I place a significant value on both immediacy and on well-thought-out response – in fact, since they are often quite different from one another, I consider the value of having both together to be quite greater than the sum of its parts, since it gives insight both into the journey and the destination and, perhaps, into the process one went through to become the other. So, for example, upon waking & reading your comment in my email, I tweeted my initial reaction – and am now writing a more thorough, thought-out response. I feel both have value.

Re: capturing immediacy and sharing it, I am absolutely in favor of it. I have released two different poetry collections wherein each poem was, when it was written, intended to capture my experience as I was having it, like a snapshot. In the published version of the book, each poem is presented literally as a scan of the page I wrote it on, so you can see exactly what I put down in the moment. (Each poem is also reproduced in type, for when my handwriting is less than clear, but I feel showing the changes in my handwriting are part of what each page reveals about my experiences.) There is a place for slow, considered poetry, but I believe there is also a value in the “now”.

Just as one may make comments while watching a show on TV (in the moment) to their friends/family, just as one may make comments while watching movies at home, or whispered comments while watching movies in the theatre, I make comments to my friends/family/followers as I read books. “Unprofessional” is something I have no problem with this practice being described – it is a social, not a professional, phenomenon. It is one person sharing their experience and reactions casually, via social media.

I am by no means a professional reviewer. I don't even read professional reviews, so I don't know what they do, what they intend to do, or whether there are any rules/expectations/guidelines for doing professional reviews. Frankly, I don't care if there are – I'm just writing about my experiences and opinions, here. This “blog” (née online journal) is more than half a million words of my personal experiences and opinions, captured as raw as possible, and even when well thought out are still certainly fairly in-the-moment. My tweetstream is (currently 6700) even-more-immediate & more-in-the-moment statements about my experiences, opinions, interests, and work. Seven of my books-in-print were written without any pre-planning at all, trying only to capture the story as it fell upon the page. You strive to be professional, and to be like other professional writers you admire, while I strive to be myself, immediate and uncompromised, whatever that may mean. My “credibility as an author” comes, I believe, in trying to be my truest self at all times and in not tempering my thoughts, emotions, and story ideas with consideration for what other people may think of them.

If, to you, that makes me childish, then so be it.

* * *

Ooh, in re-reading, editing, and adding to my above comments and thinking carefully about my word choices, I may have had an insight into the problem. As I just stated, one of the things I try to do is to be raw and honest without “consideration for what other people may think…” And while my intention in doing so is to avoid dishonesty & politics from creeping into my stories and other communication, the literal result is that I am, in some ways, inconsiderate. I do often try to be big-picture considerate. I was trying to be considerate by ordering PE:DA, and then again by giving your work another chance by reading 7th Son: Descent. I was trying to be considerate when I asked you before writing about PE:DA. (I understood your response to mean “I won't/can't stop you, but would prefer if you didn't.” Perhaps I misunderstood that, as well.) Extending being considerate of others to the point of changing or ignoring the ways I think and feel and react to the world (and to the books/etc in it) seems to cut too close to the bone. It feels like a form of censorship. In fact, the feeling that I'd been self-censoring by not writing about PE:DA certainly bled through to my handling of 7th Son: Descent. I've written many thousands of words on this “blog” about my going back and forth between trying to be considerate of others and then hating having to constantly censor myself simply to accommodate others' sensitivities. So, when I read PE:DA I was near the trough of the cycle and readily stopped tweeting about the book after a few chapters, later going so far as to self-censor my entire reaction. And now I am nearer the peak of self-expression, wherein I don't hate myself so much, but rather find other people hate me for being myself.

Anyway, the insight was that, yes, my behaviour is -in a way- inconsiderate. Which you may have read as being disrespectful/unprofessional/childish. So perhaps that was it. Perhaps you think that “if one hasn't anything nice to say, one oughtn't to speak at all…” (Except in the formalized context of a professional review?) Which is an attitude that matches well with my interpretation of your response to my query re: PE:DA, but thus may indicate that I haven't understood you at all but am simply projecting something I have seen in others onto you, both then and now… I don't know. I am sorry that my tweetstream alienated you, both because I believe it indicates that I have been misunderstood and because I had hoped you would be someone who might understand. ie: I am not sorry for what I said or how I said it, but I am sorry that my intentions for doing so and the value of doing so were not understood.

