Imagine you’re making a piece of art.  You labor over it alone in your room (or alone at a table in a cafe, as the case may be).  You show it to 2 or 3 people, but mostly it exists in your head.

Then you send it to a publisher.  They like it, buy it, publish it.  And it goes out into the world.

Then you wait.  You’re dying to know what people think, good and bad.  Of course you hope everyone will adore your book unconditionally, but you don’t really expect that.  You intentionally wrote a book that is challenging, provoking, prickly. You wrote about bad people doing bad things, and bad people doing good things, and how the line shifts, depending on the point of view in the story.

So…  Today is my birthday! The only gift I really want is a review of one of my books.

Whether you go to Goodreads or Librarything or Shelfari — or you go to Amazon, Barnesandnoble.com or Audible — or you write something for your blog or Facebook or Twitter: it would mean a lot to me.

I understand that I can do every reading gig I’m offered.  I can guest post on every blog I find. All the same, I know what really sells books is when someone tells a friend, “Hey, I read this thing…”

What if you read one of my books and didn’t like it? That’s okay.  Tell me what you didn’t like. I’m a big girl.  I can handle criticism.  Besides, how am I going to make the next book more like the things you like?

Any review — whether you leave stars or you write down your thoughts — is going to mean a lot to me.  Just be honest and say what you really think. I’ll be thrilled if you link to the review below.

We’ll still be friends afterward. Pinky swear.