WOW back atcha

I know that, as an author, I shouldn't read reviews of my work. Everyone says to have a trusted person read your reviews and send you only the good ones—because while a good review is a squee-worthy experience, a bad review has the ability to trump a million good reviews and that's all you remember and focus on.

But I am weak, and sometimes I succumb*, and having just received comp copies of several anthologies containing my stories, I found myself drifting over to Amazon to see how they were faring.

And I saw a review for Lustfully Ever After: Fairy Tale Erotic Romance, that said in part,

I could go on and on, but if I were forced to choose a favorite under pain of torture, I would have to say "Steadfast" by Andrea Dale. Maybe it's just because I've got a little bit of a military fetish thing going on right now (me and Mr. James Jones - we got a thing going on), but WOW. When I write in all caps like that, that means it was a hella powerful story, emotionally, sexually and psychologically. I tip my hat to you, Ms. Andrea Dale.

WOW indeed. I tip my hat to you, Erin O'Riordan, and thank you more than you could know for your kind words. I took some chances with this story—I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone to write in a different style. I didn't know, in the end, whether it worked. When the editor, the lovely Kristina Wright, bought it, for me that was proof that I'd succeeded. A review like this just blows me away, as it reaffirms that challenging myself really did pay off.

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*and I have no first reader for reviews. Applications welcome. Must be consistent and reliable. And like smut and speculative fiction and other stuff. And be willing to put up with my idiosyncracies.