Oh look, another author who can’t take criticism.

*Yawn*

The difference is, this author decided to take a potshot at the reviewer’s weight.

Lord.

Here’s the author’s rant in its entirety, crossing a line that no man should ever cross:

Seriously….you’re just going after me on Twitter and Good Reads now after savaging me on DarkScribe?

what is your problem with me?

the typos are LONG gone and the book has all been re-edited. That verison hasn’t been available for almost a year. I sent you that copy a year ago…you JUST got to it.

enough with the typo thing.

and can you not see that your hyper interest in woman studies and equality are tainting your ability to review a book with an even hand?

Jeesh…if you hate my characters because some are sexist or bigots…what kind of books DO you like?

and for every character you mention that is a “weak woman” or ” idiot cop” there are others to balance them out…yet you don’t even mention them.

You are the first person who has absolutely hated my book. That’s fine. If i wrote a horror novel that EVERYONE liked…i’m doing something wrong.

it’s just that your hate is coming from the wrong places.

anyway…you’ve blasted me enough. Shut up and movo on.

I can’t help but wonder if you’re pissed because the character “Janice” in my book…the one you posted an excerpt about:

“…She needed a man. Hell, maybe if she bothered to drop down below 220 lbs she might find one. That, and she’d have to not talk. Basically she’d have to become an anorexic mute and then she could possibly attract the attention of a blind man with no sense of smell.”

…Hits a little too close to home. Don’t take that out on me.

Others on good reads like my book, even with the old typos (see Monster Librarian member on here- they put Under on thier best of 2009 list…up with many published authors.)

Your opinion is fine….but don’t pretend your hate comes purely from my book….your self loathing is creeping in far more than any typos.

but hey…that’s just my opinion.

how about we both just forget about each other, okay?

Wow, he actually went there.

The self-pubbed author was a chap called Brad Quinn. Somebody needs to tell him that implying that the reviewer reacted negatively to his book because she was a fat cow who couldn’t get a man, is so not the best way to win friends and influence people.

Wanker.

Via Katiebabs’ blog.

Four years on, I wonder how many traditional romance authors still feel this way?

“I’m posting anonymously. I write traditional romances for a traditional press. My only deal with erotica is simple and market driven.

I do not want to sit by an erotica author or an erotic romance author at booksignings or attend events that publicize her books because WE DO NOT ATTRACT THE SAME READERSHIP *AND* (and after reading this thread I figure I can count on some people ignoring this second part and this is the most important part of my note so if you reply to this post please address the following aspect of my post)

MY READERS ARE LESS LIKELY TO ATTEND THE EVENT OR, IF AT A BOOSIGNING, LESS LIKELY TO APPROACH ME BECAUSE OF THE PRESENCE OF AN EROTICA/EROTIC ROMANCE AUTHOR THAN AN EROTICA/EROTIC ROMANCE AUTHOR’S READERS WOULD BE PUT OFF BY MY PRESENCE AT THE TABLE. Who loses? Me.”

Just try to tell me that isn’t so

That was a comment by an author on that old Elizabeth Bevarly hates erotic romance post that she wrote back in the summer of 2005. You guys remember it right?

If not feel free to click on the link, it makes for very interesting reading, hehe.

It has been said, ad nauseam, that all people should think before putting their thoughts up there in the internets for everyone, their pet parrot and their alien relatives to see. After all, it’s there forever, in one way or another (from Google cache to screen caps).

It has been noted that we eeeeeeeeeeeeeebol readers keep lists of authors behaving badly, and that we are not shy to share those lists with other readers whenever flaps like this latest break out.

It has been repeated all over the cyber-universe that, however unfair it may be, authors ought to behave in a different (wiser, more professional) manner than readers do–after all, authors are selling stuff to readers, and it behooves them to keep that in mind at all times.

Please note that I abhor piracy with a vengeance–as a reader, anything that will discourage authors from writing hurts me, and since it’s all about me…

However, equating “sharing within a very limited circle” to piracy and theft?

Ouch–for ALL involved.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

Now, coming at it from another perspective.

