As the title indicates this will be my final entry here until some time in the new year. I've enjoyed these blogs and done my best to keep to a weekly schedule (though it's faltered as of late) but now time constraints are forcing me to go on hiatus here.

While I'm away I'll be reworking my next novel to remove a plot thread that will no longer work for me. It's tedious work, as all authors know, and will require much of my time and concentration.

Before I go though...one final entry.

This past year I have seen the very best and the very worst that independent publishing can offer and everything in between. I have been amazed by the singular talents of authors and appalled by the lack of care from others. It's like the dirty little secret of the business...we all know there are terrible books out there that should never have been published yet we never speak of them.

I want to speak of them today.

I've heard from reviewers I know that they won't review independent books because the quality is not there in a lot of cases. Worse than that, the author's themselves have been known to personally attack a reviewer who didn't rate them the way they wanted. Let me be clear; this behaviour is reprehensible.

Reviewers need the freedom to rate and review as they see fit for the practice to have any worth at all. They may not like your book. You may not like that. But that is the business you enter when you click publish. Many, many authors understand this but the few that don't do damage to us all. Every reviewer who closes their doors to all indie authors because of these bad apples is one less avenue available to all of us.

It's time to stop not talking about it. It's time to stop fearing reprisal and start telling it like it is. It's hard to slam an author; I know. I've found myself in the position this year as well. I've lost contacts over telling the truth. It isn't easy to review someone else's hard work and have to tell them that it just isn't good.

But it has to be done.

And I'm not talking about subjective opinions here. What one person likes another won't. We all get that. But show me the reader that likes to read poor grammar, typos, spelling mistakes, and other editing gaffs. These are not subjective...they're factual. It's hard to write and hard to hear but a prerequisite of this business of publishing is a thick skin. You won't survive without it.

And just so you know, I'm certainly not above it all. A Goodreads friend of mine, Joanna Elm, read and reviewed Stillness this year. She was my first 3 star review. She wrote in part that I had a "grammatical blind spot which is found throughout the book of confusing plurals with the possessive." Did I like to hear this? What do you think?

My kneejerk reaction was that she was wrong; there's no way. Did I lash out at her or break off all contact? No I did not. I decided to see if she was right and by God you know what...she was. I had no idea that I had that blind spot. If Joanna was a less honest reviewer I still wouldn't know. But because she told me the truth I was able to go over my story again and (hopefully) fix all those errors.

For young authors out there looking for how to handle criticism, I would suggest trying to learn from it. I would suggest subjecting your prized manuscript to an editing process before hastily clicking publish.

I would submit to all authors out there that for every terribly formatted and poorly edited book that somebody reads, we all lose at least 5 potential readers because you know they'll tell people all about that terrible book they read.

Keep that in mind before you publish. Sure you may be able to coax your friends and family and maybe even a few others into giving you the reviews you want but in the end, nobody knows enough people to keep the truth about your book from rising to the fore.

So don't blame the person who tells you the truth for telling it to you. Thank them...more importantly learn from them. Reviews can help you a lot more than just getting your name out there.

If you're going to publish then take the time and do it right. Do yourself a favour and polish your book before publishing it. Do us all a favour because we are all in this together. If we ever want people to look at independent novels as having the same quality as traditionally published novels then we need to make sure they do.

Every. Last. One. Of. Us.