Monkey See Monkey Comment

I’ve been published a little over a year now and 30 something books later I’ve taken some time to reflect on how things are going and the criticism of my writing. And when I stopped focusing on the individual comments I noticed something that I wasn’t sure made me want to laugh or cringe.

There’s a pattern, or a cycle.

My first few books all the negative comments were that I was a hack. I was copying everyone under the sun and couldn’t come up with my own ideas if they bit me in the ass.

The next few were all about the crying. My characters were pussies, needed to wear skirts, weren’t real men, and on and on.

Then it was the sex. The scenes were the same as everyone else’s, there weren’t enough, or there were too many. Or they weren’t realistic. (And people wonder why authors don’t listen to too many comments and reviews from strangers when no one can have the same type of criticism.) But they were all about the sex in the books.

Next it was the pet names. I used baby too often or babe (which I rarely use) or honey, or whatever pet name, which is actually a theme and personal joke of mine in Purrfect Mates in response to that and how no matter what I do some people just love to hate it. Why they keep reading my stuff when they seem to despise it I have no idea… what’s the definition of insanity again?

After that it was the Irish accents. God help me if I hear one more time I couldn’t write a brogue or knew anyone Irish I was ready to scream. Never mind that I’m last name is FLYNN and I can speak in a perfect brogue... but speaking and writing it are two very different things. There are different ways to do everything in life, including writing. I went with phonetically doing it instead of other options because I thought that would be best.

Then it was the mountains of editor, spelling, and grammar errors. That one kinda got me so I started asking people for examples of mistakes. Am I saying my books are flawless, hell no. Every book has boo-boo’s but the replies I got to my inquiries… 90% of them were NOT mistakes. Kinda instead of kind of is not a mistake, it’s the way I talk and slang just like ain’t versus isn’t. Mother fucker can be two words or one, but when I say it out loud it sounds like two to me. You can hiss when it’s not just an “S” sound because hissing is also defined as an angry or emotional whisper.

Next few books was about me mostly writing in 1st person and how people missed so much of the book and characters because 1st person doesn’t go deep enough into the personal aspect of the story. That one confused the this out of me because to me nothing goes more in depth than 1st person, but I’ll get back to that one because that’s currently going on as well and I figured something out.

Now it’s the Midnight Matings series in general. And that one I want to address because it truly saddened me. I’ve gotten emails, reviews, comments, rude ass posts accusing my idea for the world the books are set in from being unbelievable to immoral forced matings to flat out rape. Unbelievable in fiction is part of fiction so I just sighed that some people were so quick to judge and jump on the criticism band wagon they seemed to miss the moral of the story. I tend to throw in a little political, stereotype breaking, or other ideas into my books as the underlying comments of the world around me.

The characters are forced to find a mate to join communities, packs, and species. I did get several people who got the parallelism… arranged marriages, which is very believable and happens all the time around the world. Yes, the Elders are like the parents who see a bigger picture and do what they think is right without considering the people involved. The books are from the mates perspectives and how hard it is to make their lives work when others step in where they’re not wanted. HOWEVER they are forced to find a mate amongst hundreds of hundreds of people at one very large conference. That is different and less “ouch” in my mind than a straight arranged marriage. And while the original idea was mine I do feel that bringing in Stormy Glenn and Gabrielle Evans helped mold the world to where we had lots and lots of fun bashing, beating, and flat out making the Elders the bad guys for having their heads up their asses at the idea they came up with. And rape? I have so many comments on that one but all of them would have my email full of responses because I yelled and opened my mouth. I do think if some people would stop being so quick to tear everything down and picking on every little aspect they’d “get” it and understand the moral to the story.

That being said, reading some of these comments finally had the light bulb going off over my head on the 1st person thing. It’s not 1st person that people keep complaining about… it’s that I don’t rotate it. I’m sitting here for months completely not getting why I get these emails saying that I don’t delve into the characters in my stories and only skim the surface when I write in first person instead of 3rd. It’s tense I write in, they’re actually wanting for me to go back to switching between characters. I have started it on a trial basis with the Hiding Hounds series just to see how it went over. One is 3rd person for one character & 1st person for the other. The second book is rotating first person which I had other authors and people warn me not to do because it was too confusing. Though I have to say I didn’t get one comment, email, or post as to that. But it’s also not something that’s done very often until recently when a few authors tried it after I did.

However… I find it takes away from the story when I jump back and forth from perspectives at times instead of really delving into what one character is thinking and dealing with. I had a long, long talk with my good friend Gabrielle Evans last night and decided to try something new with her encouragement. I asked her, “can’t I just write one half in one guy’s perspective and the last half in the other one’s.” And like my wonderful friend, she laughed at me and said, “you’re the damn author do what you want you goof.” Or something along those lines. I do call her wen I need a kick in the ass. So it works for us.

So, my fourth Midnight Matings book, Fur and Flightless will be half and half. And for the first time I’m listening to the random comments of strangers and willing to try something knew that hopefully will work for me as the author and keep my groove when I get all into my character telling the story and will give readers that both sides of the coin they’ve wanted… now that I get what people were saying. That being said, I’m honestly and truly hoping people share their opinions on what they thought after it comes out. POLIETLY. Rude people get no consideration in my world because my mommy taught me manners. But I do want honest.

That’s what’s in my crazy brain. I’ve been a bad blogger so I thought I’d share. Now I’m off to go finish my newest book and maybe find my bed at some point today. ~Joyee