I want to share about a review I
came across a while ago for
Going Under
where the reader was torn between giving the book four or five stars. She was
torn because while (I assume) she enjoyed the writing (or what I would call the
technical aspect of the work), she didn’t like the storyline. She admitted her
confusion in the review as she had just previously read
Good and loved it. And there you have it: She had just recently
read
Good and loved it.
Apples and oranges, anyone?
She, like many readers, had an idea
of what to expect when she opened the pages of Going Under based on a previous work of mine. She expected
something like Good. And it’s okay
that she had certain expectations. That’s human nature to set a bar for
subsequent works by an author we enjoy. It’s also human nature to expect the
same thing from that author. Kind of like opening a can of Pringles. You expect
that they will be every bit as delicious as that last can you opened. You can
count on consistency. You can count on the same great taste.
Well, I’m here to tell you that you
shouldn’t count on anything when it comes to my work. Why? Because every single
story you read of mine will be different. Vastly different. Many of my early
diehard Hoodie fans didn’t take to my
second novel, Honeysuckle Love, at
all. Why? Because the stories were on opposite sides of the spectrum, and fans
were anticipating another Hoodie-esque
work. Sorry to disappoint. After Going
Under made its debut, there was a lot of pressure to produce another Going Under-type story. But I knew there
was no way in hell I was writing another Going
Under. That was a special book written at a specific point in my writing
career. To try and duplicate it would have been disastrous, not to mention
completely offensive to me and my readers. But nevertheless, that was the
expectation. And I didn’t meet it.
I wrote a story about a heroine so
very opposite of Brooke that one could be seen as the good angel on the right
shoulder and the other as the bad angel on the left. The story also introduced
themes and tropes that the indie book world doesn’t much like. You could say I
swung all the way to the other side with the Too Good series, and I regret none
of it. Here’s why: If I had to produce the same story over and over again, I’d
most definitely put those stones in my pockets I talked about in an interview.
I’d pull a Virginia Woolf in a heartbeat because writing for me is not about
pigeon-holing myself in any one kind of genre or one type of story. That's boring
to me, and I really don’t like to be bored. Moreover, one of the most
liberating aspects of being an independent author is the ability and freedom to write
whatever I want!
I like fresh stories. I like a
challenge. I like creating newness because life is filled with enough
repetition. Life is filled with enough of the mundane. So my stories will
always reflect something different. Not one will sound like the other, and I
intend to keep it that way. Now, in saying that, I will also add that the one
constant you can count on in my work is good writing/editing. I think that
throughout my works—as different as they are—their one commonality is my voice.
That won’t change, and you can expect to always hear me in my work. But you will never read another Cadence. You will
never read another Brooke. You will never read another Anton.
Incidentally, the reviewer settled
on four stars. This was her way of reconciling her expectations of Going Under with what she actually got. I
chuckle thinking about how she would react to Hoodie. For those of you who’ve read the book, you know what I’m
talking about. And yes, as different as my stories are, I wrote them all.
I am the same author who posed as an eighteen-year-old black boy from the ghetto, a
self-absorbed justice-seeking eighteen-year-old girl, an impressionable and naïve
seventeen-year-old who fucked her 28-year-old teacher, a poverty-stricken
sixteen-year-old with social anxiety. All of them are me—my stories, my hard
work—and they represent a growing library of works that are as different as the
cultures of the world. Let’s see if I can keep going.
You just finished reading the Too
Good series. And I can make this one promise to you: You can expect nothing
like it with my next work.
