Pride before the fall
Just yesterday, I was saying how readers love my work and how both my stories and my debut collection were garnering positive reviews (in case you missed them, here and here are a couple of the good reviews for Tenth Orbit and Other Faraway Places).
Of course, calling oneself a critical darling, even in jest, is an invitation to the gods of karma, and the first mixed (let's call it mixed, shall we?) review of the collection came to my attention today. Sarah Goslee of SFFPortal had this to say about the book. As you can imagine, I bleed from learning that some readers don't love my work, but I am fascinated by the different takes, and the way readers' varied tastes and expectations give different reading experiences from the same material. Go on, read the review: it's fair and represents a different take on the book.
One of the positive things I took from this review is that the reviewer called it reminiscent of Golden Age SF as opposed to more modern fare. I happen to like Golden Age SF much more than modern SF, and I guess that must come through in my writing. I probably won't be selling stories to Asimov's any time soon, though...
The other nice thing about the review is that she enjoyed the humorous stories - I need to get SFFPortal a copy of The Curse of El Bastardo!
Writing: almost none, but I did manage 174 words of translation into an SF story I want to get subbed - in Spanish - to Axxón.