh, right, thank you to everyone who bought books this month and didn’t get a refund. Really appreciate your continued support.

The premise is that a paparazzi is waiting for a couple to appear at a private swimming pool so he can take a photo of their romantic rendezvous and make big bucks. Only, the pictures he takes aren’t what he expected.

In some ways, it left me wanting more of everything. Lindqvist’s work is normally full of great visual details, but this is more sparse. There’s not as much creepiness here as in his full novels either, just a hint of something supernatural before the ride is over. It’s like a roller coaster that goes up and down one hill, and then pulls back into the station. It begs the question, “Where’s the rest of the ride?”

I can’t say I disliked it, but I really did wish for more. More detail, more information on the ending, and more of chance to be scared. So I give this 3 stars. It’s not bad, but it’s definitely not Lindqvist’s best writing.

To fully address the story here, I need to back up to explain Shiver. In the Wolves of Mercy Falls, the idea is given that the wolves change seasonally, that cold is the trigger for change, and that at a certain age, werewolves stop shifting and just turn into wolves. From there, they live about fifteen years, and then they die from the wolf reaching their natural old age life span. BUT, suddenly for dramatic effect, all the wolves are changing and this will be their final winter as humans. Even Sam, who is a young man, is going to have this happen to him, and to me it felt extremely lazy. It felt like a fake grab at the heartstrings for added tension, and I had a hard time believing it.

My next problem was how the resolution to Grace not changing after being bitten was that she got locked in a hot car by her father, with a fever, on the hottest day of the year. This is child abuse, and when it happens in the real world, parents get arrested and lose custody of their kids. There’s no punishment of Grace’s father, and even Grace just treats this revelation as a eureka moment for helping Sam. It doesn’t really bug her that her absentee parents are vile shits. Everyone else knows this, but Grace comes across as oblivious that she’s a victim of abuse.

There were other little gripes I had, but these were the two BIG problems that left me so very dissatisfied with the first book. Yet, I’d already bought Linger, so I knew at some point I’d have to sit down and read it. And almost a year after I read the first book, I finally did read the second volume.

In the first half, Grace’s parents suddenly pretend to act like parents, with emphasis on act. Where the first book worked from the first-person POVs of Grace and Sam, Linger opens up two more POVs, Isabel Culpeper and a newly made wolf, Cole St. Clair, who is a suicidal famous rock musician who thought being a wolf would free him from feeling human.

Where I feel conflicted is that I genuinely liked the characters and dialogue for the most part. But my problems with the “why” of the story is still iffy. There’s also the small matter that Isabel’s relationship with Cole feels forced and out of character for her. From the moment they first kiss to their last conversation, their time together feels like a shoehorned aspect of the story.

However, as I neared the last 100 pages, I began to have the idea that everything written about the wolves and their disease is all a case of an unreliable narrator. And while Grace never calls out her parents on their abuse, even though it seems obvious to other characters like Rachel, Isabel, and Sam, she does at least confront them about never being home and always being dismissive of her concerns because she’s “just a child.”

This is EXACTLY how my parent treated all my problems, and it explains a lot why scene involving Grace’s parents falsely acting paternal make me fly off the deep end and lose my shit every single time. However, I’m beginning to feel that some of my anger about the way Grace deals with this lies more in how I dealt with my neglectful parents than it does with her. What I mean is, rather than see Grace’s perspective, I’m filtering her story through my own issues. So because I began confronting my parents early on about how they treated me, I kind of expected Grace to call out her parents NOW. And in truth, this may be something she can’t confront until the last book in the series. Or put another way, I may be failing to respect Grace because she doesn’t act how I would put in her place. And that’s kind of hypocritical of me.

In much the same way, it’s possible that the last book will finally reveal how much of the information we knew in the first two books about the werewolf disease was false. It’s entirely possible given what was revealed in this book, and so I can’t really say “This reveal felt stupid.” It may just be that I’d already picked up on intentional inconsistencies in Shiver not meant to be revealed until book 3.

The other matter to consider here is, “Did I enjoy reading the book?” Well, yes, I enjoyed reading Linger a LOT more than I’d enjoyed reading Shiver. The dialogue is still just as sharp, and while there is the out of character moments with Isabel and Cole, there’s also some really great lines between these two as they make little verbal jabs at each other. I still love Rachel, Grace’s insane best friend, who has a tendency to steal the scene every time she shows up.

And then there’s the fact that here we have a non-formula mainstream book where there’s still plenty of tension and emotional conflict, but no need for battles or chase scenes or bad guys, or any other artificial plot devices. I really like this, and I feel like the second book may have made the story clearer by opening up a third and fourth POV.

