I had a couple of topics I wanted to discuss and couldn’t decide which one to write about today. So I decided to combine them. I apologize in advance for the long post. If you want to read it, maybe you can break it up into two days or something. LOL.
First, should authors review? You do realize, I’m sure, that there’s no right or wrong answer to that. It’s your choice. However, I’m wondering if it even matters anymore since a couple of authors told me that Amazon is taking down reviews from authors. That doesn’t even make sense because authors are readers, too, but it might be because there are so many authors that give bad reviews to the “competition”. Yeah, it happens. I used to review a lot, but to be honest, I did it partly out of obligation. Yes, I loved the books, but if I knew the author, then there’s the chance people think you are just a friend trying to promote a friend’s book. And that can sometimes hurt more than help. Then there’s the situation where you want to review a friend’s book and you really don’t like it. What do you do then? I’ve pretty much stopped reviewing books by authors who are pretty well established and have lots of reviews already. And I might review a book if it has several bad reviews and I thought it was a really good book. I hate to see a book I really like get bad reviews. It’s really getting to the point, though, that trying to review is bogging me down. I read a LOT of books, and I just don’t have time to review every one of them. On Goodreads, you can at least just pop over and give a book some stars, so sometimes I’ll do that even if I don’t review on Amazon. I’m not saying I’m going to stop reviewing altogether, but I’m not going to do it much on retail sites. So I’m thinking I might start doing some reviewing on my blog. I want to write more on my blog anyway, so that might be a good way to have an extra post here and there. I could even do a post on “What I’m Reading” and just give a little comment about each book. I don’t know, I haven’t decided yet. We’ll see.
Next, I want to talk about how I’m burned out on Paranormal Romance. I never thought it would happen. When I wrote and published my first novel, it was a paranormal romance called A Rocky Path. It’s a ghost story. Then I did a couple of vampire books, a couple more ghost stories, more vampire/werewolf books. And I threw in a fantasy romance, Starfane, in the mix. The funny thing is, until I started writing PNR, it wasn’t what I was used to reading. I used to read horror, mystery, thriller, detective…but no PNR. Then when I started publishing that very thing, I really got into it. I was reading it like crazy. I have friends who write PNR, and I tried to read all of their books. I was like a sponge, soaking up the vampire love stories. The Black Dagger Brotherhood series blew me away. But, suddenly, things shifted. I started getting burned out on the BDB series, which I listened to as audiobooks. After I listened to the 8th (or 9th) Brotherhood book, I had to hear something different. I listened to a historical romance by Rose Gordon, which I enjoyed immensely. I’m currently listening to Micro by Michael Crichton (RIP). Next, I’m going to listen to Joe Hill’s (Stephen King’s son) latest book. Then MAYBE I can get back to the BDB. This burnout may be what’s affected my writing and making me change my current WIP. It was originally supposed to be a PNR, but it’s now apparently going to be horror. I like horror, but I never thought I would be able to write it. I was almost afraid to write The Gnome, but many people have told me they really like it. So I feel a little more confident about my WIP. For those friends of mine who write PNR, don’t worry…I know I won’t feel this way for too long. I WILL be reading your books. Just give me a little time. 
But I also want to find some more indie authors who write other things, like horror, mysteries, etc. I do have some author friends who write in these genres, but I want more. I like to support indies, so I would rather read those authors when I can.
So I kind of feel like my post was rambling. I almost did this in kind of a stream of consciousness way, just writing what came out of my brain. If it makes no sense, please forgive me. I’ve had a rough few months. LOL
At that point, I was sure there would be no more novels for me. I was convinced I didn’t have any more novels in me. But along came my current WIP. I planned it as a novella, but I wasn’t even going to worry about how many words it would turn out to be. I was hoping it would at least be a LONG novella like The Gnome. Now here I am at almost 38K, and there are still more adventures to come. The main characters haven’t yet gone on a journey where there will be challenges and perils. In a little more than 12K, this will become a novel. I’ve been averaging 1K to over 2K in each writing sitting. So even if I only get 1K per day, I could conceivably finish this as a novel in 12-13 days. (Not necessarily consecutive.) This makes me happy. But that doesn’t mean I’ll stop at 50K. I’m just saying I COULD and still call it a novel. 