As to the idea of having another author (or anyone at all, for that matter) live-tweeting comments and off-the-cuff commentary about my work, as they read it, I think that would be super. With several of my books, reading the final pages entirely changes one's understanding of the rest of the book – so that people aren't even able to accurately recall after-the-fact what they thought of it while they were reading it, only a sort of meta-experience filtered by the endings. (This is usually intentional.) Occasionally I am blessed to catch someone and get their reaction mid-book, and -especially in light of their final assessments- I find the off-the-cuff remarks about their incomplete experience to be more useful and insightful than their carefully-considered, thoughtful responses to the work as a whole. Thus, for me, live-updating my experiences as I work through books, movies, et cetera is part of my attempt to apply the golden rule in my actions. I would like people to do this with my work, so I do it with other people's work.

Oh, and thank you for your response, here. As I said on twitter, it was both thorough and professional. I appreciate your taking the time both to consider the situation and to craft a reply. If you wouldn't mind taking another moment, I have a question: Do you think I ought to read/listen to the rest of 7th Son?

I place a significant value on both immediacy and on well-thought-out response – in fact, since they are often quite different from one another, I consider the value of having both together to be quite greater than the sum of its parts, since it gives insight both into the journey and the destination and, perhaps, into the process one went through to become the other. So, for example, upon waking & reading your comment in my email, I tweeted my initial reaction – and am now writing a more thorough, thought-out response. I feel both have value.

Re: capturing immediacy and sharing it, I am absolutely in favor of it. I have released two different poetry collections wherein each poem was, when it was written, intended to capture my experience as I was having it, like a snapshot. In the published version of the book, each poem is presented literally as a scan of the page I wrote it on, so you can see exactly what I put down in the moment. (Each poem is also reproduced in type, for when my handwriting is less than clear, but I feel showing the changes in my handwriting are part of what each page reveals about my experiences.) There is a place for slow, considered poetry, but I believe there is also a value in the “now”.

Just as one may make comments while watching a show on TV (in the moment) to their friends/family, just as one may make comments while watching movies at home, or whispered comments while watching movies in the theatre, I make comments to my friends/family/followers as I read books. “Unprofessional” is something I have no problem with this practice being described – it is a social, not a professional, phenomenon. It is one person sharing their experience and reactions casually, via social media.

I am by no means a professional reviewer. I don’t even read professional reviews, so I don’t know what they do, what they intend to do, or whether there are any rules/expectations/guidelines for doing professional reviews. Frankly, I don’t care if there are – I’m just writing about my experiences and opinions, here. This “blog” (née online journal) is more than half a million words of my personal experiences and opinions, captured as raw as possible, and even when well thought out are still certainly fairly in-the-moment. My tweetstream is (currently 6700) even-more-immediate & more-in-the-moment statements about my experiences, opinions, interests, and work. Seven of my books-in-print were written without any pre-planning at all, trying only to capture the story as it fell upon the page. You strive to be professional, and to be like other professional writers you admire, while I strive to be myself, immediate and uncompromised, whatever that may mean. My “credibility as an author” comes, I believe, in trying to be my truest self at all times and in not tempering my thoughts, emotions, and story ideas with consideration for what other people may think of them.

If, to you, that makes me childish, then so be it.

* * *

Ooh, in re-reading, editing, and adding to my above comments and thinking carefully about my word choices, I may have had an insight into the problem. As I just stated, one of the things I try to do is to be raw and honest without “consideration for what other people may think…” And while my intention in doing so is to avoid dishonesty & politics from creeping into my stories and other communication, the literal result is that I am, in some ways, inconsiderate. I do often try to be big-picture considerate. I was trying to be considerate by ordering PE:DA, and then again by giving your work another chance by reading 7th Son: Descent. I was trying to be considerate when I asked you before writing about PE:DA. (I understood your response to mean “I won’t/can’t stop you, but would prefer if you didn’t.” Perhaps I misunderstood that, as well.) Extending being considerate of others to the point of changing or ignoring the ways I think and feel and react to the world (and to the books/etc in it) seems to cut too close to the bone. It feels like a form of censorship. In fact, the feeling that I’d been self-censoring by not writing about PE:DA certainly bled through to my handling of 7th Son: Descent. I’ve written many thousands of words on this “blog” about my going back and forth between trying to be considerate of others and then hating having to constantly censor myself simply to accommodate others’ sensitivities. So, when I read PE:DA I was near the trough of the cycle and readily stopped tweeting about the book after a few chapters, later going so far as to self-censor my entire reaction. And now I am nearer the peak of self-expression, wherein I don’t hate myself so much, but rather find other people hate me for being myself.