Ultimately, I have to set aside my gripes from the first book and say “we’ll see what happens” when it comes to the third and final book in the series, Forever. It may very well be the case that I’ll have to reassess my score on Shiver because I need to take the unreliable narrator into account.

But given how much more I enjoyed Linger, warts and all, I’m going to give it 4 stars. This isn’t the kind of werewolf story that will work for traditional horror fans, but for paranormal and YA fans looking for something that breaks the stereotypical formulas, this series could be worth your time. I can say for certain that I’ll be buying Forever soon, and I won’t be waiting nearly as long to read it as the time I delayed between Shiver and Linger.

In the story, it comes out that the main character Grace was once locked in a car on the hottest day of the year, with a fever. This is a non-event in the book, and in the series so far. It’s a non-event to Grace, to her parents, and to everyone else who knows about it. This revelation was the first clunk of the story, and it drives me nuts because almost every other month, there’s a similar real life story in the news about kids locked in cars, and the parents who do this get arrested and lose custody of their kids.

Let me repeat that: the parents who do this get arrested and lose custody of their kids. In Shiver, it’s not even acknowledged as an act of abuse.

I’m sure to any reader who’s never been abused, this is no big deal. But to me, this one point has stuck in my throat, and it made me hate a lot of other moments where the writing went for an easy answer. The writing at times becomes so lazy that it made me want to throw the book. But I finished the story, and I still had Linger on my TBR shelf. Why? Because after reading 10 chapters of Shiver, I was absolutely certain I had to read the rest of the series.

So, I’m reading Linger, and I’m halfway through. I’ve got plans to get the last book in the series, Forever, and I have a copy of a new series starter, Raven Boys. While searching for Forever on Amazon, I saw Maggie has another series about faeries, and I groaned but made a note of it so I could pick it up later.

I talked on Twitter about how I must be a glutton for punishment, or that I might finally have found out what the definition of guilty pleasure is. But these jokes and easy answers don’t resolve my questions of why I don’t just throw the book away and move on. It really doesn’t explain why I’d buy every book this woman writes when I’m struggling with the second book in her first series.

I think I know now, and it’s because Maggie’s writing is a near-miss for me. I like her characters and the situations she creates for them. I like most of her dialogue, and I love that she can write a story about mystical creatures without making a fate of the world plot. (God, don’t even get me started on saving the world plots.)

But it drives me nuts how she can write about neglectful parents without showing the realistic side effects of their actions. In Linger, she’s even brought in more victims of neglectful parents and given them more realistic reactions to their abuse. So Grace’s lack of a reaction becomes even more upsetting for me.

Again, I don’t think this would matter to people who hadn’t “been there done that.” But it’s being a victim of neglect that causes this to rub me the wrong way. In Linger, at least, Grace has begun to act mildly rebellious, but even this doesn’t ring true. Worse, the book’s depiction of the parents flip-flops and makes them “very concerned” about Grace’s welfare despite the fact that they still don’t seem to give a shit enough to talk to her. They talk at her, and they’re easily as dismissive as my parents were. Their performances as neglectful parents are still there, but now suddenly they’re acting out of character with false concern. One of the bit characters has commented, “Give them a few days, and they’ll go back to forgetting they even have a daughter.” Grace’s friend can recognize neglect when she sees it. So why can’t Grace? Lazy writing.

In my teens, my parents went flipping from neglecting me to taking an active role in everything I did. Suddenly they wanted to know what I was thinking, and they weren’t nearly as dismissive of me or my problems. By then it was really too late, but I think they focused so much attention on me because they worried I might turn to crime like my little brother. I’d never been caught for my crimes, unlike Bro, who got caught and arrested for almost everything he attempted. So my parents wrongly assumed that I was the good child, and they stopped ignoring me. I suspect it was because they didn’t want me turning out “evil” like him.

Before this point, I had huge explosions and temper tantrums. No one noticed, and years later, no one seems to remember them at all, but I still had them anyway. Grace doesn’t. Grace isn’t rebellious or upset about how she’s been mistreated. Grace makes no attempts to go to the opposite end of the reaction spectrum and seek attention or approval as an overachiever, or to get help from others for her problems. She doesn’t even seem to be aware that she’s been neglected despite the hot car incident, or her friends awareness of her situation, or even the fact that her parents NEVER check up on her in her room.

This one little detail is another thing that rubs me the wrong way, because even at their most neglectful moments, my folks would come check up on me in the morning and at night before they went to sleep. I know because I used to stay awake, faking sleep until they went to bed, and then I would get up to sneak outside and stare at the stars, or I would turn on a lamp to read. I was not a day person even then, so I stayed up most nights, alone and wondering if there were other kids like me when I couldn’t find traces of them in the “golly gee willickers” portrayal of kids in most of the books I was reading.

