When you write your book, as I believe we all should do in this life, if only for our grandchildren, you will be tempted to read your Amazon reviews. It's inevitable. Writing is a needy act, as storytelling has been since the beginning of the craft. Way back when tribes sat around a campfire to share their vignettes in the most dramatic fashion possible, you told your story to get a laugh, a tear, a knowing glance. Nowadays, we call that an Amazon five-star review.
I'm guilty. Friday was one of those days when I just didn't feel like writing. This happens every once in a while. I honor the written word by sitting at my desk and pondering story lines and maybe doing a little research. Check cross country stats, airfares, and inevitably, Amazon reviews.
It's a fool's errand. The overwhelming percentage are kind but it's in my nature to ignore them. If there was an email address I would write all those nice people and say thank you but such a thing does not exist. So if you're reading this and you wrote a glowing review for Taking Paris and cannot wait for June and Taking London, please know I appreciate you and read your review twice to soak in all of your kind words. You are geniuses and deserve to have babies named in your honor.
It's the dumb reviews that make me want to track down alleged readers and have a personal dialogue about their idiocy. The worst are reviews awarded one star because the delivery guy threw it on the wrong part of the porch or the reviewer didn't like the packaging. Utterly out of my control.
The know-it-alls are not much better, considering themselves experts on a certain phase of history. They want to argue every point they disagree with and tell me about the one book they read — which, of course, is far better than mine. I guarantee you that unless these people hold a doctorate on the subject matter, there's nothing you can share that I have not read in the countless hours I spend researching each and every word in a book. It's even better when they go on my Facebook page and post an insult trying to bait me into a response. I have made that mistake before, thinking there could be a civil dialogue. But no. I liken them to people with a porn addiction, unable to help themselves as they troll and troll and troll in search of their dopamine hit.
Finally, there are the historical deniers, those getting their history from God knows which website or television network. There's currently a flock of these taking umbrage with a sentence in Taking Berlin about Russia interfering in the 2016 US presidential election — it not only happened, by the way, but Russia has vowed to do it again. Why American "patriots" are defending a sworn enemy to democracy is beyond my purview.
Write your book. Bask in the accomplishment. Tell truths you want to pass on down through generations because your great-grandchildren will love you more than you will ever know for sharing these family delights. But be gentle with yourself. If you must read your Amazon reviews, do so as a form of amusement, saying a quiet thank you for the ones who get what you're trying to do.