I am so sorry for your embarrassment. I know very well the politics of reviews from my two novels - one that was published by a small house, now defunct, and the other an e-book. Both were posted on Amazon and subject to the vagaries of the review process.

A Familiar Rain did well and received many glowing reviews - one, in particular, a professional review posted in The Educated Imagination, a journal of McLuhan and Northrop Frye. But nevertheless, I had certain enemies - spammer authors who incessantly hawked their wares on Twitter and Amazon and tried to torpedo me by encouraging friends or lackeys to post fake reviews. GRRR!!!

But then, I self-published on Amazon Kindle and was torpedoed again, but this time by well-meaning fans - people who were barely literate who decided to adopt the persona of professional reviewer and totally skew the work. Equally exasperating! But I did not then, nor ever will, attempt to censor this feedback. An author has to rely on a discerning readership - otherwise, what's the point?

Now, in your case, it seems you were unjustly maligned. It's happened to me here on steemit where I gave a fair and honest response to an author's work and was met with a bristling response. Apparently, everything should be in superlatives or best not said at all. As in your case, I actually praised the author's work and recommended him to several other steemians to follow.

I am really grieved that a professional author, or his associates would react in this way. As a matter of fact, I am one of those people who read one of the books you recently reviewed and am still deriving great benefit from it. I think I wrote you and told you that. So, please don't allow this one bad experience to stop you from posting your excellent reviews. You are professional in your approach, unfortunately, as sometimes happens, other are not.