The main difference between sharing a physical copy of a book and an electronic copy is that you cannot have three–let alone six–people sitting shoulder to shoulder and reading that one copy at the same time (unless one of the six is reading it out loud, of course, and that’s not the case).

With a print book, at no point there is a second or third copy to go around. With a print book, there is a limited viable life for the copy–just ask our very own SuperLibrarian about weeding out copies that are truly no longer viable. With a print book, even one that is sold and resold via used book stores, sooner or later the reselling stops–either because the last buyer kept the copy or because the copy fell apart.

None of these is true of electronic copies.

Electronic copies are pretty much eternal–just make a new copy to your next device and voilà, you are set.

Electronic copies are pretty much like bunnies on steroids–no limit to how many you can make and give away.

Electronic piracy can be extremely discouraging for authors–if your debut novel is being downloaded a few thousand times on release day, but your sales are of a hundred or so copies on the same day, it’s difficult not to feel that at least a few of those ‘free’ downloads could have been legitimate sales.

No, there are no hard numbers on this–but, let’s us readers be realistic here: we have a book that has been buzzed up the whazzo all over big readers’ sites. Then, on release day or before in some cases, we have hundreds of thousands of downloads from filesharing sites.

Is it unreasonable for the author to feel that at least one hundredth of those would have likely been sales?

Even if it had been half of one hundredth, those sales could have made a world of difference to the author whose next contract hinges on sale numbers.

~~*~~*~~*~~*~~*~~

None of the above means that I have a solution or answer to the continued conflict between authors wanting to make a living off their writing and readers wanting cheaper and more easily accessible reading material, but hey, I’ve been told I like the sound of my voice so here you have it.

Calling a reader white trash is one of them.

Surely that’s something anybody with half a brain cell would know?

Origianlly, I wasn’t going to do a blog post on this, because I didn’t want to cause Trista Ann Michaels (Hey Trista, I linked to your page on Loose Id and everything, isn’t that great?) grief, but then I took my head out of my arse, and remembered that this isn’t a blog known for its restraint.

Might as well live by the Mean Girl code, yes?

Anyway, where was I? Yeah that’s right, here’s a really good example of what not to write on a reader blog:

I saw a link to this in my email and have been following it. It’s like a train wreck. You just can’t stop looking.

First of all, I would like to say thank you, since my book, Deadly Crimson, was one of the books you lumped into the whole m/m debate. Let me make perfectly clear, it’s not m/m, but m/f/m with no m/m interaction but this debate and interest, at least I’m hoping anyway, will increase sales and traffic and turn an already 5 figure monthly royalties into an even bigger check. So kuddos to Karen for that one.

As to her responses, though. They’re not funny or entertaining. They’re rude, classless and unbelievably white trash. Alot of people read this blog, even me on occassion. Is that really the image you want? I read that and I can clearly see in my mind some drunk out of her mind bimbo shouting trash in some backwoods bar because some other bimbo touched her man. Imagine what some professional editor might think?

It’s a shame that apparently a lack of a resonable rebuttle escaped you and you had to resort to four letter words and name calling. My two cents on the subject. Now I suppose I’ll go back into lurkdum and wait patiently for the white trash beatdown that is sure to come.

Knock yourself out.

My first feeling when I read her comment was one of confusion, who was she? Then I remembered that she was an author who I may have even read in the past. My second feeling was delight, because quite frankly it’s been a while since an author did anything so blogworthy, although I must admit, her comments were so random, one couldn’t help but wonder if she’d overdosed on coffee or something.

My cynical self naturally assumed it was an elaborate ruse to get her book mentioned on the thread. She says otherwise, but seeing as nobody mentioned either her, or her book by name, I’m not sure I believe her.

Listen, I don’t really have a problem with Trista calling me white trash, in fact it amused me a whole lot, in the way that a terrorist who was bequeathed an exocet missile would be amused.

For me, this is just blog fodder. It also means that I have a new name to add to my Authors Behaving Badly list. Unfortunate that.

Regardless of whether or not the charge was true – the fact that she called a reader, white trash, reflects badly on her as an author. And, when you’re an author who is e-published, it makes things even dicier. It may be unfair, but she’s been around long enough to know that slagging off readers in public is just not cricket.
Yes, there are double standards involved in the author/reader relationship, but that’s just a fact that authors have to adjust to, I think.

