Very busy writing at the moment. Sword of Justice has come back from the editors, and I’m pleased to say it’s going really well. There are always little things to change, but it’s nice to feel that it’s going in the right direction. I’m also getting stuck into the sequel, and there’s the small matter of a top-secret short story as well. So I’m basically spending most of my time at the keyboard.
All of which makes me think about reviews and reviewers. Iron Company has been out for a little while now, and the reviews are starting to make themselves known. It’s always nice to get feedback, even if it’s not always uniformly positive. In fact, reasoned negative criticism is probably more useful to an author – it’s good to know what you got wrong so you can fix it next time. No one wants to have their work trashed after spending months trying to make it as good as possible, but constructive critical comments are always welcome.
There’s a good summary of how criticism works on Gav Thorpe’s blog. He’s been doing this thing for much longer than I have, and it’s all good advice. Of course, one of the problems with picking up (mostly) online reviews is that even some of the most high profile books don’t get that many. Most Black Library titles will pick up less than half a dozen reviews on (say) Amazon, with the exception of the flagship series. That’s all good feedback, but what if you get a few people who just hate everything? Or, almost as bad, a few who love everything? If you took too much notice of the scores there, you could end up with a very skewed impression of your book’s reception.
So, in general, I tend to place more weight on the comments on sci-fi and fantasy review sites like this one. Though the reviews can be quite short, they’re written by people who care about the genre. Most of all, of course, I take note of the opinions of proper Warhammer/40K fans, for whom the setting really matters. Which is why it’ll be good to see the old BL website back up in due course – godammit, I miss those forums!
Chris Wraight 