This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. R.W. Buxton will be awarding a $20 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

Negative criticism, or any criticism for that matter, is hard. I’ve poured my heart and soul into the words that make up these books. Not to take it personally is difficult. I try to take two things into consideration, the source of the criticism, and can I use it constructively.
Reviews on Amazon for example can be terribly difficult because they are generally short and offer little in the way of constructive feedback. Either the reader liked it or didn’t. Although when the review starts off with, “This isn’t my usual genre…” and then something negative, I don’t worry much about it. The likelihood they would have enjoyed any book in the genre is low. If you read westerns, what’s the chance you will like an urban fantasy with a little romance? If they start off with that and love the book, then I feel it’s a true win.

A few years ago a blogger reviewed Capital Thirst. The review was less than outstanding. It was evident they tried to put a positive spin on it, but with things like “I hated the main characters,” it’s pretty evident they didn’t enjoy it. In my defense, I purposely made them both very prickly. I wanted the gulf between them to be as difficult to traverse as possible. In retrospect, maybe I made it too vast.

This, though, was a criticism I could use. I obviously couldn’t go back and rewrite Capital Thirst, but I kept this in mind as I wrote Beverly Hills Torture and Moscow Nights. Erin and Gerry are still worlds apart, but it’s with more understanding. This change is also a part of their character arcs. I didn’t just change their personalities, but as they spend more time together, they both soften to the others’ viewpoints.

Then there is the utterly useless criticism, “It was awful because there were three grammar errors.” Or something else along those lines. These I basically ignore. Although I would like to write back, you try writing sixty-thousand words with no grammar errors. Especially when they have them in the review of less than twenty words. These I just ignore. I work with an amazing editor and given my propensity to misuse commas, I’m pretty pleased with three that slip past the two of us.

Criticism is going to happen anytime you put yourself out there and share a part of yourself. I try to minimize its impact and ignore things that I can’t change. If there is anything at all that can be used from the criticism, I try to take it into consideration as I continue to write. Writing is a never ending learning process and the only way to get better is to accept some of that criticism and use it to your advantage. I’m not going to change the way I write, but I will certainly use it to make my writing better.

Erin is desperate to save Gerry from shadowy forces that would do anything to prevent him from fulfilling the prophecy. But when she arrives, he’s with another woman and the worst thing is it’s Tina, his former partner at the FBI.

Can she convince him the threat is real, and not just to him, but Mary his young daughter.

Halfway around the world ominous figures hiding in the night plan the unthinkable and Gerry is the only one that can stop them. The threat is genuine but will he believe her? Will he believe in the prophecy?

Erin must face her own past, a past she thought was over. It opens old wounds that send her careening on a path of destruction. Can she overcome them in time to save Gerry or will she lose everything because of a deep-rooted hurt that can’t be healed?

Enjoy an Excerpt

“How am I a threat? I didn’t even know about any of this.” Gerry turned his palms upward in his lap.

“First, he knows of you and found you, the reason we had to flee, but he has set himself up as the one to fulfill the prophecy. It’s simple, there can’t be anyone to threaten his position.”

“So, what, we’re going to just meet with him and tell him I’m not who he thinks I am?”

“It’s more complicated than that.” Erin looked over her shoulder at Mary, already asleep despite her claim, curled up in the large tan leather seat. She looked back at Gerry. “You already have a huge base of supporters, and he can’t have that. He wants complete control.”

“But…”

“But there’s even more. He wants to bring us out of the shadows of night and enslave humanity. He’s perverted the prophecy. His idea of saving our race is to destroy humanity, which would ultimately destroy us. The true savior will save us from destruction, his destruction.”

Gerry blew through his teeth, making a small whistling noise. “So what you’re saying is we have to find this guy and destroy him before he kills me?”

About the Author:I love a good paranormal read, something about the un-dead haunts the fringes of my mind. Mix in romance, love, loss, and you have a great story.

I voraciously read everything, fiction, and non-fiction but always find myself turning back to the darker stories. I’ve always wanted to write and the dream became a reality with Capital Thirst, and the remainder of the Erin Kingsly novels.

I spend most of my days designing and building websites, but my free time is devoted to my wife, family, and cats. Yes three grown children and three cats. Things can be hectic.

For fun you might find me driving winding roads with the top down or out photographing nature.

Buy the book at Amazon, iBooks, Barnes and Noble, or Kobo.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. R.W. Buxton will be awarding $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

If you had to do something differently as a child or teenager to become a better writer as an adult, what would you do?

