Before I became an author, I imagined writing, readers, silence, dogs, and stories. I did not imagine scammers, fake book clubs, ARC platforms, dashboards, or how quickly people try to sell writers their own dreams back to them.

Author life • scam messages • dreams with invoices attached

The Dream

Writing books and being an author was a dream that lived inside me since I was a little girl, from the moment I learned how to read and write, around five years old.

I still remember arriving home, very proud, showing my father that I could read. Back then we were living in Yemen. No, I am not from Yemen, but my father was building a power station there, and we lived in Sana’a for a year. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, and I still remember a lot of it.

That is a conversation for another time, but I want to say this: when I lived there, Yemen was a beautiful country with amazing, loving people.

So, as I was saying, writing was always a big part of my life. I wrote and drew in my notebooks. I wrote about everything: real things that happened during the day, invented stories, and sometimes a mix of both.

I invented so many things that some people thought I was lying.

I was not lying.

I was creating fantasies of all kinds for my notebooks. A blank page, for me, was a waste of paper.

“A blank page was a waste of paper.”

Growing up, life took me away from the dream of being a writer. I became something completely different from any kind of art. I became a manager in industries that have their own kind of glamour, yes, but at least in my field, no art.

Then one day I decided: no, it is time. I am going to live the second half of my life doing exactly what I dreamed of as a child.

And of course, because I am me, I romanticized the whole thing.

I imagined myself in a country house, in the kind of house they call a chalupa here in Eastern Europe. Near a lake. No neighbors. Just me, my dogs, and my books. I would write, readers would find me, and I would continue writing.

I imagined connecting with readers through emails and staying away from social media and everything around being public.

I could see myself waking up in the morning, making tea, going outside with my dogs, watching them play, while the story I was going to write later unfolded in front of me.

Yes.

You got it right.

I romanticized my new career.

The Reality

Knowing absolutely nothing of what I know today, I left my job and started writing.

And I wrote.

And I have to say this honestly: I had never felt happier.

I wrote, developed, expanded, and opened all the ideas that had been living inside me for years. I was the happiest I had ever been in my whole life. Thinking about it almost makes me want to cry.

Just kidding. I am not really the crying type. I would love to be, very cinematic, very useful, very “main character near a window,” but no. I am more like that scene in The Holiday where the character sits in the car trying very hard to cry and nothing happens.

So here I am, trying.

Still not crying.

Back to the story.

I felt so lucky to live in a time when the internet exists. A time when you can self-publish, upload your book, press a button, and suddenly…

Yeahhhh.

I am an author.

And then…

Nothing happened.

Yes. Nothing.

Nobody was reading my book. Nobody knew who the hell I was.

And then came the very obvious question that somehow had not appeared inside my romantic little chalupa fantasy:

How are readers supposed to find me if they do not know I exist?

Before that, while I was dreaming, I had also chosen a pen name. A name that described who I am and had something to do with how I see life, stories, and identity.

Lupe Farkas.

Again, another story for another time.

But back to this story.

I had a book. I had a pen name. I had a dream.

And I had no real idea how readers were supposed to find any of it.

“It was just me, my Coke Zero, and a dream.”

The Scammers

So I created an Instagram account.

A few days later, bang.

Loads of pages started trying to connect with me.

The messages were almost always similar:

And I was delighted.

I was happy.

I thought, oh my goodness, this is amazing. People are seeing the book. People are interested. Maybe this is how it starts.

So I answered.

That was bad.

It was bad because most of these people were not real creators. They were not real book enthusiasts who had created pages because they loved reading. They were offering to read my book, or have others “read” my book, for money. They were offering reviews for money. Promotion for money. Book club access for money. Podcast access for money.

I did not pay anyone, but I started noticing things.

The same kinds of messages. The same kinds of photos. The same weird language. The same sudden enthusiasm before they could possibly have read anything. The same “beautiful opportunity” that always ended with a payment.

One of them told me beautiful things about my book and said they wanted it in their book club. They said there would be a virtual meeting with readers. Then came the little detail: I had to pay to participate.

And I thought, no. That is not good.

Soon after, some of those accounts disappeared from Instagram completely.

I will not lie: it made me sad.

It made me upset because they were not only trying to get money from me. They were playing with my dream. They were touching the deepest, most personal, most emotional part of me.

That is the part I think people do not understand.

Scammers do not only try to take your money.

They touch your dream.

And that is why it hurts.

“They do not only try to take your money. They touch your dream.”

The ARC World

But not all bad things come only to hurt you.

Because of those messages, I had to start digging. I had to understand what actually happens after an author writes the book.

And then a whole world opened up for me.

The ARC world.

I did not know how much early reviews mattered.

I did not know how many authors try to build an ARC team before publication.

I did not know how important it was for a new book to have readers before the book officially goes out into the world.

I had heard people talk about numbers, about early reviews, about how readers often feel safer choosing a book that already has social proof. Some people talk about fifty reviews as if it is a magic door. I do not know if the door is magic, but I understood very quickly that launching with no early readers makes everything harder.

And I had done exactly that.

I debuted my novel with no ARC team, no early reviews, no launch structure, no nothing.

It was just me, my Coke Zero, and a dream.

And yes, I learned the hard way.

