Way Less Stars Than Are In The Sky, But Invaluable

Regardless of what you do in life, somebody else is evaluating your performance. Even if you own the business or it is a family run business, and you're the one in charge, someone else is evaluating how well you are doing your job. Most people welcome an honest review of their efforts, as long as it is honest, and it is not placed on some kind of inflated grade scale. When I was in the Air Force, we received Airman Performance Reports (APRs) every year. You were graded on ten performance characteristics with a score of one to nine. The problem was, the scale had become so inflated that an eight was bad-- a seven could end a career. What should have been considered an average score, a five, would land you outside the gate by the end of the day.

With the advent of the Internet, customer reviews have taken the place of word-of-mouth for finding high performing products. Most shoppers for goods on Amazon use reviews to help them with purchasing decisions. I usually look for the critical reviews of a product I'm considering and take time to read what the person wrote. Sometimes, it has nothing at all to do with the product but everything to do with the delivery or something else unconnected to the product’s quality. So, I look at reviews with a jaundiced eye. But how does this work for book reviews?

Reviews for my most recent novel, Blood Upon the Sands, have begin appearing on book sites throughout the realm. Most of these sites allow readers to review books they’ve read and also rate the book from one to five stars. Amazon provides no guidance as to what these stars mean.  If you go to Goodreads, they provide some guidance. The stars from one to five:  did not like it, it was okay, liked it, really liked it, it was amazing. Based on that scale, two stars would be average. Barnes & Noble defines their star rankings similarly using the words: poor, below average, good, very good, excellent. Barnes & Noble really doesn't have an average, so you have a choice of either being below average or good (two or three stars respectively). I could find no star definition on Smashwords.

If I want to buy a book by a particular author, I buy the book. I could care less if John Smith from Fort Lee, New Jersey hated Dan Brown's latest book, it doesn't affect my decision to buy. However, if I'm interested in a book, maybe because of the cover or a  blurb I read, the reviews do come into play. But just like when I am buying goods, I read the worst review to see why they were given only one star. In a lot of cases, reading the review is illuminating. 

Reviews from my book coming in, (taking a moment to brag):  Self-Publishing Review rated my book 5 stars for each of their three judged categories (appearance, editing, content) as well as overall.  In addition, the reviewer wrote a very nice narrative that talked about the various nuances and was complimentary of my style and story. 

Once sales of my book started, I earned a Bestseller badge from Amazon and began to see reviews. My first 10 reviews on Amazon were all five stars. I’m a realist and didn't expect everyone to love my book, so I knew it would change. A few days later a couple of fours appeared. No big deal, especially if you took the time to read them.

One reviewer said she was uninterested because the book was set in the Middle East. Even though she spent more of her review discussing that than the book, in the end, she did say "engaging characters, perfectly choreographed action and smart dialogue delivered with practiced cadence. Despite not falling in love with the story, I know this is a well-written novel and lovers of political thrillers will eat it up." To me, it was a positive and honest at four stars. But because my book was no longer all five-star reviews, will it be left unread? I am unsure why, but the reviewer graded the book only three stars on Goodreads with the exact same narrative. Perhaps because on Goodreads three stars mean she liked it. 

A different Goodreads reviewer said "great characters, a great plot, an interesting plight, most people haven’t heard of. All the things that make a great story..." Even with all the “greats” they only rated the book three stars because they felt the villain was over the top. (Note: In any book I ever write, the villain will be evil not simply bad.) I honestly had no problem with the review because the reader seemed to be sincere about what they were saying.  However, because of the inflation in the star grading system, it may cost me readers who don't look beyond the stars for why a reviewer rated it the way they did.  After all, some readers look for evil villains and there is none eviler than Maksim.

While these reader reviews were coming in so were the reviews from literary sources: 

"An accomplished thriller that’s full of pace, intrigue, and suspense..."

Piaras Cíonnaoíth, Emerald Book Reviews

"…once opened, the action and events and premises are so compelling that pausing the experience is not likely. Highly Recommended--"

Grady Harp, San Francisco Review of Books

“…an exceptionally well-written thriller”

Atlantic Way Review

Yes, all of those had a rating of five stars, but I don't really have any idea what the scale of stars meant for their particular publications.

If the praise reviews are averaged against the critical reviews, my book still averages at almost 5 stars--- but I have to admit any less than stellar review hurts. The child of any creative effort is treasured by its creator regardless of what anyone else may think. It is impossible not to feel the pain when someone else evaluates your creation less-than-perfect even if you understand why.  

What is the takeaway? 

• When you review something, be honest. 
• If there is some sort of star or thumbs up grading scale be honest with that too. Evaluate and award the rating not only based on the scale provided but be familiar with how similar things are rated on a particular site. 
• If you do provide a less than stellar rating, say why. A review is an opinion if you have one you should be able to defend and explain it. 
• Likewise, when you go to buy a book, take a moment to read the worst review. Figure out why the person is snubbing a particular creative work you found interesting. They may base their evaluation on a different scale or using a different criterion which is irrelevant to you.

