REVIEWS AND OLIVER CROMWELL

I promise that today’s blog will only be half serious, and below we will continue with the history lesson and find out what Oliver Cromwell was up to.

I was amazed at the amount of feedback I’ve had about my blog on reviews last week. It’s a subject very close to writer’s hearts. I had no intention of scribbling more about it, but I wanted to share the following.

Firstly I had a message from a very good FB friend who said it was the first blog she’d ever read which asked people to give the writer’s book 1 or 2 stars!  Yes, it was a joke, getting a low number of stars is very discouraging. I’m only after honesty as a method of policing ourselves and raising the standard of indie books (including my own).

But I felt bad after writing it. The two 3 stars I have are from my brother in law and my best friend. (I think they are about the only people from my small pool of family and friends who have written reviews). To date all the others had been 4 or 5 – so who was I to preach? Was I being totally hypocritical in my last blog?

Then, Bingo! (The timing was almost surreal). On Friday I received a 2 star on Amazon from a total stranger who had bought Walking over Eggshells because of all its 5 star reviews. She read it and wrote the following:-

I don’t generally read biographies of people who aren’t famous. This book had so many five star reviews that I thought it would be a worthwhile read. In my opinion this book should be listed as a cautionary tale for those who either grew up with or live with a person diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder. Unfortunately for her, the author does not find out that is what’s wrong with her mother until her mother is deceased.
If you want to read a story where the primary character is so obsessed with pleasing her mother that she seeks validation for her every move, then this book is for you. Is the daughter co-dependant? I don’t know and really don’t care. Is she “normal” as she later defines herself? Somehow I doubt it.
Not story related but be prepared for the many grammar errors and occasional misspellings in the Kindle edition.

 I think that is a very fair comment, (if only she had sent me a list with all the typos and bad grammar. I can’t find them, but I’m sure they are probably there).

It might have something to do with my rather strange upbringing, and maybe I’m not normal, but I did not dissolve into floods of tears.  She has hit the nail on the head, I did write the book to raise awareness of narcissistic personality disorder, and if it finds readers who are living through the same hell, it might help to make sense of the situation they are in. It might give them ideas on how to cope or the strength to walk away.  I was tempted to add a comment under the review thanking the reader for her perception, but I know that’s not the thing to do.

An email dropped into my box this morning, and this is what it said:-

Thank you for sharing this painful story… I too had a most difficult mother and find it almost impossible to explain this kind of mother/daughter relationship.

So, it’s swings and roundabouts and hopefully I’ve proved my case.

On Friday, more about review groups as it’s time for the ‘fluff’ part of the blog.

If you remember King Charles was all right with the world. He was perfectly happy running up huge overdrafts and living the high life. Here he is again in another gorgeous outfit.

Cromwell who was leading the Roundheads at the time, said that NONE of this was right. Under Habeas Corpus, people should not be put to death for no reason, that it was wrong for ANYONE to be put to death twice and that Charles was certainly WRONG for taking all the Ship Money for himself.

This picture shows the check out queue on the Thames as boat owners wait to pay their taxes.

Charles had found an old law hidden in his comic collection between the Beano and the Dandy. This told him that he could tax people to build ships and he didn’t need parliament’s approval. He decided to take this one step further and demand money not only from those people who lived on the coast, but in the inland towns as well.

This puzzled the country folk as they had no idea what a ship was and they had no money either.

When Oliver heard this he was very cross indeed. He was a little strange though. For example he forbade the wearing of make up BY LAW!!!  This was partly to ensure that those early Chelsea pensioners would not creep out to fight as he knew they would not do so without painting their faces blue. (Refer back to ancient Britons and the wode face painting before battle). Here they are again.

It was perfectly obvious, war was inevitable.