Now that I am everywhere on social media—Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook and also on Goodreads and Amazon—I am being trolled.

Listen, I understand that not everyone will like my writing or my characters or my books. I don’t like a lot of bestsellers. I think Fifty Shades of Grey needed a strong editor. I hated the second two books in the Divergent series. I think Susan Mallery needs to move out of Fool’s Gold and find a new place to live.

Every single reader has an opinion on every single book. That’s a given. And when you write, you open yourself up to criticism. When you write an ebook, you open yourself up to trolls.

I’ve had bloggers that I’ve sent review copies to who haven’t enjoyed my books but while their reviews haven’t been raves, they’ve been respectful and honest.

Then I’ve had a**holes who have posted reviews of the previews of my novels on Amazon and told other people not to read them. The whole f***ing point of previews is to let people get a taste and decide for themselves. But it wasn’t enough for this angry blogger; no, she had to urge other people to avoid my book based solely on the preview. She didn’t think they had enough personal discretion to make up their own minds. I have a real sense that this blogger has done this to umpteem novelists. I complained to Amazon because I found this to be inappropriate considering she hadn’t read the novel she was slagging but typically, they never responded to my comment.

Blogging is power. All of a sudden, anonymous people with goodness knows what skill set have the power to slag people who have actually done the f**king work and spent months or years putting pen to paper and try to warn other people away from their work.

I’m ticked because I’ve had another example of this tonight.

Listen. You may not like the romance genre. You may not like my writing. But please, be fair. I try to be fair when I critique other people’s work, even if I don’t enjoy it. I try to remember how many hours and weeks and months and years writers spend agonizing over words and phrases and charactizations.

When I post reviews, I try so hard to be fair and I never, ever, ever post reviews for a genre that I don’t enjoy. That’s just Meangirling and I absolutely hate Meangirling—especially among online bloggers because they can make or break a career.

But I guess that’s the point. People who can, try.

People who can’t, Meangirl.