Sing Sad Songs is among the five best stories I have ever written. I usually place it as number 3 actually. It was going along full steam getting only five-star reviews on Amazon. And then somebody’s mother, or possibly anonymous old maid, decided to troll it as an evil book.
The problem, it seems, was that twelve year old kids are not allowed to talk about sex in a humor novel, even if the conversations are with older peers in private and that person gave sound be-cautious-and-don’t-risk-it advice. To be clear, there were no actual sex scenes depicted anywhere in the book. Other reviewers loved the book. One even thought it should be recommended to school libraries as being good for middle-school kids. But not anonymous reader. She suggested that the other reviewers were either idiots or weren’t smart enough to know what they were reading.
Remember, this is a humor blog. I find things funny about the terrible irony of how this book was treated. My complaint to Amazon was not profanity-laced or anything. I simply did not believe reviewers should impugn the remarks of other reviewers. I was even told by the Amazon adjudicator of justice that I was not given the right to comment on this review because every reviewer is entitled to their opinion, Oh, well… we all know the relationship between stupid people and an appreciation of ironic twists of fate.
Anyway, the punishments did not end there.
The story is about a boy who grew up in France and was in the car with his twin sister and both parents when it went off the cliff. The only family members who could take him in as the only survivor in the crash were his cousins Victor, Richard, Kelly, and Richard’s young son Billy Martin who all lived together in one house in Norwall, Iowa. They are a dysfunctional family who own and operate a small town bar and grill, two brothers and a sister. Nobody wants another family member (except for young Billy) in a family that none of the members really want to be in.
And while the new arrangement has its difficulties, Francois begins to sing sad songs from the bar’s new karaoke machine. And his singing is a hit with all who hear it. The bar and grill begins to prosper from the show he puts on. Soon everybody is falling in love with the sad boy from France.
The story is intended to make you cry at the end. But it should make you laugh too. I can’t tell you more than that without spoiling the book.
What the book is not is child pornography. I even went in and removed the words that made the anonymous reader rain fire on my book.
But Amazon lowered the rating from two stars to one. Then they went to my other books, found a review on Magical Miss Morgan that used the word “Questionable” (referring to the main character’s decisions as a teacher, which is part of the plot) and lowered that book’s rating from a four to a three. Apparently Amazon exacts maximum revenge on anyone who lodges a complaint about a review.
On my last free-book promotion for this book, I only gave away one copy. I don’t know whether that is because of this one bad review, or if it was the glitch that Amazon suffered over the weekend that removed several books from my author’s page even though, when I checked, all of the books were still for sale the whole time. Sing Sad Songs was one of those glitched books. According to other self-published authors, this happened to many others as well.
So, now there is nothing for it but to endure it. Such is life. Sing Sad Songs has had some sad luck.
