I was thoroughly violated by Amazon in June; almost all of my books were blocked. I got them put back up, but the problem of course is that I lost most of my reviews.

Now I’ve never gotten a lot of reviews — probably because, unlike most Amazon authors, I don’t pay for them — but my reviews were previously mostly good.

At the moment however, pretty much the only reviews I have are bad.

The problem is that most of the people who leave reviews on Amazon are people who love the kind of writing I hate. Flowery, over-written, full of the cliches of the genre.

On the Amazon UK site, someone criticized THREE DAYS A SLAVE as “Poorly written and trashy.” I checked out a book that the critic gave 5 stars to, a lengthy historical fantasy romance, and I about wanted to vomit. The first paragraph consisted of six long sentences, all of which stated in different ways that the Queen was sitting looking out the window.

That’s one of the problems with modern romances. They always start with the backstory and spend ten chapters getting to the good stuff. It’s just as easy to begin “Karin took off her panties and stepped into the room”, and then explain who Karin is, as it is to begin with twenty chapters explaining who Karin is.

Here are some things you are never going to read in a book by Natasha Stevens:

• Lengthy descriptions of the weather, architecture, or clothes.
• Lengthy descriptions of shopping trips or meals
• No Wikipedia-style paragraphs about the history of this or that city or country. (If you want to know more about Prague, for example, look it up yourself.)
• Numerous rhetorical questions the narrator asks of herself, such as “how could I feel this way? How could my body betray me like this? How could I allow him to use me this way?”

I try to follow Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing (With the possible exception of the one about using adverbs. As he says, romances are full of “rape and adverbs.” It’s kind of our stock-in-trade.

One of my favorite reviews described THE HITMAN AND THE ESCORT as a “thriller with no filler” and I thought that was exactly what I was trying to do.

Anyway, THE HITMAN AND THE ESCORT will be available for free for the next five days:

Get it HERE on Amazon 

Okay, I’m back.

Right?

For now?

All my books are back up again, but most of them lost all their reviews.

If you’re a fan, please go over to my Amazon author page and say something nice about the ones you like.

I’ve been up most of the night crying: Amazon yesterday blocked ELEVEN of my books.

No warning given, and no explanation provided. Just the usual “in violation of content guidelines” and those guidelines are literally “pretty much what you’d expect.”

I’ve had a book or two blocked before, but never like this. It’s not the actual fact of blocking my works, or Amazon choosing what kind of stuff they want on their platform; it’s the cruel, cruelly random nature of the way they do it.

All my books were approved and published, and all of them were already selling. Apple is very strict about content; but they block it BEFORE they publish it.

There was no warning. There are no guidelines about what is unacceptable. (Obviously there is a LOT of stuff available on Amazon that is far, far more offensive than my stuff. And why did some of my books remain? It seems to have been a crack down on the term “dark erotica.”)

There is no appeal process (although you can contact them to talk about it, though it rarely helps.) I might be able to re-publish some of them, but they’ll have lost their rankings, which were doing very well.

Just, suddenly, 70 percent of my income has disappeared. Poof.

I’ve re-activated a few things. Here’s the sad remains of my Amazon author page.

Some of my friends envy the money I make from my writing; I would point out this as an example of how heartbreaking it can be.

Remember my story THE GARDENER AND THE TEASE?

Well, I always wanted to continue that story, but I had trouble thinking of a “hook.”

So obviously the thing to do would be to make the Gardener into a stepbrother, MMA Fighter, and former Navy SEAL, right?

Get it HERE ON AMAZON! FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED!

New adult Lisa has got a new stepbrother … and he’s a tall and handsome MMA fighter and former Navy SEAL, returned home after a mysterious conflict with some Russian mobsters. The tension between them quickly comes to a boil in this sizzling first chapter of a new adult bad boy stepbrother dark romantic thriller from Natasha Stevens, bestselling author of I OWN YOU and THE HITMAN AND THE ESCORT.

WARNING! Red hot contents! Reader discretion advised! Only for those who love a dirty-talking rough-and-ready alpha male and a wanton new adult female lead!

Get my new (ish) collection of extreme BDSM horror erotica stories HERE ON AMAZON!

Included in this collection, three stories published under another name plus one:

50 SHADES OF PAIN – A young hitchhiker makes the wrong decision in accepting a ride from an older doctor. But he has made a wrong decision, too …

50 SHADES OF BLACK  — Also published as BLACK ALPHA TAKES THE CLUB GIRL. He’s a VIP; she’s a tease who dances at the club every night. Tonight, the teasing stops!

50 SHADES OF BROWN – Dr. Brown’s 18-year-old slutty stepdaughter has violated the household rules one time too many, and now she’s going to get a very special punishment.

50 SHADES OF RED – Also published as CUCKOLDED BY THE RUSSIAN BILLIONAIRE. Stealing money from a Russian billionaire was his first mistake; but he made another mistake, in choosing a trophy wife so beautiful and so slutty …

GET IT NOW!

Put ya name on it!

I originally wrote this book under a different name, but I actually like it a lot, and feel that despite having more hot man-on-man action than my other books, it’s very distinctly a Natasha Stevens Joint. It’s got the dubcon, the dark humor, the snappy dialogue — but here it’s also got a strong female lead who’s NOT 18, and not skinny. She’s a big beautiful woman, and she likes to watch gay men get it on, and she’s not taking no crap from nobody nomore!

Get it HERE on Amazon FREE from 4/11/20116 to 4/15/2016.

The blurb:

BBW Angela is content with her life, and her slacker husband, until a chance encounter with some bikers reveals her husband’s true gay nature … and how much she loves to watch.

Embracing the outlaw life of the bikers, Angela becomes the confident and free woman she always wanted to be as she joins the biker gang as the MC’s accountant. In the process she uses them to help her right various wrongs — in the roughest and sexiest ways possible.

Graphic content, including M/M sex. Intended only for mature audiences who love graphic content😉