Anyway, I don’t think Treva, her publisher at Loose Id, had sent her the polite email note telling her to cease and desist at this point, (all assumptions on my part of course) because she came back, after my lengthy and may I say, restrained reponse:

Well, at least you read my correction before responding just like i knew you would. I wasn’t lying, I hit the wrong key, let’s make sure we get that point straight.

Also, I wasn’t plugging my book. I was correcting an incorrect assumption. My book isn’t m/m and I don’t want people thinking it is.

I can assure you, I know just as much about cosmo bars as I do backwoods bars. Where ever I am, I know how to act like a lady. Location doesn’t make you, your attitude and behavior does. What does your attitude and behavior say about you?

I’m sure you’re proud of you behavior. I’m sure you’re patting yourself on the back and you’ll respond, why yes I am. Good for you.

Just remember, what goes around comes around. I posted to correct a wrong and caution you on your behavior and responses because I see what people are posting about you.

It’s just a shame your nose is too high in the air for you to see it. Watch out for that rain.

The irony of her trying to caution me on my behaviour wasn’t lost on me.

Isn’t it funny though, how the people who claim to be the most lady-like, and well-mannered, always seem to be the ones who are quickest to dive into the gutter and start slinging shit around?

UPDATED TO ADD

(Just noticed that out of the four books displayed at the top of the Loose Id’s home page, three of them are MM, and that on the Coming Soon page as of 7th July 09, out of the book covers you can see, 2 of the books are het, 1 is an MMF, 1 is an MFM, and 5 are MMs.

Nope, not seemingly leaning towards MM at all. *g*)

Ivanhine, over at Ann Somerville’s blog.

Ivanhine starts:

I am pretty much an outsider and an occasional reader of DA. I don’t belong to, nor am I represented by any publishers involved in any of the discussions to which you took part. In fact, the only somewhat direct contact I have is that my epublisher got a positive review from you at Uniquely Pleasurable a short time back for another author’s work (not mine.) I don’t know your work very well, except for what is put out on the net, but there is a long history of comments, blog posts, and self-disclosures here from which any casual observer can draw a conclusion. And here is what I see, for what it is worth, and you can take it or leave it.

If you want to read any more, you have to wonder over there, because I simply don’t have time to post excerpts right now.

I have to tell you though, this was my favourite bit from the rather long, but wonderfully articulate comment:

Didn’t you understand that you can’t shit in the same place you eat?

Methinks the answer to that is a resounding, no.

Edited to add:
Apparently AS deleted the relevant post, so the links will be broken. Shame, because Ivanhine’s comments were rather splendid.

Jane at Dear Author posted about some sort of harebrained idea by some novelists to expand the reach of copyright law to the sale of used print books.

NINC on the sale of used books:

Used book sales, particularly sales of used books through the Internet, have a significant negative effect on the income of publishers and, therefore, authors, as there is no remuneration to them for any sales of used books.

…

Ninc recommends that commercial used-book sellers be required to pay to publishers a “Secondary Sale” fee upon the reselling of any book within two years of its original publication date. A percentage of these fees would then transfer to authors in accordance with contractual agreements between authors and publishers, thereby reinforcing the Founders’ intent, as stated in Article I of the Constitution, to protect authors’ exclusive right to benefit from their work.

Oh really?

Many of the comments over there expressed my bewilderment over such a preposterous idea, but then there was this gem by Misi:

Well, one day there will only be e-books and all you’ll get is a license to read, not ownership, just a lot of software is now. You can’t even resell the disc (legally) under those terms. Well, you can sell the discs, but only if you delete the content.

The current copyright law is outdated. Again, used bookstores aren’t the problem. It’s the online places that have changed the situation. The law should be changed to.

I’m almost speechless here.

I mean, my mind is just a jumble of extrapolations. I guess we could say that at some point only the person who actually paid for the book should be able to read it, and that any other person reading the same physical book should pay royalties to the author for the privilege.

I ask again, what the fuck?

I pay dearly for my weaknesses, particularly my curiosity.

