Sitting in Starbucks

I'm writing this post from my Friendly Neighborhood Starbucks store (the ONLY Friendly Neighborhood Starbucks store in this town, actually) and I'm wondering things.

If you've seen it on Facebook and Twitter (its probably calmed down by now, but about two and a half weeks ago, it was viral all over the net) then you know about the Jacqueline Howett debacle. The Self-Published authoress threw a shit fit over a review posted about her book, The Greek Seaman. Big Al of Big Al's Books and Pals was wonderfully polite in dealing with her ranting and he was even polite when she - a woman who is in her 50's at the very least, according to her own blog - descended into expletives at anybody who commented on the blog supporting Big Al and his review of her book.

Compared to about 80% of the reviews I've looked at of self-published works, it was gloriously polite. I read the preview of The Greek Seaman on Amazon, and I was quite frankly shocked by the quality. But the plotline was solid, the characters were interesting, and if you ignored the mass of spelling and grammar mistakes, it was an engaging read. Big Al was honest, to-the-point, and very, very flattering towards Ms Howett, and she threw that back in his face within TWO DAYS of his posting of the review.

Talk about immature, huh? One thing an author should never do in regards to a review is flame the reviewer for writing it. ESPECIALLY when, for the most part, the review is flattering.

So, it got me thinking. She's damaged the reputation of Indie and self-published authors. I'm going to do something I never thought I'd want to do:

I'm starting my own book review blog, dedicated solely to reviewing the works of self-published and indie authors.

Why?

Well . . . why not? I'm an avid reader, and this will give me a good chance to not only express my opinions, but to maybe read the next Edgar Allen Poe or Charles Dickens of the 21st Century before they get famous. To assist with this, I'm working seriously on my own self-published project to get into the mindset of what's what and where's where, and at the moment, I'm working on my submission guidelines.

If you have looked at my own story-posting blog which, I'm ashamed to say, I haven't updated in awhile because Life's kicked me in the teeth (see my previous post) then you'll see I write things all across the board. I want to read all across the board as well.

I'm currently working on submission guidelines, I made a Gmail account specifically for this so I'm not getting my submissions lost in the abyss that is my yahoo account, and I'm advertising in my Gaia signature that I'm looking for self-published works to review.

We'll see where this goes.

Wish me luck!


Peace,

Emily Grace