Author Guest Post with Spaulding Taylor, Last Star Standing

Aiden has always felt like an outsider.

Welcome to one of the August 3rd stops on the blog tour for Last Star Standing by Spaulding Taylor with Goddess Fish Promotions. Be sure to follow the rest of the tour for spotlights, reviews, author guest posts, and a giveaway! More on that at the end of this post.

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Author Guest Post

How to Handle Negative Criticism

Having been asked how best to handle negative criticism, I’d have to admit that – until recently – I wasn’t the best person to ask. This was partly because I lose my temper fast, and partly because, until recently, I’d been lucky enough not to have much.

My contemporary novels Orion published – soon to be re-released in a new edition – received no negative reviews. The crossest I got was when The Daily Mail described While the Music Lasts as “a romp” but I was mollified by the Sunday Telegraph’s “not as light as it pretends to be”.

My speculative thriller, Last Star Standing, has yet to receive a bad review, but Unbound didn’t really push it, either. I was happy with its Kirkus-starred review and not downhearted that it didn’t get many others. It’s been a finalist for loads of prizes, too, which helps.

Where I’ve been truly TESTED with negative criticism, oddly enough, has been very recently.

My prizewinning books that read something like Jane Austen (“McVeigh’s prose and plotting are pitch-perfect” – Publishers Weekly) – have been known to rouse the indignation of two separate kinds of Janeites: the purists and the unhinged, wild-eyed fanatics – and this without there being a zombie or a spaceship in them, from beginning to end!

No, what’s infuriated these Austen fans into shoving maniacal one-stars onto my Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation is that I dared to imagine that

1. Harriet, Emma’s dim little protegee, in Emma, was only pretending to be stupid – AND
2. that Mr Knightley (aged 38) had had a love affair at nineteen.

But you wouldn’t believe the abuse! The vitriol!!! One Bible-belting Austenite screeched on Amazon that she “wanted to throw it” – Harriet – “into Mount Doom and watch it burn, baby, burn!!!!!”

Another – a self-confessed wannabe author – howled on LibraryThing that it shouldn’t have been allowed to be published and “watch out – a new literary ASSASSIN is in town!!!!”

And that’s not all. I was absolutely incandescent when some utter jerk, calling themselves “Splat”, surfaced on Amazon.

Now “Splat” has no profile, follows exactly one author and has only ever written one review, the one-starred review of my book. And in this (one) review he not only gives away the plot twist without a single warning BUT brazenly recommends that people instead buzz off and read the only author that Splat “follows”.  

Wowsers. This was waaaaaay out of order, everybody told me.

And: “Amazon’ll pull the review, no question.”

Wrong!!! Amazon could not have cared less. It was reported by at least forty people, at least, that I know about. And it still pops up – spoiler and all – FIRST of all my reviews on Amazon.

I wish to stress that I handled all this vitriol with great dignity and maturity. (That is, after I’d finished damaging my ankle by kicking the furniture.)

This is what I did: I contacted everyone to whom I’d sent an advance copy of Harriet who had yet to review it and I urged them to redress the balance on Amazon.com.

And on LibraryThing – where poor little Harriet had exactly zero reviews at the time of the one-star massacre – I offered it as a giveaway, in hopes that a nice freebie and a little time will cause it to be done just a tad more justice. After all, this is a book Publishers Weekly chose as “Editors Pick: outstanding” – and, though only a few months old, it’s also the Gold Medal winner of the historical category in the Global Book Awards. Not a bad book.

And it does NOT – she says through gritted teeth – repeat NOT – deserve to be thrown into Mount Doom to “burn, baby, burn!”

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just off to kick a little more furniture.

About the Book

Last Star Standing
by Spaulding Taylor

Published 18 February 2021
Unbound Digital

Genre: Thriller
Page Count: 336
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!

Aiden has always felt like an outsider. After the rebel assassin is captured and imprisoned by the world’s galactic overlords, he awaits execution. Then a mole working for the occupying regime alerts him to a plot that could destroy the entire resistance…

Engineering a daring escape, Aiden’s growing feud with the new rebel leader leaves him out in the cold and smouldering with resentment. Faced with deceit and betrayals on every side, he recruits a group of overlooked outcasts and stakes everything on one last mission.

Can the restless, reckless Aiden take a stand long enough to save humanity from enslavement?

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Excerpt

Nothing. Clean as a whistle. Until my massive hand grasped hold of something, something which must have blended into its background so perfectly that I hadn’t even spotted it. Something alive, nestling under the co-pilot’s seat. I couldn’t believe it. A live gromeline. Trembling, possibly with fury, and trying in vain to squeeze back. Grabbing my trophy – I could feel its hot little heart throbbing like an injury against my palm – I hopped out of the plane so fast that my wound protested.

‘Bully!’

Bully raised one eyebrow. Two would have been overkill.

‘Bully, you are not going to believe this. I found a gromeline!’ The gromeline – only about fifteen centimetres – bit my finger, hard, even though I could have easily crushed its entire body with my fist – and probably would have, had I been a tester, and not merely disguised as one.

Feisty little gromeline. I flicked it lightly with my sausage-sized finger. When it protested, I growled, ‘Cheese it, munchkin,’ though I could feel it struggling obstreperously against my palm.

Bully was intrigued. ‘Is it genuine?’ ‘Of course it’s genuine. It just bit me, didn’t it?’

Bully probably considered this no proof. But they’re rarer than clean air these days and his fascination was obvious. Now gromelines come from the farthest galaxy so far discovered, can speak any tongue and own enviable mental powers. They are also brave to the point of stupidity and ludicrously small. This one was mouse-coloured – they can be spectacular – with tiny red eyes. Few humans have ever seen one.

About the Author

Alice (Spaulding Taylor) McVeigh has been published by Orion/Hachette in contemporary fiction, by Unbound Publishing in action/adventure and by Warleigh Hall Press in Austenesque fiction. Her novels have won Gold Medal/First Place is the Global, eLit and Pencraft Book Awards, been runner-up in the Independent Press Awards, finalists in the Eric Hoffer, Rone and Wishing Shelf Book Awards and selected by Shelf Unbound as one of the “top indies” of 2021. Two of her novels are currently finalists in the CIBA Book Awards (the Cygnus and Goethe Awards). Her most recent novel (Harriet: A Jane Austen Variation) was just selected as Editors’ Pick “outstanding” on Publishers Weekly.

A professional London cellist, Alice lives in London and Crete with her professor husband: their only child is completing her Masters in Chinese Literature. They also share two miniature long-haired dachshunds and an incurable addiction to tennis.

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