Anyway, the insight was that, yes, my behaviour is -in a way- inconsiderate. Which you may have read as being disrespectful/unprofessional/childish. So perhaps that was it. Perhaps you think that “if one hasn’t anything nice to say, one oughtn’t to speak at all…” (Except in the formalized context of a professional review?) Which is an attitude that matches well with my interpretation of your response to my query re: PE:DA, but thus may indicate that I haven’t understood you at all but am simply projecting something I have seen in others onto you, both then and now… I don’t know. I am sorry that my tweetstream alienated you, both because I believe it indicates that I have been misunderstood and because I had hoped you would be someone who might understand. ie: I am not sorry for what I said or how I said it, but I am sorry that my intentions for doing so and the value of doing so were not understood.

As to the idea of having another author (or anyone at all, for that matter) live-tweeting comments and off-the-cuff commentary about my work, as they read it, I think that would be super. With several of my books, reading the final pages entirely changes one’s understanding of the rest of the book – so that people aren’t even able to accurately recall after-the-fact what they thought of it while they were reading it, only a sort of meta-experience filtered by the endings. (This is usually intentional.) Occasionally I am blessed to catch someone and get their reaction mid-book, and -especially in light of their final assessments- I find the off-the-cuff remarks about their incomplete experience to be more useful and insightful than their carefully-considered, thoughtful responses to the work as a whole. Thus, for me, live-updating my experiences as I work through books, movies, et cetera is part of my attempt to apply the golden rule in my actions. I would like people to do this with my work, so I do it with other people’s work.

Oh, and thank you for your response, here. As I said on twitter, it was both thorough and professional. I appreciate your taking the time both to consider the situation and to craft a reply. If you wouldn’t mind taking another moment, I have a question: Do you think I ought to read/listen to the rest of 7th Son?

To be absolutely clear about my recent reaction on Twitter regarding your opinions of my work:

Yours is not the first negative review of my work, and it will not be the last. For the past four years, I've experienced reviews of all breeds, and — as the thousands of listeners of my work can attest — have remained as grounded and humble about the quality of my content as I was when it debuted. I do not consider myself a master storyteller by any means, but stand by every word of the works you've read, and am proud of them.

As with all other readers, you are well within your right to critique 7th Son: Descent. I bear no ill-will toward your analysis; they are your opinions. However, I am surprised that you remain puzzled about my Twitter comment regarding your disrespectful behavior on Twitter, and so will clearly explain my reasons here, for the benefit of you and your readers.

As you illustrated in your review above, you posted “live” reviews to Goodreads as you read the work, which as you well know, were also posted to your Twitter stream. You were well within your right to do this, and yet it showcased a level of unprofessionalism that I imagine you, as all professional writers, strive daily to avoid.

I was not the only person following your tweetstream to feel alienated by your live tweets, and was not the only person who unfollowed you as a result of them. I was not offended by the fact that you did not enjoy the novel; I was offended by the unprofessional and childish “in the moment” comments you posted as you read the work. Just as you clearly expected more from 7th Son: Descent, I expect more thoughtful behavior from a fellow professional writer and craftsman.

To put it in even clearer terms: Imagine that a novelist live-tweeted such comments about your work, as he read it. Would you not feel publicly disrespected for such thoughtless off-the-cuff commentary? Would you not feel a twinge of humiliation, since you likely value fellow writers' opinions? Were the roles reversed, you might believe that the novelist's behavior was not merely unprofessional, but downright deplorable. I suspect you expect more panache from a pro.

If you re-read your presentation on Goodreads and Twitter with this in mind, you may have a different perspective of the tone and content of your comments, and how their presentation undermined the very credibility you seek as an author, podcaster and professional.

Again, to be clear: Your review did not offend me. And ultimately, the beating heart of your Goodreads/Twitter commentary did not offend me. Your presentation of that commentary, however, smacked of surly childishness. I do not know what motivated such childishness, and do not wish to know. You may want to reconsider your “off the cuff” reviewing strategy for future works. The best reviews are thoughtful ones, crafted after focus and reflection — much like the one you intended to write here.

In many ways, negative reviews are far more insightful for authors than positive ones. Yours is no exception. I do not offer any apologies for my voice in the podcast, for it is the one I was born with — but I do appreciate that you made an attempt to listen to it. I also appreciate that you made the time to read 7th Son: Descent, and share your thoughts with your readers.

I am especially grateful that you compared my work to that of multiple New York Times bestselling novelist Brad Meltzer and multiple Bram Stoker award-winner Jonathan Maberry. I've personally corresponded with both authors, treasure their personal and professional support, and strive to be half the world-class professionals they have become. You may benefit from having a similar career goal.

