I figured this was bound to happen at some point, and sure enough, it did: I set up a blog-tour stop at Fiction Vixen, and then their reviewer turned out to not like my book. So I’m blogging over there on the topic of When People Don’t Like Your Book. Also giving away a copy – open to international entries, BTW.
Something I find amusing is that the fact that the reviewer didn’t like the book wasn’t nearly as traumatic for me as dealing with the nice person who was setting up my guest spot – I kept worrying about how awkward this must be for her.
You know the Julia Sweeney stage show, God Said, “Ha!”? It’s a monologue about a time in her life when she and her brother both had cancer. Anyway her own cancer is diagnosed as this highly treatable, nothing-to-worry-about form, and she makes one visit to this specialist in this particular cancer who tells her all about it and reassures her of its eminent treatability.
Her treatment goes forward with her regular doctor, and at some point it’s determined that she actually has this other kind of cancer (also highly treatable) rather than the specialist-doctor’s kind. Only she keeps running into the specialist around the hospital, and he’s always wanting to reassure her of how treatable Cancer A is, and she just sort of nods and humors him instead of explaining that she’s actually got Cancer B.
And in her monologue she observes: “That’s how co-dependent I am; I can’t even bring myself to tell the guy that I don’t have his cancer!“
That cracks me up because it’s such a perfect, pithy illustration of a certain personality type, which happens to be my personality type as well. Instead of being distressed about the Fiction Vixen reviewer not liking my book, I was thinking, “Oh, my god, this must be so uncomfortable for them to tell me! What can I do to put them at ease?”
When in fact I’m sure this must happen, if not all the time, at least with enough frequency that the bloggers are used to dealing with it.
Anyway that’s the backstory of today’s blog appearance. But we’re talking about well-loved books, movies, etc. that you just Did. Not. Get. So come over and tell me yours!