Don’t pass up what could be the best thing you’ve ever read simply because someone else downgraded the rating because they didn’t like the cover of the book.

I am at a level far below writers who have been producing work for years and are considered the best at their game. Stephen King is probably not upset Rebecca Harn rated his novel as one star because she thought the villain was over the top -- but she did and it contributed to a less than 4 1/2 star combined score for his book. 

For right now, my book is rated higher than Stephen King's - but I doubt he is upset about that either.  

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Available Everywhere: Blood Upon the Sands

On 16 April 2019, Blood Upon the Sands was officially released.  It is now available in ePub and Paperback from the following retailers:

Against the bloody backdrop of a country simmering with racial tension, friendships are tested, beliefs are tried, and the prejudices of years are challenged…

Since the earliest days of Kuwait’s independence, the Bedoon have faced government-sanctioned discrimination. To accelerate their expulsion, an ex-KGB agent turned mercenary is secretly hired to manipulate the political climate by influencing public opinion further against the vulnerable populace.

Weaving real-world history and current events seamlessly into an action thriller, Blood Upon the Sands is a gripping story of the fight to reveal truth amid rising chaos and hate. Evan Davis is again thrust into the center of the conflict. Back, in the Middle East, this time under the patronage of a horse breeder, Hamad Al- Bourisli, Evan is brought in to write about Kuwait’s culture to improve the small country’s image in the West. Evan soon finds kinship with Hamad and intimacy with his beautiful cultural liaison, Najila.

When documents are anonymously left, Evan discovers disturbing truths about the stateless Bedoon population. Meanwhile, under the alias Shaytan, Maksim Bondreovich begins to spread terror and chaos across the country while framing Bedoon citizens for the atrocities.

Time is running out before Shaytan makes his biggest play yet – bombing the Hotel Sultana and placing the blame solely on the disenfranchised Bedoon population. As rising racism and public dissent become undeniable, will Evan go against his friend and employer to bring the truth come to light?

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On Being Weighed & Measured

It was hard to believe when I first read it, but having seen the reference several places since my initial discovery, I can accept as fact that the length of the average Agatha Christie mystery is between 40,000 and 60,000 words. Christie is the most prolific and widely sold English language mystery author in the world. Of course, I found out several other facts about books and their length while researching the number of words that make up various literary works.  Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is over 481,000 words, whereas The Hobbit is only 95.356 words; the Harry Potter books run between 77,000 and 200,000 words; and Huckleberry Finn is right at 110,000 words.

Why was I even looking at the number of words contained in the average novel? Due to my own personality quirk, I needed some way of measuring the level of effort I was giving to my latest writing project. Since the beginning of the year I've started to write a story  that I have had bouncing around in my mind for the last few years.Allah's Numbers (working title)is an espionage thriller with several main characters, multiple story lines, various plot twists, and turns, and it takes place across several countries. Evan Davis, the main character in Three Paperclips & a Grey Scarf and Blood Upon the Sands, is back again and he is drawn into yet another situation that requires a man of both common sense and ethics who can rise to overcome his faults and human frailties. Anyway, since I have transitioned from full-time government employee to full-time novelist I needed some way of gauging how I was doing on a day-to-day basis.

I have read that some writers sit down and attempt to write a specific number of pages per day.  They start at eight in the morning and whenever they reach the specified number of pages they stop for the day. This means that some work days may only last a couple of hours whereas others may stretch into the evening.  I actually tried that method when I was in Kuwait and found that I would write 4000-5000 words on Monday and on Tuesday I would delete half of them because they felt forced. By the end of the week I would have 500 good words. That is no way to actually finish writing something.

My typical schedule right now is to write two full days a week, edit one full day a week, and do story flow and continuity checks on Fridays. Every week I record the number of words in each of the story segments that I am writing and compare the that total to the week before. I realize now that some weeks I just write more than others, and likewise there are times when I actually delete things during editing and continuity checks which can cause fluctuations. Breaking my effort into different purposes actually helps my overall writing productivity and my rate of production, as measured by just number of words written, has gone up every week.  I take this to mean that the more time I spend writing, the more productive I get.  

What is this mean for where I am at today?  Three Paperclips & a Grey Scarf came in right at 33,000 words, but that was a novella and not a full novel; even so it is my longest published work to date.    As of today, I have written 47,000 words of my current novel Allah's Numbers (working title).  I will continue writing until I have told the entire story that I want to tell, but based on my research I found that most thrillers tend to run between 120,000 and 150,000 words.  Looking at the story I've captured thus far, and where I want to be when I write the words The End that is a pretty good estimate for what it will take to finish things.

A few more hints to whet your appetite – – – other characters in the book include a failed KGB chief, a sleeper agent who has been in place for almost 3 decades ago, a beautiful Mossad agent, a confused Palestinian boy who is being used in order to exact a final revenge and a dog name Zax.

I hope to release the book by July of this year.

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