Much Ado About a Troll Review

Troll reviews are one of the weirdest parts of being an author. I'm a gay guy. I'm specifically a gay guy who talks about homophobia when I see it, and who gets in arguments with anti-SJWs and incels and idiotic Trump supporters sometimes, because I can't help myself. I'm learning to engage less and less, but sometimes someone just needs to call them on their stupidity or hypocrisy.

The problem with that is the red-pill weirdos have no lives, so they then stalk my social media, find my books and author info, and leave troll reviews of my work on Amazon.

The last time it happened was around the time my novella Wolves came out, and a bunch of awesome people helped me by reporting those reviews. A few are still up, but most are gone, as they should be.

Last night I checked my Amazon page and noticed that a couple months ago someone threw more up.

One of them is for Shadows of Ourselves and the other is for Wolves. The one for Wolves Is actually hilarious because he says he bought it on another site, which is impossible, since it's only available on Amazon. He also calls my main character an obvious self-insert, which is hilarious because the main character of that is a surly twink with a truck and a boyfriend, and I'm a shy fat dude who can't even drive, let alone handle a relationship. He also says that writing a sex scene doesn't automatically make it sexy, which is further hilarity because there's no actual sex scene in that book, and if there were, it would be more desperate and emotional than sexy, because that's not a sexy book. I think it may mention sex in passing, but there's no sex scenes,

The one for Shadows just goes on about how Sky and Hunter are stupid and how I 'write like a teenage edgelord' which is hilarious because Sky IS a teenage edgelord and I wrote his voice that way on purpose. That's the entire purpose of the character. He's depressed and cynical and has to stop choosing to be snarky and bitter and isolated. He's a semi-goth painter with an abusive mother and a grunge aesthetic, and a drug problem. Of course he's an angsty edgelord; if he started the series as a well-adjusted adult there'd be no point or room for him to grow.

The one about Shadows actually talks about the content, so it may be a genuine rant review even though it reads like a troll who has a personal vendetta against me. So as much as I hate it I'm not going to report it, because people have every right to trash my books if they actually read them and don't like them. They even have the right to trash me, if they really want.

But the Wolves review is not only trolling, but also telling random lies about the book and attempting to insult me personally, and is obviously not a verified purchase, so I reported it. That's all I can really do, aside from attempt to garner more positive reviews for both of them to combat the trollish ones. Shadows deserves more attention anyway, but I'm sure the new edition coming out and the sequel following in the early or middle of next year should also help. I have a novella coming out for it before the year is up too, so.

Tonight I got way more done that I thought I would. I hit publish on A Twink in the Woods and Ian's Fetish, which are just silly, sexy fun, so hopefully both of those should be up by tomorrow or the next day, unless Amazon pulls some foolery or decides the titles or covers are too risqué and makes me change them. Cross your fingers it all goes as planned! If it does I'll post cover reveals and links tomorrow as well as add new pages for both of those!

Storm of Masks is now live again, and I made some slight adjustments to the colour filter and text/layout of the cover I like. It's still the same image, but it's a fresh cost of paint. I also have two new shorts to publish tomorrow and the next day as well, so it should be a steady stream of releases for the next few days.

Now I'm going to eat Mini Snowballs and drink black coffee and recover from all my hard labour. Peace!