Maggie’s writing gets damned close at times to the truth, and I think that’s why it angers me so much that she gets right up to the point of painful truth, only to back down and brush off her main character’s development.

There’s other issues I could highlight in Linger, like Isabel’s completely going out of character to kiss Cole, a total stranger to her, or how Grace’s father lays out some ridiculous concerned parent speeches on Sam, and yet, he’s the scumbag absent father who locked his daughter in a car so he could go shopping.

But then there’s the same things to like about the writing too. Everything I enjoyed about Shiver, I’m liking in Linger. By the same token, everything that drove me nuts about the lazy writing is still grating on me here. But I think I continue on because I wonder if eventually, Maggie will allow Grace to look at her parents and say, “You’re shitty people, and you don’t love me nearly as much as you claim to.” I want to know where she goes with these characters in her world, even if sometimes the direction she takes makes my eye twitch.

I want to keep reading because Maggie’s writing comes extremely close to the ring of truth I’m seeking in fiction, only to miss the target over and over. I’m still reading because despite the lazy answers given, Maggie’s doing something I wish more mainstream writers would be bold enough to try. She’s eschewing the traditional conflict formulas and telling a subtler kind of supernatural story. She’s got great characters and great dialog, and so I keep reading because maybe if this time it doesn’t work out, there’s always a chance that her writing style will mature and evolve to address these weaknesses while retaining the elements I’m loving. If and when that happens, I want to be there to see it.

So…that’s why I’m still reading Maggie Stiefvater’s books, even though my picky nature would normally have me chucking an author and moving on to someone else.

“Please support indie authors by reviewing their work, IF YOU LIKE IT.” Bullshit.

The whole point of a review is to tell other readers what you thought of a book, and you should feel okay giving a bad review if you didn’t like a book. You should not treat book reviews like a gladhanding session. If you can’t say anything nice about a book, then say what you didn’t like about it.

I had an indie author approach me about this and say, “But what point is there to a bad review? It will only hurt the author’s feelings and their sales.” They’re completely missing the point of what a review is meant to do. To these youg’uns, a review is all about stroking their ego and helping build hype for a book. It has nothing to do with informing other readers about the work, or what you as a reader felt while going through the story. Being polite for once, they are totally missing the point.

A bad review can still help sell copies in ways these folks cannot understand. A book with nothing but 5-star reviews begins to take a hit in credibility because we live in an age of bulk-purchased praise and sock-puppet accounts. We live in an age of gaming the systems with praise from friends and relatives. Thirty-five 5-star reviews and no complaints says to the average reader “Something funny is going on here.” Nothing but endless praise sets off warning klaxons and can actually hurt your sales. But if you have a few 2 and 3-star reviews to go along with the glowing praise, now the readers can look over both sides of the review spectrum and feel like they’re making an informed decision. That’s why you ask for honesty from readers, so that other readers can make an informed decision before they purchase your work. No reader should ever feel like they were tricked into buying your stuff, and no would-be reviewer should be made to feel like they can’t complain about not liking your writing.

Y’all know I’ve got a couple reviews that burn my tits every time I think about them. But I would never try to remove those reviews. It doesn’t matter if they send some potential readers running away. The main point of the review isn’t to help me sell books. It is for the reviewer to tell other readers what they thought of the book. I can take a good review and show it to the public as a promotional tool, but that’s a secondary function. The review isn’t for me, it’s for the readers.

It’s hard enough for indie authors to gain any sense of legitimacy to their art when publishers and their pro authors are constantly dissing us as unprofessional. The pros often game the system by buying friendly reviews, or by quote chopping ambiguous reviews to sound like glowing praise. The pros do a lot of unprofessional things to enhance the illusion of their artistic legitimacy, but these are not tactics we indies should need or want to duplicate.

So if you must ask for reviews, ask for honest reviews, good and bad. Do not ask for reviews “if you like it.” By doing this, you’re missing the point of a book review, and you’re looking just as vain and speshul snowflakey as the image the pros are projecting onto you. Reject that notion, and be willing to take some hits to your image with bad reviews. Ask for and encourage honest reviews, and don’t worry about bad reviews until you actually get one.

When you do get a bad review, deal with your pain, but let it stand and don’t try to get it removed as “bullying.” A bad review isn’t bullying. It’s just someone who didn’t like the way you told your story. So let it stand and find a way to cope with it. My way is to bitch on Twitter and drink a lot to ease the sting. So I suppose it’s a good thing that I’ve only had a few bad reviews, or this could lead to alcoholism.