I got yelled at for what?

NO BASHING – KEEP IT ANONYMOUS AND FRIENDLY

Readers – What are some strange review comments you’ve seen?

Authors – Do you ever get yelled at for strange things you couldn’t predict?

Let me preface this by saying — This post is meant as a fun peek at the life of an author. I LOVE my readers. I respect your opinions and your right to have them. Thank you for leaving reviews, sending emails, and having your own thoughts and feelings.

But sometimes people leave me scratching my head…

For some reason I’ve been thinking of all the random things I’ve been yelled at for over the years regarding my books. I’m not talking about bad reviews or someone who hates the book for whatever reason. I’m talking about those things I could never in a million years have predicted would be a trigger. Normally, it’s considered bad form to answer reviews and 99.99% of the time I don’t (at least not outside of my brain).

Here are three I can come up with offhand:

1. I once was yelled at because my heroine had blue eyes, and blue eyes are rare.

A: Um, have you seem my picture? I’m like the poster girl for Swedish America. Blue eyes aren’t unusual to me. And after nearly 100 books, I can guarantee I’ve used up the normal (and not normal) eye color spectrum.

2. A reviewer hated my contemporary romance because I described a character as having a white cotton ball hairdo (old lady, grandma type) who was knitting. And how dare I describe a knitter like that. Not all knitters were old. They had to throw my book against the wall.

A: I’m sorry you were offended, but I’ve never stated all knitters were old. This was an homage to my grandmother who was crafty awesome. I’m not going to apologize for giving her a nod in one of my book. I love you, grandma, RIP. I wish I had even a 1/4 of your sewing/craft talent.

3. This book was awesome, I love it to pieces, but it needs an editor.

A: It had them. Several professionals actually. Normally assigned by the publisher. But I know I’m not perfect and I will always try to do better. After some of these, I paid to send it through again to see all the errors they found. …Sadly, this has happened and I’ve wasted my money for books to come back clean with a few personal preference suggestions. Or the misspelled words were series/author writing choices that don’t change.

However, if there is an error, please email me privately (to make sure I see it) the what, where, so I can get it fixed if I need to.

I LOVE MY READERS! Please don’t stop leaving the honest reviews for my books.