Where in the World is Holly Blackstone and Other Tales

Sorry I’ve been a bit quiet as of late; life took an unexpected turn and I was left stressed and busy for a little while following my trip last month. Things seem to have smoothed out and now I can devote more of my time and energy to writing and editing, which I love. =) I’m REALLY SORRY I haven’t been able to get my fourth book out as promised, but it is important to me and I haven’t forgotten. I appreciate my readers who have picked up each subsequent installment and I wanted to be sure this next one wasn’t just dashed out but is still quality. I too get frustrated by series that keep you waiting a long time, which is why I’ve tried to be good about releasing each of my books within just a month or two of one another. Still, I’m really sorry for this last delay (even more so because iBookstore dropped the ball on “The Air I Breathe” and it got into the distribution channel six weeks after I submitted it instead of the normal two or three).

If you’re a reader who also participates in Goodreads you might have heard about the scandal concerning one of the erotica groups on that site. It seems several of the moderators of the ‘Keep Calm and Read Sexy Romances’ group plagiarised from the books “Easy” and “Beautiful Disaster” to create a book “Amazingly Broken”, then manouevred the group into agreeing to read it together, thus helping to propel it to the top 50 in Amazon within a few days. Apparently it sold like hotcakes for five or six days before the deception was noted. The book has subsequently been pulled from Amazon and people are flocking to get a refund.

As I mentioned in a previous post or in comments, it becomes apparent fairly quickly that there is a bit of a game afoot with regard to book promotion. One Goodreads poster mentioned she was approached to read and pimp “Amazingly Broken”, (which it sounds like she did). People on boards have complained (or said they’ve observed), how negative reviews get voted down on Amazon and good reviews pushed up, or noted how many reviews sound similar or ‘zombie like’. I read a fair amount of erotica for comparison (and read reviews and previews of a lot more), and sometimes write reviews under an alternate name and I’ve seen this game play out. This is one reason why I always am begging my readers for reviews; it is difficult to overcome that pressure, (at least I’m finding it a bit difficult, even after publishing four books). This scandal at Goodreads perhaps illustrates how easy it is to fool people online, even in a large community full of ostensibly savvy readers and netizens. Unfortunately the moderators of the new group have decided the group needs to read “Beautiful Disaster” ; I think it should have been put up to a vote and frankly, I would prefer to find a gem that hasn’t been discovered yet as opposed to a populist book like “BD”. I’m not going to read it, and instead spend my time trying to make book four the best it can be! I hope you’ll hang around for a bit longer while I get back into the swing of writing and editing.

Warm regards and thanks for stopping by!

Holly

UPDATE: I was wrong and they decided to read “Beautiful Bastard”; somewhere I saw BD mentioned, I must have mixed it up!

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