I rushed into it. I released the book with some errors, with no reviews, with no real plan, and with a lot of feeling. Just a dream and Coke Zero, again.

Now, three months later, I feel smarter.

Do I know everything? No.

Absolutely not.

But I know more than I knew when my book came out, and that made me take a few decisions.

And I decided to become more present online, but in my own way. Do I know exactly how I will be present on social media? No. Of course not. Let us not become too organized. It would be suspicious.

But I know I want my presence to be built around words, books, reviews, podcasts, and real conversations.

Not performance.

Not fake visibility.

Words.

The House of the Spirits Moment

While I was trying to understand ARC reading and review platforms, I started reading reviews differently.

Then, one day, I decided to reread one of my favorite books: The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende.

I went to check the reviews thinking I would find people talking about the beauty of her world, her characters, the atmosphere, the strange magic, the women, the green hair, and the way she builds a whole family and a whole country inside one story.

And then I saw the reviews.

My goodness.

One star for The House of the Spirits.

Mean reviews. Aggressive reviews. Extremely hard reviews. Reviews so brutal they actually made me feel sad for Isabel Allende, which is ridiculous because she is Isabel Allende and does not need me protecting her from Goodreads like a tiny literary bodyguard.

But still.

I sat there thinking: if even Isabel Allende gets reviews like this, if even The House of the Spirits can be judged like a criminal, who am I to think my book will be safe?

That scared me.

“If even Isabel Allende gets reviewed like that, who am I to think my book will be safe?”

But it also made something very clear.

I do not want to be that kind of reviewer.

I wanted to create a safer space for authors. Not a fake space where every book is perfect. Not a place where criticism disappears. But a place where books are read with care.

Because yes, sometimes I might not like a book.

Sometimes a story will not be my personal taste. Sometimes the pacing will not work for me, or the characters will not reach me, or I will feel the book needed more tension, more depth, more something.

But that does not automatically mean the book is bad.

That is the difference I care about.

When you review seriously, especially as an ARC reader, you cannot only ask, “Was this my personal taste?”

You also have to ask:

That is the kind of reviewing I want to practice.

Honest, yes.

But not cruel.

Critical, yes.

But not careless.

Personal, yes.

But not pretending my personal taste is the final law of literature.

Because authors do not need reviewers who treat books like criminals.

They need readers who pay attention.

And that is when I understood what I wanted Lupe Farkas Reviews to be: not a place of blind praise, but a place of attention.

“A safe space does not mean a place without honesty. It means a place without cruelty.”

Why I Became an ARC Reader

So I decided to see how it all works from the other side.

I applied to become a book reviewer on different platforms, including NetGalley.

And then I started reading amazing books from amazing authors.

That is when the answer arrived.

I am an author who writes, yes.

But I am also a reader.

And I want to review books for other authors with the same care I hope someone brings to mine.

I do not read to judge from above. I read to understand the heart of the book and what the author is trying to show me.

That does not mean I will love every book.

It does not mean every review will be five stars.

It does not mean I will pretend something worked for me when it did not.

It means I will read with attention.

I will look at the structure, the characters, the emotional pacing, the atmosphere, the intention, the reader impact, and the places where the story either landed or needed more.

Because when you love to read, you love authors too.

And I love authors.

Authors are amazing. It is not easy to sit down and create a world. It is not easy to take something that lives inside you and put it into words. It is not easy to give strangers access to your characters, your heroines, your monsters, your grief, your hopes, your strange little creations.

At the end of the day, many authors want something very simple and very impossible:

Read me.

Understand what I was trying to say.

Meet my characters.

See the world I built.

See the thing I carried.

That is why I review.

That is why I want to talk about books on the podcast.

That is why I want to interview authors like me, authors who are out here trying to write, trying to be read, trying to be understood, trying to keep going.

Why Authors Read Other Authors

And maybe someone will wonder:

Why does an author feel the need to become an ARC reader and a beta reader too?

First of all, because to write well, you need to read a lot.

Not casually. Not once in a while. A lot.

You need to read what works, what does not work, what moves you, what loses you, what surprises you, what makes you jealous in the best way, what teaches you something without asking permission.

Second, because books are not a side interest for me.

Books are my passion.

Words are my oldest obsession.

I read across genres because I love stories in all their strange forms. I love literary fiction, psychological fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, witchy books, memoirs, children’s books, audiobooks, indie books, traditionally published books, and the unexpected book that walks into my life and rearranges the furniture.

So yes, I will read books while I write books.

I will write about books while I write my own.

I will speak about books while learning how to speak about mine.

Because for me, this is not a distraction from being an author.

This is the ecosystem.

Reading, writing, reviewing, podcasting, talking to authors, discovering stories, learning from books, and building a literary life around words.

For Now, I’ll Be Here

Maybe one day the dream will still be possible.

Maybe I will live somewhere quiet, maybe in the middle of nowhere, reading, writing, walking with my dogs, letting stories unfold while readers find my work and allow me to keep going.

I do not know yet.

For now, I have decided I will be here.

Online, but not as a performance.

Visible, but not available for every demand of the algorithm.

Present through words, through reviews, through the podcast, through the Journal, through books I read and books I write.

Speaking and writing about my greatest love:

words.

There are many things I still want to say about these first months of my new adventure, and I hope you will be here with me.

And yes, I review books.

And yes, I do it for free.

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