Greetings gentle readers. For those who have not seen enough of blogs mentioning me this weekend, here is my regular guest post and this month I am looking at reviews and the star ratings.

Why now? Well in case you missed it this weekend saw the release of a short story of mine called Diary Dates and I have been fortunate enough to have already had several reviews posted.

I have never before experienced so many people sending me apologetic messages in advance of my reading their reviews. I started to fear the worst. But let me tell you readers all, I love your honest reviews and I agree with all of them. We all hate 1 or 2 star ratings and luckily there were none of those, but I should say that I am not a fan of all 5 star ratings either. If a story gets a 5 star rating where is there left to go? Also the reviewer has then set the bar so high that when a reader does not share their opinion that it encourages conflict. There are even reviewers who will only post a review if they have given it 5 stars. Those people do not need a 5 star system because they only need 0 for don’t like and 1 for like!

For the system to be fair, ratings should follow a statistical norm where the fewest books earn 1* or 5* ratings and the largest number achieve the median rating of 3* Those of you familiar with any kind of moderated scoring will be familiar with the bell curve graph upon which they are plotted.

People seem to like my story Diary Dates and above all they love the characters. That pleases me more than I can say. The general criticism was that the story is too short, ended too soon and left the characters in a Happy For Now rather than Happy Ever After situation. Well I tend to agree with you. I have had a 5* rating and of course I treasure it. However, the average rating is 3.5 and I am more than happy with that. I am left with room to learn,to develop and to grow as a writer.

When it comes to short story writing I believe that perfection is a lot more difficult to achieve and I know that I am not anywhere near that yet. I do however promise all my readers and reviewers that I will keep trying for perfection in the hope that I might throw up some acceptable tales along the way.

Most seem to think this story worthy of a 3.5 rating and I wholeheartedly agree with that. Thank you for all liking my characters and yes I grew fond of them too and have no intention of letting young Andrew disappear at the end of his studies! The story is not yet done.

Author Bio

Author T.J. Masters recently and somewhat reluctantly passed his 60th birthday. After a long and happy teaching career T.J. wanted to follow a new path before senility set in. Books and stories have been a lifelong passion and there are many tales waiting to be told.

As a happily partnered gay man T.J. chooses to write what he knows best. His overactive and ever exploring mind is probably described by the Oscar Wilde quote that “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”.

Website: www.tjmasters.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tjmasterswriter/

Twitter: @TJMasters