I myself have been criticised on at least one occasion for using too many semicolons in my writing. I hadn't noticed at the time, but I really was overusing them. It's one of the quirks of my writing style that I now try and consciously tone down, along with starting dialogue paragraphs with "the character did this" and my inability to go three pages without someone making some kind of witty or sarcastic remark.
My use of semicolons in fiction writing is generally limited to descriptive paragraphs, where run-on sentences are more acceptable. Often, I end up with two short sentences describing the same object; a semicolon is a neat way of linking them together without resorting to "and". (See?)
The only hard-and-fast rule I have when using semicolons is that I limit myself to one per paragraph. This stops me from overloading my descriptions with them and forces me to vary my sentence structure more to keep things interesting. But in general, I see nothing wrong with using semicolons. The trick, as with most things in writing, is not to overuse them.
EDIT: After a brief discussion in the comments, I'd like to add that it's also important to make sure you're using semicolons correctly. Part of the backlash against them is due to writers using them inappropriately. Semicolons are for linking related clauses, as I did in my example. They're not just fancy commas.