I’ve been thinking about reviews.

Specifically, should writers post reviews of books in the genre in which they write? Now this may come as a shock to you but I don’t read much romance and if I do there’s this weird expectation that I must either button my lip or say nice things. Just like our foremother taught us. So if I’m on goodreads.com and compelled to put in some sort of feedback I put in a number of stars. That’s it. It gets very tricky dealing with the village that is the romance community and the overall respectability and decorum one must maintain for else one’s reputation is gone and gone forever. Oops, no that’s Cranford, I think.

Which brings me to the issue of the Online Presence. I’m thinking back to a conversation I had with a couple of fans recently–actually not my fans, but Colleen Gleason’s–who said they never visited writers’ websites but did keep an eye out on Facebook which is how they knew she’d be in that particular B&N at that particular time. So, Facebook. Now that’s a Cranford. I don’t have a continual stream of nice and interesting things to say unless it’s about something happening with the release of a book or a cover or … come on, do you really want to hear about my yard (vines growing back, big patch of poison ivy, I have mega pump container of Roundup for it) or the tendonitis in my knee (getting better, thanks, developed in fight against vines). Or what I’m having for dinner? (I hope it involves bacon.)

But I do like Twitter. It’s a nice, fast way to share content with a link. Very impersonal, which means I don’t have to work at being nice and inoffensive as FB seems to demand. In fact it seems to encourage snarkiness, which is fine by me.

But back to reviews. If you’re a writer, do you post reviews of books by people you know or might meet?As a reader, do reviews influence your decision to buy? Colleen’s two fans, by the way, said it was the back cover blurb that sold them. What do you think?

Check out the new bit of my website, spice.janetmullany.com. I’m still updating so there’s more content to add but it’s done!