Why do writers love amazon reviews?

Why do writers love an Amazon review?

5 reviews prove to the writer that people have actually read their work.

10 reviews and other readers believe that the book is worth a peek.

20 reviews and the writer now believes in their own work.

50 reviews and both the writer and the readers join up, go down the pub, and drink copious amounts of alcohol.  

100 reviews and the magic flows. The dragons fly in the fan mail every day, the imps open it and deal with all the messages of adoration, and the elves organise the never ending party before promoting their own website called, ‘You call, we answer, we fly anywhere, anytime, 24/7.’

If you want the magic of words to captivate you, please leave a review for all your favourite authors.

Reblogged from the original blog post at: www.rickhayesauthor.com.

I really liked this blog post. My first book An Ominous Book only has two reviews, both of them 4 stars and honest. Some excerpts from the two reviews:

"A highly recommended book, an original and creative story, which demonstrates the great talent of its author. With a story that catches you from start to finish ... and definitely the unexpected ending, it leaves you with a huge desire to read the whole saga."

"This book was a rollicking, fun, good time that is made for kids of all ages to enjoy!

You have elves, castles, magic, sword fights, magical beasts, criminals, danger, laughter, fun and adventure. This would make an exceptional movie series or television show. There is no bullying of the children and the fun tends to outweigh anxious parts, for the most part.

My favorite scene is the rescue of Richard from the criminals. It is brilliant and I read it twice! Just fantastic how the Water Sage used the sword to wipe out the criminals."

If you thought these two reviews are enticing enough but you're not convinced, why not see it in goodreads.com?

An Ominous Book review by N.N. Light

My book was reviewed by well respected book reviewer N. N. Light who wrote an honest review of the first book of my series. Here is a post of the review:

Title: An Ominous Book (An Ominous Book series, book 1)

Author: Nancy Foster

Genre: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Young Adult

My Review:

This book was a rollicking, fun, good time that is made for kids of all ages to enjoy!

You have elves, castles, magic, sword fights, magical beasts, criminals, danger, laughter, fun and adventure.  This would make an exceptional movie series or television show.  There is no bullying of the children and the fun tends to outweigh anxious parts, for the most part.

My favorite scene is the rescue of Richard from the criminals.  It is brilliant and I read it twice!  Just fantastic how the Water Sage used the sword to wipe out the criminals.

I didn’t care for Froylan or King Salman, for the most part.  The end of the book lost me.  I can’t comprehend how ******* (bleeped character name to avoid spoliers) becomes the most powerful witch/warlock and can destroy everything.  I didn’t enjoy the ending and that took this book from 5 stars to 4 stars.  Still, a fun read overall.

My Rating:  4 stars

Original post HERE.

Quite frankly I'm very excited with this review and also surprised that the reviewer enjoyed Richard's rescue so much that he read it a second time.

I'm ecstatic that he detested Salman and Froylan. I wanted both of them to be equally detestable and yet Froylan is a prominent character in each and every one of the 6 published books. He becomes even more detestable in the second book Separation but his path takes a huge turn in the subsequent books. You can say that he *almost* stops being an utterly detestable villain or... misunderstood antihero of sorts.

Salman is detestable in every way (he is even worse in Separation) and the flashback scenes show he was always cunning and cruel. Maybe I'll write a book about his past where he was *slightly* more decent.

As for the totally unexpected conclusion to the book, some people loved it, others will expectedly feel totally confused or frustrated which is something I fully understand. In a way, if you can cause strong emotions to a reader, then perhaps you did something right as an author.

You'd be surprised to know the surprising conclusion of book 1 was the first scene I imagined when I created this massive miniverse and the consequences in Separation were ideas that were floating in my head.

I think the first book has the most surprising finale whereas the ending of each sequel seems to satisfy their specific plotlines but without unsettling the reader.

The reviewer stated his favorite three characters from the book:

#1 Lord Spaulding
#2 Lord Seiran
#3 Richard Earlrose

I decided to make this little drawing as a thank you note. ;) I was busy making a colorized version on Photoshop but I yanked my mouse from its wiring and I think I finally busted it. Damn.

If you are curious to purchase An Ominous Book in order to agree or disagree with this review, click HERE to see it on Amazon.

Win a Free Kindle Fire

There is another interesting promo going on between today March 21st and March 28th where a Kindle Fire is being raffled on a massive giveaway.

Interested?

Click HERE to participate!

An interesting self editing tool for indie writers

I just stumbled into a new little self editing toy called Pro Writing Aid. It's a freemium online tool that checks up to 3000 words of text at a time in the free version and locates repetitive words, jarring phrases and grammatical problems.

I'm really busy right now with my job, but I might give it a go with some of my novels just to patch things a bit further.

Click HERE to try it out!

Diaspora is free this weekend only on Amazon

You would probably be surprised to know that the 4th installment of my series is actually the book I wrote first (I know that I'm sort of strange, deal with it). I had a rough idea of where I wanted the story to go, but a part of me wanted to write about Spaulding's fully changed life and how his strained relationship with Froylan began to take a more positive note from this book forward.

I didn't even know what to name Froylan at first whenh I wrote the initial scene of this book. I just knew he was blonde, tall, very muscular, wears a ridiculous short black cape all of the time, cunning and a badass psychopath that causes Spaulding all sorts of trouble in the earlier books. It was during a facebook feed where I was arguing about the Saint Seiya Soul of Gold series where someone that posted on the thread had a username that caught my attention. I wasn't fully sure that Froylan was the right name but the name just kept on ringing in my head over and over again and in that very moment, I knew that I found the perfect name for the character I love to write about the most in my novels.

