The Craziness of Book Reviews

by Beth K. Vogt 

Don’t read book reviews. 

I’ve heard variations of this statement ever since I published my first novel, Wish You Were Here, in 2012.

• I don’t read my book reviews (said by other authors).

• Don’t read your book reviews (said by my mentors).

• What are you doing reading your book reviews? I told you to stay away from [insert name of Amazon/GoodReads/review site here] (said by my mentors when I confess that I’ve ignored what they said and read my reviews).

• Why don’t you read your book reviews? I like to read reviews of my books. I always learn something from the negative reviews (said by other authors who have a stronger emotional stability than I do – or are just lying).

My honest take on the subject: Book reviews make me crazy.

There are two fundamental reasons why book reviews push my crazy buttons:

I can put too much credence in positive reviews. It’s a bit like actress Sally Field exclaiming, “And I can’t deny the fact that you like me … right now, you like me!” when she won an Oscar for Places in the Heart. We all want to be liked, and every author wants their books to be liked too. But being liked “right now” becomes being liked “then.” We can’t go through life holding our breath, waiting for the next positive review.

I can let negative reviews ruin my day. On a normal day – if you’re inclined to believe writers have normal days – I’m resilient enough to a) not read reviews and b) not let reviews be more than someone else’s opinion. But when I’m on deadline and the story is snarled and I’m doubting my abilities as a writer…well then, negative reviews are the equivalent of pouring myself a glass of battery acid and then chugging it.

Howard Books, 2015

I wander over to Amazon or to a blogger’s website or to Goodreads, and I let someone tell me what they think about my book. And yes, I take it personally instead of being a professional and remembering some people will like my book and some people won’t. That’s the biz.

I made this mistake as I lasered in on my most recent deadline. At the same time I was working toward pushing SEND, but I was also keeping track of my just-released novel, Crazy Little Thing Called Love. Checking its Amazon ranking. Sneaking peeks at reviews. When they were good, I was good. When they were not good, I tanked.

I had no business trolling online and counting stars, looking for the positive and getting hamstringed by the negative. But I did it anyway – I invited the crazy right in.

How did I show “crazy” the door and get back on solid ground?

1. I went for the fun. One of my mentors, best-selling author Rachel Hauck, reminded me to have fun with my story. To do this, I had to forget what other people were saying about my just-released novel. No checking Amazon. No reading reviews. I needed to focus solely on the story I was writing, remember why I loved it, and enjoy writing again. 

2. I put up a boundary. I am blessed to have a virtual assistant (VA), who truly does help my life run more smoothly. Now, when I get sent a link that a review is up on Novel Rocket or when someone tweets that they posted a review, I send that info to my VA so she can read it. If she wants to tweet a positive quote, so be it.

3. I remember the truth. Several weeks ago, I had a custom ring made for myself with a partial quote by Charles H. Spurgeon. It says: “He is the only ground of confidence.” Every day – sometimes minute by minute – I need to remember that God is my source of confidence and the only one who can tell me who I am.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love is the first novel in my destination wedding series. There’s also a fungiveaway celebrating release of Autumn Brides, a trio of novellas by authors Katie Ganshert, Kathryn Springer, and me.

Beth K. Vogt

Beth K. Vogt is a non-fiction author who said she’d never write fiction, the wife of an Air Force physician who said she’d never marry anyone in the military and a mom of four who said she’d never have kids. Vogt believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “never.” A 2015 RITA® Finalist and a 2015 and 2014 Carol Award finalist, her 2014 novel, Somebody Like You, was one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. She lives in Colorado with her husband, Rob, and their youngest daughter. 

For more information about Beth, visit her website, become a fan on Facebook or follow her on Twitter and Pinterest.

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When You Become Someone You Don’t Want to Be

by Beth K. Vogt 

I’ve always thought of myself as a healthy person. These days, I think of myself as a “trying to get healthy” person. 

In the past year, there have been a few times when I’ve been talking and the words “chronically ill” or “chronic pain” have slipped past my lips. I’ve paused, wanting to correct myself. 

That can’t be me.

But I don’t correct myself. Like it or not – and I do not like it – I have battled illness and pain for the past five years. And, by definition, chronic illness or pain lasts three months or more. 

Okay, then. Who am I to argue with the National Institutes of Health (NIH)?

I’ve tried varied approaches to living 24/7 with this non-healthy version of me. 

• Don’t Talk About It - I mean, what’s the point? I don’t want to be one of those people who talks, talks, talks all the time about their illnesses. There is more to life than my struggle with back pain or my frozen shoulder. 

• Find the Humor in It – I had vertigo for several years, and thought of it as having my own personal roller coaster in my brain. I was diagnosed with a frozen shoulder almost a year ago and named my shoulder “Olaf,” because “some people are worth melting for.” Thank you, Disney. 

• Ignore It – This is similar to the whole “rub some dirt in it” approach to falling down and getting hurt or a coach’s “just walk it off” advice to an athlete. Why not ignore the way the room still tilts sometimes two years after my last “real” bout of vertigo. Ignore the sleepless nights. Ignore the back pain. Ignore the fact that a snarling, barking dog came running out into the street aiming right for me while I was on a walk, and that in my attempt to escape the little brute, I fell hard on my still-recovering frozen shoulder. Yeah, forget that. 

Despite this trio of coping mechanisms, what do you do when you become someone you don’t want to be? 

1. Some nights I crawl into bed and cry. I admit that I’m in pain. I admit I am beyond-tired of waking up in pain and going to bed in pain. Sometimes I cry loud enough for my husband to hear and sometimes I cry into my pillow. I just . . . let myself cry. 

