I'll Be Glad to Toss Your Book in the Trash

So sayeth a brand new fan I've received. Along with all the emails I received from my website contact link today was a gem of an email about my novel Blood Ocean, which was part of the Afterblight Chronicles published by Abaddon Books (UK).

Here's the email:

"After reading your contribution to the Afterblight Chronicles, I can say that I will never read another one of your books again. I have issues with it since I started it. But being someone who doesn't give up on a series and who enjoys SciFi, I am going through them. If this is any indication of your work, well lets just say, your no where as good a (sic) your complementaries. So, unless you have a another book in the Series, I will be glad to toss this junk in the trash where it belongs." - name withheld by me

Here was my reply:

"Thank you! Can I ask what your issue was?"

I'm waiting on a response.

His response will sort of indicate what sort of person he is. You see, this is my most brutal book. I mean, hell, it's post apocalyptic. It's supposed to be brutal, right? But it also has transgender characters, cannibalism, anti-Caucasian sentiment, and I heap a ton of fictional baggage on the Japanese.

Is he Japanese?

Did he take umbrage at me making white people evil?

Is he a vegan?

Maybe he doesn't like LGBTs.

This book is still available. It was published in 2012. This is not an advertisement, but here's what the book is about if you've never heard of it.

Waterworld meets Point Break as Kavika, an under-sized boy living in the floating Sargasso City - jigsawed together with ships, submarines, barges and oil tankers off the coast of what was once known as California, must strive to overcome his lowly status and the condemnation of his peers in order to save his city from an enemy living within.

Survivors of the Cull, a Plague that wiped out people without the blood type O-neg, struggle in the floating Sargasso City jigsawed together with ships, submarines, barges and oil tankers off the coast of what was once known as California.

Separated by demarcations of turf, ethnicity and fear, it’s not so much living as existing. High above it all swing the Pali Boys: descendants of Hawaiian warriors, they desire to lift themselves and the spirits of the residents below by performing an increasingly impossible series of extreme stunts, designed to test their manhood, and demonstrate the vibrancy humanity once had.

But as a conspiracy of murder unfolds and blood attacks increase, Kavika a single under-sized Pali Boy must strive to overcome his lowly status and the condemnation of his peers in order to save them all from an enemy living within.

The book received mixed reviews when it came out. Some consider it the favorite of my 20+ published books. Others don't like it for the brutality. And some think I spent too much time in scene setting. But everyone had at least something good to say about it. 

Update: I've waited 24 hours for a reply, but didn't receive on. But I did put my detective skills to work, you know, those I got from watching television. His name is in his email, which I can see. I Facebooked his name and there is one person out there with a mutual friend of that same name. If that's the same person, then he's white, southern, and middle aged. So being Japanese is out. Maybe he's a white vegan?

So there you have it. You can't please everyone, but at least this fine upstanding gentleman gave me a laugh.