There is one thing that stands out the most when it comes to school. I wish I had paid more attention during those long boring classes on grammar. Of course they don’t make kids diagram sentences anymore, but if I knew all those funny little quirks of sentence structure and what all the parts are, it would make the editing process significantly easier. Let’s be honest, who knows what a hidden verb is. While I honestly never cared before I now wish I knew.

What is the most difficult part of your artistic process?

The most difficult part of being a writer is marketing, but since the question is about the artistic process, I’ll answer that too. I plot and outline my novels because for me that makes writing them go much faster. The challenge for me is usually the middle. I go into a new project with a clear beginning and end so writing act one and act three are pretty easy. It’s the middle part, act two, that always seems to trip me up. Bridging the gap between the beginning and end. What path do the characters take? What events should propel them along the way?

Some people would say just write and see where it goes. I took this approach with my first novel and ended up with an inflated manuscript that I cut over twenty-thousand words from. That’s a lot of extra work to just throw away. Sure I got through act two, but what a tremendous waste of time.

The middle is like the doldrums in the ocean, but you definitely don’t want that. The action and story need to move forward. You don’t want to leave your readers floating aimlessly in an ocean of meaningless words.

Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?

I wouldn’t say I purposefully hide secrets, but I often use symbolism that on the surface might be taken one way, but there are multiple ways to interpret it and often I’m not thinking of the most obvious when I write it. So people may just see the obvious, but if they think about it, there will be more to it.

If you didn’t write, what would you do for work?

I think the proper question is if my writing paid for itself what would I do for work? As it is, I’m a web developer full time spending hours writing boring code for websites that are less than interesting. Assuming my writing was extremely successful, and I didn’t have to spend my days writing code, I would pursue a career as a nature photography artist.

If I’m not working, or not writing I spend much of my time out walking trails photographing nature. Surprisingly, some of my photographs have even won awards in some contests I’ve entered. To be honest, making money in nature photography makes writing look easy.

Whether it’s writing or photography, a career in art or creativity would be what I would pursue.

What has been your hardest scene to write?

Without a doubt, the most difficult scene I’ve written to date is in the third novel of the Erin Kinglsy Saga. Since it hasn’t been published yet, I don’t want to spoil any of the fun, but the story took me to a place where my only way out was to do something terrible to one of the characters. I wrote it, changed it, rewrote it with at least a dozen different possibilities but none of them worked. I had to do it. As an author all the characters are your creation, even the villains. So it’s not without great regret when you do something awful to one of them.

A frantic middle of the night call jolts Gerry from his quiet, but lonely life, back into a world fraught with dangerous creatures of the night. Erin’s frenzied call leads Gerry across the country where he finds himself immersed in the luxuries of Beverly Hills and the seedier side of the Hollywood strip.

Sadness and longing grip him as he finds a blood-spattered room and Erin is nowhere to be found.

Alone in a strange city with nothing to go on can Gerry find and save Erin? Or is this the end of something never meant to be?

Her past has caught up with her and he’s her only hope.

With a group of trusted friends Gerry takes on the impossible and gives everything to save Erin.

Beverly Hills Torture is the second novel in the Erin Kingsly series. Be sure to check out Capital Thirst.

Enjoy an Excerpt

Nicolas walked back to the door. He turned and said, “This is a mistake. Mark my words.”

Erin watched him go, then sank to the bottom step of the grand stairway. Her head fell into her hands. This wasn’t the last she’d hear of the High Priestess. More messengers would come. Maybe they wouldn’t ask politely. Maybe they would try to force her. Maybe it would just be more groveling fools like Nicolas. Whatever happened, she wouldn’t give in to them. She wandered back up the stairs into her bedroom. The room she never slept in. It was her retreat though. She picked up the picture of her and Gerry again. He was so happy, and so was she. She saw it in both of their eyes. Honest and genuine happiness. Something she lost. It had been a year since things fell apart. It still felt like the first night alone.

She set the picture down and flopped on the bed. She lay back and tried to forget. But she couldn’t. It was still too real, too raw. Tears rose again and slid down her face. They were lost in her hair, and she stared at the ceiling. There was nothing she could do about her past decisions.

The only way to go was forward. Unfortunately, it would be a painful path.

About the Author:I love a good paranormal read, something about the un-dead haunts the fringes of my mind. Mix in romance, love, loss, and you have a great story.

I voraciously read everything, fiction, and non-fiction but always find myself turning back to the darker stories. I’ve always wanted to write and the dream became a reality with Capital Thirst, and the remainder of the Erin Kingsly novels.

I spend most of my days designing and building websites, but my free time is devoted to my wife, family, and cats. Yes three grown children and three cats. Things can be hectic.