During a recent post discussing LLB quitting blogging, Throwmearope mentioned how it’s become sorta the “in” thing to do. Quit then come back. Quit then come back. Quit… well, you know, like Cher or Michael Jordan: lather, rinse, repeat.

And that brought to mind author Tess Gerritsen and her earlier epic flounce.  Some of you may remember that she felt overwhelmed by the meanness. Then again, some of us readers felt rather unimpressed by the whole “if you are not a writer you have no call to write a review because you just don’t understand writing” that she espouses in her blog (yeah, I’m paraphrasing—sue me).

So, since curiosity is my besetting sin, I wandered over to TG’s blog to see how that “not blogging” thing was going. Imagine how utterly unsurprised I am to see that she’s back to it.

Ah but the goodness doesn’t end there, no siree! Following a recent link, I found this little pearl of wisdom over at Murderati: Can a bad review kill your career?

And Ms Gerritsen categorically replies, “Yes.”

Worse, the evil internet just gave an opportunity to the mean people to spew their bitterness and envy to everyone, and preemptively kill the newbie author’s career. Because bad reviews can mean no order from big chains, Walmart, CostCo, etc.

Wow, aren’t we humble reviewers powerful, huh?

But wait, wait! We can also destroy the careers of established icons such as Stephen King and Ms Gerritsen—because of the hurt we cause them.

Yes, people. Bad reviews hurt authors. How dare we hurt people we don’t know! And worse, when we ourselves haven’t sweated blood over our mind babies!

But what is this I see?

Oh no, no, my mistake! It’s only reviews like PW’s that can destroy careers and hurt writers’ sensibilities. We ignorant amateur reviewers can only make them stop blogging. (Or give them fodder for long diatribes, depending on their character)

Okay, that was catty and petty and mean. Glad to get it out of my system.

Here’s the thing, though. I don’t write reviews for writers, I write them for other readers. Yes, writing a review puts the writer’s name and book title out there for people to be aware of, which hopefully will translate into sales and benefit the author. But that is not the main reason for reviews. Reviews are written to share a reader’s view on a book with other readers.

Further, a bad review and a negative review are not the same thing.

A review that says “buy this book, highly recommended!” is as bad as a review that says “this book sucks, should have never been published”

A review that says, “I didn’t like this book; I found the writing/the editing/the plotting/the dialogue/the characterization to be terrible; I wanted to shake some sense into the characters; had a scene/plot device that drove me up the wall” is not a bad review.

But you know what? This is not about reviews. It’s about maturity. You know that whole, “If you can’t take the heat, stay out of the kitchen”? It would seem that someone who cannot take any criticism of her work without internalizing it into being about her should try harder to avoid learning of said criticism.

You know, don’t have google alert you every time your name is mentioned. Don’t go trolling Amazon for reviews. Ask your friends, publicist, agent, what not, to refrain from sending you links to reviews.

Or grow some thicker skin.

Karen’s Thoughts…

My thoughts on the matter? Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic.

Tess is either a manic depressive, or a huge fucking drama queen. I vote for both actually.

As a cyber-pal commented the other day, she seems to be the kind of person who’d take to her bed if she broke a fingernail. Harsh, I know, but seriously, come on, she’s as big a wimp as I’ve come across in Blogland. Her problem is, she wants to be universally loved as a blogger and a writer.  Somebody should tell her that that’s an ambition that’s bound to go a bit Pete Tong.

Like I wrote over at Murderati, reviews can’t end a career, only the author has the power to do that.

If you put your work out there, then you’d better be prepared to take the negatives as well as the over-the-top adulation, because no matter how good a writer you are, not everybody will love your work. What’s so difficult to understand about that?

By the way, I’m pretty sure the blog moderators will remove my comment sooner or later, it seems that they’re all about deleting comments that they don’t quite approve of.

Some guy called Jim asked the question as to why Tess keeps writing when she clearly seems to get no enjoyment from doing it. His comment was removed. I wouldn’t mind, but he wasn’t even trying to be a smart-arse.

When Tess recounted the story of the blood and sweat she’d sacrificed during the writing of The Bone Garden, only to have some reviewer absolutely go to town on it, I laughed out loud.

