I had an awesome WTFkery planned for today, but alas, ebay has taken it down. Essentially, a couple of kids had been using their Beyblades in the bathtub. Connor has some of those and they spin pretty hard, but I guess in this case the Beyblades did about $500 worth of damage to the tub and tiles with their spinning, so the pissed off parents were putting up the Beyblades for sale…and they posted a picture of the these two completely devastated boys holding the bag of Beyblades.
Sort of priceless, even if it was probably a hoax (Last I saw, the auction was up to about $300, which is way, way more than the toys are worth.). I showed it to Connor and he was, of course, all about the Beyblades. “I hope they don’t get rid of those two that light up. Those are cool.”
Indeed.
I suppose they are.
Anyway, the other bit of amusing WTFkery is actually about my reviews on BoD on Amazon. So far, they’ve been pretty good, but at one point this past week, a one star and a two star review were tossed up there by very new people and very close to each other timewise. And essentially saying the same thing: BoD is dark and dirty and disgusting. And full of teenage rape. (Jesus, WTF is up with that? I thought *all* UF books were about teenage rape. That’s why I put it in there! *sarcasm*) There were also complaints about why my book was being marketed as YA and how they were so glad they’d read it before they gave it to their 12 year old daughter.
Um. I’m sure these were trolls, but in the off chance that they weren’t? A Brush of Darkness is NOT YA. I know it has shown up on some YA blogs, but thus far the bloggers have usually been pretty good about indicating that this is an adult book. People swear. Have sex. Unicorns sniff panties. Bacon is served. You know. Grown up stuff.
At any rate, the reviews in question were removed – a few commenters did pop on and made it quite clear that the reviewers either hadn’t read the book or may have been plants to knock me down a peg. When I checked back a few hours later they were gone. (No, I was NOT involved with that in any way. I’m pretty firm in the belief that authors shouldn’t get mixed up in the reviewing process. It’s pretty much a no-win situation.) But thanks to whoever did step up and complain – I definitely appreciate it.
That being said, as an author – sure, I like good reviews…but I’m not against negative ones either, particularly if they’re well written and thought out. I obviously can’t make everyone happy, but I’d much rather see a review that at least indicates that the reviewer *read* the book, as opposed to a blanket statement.
“I thought Brystion was a righteous twat because of x” means more to me than “Typical UF crap”, for example.
Ah well. Lessons learned, and all that.
