Blog tour roundup: week 1

The first week of my blog tour is now over, so I thought I'd take a look back at some of the highlights.

Reviews

Darkhaven has received lots of lovely reviews this week, some as part of the tour and others separately.

"A beautifully written and perfectly paced debut with unique world-building, wonderfully nuanced characters, and oh yes, I cried at the end." Books, Bones & Buffy

"With her debut A.F.E. Smith has delivered a wonderful fantasy tale, one filled with heart and if you like your fantasy laced with a good mystery, Darkhaven is definitely a book to check out." A Fantastical Librarian

"A fast reading, page turner of a fantasy that sucks you in right from the beginning scenes." Girl Who Reads

Overall, I've been really happy with the response from reviewers so far. I'm really grateful that so many people I don't know have read, enjoyed and reviewed my book.

Of course, I also had one terrible review that made me doubt my entire worth as a writer. I haven't linked that one on the reviews page, because I'm not that much of a masochist, but you can Google it. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Yeah, so that knocked me sideways for a while. Clearly my writing and that particular reviewer get on like itching powder and underwear. But that's the nature of the business, right? Unless you stick to family and friends, you're never going to please everyone. There are bound to be more bad reviews ahead of me, so the sooner I learn to brush them off, the better. (She says, sobbing uncontrollably and clutching a teddy bear.)

Anyway, the response to Darkhaven has been 95% positive, and I send out a big thank you to all the reviewers who have posted reviews so far. Yes, even the one who hated it and wished it would die.

Interviews

I've answered a lot of interesting questions this week. It's always impressive to me how interviewers manage to keep their questions different. So ...

• read this one if you want to know who I'd choose to be castaway with!
  
• read this one if you want to know where I accidentally stole some of my ideas from!
• read this one if you want to know my best and worst superpowers!
• read this one if you want to know how I organise my book collection!

Articles

And finally, I've also been rambling away on various topics. I actually hesitate to link to any of my guest posts here, because every time I write and send one, I instantly think of about five different ways I could have made it better. But here are a couple that might not be too weird:

• Turning the kaleidoscope
  
• The unequal fight
  

So, that was the first week of my blog tour! You can catch up on all the stops here, or you might like to read today's posts: a character interview with Ayla Nightshade, and an article about Darkhaven's female characters.

Looking forward to the second week of the tour … which, of course, includes the release day itself! Yay!

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