Book reviews are an interesting topic. You can buy reviews, sometimes buy a “good” review for several hundred dollars. You can get advance reviews by sending out all kinds of advance copy to hundreds of unknown persons (and hope some respond). You can suggest a book blogger review your book.

Or, like me, you can beg your readers to provide reviews.

How does that work out? I got several nice reviews from my friends and a few from people I didn’t know on my first book. There was only one person (out of only 21 reviews) who didn’t like the book. And only one refund out of hundreds sold. That’s okay. I see no way to write books that everyone enjoys.

Yet the hardest part about writing — I’ve read that even great authors like Hemmingway and Stephen King have or had the same issue — is the nagging doubt that eats away at you as you write. Every author seems to have that day when they say, “This is trash! What am I doing?” And then you read the same material days later and say, “Not bad” or “That’s a damn good chapter.”

But you always wonder if you are good enough. Good enough for what, I don’t know. I suppose, given I did sell ten times the number of books I thought I would the first time around and the reviews from “strangers” were mostly good, I write an okay story. Time will tell with The Switch. One thing I have learned…the process of composing a complex story is quite fulfilling…good reviews or not.

Many THANKS to those who reviewed The Redemption, and thanks to future reviewers of The Switch.