Another little tidbit of background information is that I initially didn't want Froylan to be so cruel to Spaulding during his imprisonment in the castle which occurs in Separation. I initially imagined Spaulding wore elegant beige robes and he was more like a forced guest of an elegant palace that was treated somewhat well instead of the harsh life he suffered inside of a super max military prison.

When I finally got to writing Separation, I fully realized the only way to force Spaulding to move the story forward and trigger the critical events of the 3rd book Exile was to make his life so miserable that he was left without any other choice.

I think Diaspora is the stepping stone to the conversion of the pace of my series of how Spaulding wishes to mend the errors of Salman and it ends with the exhilarating introduction to my favorite character of the series: Lord Damantin.

To celebrate the inclusion of the first review of An Ominous Book on Goodreads.com, I'm giving away Diaspora for free this weekend. If you feel sufficiently interested in reading the first book for free, you will be able to nab a copy if you join my mailing list. The link to join my mailing list is in the side menu.

Get Diaspora for free HERE.

Enjoy!

Exciting SciFi and Fantasy on Instafreebie

Yet another exciting free ebook giveaway is being held right now and it is focusing on random genres in Science Fiction and Fantasy. My book isn't participating on this specific event, but perhaps you will find a book you'd like to read.

Enjoy!

Click HERE.

A free bad boy romance book!

Do you like to read bad boy billionaire romance books? How about a love story where an Emirates Flight is getting some saucy action? You can get a free copy of Natalia Bank's The Wealthy Sheik's Love Triangle right now! 

Get a free copy of this book HERE.

Enjoy!

The reviews for An Ominous Book are starting to come!

Okay, well, maybe it's just 1 review on goodreads, but nonetheless I'm very excited to get an honest opinion of my first book who particularly not only loved the totally unexpected cliffhanger at the end, he also loved Nelida when she turns into a villain.

If you have read An Ominous Book, feel free to write your review (even if you hated it) on Goodreads or Amazon. If you write reviews on your blog, please comment on this page featuring the link to give your blog some publicity.

As a special treat of this fantasic mini celebration, I'm going to please everyone that loved Creepy Nelida with a drawing that is inspired in a real scene from the second book of my series, Separation.

Yes, the scene of this drawing really does occur in my book. Even though An Ominous Book is primarily an Epic Fantasy series with a huge Japanese cultural influence, lots of magic and political strife, there is a dabble of horror here and there, particularly in the second book. I don't wish to spoil what sorts of evil deeds Nelida does but she is quite a baddy!!!

I will even propose my diehard fans another goodie, if you read the book and review it, tell me which scene you particularly really liked from my story and I might consider drawing it for you!

Until next time!

I met Hollywood celebrity Gael García Bernal!

Last Monday I got a really surprising tweet. A local Mexican news account I follow mainly for traffic reports sent a tweet that the famous Hollywood actor Gael García was going to film a film titled "Museo" in a neighborhood that is near my home. I had to do some errands in the vicinity anyways so why not? Let's see if I'm lucky enough to at least catch a glimpse of him from afar. The only problem was that I wasn't certain if the place was going to be cornered by a horde of cops or not after recalling gossip that Daniel Craig was rather snobbish when he filmed in downtown Mexico City.

In fact, I asked a very dear friend of mine if he wanted to tag along and he staunchly told me that he saw on the 10 pm news that it would be a waste of time because they were going to close a ton of streets. He even urged me not to go.

Of course, I usually don't listen to people if I disagree with what they say and decided to go alone. Low and behold, after walking around the neighborhood in the nearby streets where the tweet claimed would be closed, I soon found a small side street and was pleasantly surprised there were no cops, no hordes of crazy fans, no paparazzi, nothing. I saw several crew members drinking coffee, walking around and some extras trying out clothes. I asked a crew member that was walking by if Gael was nearby and she kindly told me "Oh, yeah, he's out here somewhere. If you wander around, you might bump into him."

Around 15 minutes later Gael was walking across the street and I timidly asked him if he could sign an autograph. He was very polite and was surprised that I brought the 3rd book of "An Ominous Book" series titled "Exile" with me. He chuckled that the book already had someone's autograph and I told him I was the author. He became somewhat curious and I briefly mentioned it's a fantasy book series. He then kindly wrote a lovely message on my book and a crew member (I think the guy that took the picture is either the producer or director because he seemed sorta important) took two very lovely photos.

I briefly met Gael's family around 7 years ago during a piano concert and found his family to be very approachable and friendly. I'm very glad that Gael was equally approachable. He even told me that he was going to be filming in that area the rest of the week in case I wanted to stop by again to say hi. I told him about my insane job schedule would make it very difficult but I mentioned that I could try to come Thursday because it's a minor holiday.

I actually went back to the same street Thursday around 3 pm but the crew was sadly no longer there. They must have been shooting a scene in some other street in the area. What a bummer because I wanted to give him one of my books as a gift because he seemed rather interested. Anyhow, he told me that Museo will premiere next year and I'm definitely going to see it.

Anyhow, if you are interested in reading Exile, you can get a copy in ebook format HERE and a paperback copy HERE.