Some of this is going to be a rant, however if you stick with the rant there is something mildly awesome at the other side. Also, let there be some honesty between us here, it’s hardly the first rant regular visitors to my blog have had to endure, and I suspect more than one of you mostly comes here for the rants.

You know who you are…

This particular post was inspired, in a roundabout way, by a couple of arseholes who deserves a very special kind of purgatory. One of them was an arsehole to another writer, the other an arsehole to me. Both of them were however the same kind of arse, the kind of arse that gives out a one-star review. Now as I promised this was a rant, so I will get the rant out of the way first. I got this review for Lexicromicon from an American on Amazon. I’ve blocked out his name out of politeness.

I don’t normally comment on the occasion shitty review, life is too short, and people are entitled to their shity unwarranted and ill-considered opinions. However, I do take exception to someone reviewing a book they have not read, clearly state they have not read it, and then put in a quote about Mr Lovecraft not writing for lazy readers…

Irony anyone one? Get your bag of irony here… Come get it while its fresh…

On that by the way, I read every piece of fiction Lovecraft ever wrote at least five times, including more than one story I utterly detest, while writing that book. Lazy reader I am not, unlike the reviewer clearly.

Okay that’s the rant done… Do I feel better for it. No not really, ranting about negative arseholes who give out one-star reviews and denigrate peoples work doesn’t achieve anything. I’ve had lots of great feedback and reviews from other people for that book and my fiction, so I chose not to let such things bother me (except they do every time, because of course they do, shity reviews are the ones we all remember no matter how many good ones we get… We laugh them other, but we die inside.)

While I was dealing with that little bit general background shit that comes an authors way, another author I vaguely follow-on twitter posted a picture of their very first review for a new book. The very first review they had received. Which wasn’t a review, as such, just a single solitary star. Think about that for a moment, someone took time out of their day to give someone a one-star review on their new book, just out of spite as they could not even be arsed to write a review.

The writer in question posted this and laughed it off. Which may have been entirely genuine laughter, but I suspect she was dying a little inside. Someone disliked her, or at least her books enough to just be an arsehole for the sake of being an arsehole… I hope there is a special kind of purgatory for people like that, I surely do… If she could laugh it off all power to her, but I for one was angry for her.

Now on the plus side this did mean I looked at the book in question, which may well be a fine book but didn’t grab me as a book for me, but hopefully it made some other look at it too. But while that book was not a book for me, I did actually look at what else the writer in question had written to see if anything appealed. I am a great believer in Karma, so I thought I could perhaps redress the balance of the universe a little and buy a book that appealed and give it a read, and if I liked it a review… And as it happened for serval reasons one novella written by the writer in question leapt out at me. Perhaps because I was thinking of people who deserved some kind of purgatory at the time…

So that’s what I did, I bought a copy of Barbara Avon’s novella Owl Eyes Motel in a fit of rage spite and with an urge to dress the balance of the universe a little because cretinous arseholes leaving shitty one-star reviews for another human being’s labours of love offends me…

I’m a messy complicated sort of entity who does things for messy complicated reasons, they don’t have to make sense to anyone but me… However, I was hopeful that the book would be good so I could write a nice review… It wasn’t good…

It was utterly awesome…

Owl Eyes Motel by Barbara Avon

We have all stayed at an odd Motel out on the edge of town that seems slightly off kilter and has a sense of wrongness about it that is hard to put your finger one at first. As someone who has spent far too many nights in that strange kind of purgatory over the years due to previous jobs and occasional wanderings, I don’t find it hard to imagine them as a rum and uncanny kind of netherworld. Neither clearly does Barbara Avon, who fictional creation is one part Hotel California, one part purgatory, and beautifully realised through out. Each chapter is a Room Number, and each room has its own story. Room 252 was a particular favourite, that particular story is so finally crafted I’m openly jealous of the author for pulling it off… But a story, within a story, within a story… Well, it is almost raison d’etre for me…

But Room 252 is not alone in being well crafted, the whole novella is wonderfully crafted. Even after the first room, when you have gained a reasonable idea what you are in for, each room that follows has new twists and surprises within them. The stories manage to be nasty at times, sexy at times and always intriguing. It’s hard not to fall a little in love with some of the staff, Tawny the longue singer, Fredrick the bartender and Milton himself, the proprietor and ‘beating’ heart of the Owl Eyes Motel…

It is frankly a brilliant bit of creativity, wonderfully structured, wonderfully written and if it has a flaw, it is only that it is a novella because it left me wanting more.

Just do yourself a favour and read it. If you have read and enjoyed Passing Place, then defiantly read it, I can’t really praise anything higher than that…

Anyway, having redressed the balance of the universe, I am probably going to end up having to read more of Barbara’s novels now.