2. I walk for several miles each day with a close friend. A lot of exercise becomes off limits when you have vertigo. Or back problems. Or a frozen shoulder. Or all three issues at the same time. But walking is always an option. Except when you fall, spread eagle, on your hair stylist’s floor and tear a ligament in your ankle. And yes, I did that too, but I got back to walking as soon as I could, because walking is good for me physically, emotionally, and spiritually. 

Howard Books, 2015

3. I maintain as normal a life as possible. To do that, I had to drop my stubborn “I will never have back surgery” stance and accept that surgery was my last and only option for pain-free walking. I had to lower my expectations of what I could do, but still look for good things every day. I joined Instagram and every day I look for “a little bit of pretty” to photograph while I am on my walks.

4. I know God hasn’t lost sight of me. God knows what is happening in my life. All of it. It’s not like He’s turned his back on me for a minute and all of this has happened … and in a moment He’ll turn around and say, “Ooops! Sorry about that. I lost track of you for a minute there, Beth.” No. Sickness cannot separate me from God. And so, I trust Him in all this. I don’t ask Him why. I ask Him how I am to live my life today … and tomorrow … and the next day.

Crazy Little Thing Called Love is the first novel in my destination wedding series. There’s also a fun giveaway celebrating release of Autumn Brides, a trio of novellas by authors Katie Ganshert, Kathryne Springer, and me.

Beth K. Vogt

Beth K. Vogt is a non-fiction author who said she’d never write fiction, the wife of an Air Force physician who said she’d never marry anyone in the military and a mom of four who said she’d never have kids. Vogt believes God’s best often waits behind the doors marked “never.” A 2015 RITA® Finalist and a 2015 and 2014 Carol Award finalist, her 2014 novel, Somebody Like You, was one of Publisher’s Weekly’s Best Books of 2014. She lives in Colorado with her husband, Rob, and their youngest daughter. 

For more information about Beth, visit her website, become a fan on Facebook or follow her on Twitter and Pinterest.

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The Here and Now of Contemporary Romance, by Beth K. Vogt

God turned a season of burnout in my life into a sudden bend in the writing road. That virtual curve led me from life as a nonfiction editor and writer to the “Dark Side” of writing fiction.

Novel writing demanded a new set of skills, mastering things like subplots and layers and description and dialogue – both internal and conversational – and Voices of Truth and Voices of Passion. There’s a lot of “chatter” in fiction. I had a lot to learn if I was going to do this right. After all, my goal wasn’t to wander around lost in the darkness.

And so I made a strategic decision: I would write contemporary romance, not historical. If I wrote about now – the world I live in – then I’d avoid hours of researching clothes and food and cultural mores. That way, I could focus on mastering the rules of the writing road for a novice novelist.

Brilliant move, yes?

Well, no and yes.

Turns out, writing contemporary romance doesn’t exempt you from research. I live now, but that doesn’t mean I know everything about today – or the past five years, for that matter. I am a writer – and a wife and a mom. However, not all of my characters are writers, wives and moms. Professions for pretend people require research – as do locations and hobbies, among other things.

Even so, I’m satisfied with my choice to write romances based in the here and now of Colorado. I love that I’m immersed in my imaginary characters’ Storyworlds.  And if I need to do research, it’s no more than a walk around the block or day trip away.

When I needed to describe what my heroine in Catch a Falling Star saw from her west-facing floor to ceiling windows, I looked out my windows and watched the sun set behind the Front Range. I also accessed some of the hundreds of photographs of Colorado sunrises and sunsets I have stored on my computer.   

One of my characters in my debut novel, Wish You Were Here, liked to run in Garden of the Gods, a public park – and national landmark. I grabbed my camera and invited my husband to walk with me through this beautiful locale a mere fifteen minutes from our home. As we walked and talked, I paused and snapped photographs of the towering red rocks – and the lone white one. As we passed tourists and families and runners and spotted the occasional climber ascending a rock face, I reminded myself what my imaginary character might see as he ran through the park. 

Made up characters have to eat and drink just like real people do … well, you know what I mean. The well-known Craftwood Inn was the backdrop for a pivotal scene in Catch a Falling Star. Featuring a wide-range of game, it’s one of my husband’s favorite restaurants. We’ve eaten there a number of times. Even so, to describe the interior and the meal, I went to the restaurant’s website and viewed photographs and a current menu. 

For Catch a Falling Star, I knew I wanted a military hero. I opted to make Griffin Walker a fighter pilot because Warren, one of my husband’s best friends, flew A-10s. Since we live all of 10 minutes from the U.S. Air Force Academy, it was easy to include that Griffin was an Academy graduate. Before polishing a scene where Griffin revisits the Academy for the first time since he graduated, my husband and I walked the exact spot my fictional character walked as he pondered his life choices. And yes, I carried my camera, asking my husband questions to flesh out the scene because he’s also an Academy grad. 

Colorado is over 100 million square miles, and is home to more than 5 million people. With the backdrop of the Rocky Mountains, locations like Denver and Estes Park – not to mention Telluride and Aspen – and landmarks such as the Olympic Training Center and Mesa Verde National Park, I’ve just begun to explore the novel possibilities of my home state. My goal? To take my

readers along with me as I follow my imaginary characters along on their adventures!

Beth K. Vogt believes God’s best is often behind the doors marked “Never.” After being a nonfiction writer and editor who said she'd never write fiction, Beth's second inspirational contemporary romance novel, Catch a Falling Star, released May 7, 2013 from Howard Books. Beth is also the Skills Coach for My Book Therapy (MBT), best-selling author Susan May Warren’s writing community. Connect with Beth at bethvogt.com. 

Don't forget to stop by tomorrow to enter to win a free copy of Beth's latest release, Catch a Falling Star!

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