Lot of nice reviews and an update

This is, from left to right, Kehfrey Ihmel, Tehlm Sevet a.k.a. Marun, and Vik Ihmel, as they would appear in The Bound in Stone set in The Soulstone Chronicles. Fan art by Tressa Green.

Last few days, multiple reviews were posted on Amazon for various books, both forThe Soulstone Chronicles and for Gods of Faith and Destruction. I believe there were four reviewers total and more than fifteen five star ratings accorded.

Thank you, all reviewers.

I wanted to let everyone know that I have been considering not acknowledging reviews via comments on Amazon. I posted about this concern earlier on my blogs but wasn’t sure until now if I should stop, when I should stop or even if I could stop. I like interacting with my readers, but then I thought, ‘What if that makes a reader nervous about leaving a review?’

After that I thought, ‘But what if I don’t leave a thank-you and the next reviewer is disappointed that I didn’t?’

After that I was stuck in a should-I-shouldn’t-I worry knot, and since I have enough trouble with anxiety as it is, I decided I should stop leaving personal thank-you notes on Amazon and just say thank you on my blogs.

So! Big, huge, massive thank you to the latest reviewers. Really big. I needed the encouragement, and your reviews arrived with impeccable timing. You’re all angels.

Next, the update. Showers are great! I get all sorts of ideas in the shower. And then I wonder if I remembered to wash my hair, but that’ not important here. Thing is, I had a great scene idea pop into my head for Redemption 4 yesterday, so I wrote a note to remember it. I’m not physically writing R4 right now, but I’m still working on it up in the noggin.

Currently physically writing Gods of Faith and Destruction 3. I told a friend that I had a better idea for how it should run (Shower! Bless the shower!) and therefore changed the old ending of the last chapter I wrote five years ago (a matter of a few paras only) and now I’m working on entirely new stuff. Vaal is about to go on a sulking rampage. Yeah, because, like, he thinks he’s in charge but… ha, ha, no, not telling.

This morning’s shower idea: I didn’t know what I could offer in the way of rewards if I did a crowd funder to get individual cover art for every book in my Soulstone series. What have I got after I give away all my stories as ebooks or signed copies of the final print versions? I thought nothing. Until this morning.

That’s when I remembered, ‘Oh, yeah. I can edit.’ I decided I should offer a very simple service to funders who might also be fellow writers. Basically, it would be a personal edit of someone’s story, up to a certain number of words, which would give the writer an example of how I would go about strengthening prose in their story. This is something I can do for first person or third person (single or mulitple POV, strict or flowing POV), because I have experience with those POV types.

So yes, I do have something I can offer aside from an ebook back list and signed print copies. I shall look into crowd funding more after I get the family income tax filing done.