Do negative reviews bother me?
Absolutely not!
On Amazon and Goodreads I have my share of one-, two-, and three-star reviews, just like any established author. Criticism is all in the eye of beholder. And—this may be unpopular to say, but I’ll say it: not everyone is smart enough to assess a book’s worth.
Even Deacon Cowl—the author of one of my favorites, the bestselling true saga Silent Screams—has critics. Sometimes when I’m feeling discouraged, I go online and read his negative reviews. He’s been called “tasteless,” “exploitative,” “callously disrespectful to the Stockyard Slayer’s victims,” and one of my favorite passages, courtesy of the New York Times: “For all its style, Silent Screams is laced with lurid details and no small amount of speculation into the mind of an unknowable man, ultimately written more like an unusually well-researched, mid-shelf commercial thriller than a true account of anything.”
This helps me stay grounded.
Because not even the great Deacon Cowl is invincible.
—H. G. Kane, “How to Respond Gracefully to Criticism,” 2019, hgkaneofficial.com