I recall thinking that The Bone Garden was the most self-indulgent book I’d ever come across. No wonder the reviewer skewered it. I actually like Tess Gerritsen as a writer, but TBG was nowhere near her best work. I always felt that she was trying to be a little too clever in terms of her execution, and somehow, she wasn’t able to bridge the gap between information dump, and the formation of a cohesive story. I’m a simple gal with simple reading tastes, so trying to keep up with the goings ons within two different time periods, and trying to work out who the perp was, was so tiring, it took me nigh on three months to finish the damned book.

Anyway, I digress.

Apparently this particular review was the worst in her twenty-one year writing history, and it affected her so much she wrote in a cloud of depression afterwards. Sigh.

Now I realise that writers and other creative types feel that they have the market pretty well cornered when it comes to being bombarded with criticism, but for fuck’s sake, this is no different to being told that your performance sucks in a regular job. You either tell your employer to go stick their job, or you man up, and do better.

Anyway, the asinine comments weren’t just restricted to TG, some of her fawning peers also put the ass into assholic. Here’s an example:

It seems that some reviewers find it more enjoyable (for themselves) to see how nasty they can be. The bigger the author, the nastier the review, just to get attention for themselves. “Oh, wow, you really took on famous XYZ author.”

Yeah, I’m sure that’s exactly how it is. It can’t possibly be because the reviewer thought the book sucked arseholes.

This next comment annoyed me no end:

But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.

What an absolute crock of shit. There are plenty of reviews out there that are probably better written than the work they were analysing. Not every author who gets a book contract is a great writer, that’s just a sad fact of life.

This comment from some chick called Eva made me want to gnaw my own arm off:

The more you get famous (and you are very famous !) the more some reviews will be brutal and humiliating. These reviews tell us more about the reviewer’s soul and state of mind than about the quality of the reviewed book. It is the old adage of conceiled (or maybo not so well conceiled) jealousy …

“These reviews tell us more about the reviewers soul and state of mind”? Is she kidding? So a negative review has nothing at all to do with the fact that the reviewer possibly hated the book, and everything to do with the reviewer being a jealous hag? Really?? Oooo-kay then.

The same commenter went on to add:

“So please just keep writing and do not stop. Your readers are more important than your reviewers.”

Here’s me thinking that reviewers were readers too.

Listen, I know authors who dread, absolutely dread getting a bad review. I know authors who feel like the world has ended because somebody said their book sucked, and I sympathise up to a point, but it’s not my responsibility as a reader to make the author feel better about themselves. It really isn’t.

In my opinion, authors who think that people who review their books should consider their feelings need to get a huge fucking grip.

At the time of the Tess Gerritsen/DA Lovefest, I didn’t really get why a post on a reader blog, would lead her to want to take her toys home in a snit. I mean, she’s a best-selling author for fuck’s sake, she doesn’t need to prove anything to anybody.

My advice to Tess would be to grow a pair, otherwise she’ll spend the rest of her life on medication, wondering where her dangling participles went wrong.

I usually don’t do the whole “You’re just jealous bitch!” thing, and use it as an excuse for fuckheaded behaviour, but I have to say there can be no other explanation for Chancery Stone’s never-ending rants on her blog (sorry, not linking), about Nora Roberts.

Well, there is the attention-seeking-let’s-promote-my-books-at-all-cost thing, but judging from her past fucked up behaviour, that kinda goes without saying doesn’t it?

You do remember Ms Stone, don’t you? You know, the slightly strange man-hater, who thinks that incest is romantic, and that child abuse is sexy?

Yeah, that’s the one.

Anyway, poor Chancery Stone seems to be suffering from the worst case of professional jealousy I’ve ever witnessed.

It seems that she’s got a massive hard-on for our very own Nora Roberts. No, really.

Personally, I believe that her tactic is to stir up enough shit, (the jealousy is very real too though) so that La Nora fangirls will go over to her blog to give her what for, discover her literary masterpiece, that she’s desperately trying to flog to all and sundry, and buy said book to see what the fuss is about.

Unfortunately for her, she actually needs some kind of readership to get anything going.

Anyway, because I’m always there for the desperate and the needy, I decided to post a few examples of the stuff she’s written. Here’s a fairly tame excerpt to start you off with:

Well, Nora Roberts – what can I say?

