I was extremely flattered when Mieneke van der Salm, proprietress of the excellent A Fantastical Librarian blog, asked to interview me for her ongoing Blogger Query series. The end result was just published, and (as you’d probably expect from me) I went on and on and on in my answers. If you’re interested in finding out more about me, make sure to take a look! Here’s an excerpt:

Negative reviews, yay or nay? And why? 

Yes, absolutely. It annoys me to no end when blogs never or only very rarely post negative reviews. I tend to lose interest and, ultimately, respect for reviewers who only post positive reviews. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to be able to write about books you didn’t like. If you can’t or won’t do that, you’ll sound like a cheerleader. At the same time, I really don’t appreciate reviewers who can’t express a negative opinion without going overboard. We’re writing about someone’s baby here, about a book someone spent blood, sweat and tears on. If you didn’t like it, fine, by all means let us know – but don’t make it a hatchet job. I dislike it when reviewers are more concerned with sounding clever than with the book they’re supposed to be reviewing, and I hate snark for snark’s sake. One of the hardest things to write as a reviewer is a negative review that’s still balanced, detailed and polite.

You can read the entire interview here!