Finally, in the interest of clarity for your readers, you mentioned in your review that you contacted me after reading Personal Effects: Dark Art, informed me that you did not enjoy it, and asked me for guidance. This is true. To cite your July 2009 email:

“As someone with doubts about my own writing, I know I don't feel good when I see negative reviews of my own work. … So I'm asking you your preference:  Do you prefer that I remain silent, or do you prefer that I write/post a 2-star review of the book?”

While I was perplexed that anyone would ask for such permission, my same-day reply was, “While I don't see how a two star review would improve the credibility of the novel, you are welcome to do whatever you wish.”

I fully expected, and clearly empowered, you to make a frank analysis from you regarding that work, as I do with all my readers. The reasons why you did not post a review — which as I've stated, are well within your right as a consumer — are yours alone.

Oh, and I like to say “I'll try anything twice.” It's almost entirely true, and for most things it's a good idea. A single sample isn't usually sufficient or appropriate to judge a whole. (Just as I found that the first episode of 7th Son: Descent wasn't a good representation of the rest of the novel.) So when I tried PE:DA and didn't like it, I figured I'd give Hutch another try. And when I tried Meltzer's The Book of Lies (because the premise intrigued me, and because Joss Whedon recommended it) and didn't like it, I asked around and found that fans of Meltzer liked Zero Game better, so I tried that one too. If I try a new restaurant and don't like it, I don't assume I dislike their entire menu; I remain willing to come back and try something else.

And just because the first few thrillers (most of them in the last year) I tried didn't work for me doesn't mean I won't someday find thrillers that do, or that my tastes and mood won't change. I also suspect that medium has influenced me somewhat; if the 7th Son series were adapted into a slick SciFi miniseries (perhaps by SyFy), I'd probably watch it and think it was swell.

Oh, and if you think this review is bad… I've been trying to finish reading Atlas Shrugged for the past year and expect to write a VERY negative review of it soon. THAT book is shit. THAT book put me literally to sleep several times (which is rare), once in the middle of a sex scene. THAT book makes 7th Son: Descent feel like a pleasant diversion.

In fact, I didn't mention it, but I intentionally read 7th Son: Descent in between other very heavy books. I just finished reading Shock Doctrine and I'm about to start grinding my way through several history books about World War I, Einstein, Hitler, and the 1918 Flu epidemic, among other things. It was a totally different sort of reading.

I agree that a much longer dissection would likely be a poor use of your time and would come across even more negatively than this one did.

Some people would ask (and I guess have asked) if you don't like thrillers then why read them? But I'm of a mind that if you don't like something it's still not a bad idea to try something now and again that you don't like. You may find that your tastes have changed or you may (as you did here) simply find a good example of one and it can help you examine why you may not like it even in light of the fact that you have that example.

No rush in getting to mine. Archangel isn't in print yet. Perhaps (God willing) it will be by the time you get to it. Not that I have even sent it out yet or expect that it will be, but you never know.

As I told Allison Duncan (svallie on twitter) I don't mind people taking a hacksaw to my work. Maybe it will hurt, it definitely would if they said nothing good, but my hope would be that I would find a useful takeaway from it. And if I don't? Well it wasn't my time that was used up other than in the reading of the review.

On Twitter, Hutch suggested that I'd treated him with disrespect with my review & my tweets about my experience with his book. I feel that I expressed quite a bit of discretion and respect in both avoiding any real review of PE:DA (which, unlike 7th Son: Descent, I hated, rather than simply disliked), and in holding back from writing the more complete review I believe the work is due. I respected him enough that -although I didn't want to spend my own money on it- I got my local library to buy a copy (that it otherwise wouldn't have). I respected him enough to be honest about my opinions.

In fact, I tried to be positive and to end on an up beat. A sort of “this isn't for me, but if you like this sort of thing, it's a fairly good example.” Like my old review of a particular champagne, this is a review of something in a category I know I do not like but which, for whatever sick reason, I go ahead and finish consuming & then reviewing, stating all the while that someone who likes such things would give a better review. It's like pompous “film critics” panning fun action/scifi blockbuster movies, because that isn't the sort of movie they like to watch, except you'd never expect them to admit it, or to point you to Ain't It Cool News (or such) for a review from an appropriate audience.

My reading list is super-full right now (doing research for an alternate history zombie novel), but yours is already on the list (I want to try to get through all the books I've traded promos with… which means that at some point I'll write a similar 2 or 3 star review of Jack Wakes Up, even though I actually know Seth in person and think he's a great guy), though it might be a while.

Should you ever happen to want to pull apart another podcast novel thriller, feel free to have a look at mine.

Cheers,
Scott