Well, first off, let me say I’d never heard of her before September the 3rd 2008. Actually, I lie, I hadn’t heard of her until September the 4th 2008, when someone posted this, “Oh, my heavens. I never thought I would live to see the day when Chancery Stone tried to administer the smackdown to Nora Roberts. NORA ROBERTS” at Karen Knows Fuck-all. But She’s Got a Big Fucking Mouth Regardless.

Hey, I’ll have you know my mouth is of average size. No, really, it is. And I do too know something. I know that Chancery Stone wrote three books that she couldn’t sell to any decent publishers, so she went the vanity press route. I also know that she wrote approximately 99% of the favourable reviews on Amazon herself. See? I do know a few things.

Anyway, here’s another excerpt from the same long-assed rant:

Nora Roberts is, in fact, not a fangirl lurker but an internationally ‘famous’ (except to me, obviously) bestseller of romantic fiction.

No, I’m not kidding. She is. Pages and pages and pages of that girl all over Amazon. All of them with “International bestseller” plastered all over them. Admittedly she is not nearly so famous in Britain as she is in the States, which may go some way to explaining me never having heard of her, and, admittedly, I haven’t read a Mills & Boon (Silhouette in the US) romance in over fifteen years, but I must have passed her in the supermarket (not personally, you understand – “Why, hello there, Nora, out gettin’ a nice bit of beef, are we?”).

You’ll have to excuse Ms Stone, I believe that she believes that she’s too literary for us romance types, hence her obvious disdain for Mills and Boon books. Such blatant snobbery is amusing, especially in light of the fact that she’s having trouble finding a decent home for her porn amazing literary masterpiece.  It’s ok dearie, those bastards in those big publishing houses obviously don’t know a genius when they see one. *g*

After discovering her ‘true identity’ I hared over to Wikipedia for a quick look, not sure if she’d be in there.

Hell, yes, overrun with fangirl trivia. And you won’t believe what I found over there. Nora has awards. Walls full of ‘em. Nora has won no fewer than 23 awards, according to this fabulous site, all but 3 of which were awarded by that esteemed organisation, The Romance Writers of America. Didn’t you just know they were going to show up again?

But that’s not all. It gets better. Nora is “a founding member of The Romance Writers of America”. No…. And she was its first “inductee in the organization’s Hall of Fame.” Well, shove me over with a feather.

I thought I’d witnessed true jealousy before, but after reading some of Ms Stone’s rantings, I can honestly say I’ve never seen anything so sad and – well… pathetic.

This comment amused me greatly: (Talking about La Nora)

You’d think with a public profile, and a reputation and all, she’d think to keep her mouth shut.

Yeah, she really wrote that.

Anyway, here’s some more before I go off to bed:

Well, Nora Roberts has certainly made a fool out of me. She’s been making mincemeat out of my ideas for writing The Perfect Novel – i.e. one that sells – for the past week now. (See the previous seven million blogs, starting with Writing for the First Wall)

It’s humiliating.

The ever-expanding list of Things Chancery Got Wrong has certainly taught me not to write about ‘how to write fiction that sells’ without first consulting a Zen master. And Nora is the Zen master. I never thought anyone would fill Barbara Cartland’s shoes after she died. I felt that her ’style’ of writing would blend away into the mists of time, along with her pink meringue frocks and her ugly little pouffes of dogs. I thought audiences had got too sophisticated. I felt sure she belonged to a world that no longer existed: the world of manly men and womanly women and adjectives placed grotesquely in the wrong place.

Shows what shit I know.

I am ashamed to say I did not know Nora wrote what is fondly called “Paranormal Romances” until her heroine went to a cupboard to find her wand. I choked, and the heroine then pulled out a broom.

Oh now she did it! She mentioned Barbara Cartland, and pink meringue frocks, whilst trying to denigrate the genre. How very individual of her. *g*

This next bit made me tear up a bit:

But all this is incidental to the ways Nora has shown me up. Here are but a few:-

1. No good title. Nora has the most unremarkable titles I’ve ever seen. In the entire week I was reading the book. I was totally unable to remember the name of it. We ended up referring to it as “Fire-up My Ass” because it was the only way we could identify it whenever it got lost. In fact, it’s as if her book titles have been made deliberately generic so that readers do indeed feel as if they are reading the same book over and over. Hmm, maybe that’s no accident after all.

