Hawaiian Gothic Gets Its First Review! (and why can't I hold all these feels?)

Lisa at The Novel Approach gave it 4 stars and had this to say:

Action, suspense, danger, mythology, fantasy, and the ultimate love-overcoming-all-odds romance transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary in Hawaiian Gothic and placed Heidi Belleau and Violetta Vane on my “authors to watch” list.

 Woohoo!

I find the build up to a release a pretty anxious time, which I'm sure is completely normal for authors. In Hawaiian Gothic's case, we've been working on this novel since December of last year, so finally releasing it out into the wild and hearing reader responses to it can be nerve-wrecking. It's the result of a lot of time and effort and heart. It's our first novel-length release. It's our first grand, sweeping romance. Waiting for it to come out is the culmination of a lot of feelings and rising emotions. Honestly, it's a little like the month before Christmas when you're still a little kid, except you don't get a sweet advent calendar and along with the anxious excitement, you have the anxious uh... dread. Like maybe if, along with presents, Santa might be giftwrapping boxes of poop and leaving them under your tree. Okay, not to say that negative reviews are poop, but they sometimes feel like that! LOL.

All you can do as an author is write your best story, get honest feedback and work damn hard on your edits, put on your big girl panties, and accept how readers respond, for good or for ill. Maybe you use criticism to better your writing, maybe you stop reading reviews to save your own precious ego, maybe you flip out and go all Dickensian Principles on the internet's ass (I don't personally suggest this one).

Either way, it's definitely a relief to hear positive feedback, especially during these anxious hours leading up to release. I know books rarely (never) get unanimously positive reception, and I accept that, but a good review sure can bolster you, can't it?

Hawaiian Gothic comes out tonight/tomorrow from Loose Id and will cost $6.99 to download in all major formats. It will be available from third-party retailers (like Amazon, ARe, Fictionwise, B&N, and Sony) on June 29th.