For fun you might find me driving winding roads with the top down or out photographing nature.

Buy the book for only $0.99 at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, iBooks, or Kobo.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. R.W. Buxton will be awarding a $20 Amazon or B/N GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

While writing Capital Thirst I actively took part in an online critique group. It was an interesting experience. To have your work critiqued you had to critique the work of others. Which makes sense, otherwise people would just post and never take part.

While doing this I read some amazing work, and some that was, let’s just say, in the early stages. Much of what I read though truly inspired me to improve my writing. Critiquing other writers’ work you come to realize things that do and don’t work. Yes, at the time I used some of those things that don’t work and maybe still do. Another cool thing is that you are reading all different genres. The writing styles of each genre are very different, but some things can be applied across the board.

It’s a little intimidating to put something you’ve worked so hard on up for others to “criticize.” After getting the first few critiques I realized most of the other authors are interested in helping. I suppose the issue I had, and it’s probably more with the site I was on, your work was only posted until it received x number of critiques. Invariably many of them would be worthless, people just trying to get points towards having their own work critiqued and not really putting much or any effort into what they were offering. Others would be great. Lots of detail and ideas to think about. It takes time to wade through the less than useful ones to get to those that are helpful.

I always loved the long descriptive critiques that would go into theme and plotting or talk about character motivation. This provided a lot to think about. Was I going in the right direction? Did I have enough description or too much? Did the actions characters took makes sense did they have motivation? Other critiques would suggest changing this word or that or adding a comma. These weren’t as useful. I may end up rewriting or removing that sentence or paragraph altogether. Sure it helps, but that wasn’t what I was after.

After my experience with Capital Thirst, which overall was good, I didn’t plan to post Beverly Hills Torture. But now as I’m approaching the time when I’m about to send it to an editor I’m rethinking that decision. A good deal of the feedback was very useful, and I included it in the final draft. The downside is, it takes a lot of time and effort both in reviewing the work of others and going through the critiques of your own work. But I think it’s worth the effort to get the feedback of your peers.

If there was a choice, I probably would choose not to do it online but with a group of local authors. I think the responses would be more sincere. Please don’t get me wrong, there were a lot of very good authors that provided great feedback online, but I think if the person is sitting across from me and seeing me face to face they may work harder and the feedback would be far more interactive. Unfortunately while I’m aware of a sci-fi group locally I haven’t found any paranormal romance or romance.

One last word on the subject. Just like any other online community, it makes me sad to say, there are trolls. Some people just can’t be happy unless they trash someone else. I don’t understand this but it seems to be a fact of online life.

DC bustles, the light from the city fills the night. But in the dark alleys and backstreets, only slivers of light from a full moon dance. In such an alley, a shadowy figure is hunched over a body. She lifts her head to reveal soulless eyes and fangs dripping with blood as she licks her lips with exultation.

Standing up, she wipes her chin, and tosses her long black hair, then saunters away.

At FBI headquarters, Gerry examines the case files of 18 wealthy men, dead, with few clues, no DNA, and no leads…

When predator and prey become one, no one is safe.

Enjoy an Excerpt

The smell of the lavender in the bath water made her linger a minute longer as she ran her hand down her smooth, alabaster arm, and then across her flat stomach. She lay back in the tub with her head resting on the soft spa pillow at the end. Her body melted into nothingness. The
warmth filled her with a longing for a time now beyond her grasp.

Her thoughts floated through images of men she had killed. The terror of their last thoughts flooded back, aroused, and saddened her.

A siren on the street jarred her from her thoughts. She stood and let the tiny rivulets of water run the length of her lithe body. She stepped out onto the soft, luxuriant bath mat. Her long black hair, in stark contrast to her body, came just short of the middle of her back. She reached for a plush white towel to dry herself. She bit her lower lip, worried that she lingered too long. That she might be late.

Tonight was her night to kill, and she wanted it to be perfect. Just who would it be?

About the Author: I love a good paranormal read, something about the un-dead haunts the fringes of my mind. Mix in romance, love, loss, and you have a great story.

I voraciously read everything, fiction, and non-fiction but always find myself turning back to the darker stories. I’ve always wanted to write and the dream became a reality with Capital Thirst, and the remainder of the Erin Kingsly novels.

I spend most of my days designing and building websites, but my free time is devoted to my wife, family, and cats. Yes three grown children and three cats. Things can be hectic.

For fun you might find me driving winding roads with the top down or out photographing nature.

Buy the book at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

a Rafflecopter giveaway
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