2. There is no twist of lemon. This was the worst blow of all. Remember me saying that what publishers and readers wanted was more of the same, but with a twist of lemon instead of lime? Nope. Not true. Nora has no twist of lemon. With Nora there only is lime. And then lime. And more lime.

3. No plot. There’s a ‘bad force’ on the island; witch girl must beat it. That’s the plot. Apparently for all three novels. The encounters with ‘the plot’, such as they are, are so incidental that they disappear entirely by the end. There’s wolves, pentagrams, lightning and a bad Hitchcockian car and cliff-edge scene and that’s it. The ‘bad force’ has all the threat of a trick-or-treat costume. Episodes of Hector’s House are more alarming. No plot. None. I didn’t think it was possible outside a Booker novel. Wonder if her publishers have thought to enter it?

4. No villain. The ‘bad force’ is so unbad that it wanders in and out like a forgotten extra. You wouldn’t think it was possible to write a novel with no dramatic tension, but Nora’s done it. There is no tension between the heroine and the hero. There is no tension between the invisible villain and the naked-and-crystalled blue-flamed heroine. In fact, so in control is she that you never doubt for an instant that she is going to whup that big bad wolf’s ass.

5. Flowers. Yes, I didn’t expect them either. But flowers have a starring role in this novel. As do fairy ornaments and long dresses and books and homebakes. (What is it with romances and food? That’s something that hasn’t changed from Barbara’s day either.) The heroine talks more about her flowers and her garden – which looks like something out a Disney movie – than she does about the ‘threat’ of the villain or the entirely absent heroics of the hero.

6. Herself. Yep, unlike many authors who either purposefully disguise themselves in their novels, or write about themselves unwittingly, Nora actually strides into this novel as herself. Guess what character she plays? No, go on, guess. You’ll never get it. Nora plays… (drum roll)… An Author. On a book-signing. Which just happens to be a perfect, almost mythic, book signing, with lots of pre-sales (or pre-sells as she has it) and more copies than she’s ever sold before and lovely food and flowers and a book shop moving mountains for her. As if that wasn’t enough, Nora The Author has slept with the sexy hero. And gets to snog him. Gosh, no………….

I could go on with this list, but I won’t. The humiliation is too painful. Without even trying, Nora has actually finally managed to deliver me a “smackdown”. I, too, like Stephen King “am amazed by Nora Roberts”. No plot, no tension, no point even, and she’s still piling ‘em in the aisles and selling ‘em cheap. I have nothing but endless admiration for her.

Well there you have it.

Nora Roberts, romance author extraordinaire sucks, and Chancery Stone, promo troll extraordinaire, is proudly “saving the world from mediocre writing”, by advocating incest and calling child abuse sexy.

 It’s a pity she hasn’t been able to sell her masterpiece to a decent publisher isn’t it?

Apparently Slow Cooked Press (who don’t seem to exist anywhere on the internet) wrote about her book:

“You wouldn’t believe how much you could identify with a man who pees on his brother.”

Nice.

Hey I have an idea, maybe she should send her work to New Concepts Publishing, I hear they’re desperately seeking authors at the moment. I’m pretty sure she’d fit in with Madris and Co. like a pig in shit.

There are lots more rantings about Nora on her blog, and at one point she goes off on a tangent about La Nora being obsessed by families, of all things. No, I didn’t really get it either, but in Chancery Stone’s world, it probably made complete sense. I’d say she was mad as ten badgers, but I fear I would be doing badgers a terrible injustice.

One thing I can’t figure out about her though, is why she feels she has to write her own favourable reviews on Amazon if she’s doing so well, can you?

Anyway, there’s nothing left for me to say, except for this: Chancery Stone, you’re not fit to lick Nora Roberts’ boots, even after they’ve been immersed in dog shit.

Isn’t that just the most romantic thing you ever heard?

I’m sure Chancery Stone will be pleased that I posted her Youtube vid on the blog, seeing as she’s such a publicity whore.

