Every author spends years (in my case, decades) working on their novels. We put ourselves out there and basically invite people to criticize our work from the anonymity of their computers. We understand that everyone is not going to like or appreciate our work and it's usually the one complainer who has no problem posting a review instead of the 99 who enjoyed the book, but don't that get under our skin.
So, I offered The Victor as a free Kindle download for 3 days. It had over 1200 downloads and one by one the reviews are trickling in. Most are great. Very few aren't which is very gratifying to someone like me who couldn't pay people for 30 years to read it. I had no idea if my writing was any good until complete strangers started posting nice reviews.
I understand not liking the genre and posting a review along those lines (aka writing is good but just not my cup of tea, etc.).
But what really peeves me to no end is someone who actually says in their review that they were enjoying the book UNTIL they came upon a mild cuss word and then they closed the book and flung it as far away from their person as possible so as not to be contaminated. What?! Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit because it wasn't a paperback, but you get the idea.
My first reaction was indignation. What world do these people live in? Do they walk around with earmuffs on?
The very few swear words I used in the book were: "bloody hell" and "damn" which came from a battle-hardened knight under extreme duress. What is he supposed to say? "Drat and double drat!?" The reviewer suggested that instead of actually using the swear words, I could just say: "he uttered a curse word" but that is "telling" and not "showing", a "no-no" in writing.
So I looked up how many times the Bible uses the words:
Hell: 54 times
Damn: 453 times
Jesus basically cussed out the Pharisees, calling them broods of vipers and serpents! He took a whip and turned over the tables of the money-changers and I don't think he was reciting the 23rd Psalm as he did so. The Bible talks about rape, child sacrifice, murder, incest...the list goes on and on. Does this woman only limit herself to the Psalms?
The Victor is a blatant allegory of the Bible with scripture references but all that got tossed out like the baby with the bathwater because they "don't read Christian books with cuss words."
I'm being told to just ignore it, the vast majority of the reviews are wonderful, but it still irks the living daylights out of me! (See, I didn't use the word hell there).
Okay...rant over. We will now continue with our regularly scheduled program...