By the way, when you look at her other videos, do you come away with the feeling that she hates men?

Just sayin’.

CHANCERY Effing STONE.

The woman is too stupid to be real. She’s spent days arguing and trying cause a kerfuffle on the Amazon boards, all because she wants to sell more books. She obviously believes that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. (I wonder how that’s working out for her?)

She then decides to act like the injured party, and posts this crap, on the Amazon romance readers board:

Hi, my name is Chancery Stone. I am the author of The DANNY Quadrilogy and I first posted on this forum two days ago. Since then I have witnessed some strange and occasionally, at least to me, entertaining behaviour, and what I want to ask you now is this:

Do romance authors hate all other authors? Do YOU hate other authors? Or is it really a small clique of authors on here that simply create this impression?

Now that we know what her usual MO is, this seems like such an obvious ploy to get people to lash out at her, thus generating more talk about her and her books. I don’t mind giving her the publicity she obviously craves, but sooner or later, she’s gonna learn that most valuable of lessons: Nothing really ever dies on the internet.

The silly arse continues:

In my short two days I’ve had authors stridently assert that my book wasn’t a romance – without them knowing the first thing about it. I’ve had them tell me it “couldn’t qualify as a romance” because it contained incest. I’ve had them assert very aggressively, and repeatedly, that ALL romance readers have to have a happy ending on their romances or they will boycott any authors that dare to do different. I’ve had them assert that Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre – the prototype romances upon which all modern romances are based – are not romances. Neither, apparently, are Gone With The Wind, or the works of Virginia Andrews.

I imagine there are an awful lot of readers around the world right now cheerfully believing they are reading some of the finest romances in the world only to be bitterly disillusioned, by this board, to discover they are not.

What an utter fuckwit.

have also been told that the definition of romance is determined by the Romance Writers of America, an appallingly xenophobic remark that we shall put to one side for just now to discuss what this says about the board. Is everyone on it really that narrow in their definitions? Are YOU only confident you are reading a romance if the RWA says so? Who exactly ARE the RWA to determine what is a romance and what isn’t, and to lay down rules – if they actually do – about it’s ‘true’ nature?

She is such an attention-seeking dickhead.

I am curious as to what all the hundreds (thousands?) of silent readers think, reading this hostility masquerading as “advice”. Does it make you want to take part in discussions? Do you feel these people represent your views? Are you afraid to venture your true feelings, ‘advertise’ your own work, say anything, indeed, in case the self-appointed clique-of-the-week decide to take you down for not conforming?

I can pretty much guarantee that the majority of the silent romance readers, think you’re a cock.

This comment had me choking on my lemon tea:

Part of this charming definition of ‘etiquette’ has, for my part, included me being threatened with the ‘report abuse’ button. It has also had me referred to as “one of those foreigners” who, allegedly, come over to Amazon.com just to break these ‘rules’ of ‘etiquette’, perhaps by stealing your jobs and raping your women.

Yes, people, this twat is actually comparing the reaction of romance readers to racism.

There are lots more, but this little comment tells you what that whole post was really about:

This sad and moving speech has been brought to you by Chancery Stone, author of The Danny Quadrilogy, volume 1 of which may be bought from Amazon.co.uk and Volume 2 of which appears here on Amazon.com.

At one point, she boasts that she has loads of readers and her sales are fabulous. But this naturally begs the question, if she’s got that many readers, why does she feel the need to go around and harp on about her books to an audience that she surely knows wont be adding to her sales figures?

This comment from ‘Francois’ had me laughing my tits off:

So we’ve established that Chancery Stone is a nutcase who’s been shilling her “novel” for upwards of fifteen years to no avail whatsoever in between masturbating to her own genius. Oh, and I have a new favorite quote:

“I like going for the jugular and watching them squirm as they try to redeem an irredeemable faux pas.” This coming from a woman who showed up on a quiet romance novel forum screeching “READ MY EDGY GAY INCEST STORY!!”

I swear, she even makes the Vicious Rhinoceros and her sidekick, look slightly less insane.

My hope for her is that one day (soon), she learns about the benefits of taking one’s medication before logging onto the computer.