Well, myself and the Tall Guy are off to London tonight to have ourselves a very dirty weekend, so this’ll be the last blogging day until Monday.
I’m hoping that Maili will have decided on a layout for her new blog, all the changes are making my eyes water. If she doesn’t, I may be tempted to call her a Scotch. (g)
Whilst on my blog travels, I discovered this link courtesy of a commentator on the Smart Bitches site.
The reviewer was particularly scathing, but very articulate. I must admit, I pissed myself laughing at the response from the editor at the company that had published the book. This is an excerpt of an e-mail that she sent to Steph (the reviewer).
“Look at yourself. You pride yourself on being a critical bitch, pampered, on a college scholarship that obviously led to nowheresville, you’re a failure in life, you judge books not on their merit but on your own prejudicial beliefs, and like a typical liberal you are only tolerant of people who think like you do.
Liberals are the most intolerant people on the planet, all the while “preaching” tolerance. Huh? You picked on Leah’s Way solely because your biases predispose you to hate it. That’s not a critic, that’s a propaganda machine like Goebbels was under Hitler.
The only good news is that people like you, and you specifically, don’t matter. You’re so inconsequential that it is like you simply don’t exist. Don’t bother responding. I won’t bother reading your response, and you’ll have your attention hoping nature’s worst nightmare come true–you’ll be ignored. Enjoy the rest of your miserable life. You should; you’re the only one who cares about it or who will notice.”
Pow! Bang! take that beeotch!! How venomous? I bet some authors wish they could say those kind of things to people who give them bad reviews though. Come on admit it guys, it doesn’t make you a bad person, I would if it was me. (g)
What I don’t get is why the editor bothered asking Steph to review this book in the first place. She’d been warned that the review wouldn’t necessarily be positive, and could in fact be quite scathing, if the reviewer didn’t like it. Sheesh. As the editor, I’m not sure why she even got involved in the catfight, surely this would have been less damaging coming from a reader?
Also, whilst I was doing my daily blog travelling, I came across this courtesy of LLB’s blog. I was gob-smacked. Some brazen hussy called Janet Dailey (apparently she’s a writer) plagiarised Nora’s work, years ago, and I never knew about it. Mind you, I think it was discovered the year that Princess Diana was murdered, oops sorry, killed in a car accident, so maybe it kinda just missed my scandal radar.
By the way, I’m going to be a bridesmaid for one of my friends, who’s getting married next month (she’s getting married the day before we fly to Florida), her sister sent me a text yesterday asking me if I could come up with some ideas for a hen night (bachelorette party to you crazy Americans out there) her idea was to maybe go to a Greek restaurant in Manchester. Anybody got any better ideas, because I absolutely hate feta cheese. Yech.
Angela James
August 5
12:33 pm
Karen, I remember that debacle over the Leah’s Way review from last year and if memory serves me right, it turns out that the “editor” or “publisher” of that company was also the author of the book or some such nonsense. There was a good write up on the whole business and the story behind it somewhere. I’ll see if I can’t track it down for you.
Angela James
August 5
12:39 pm
Aha! I found a link that summarizes the whole story. I’ll include that link and the snippet that was in my head:
http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/archives/001511.html
UPDATE: Well, maybe just a little more. I did a little digging into “Windstream Publishing,” Sue Eccleston’s imprint, and discovered just why she’s so intent on defending the publication of Leah’s Way. It seems that Windstream only publishes the one book, and does it from Danville, California…which just happens to be where the book’s author, Richard Botelho, lives. In fact, Botelho’s also the contact person listed for Windstream in the PMA directory. Looks like the book’s self-published–and while the full extent of Eccleston’s connection to Botelho is not clear to me**, her unprofessional conduct in “support” of the book is nevertheless a little less mind-boggling.
This is where I originally read the whole thing:
http://www.beatrice.com/archives/001291.html
Jenn
August 5
1:33 pm
As I am quite a bit older than you(g) I remember when I first read a Silhouette(a division of Harlequin) by Janet Dailey. Each story was set in one of the fifty states and was a good read for the times. She was a very popular author here but then her writing changed and I stop reading her. I remember the flap over the Plagiarism the time but and I thought Ms. Roberts handled it in the only way she could. I thought is was a sad downhill slide of an author that I had enjoyed so much.
Have a good time with the TALL Guy and give him a kiss (g) for me.
McVane
August 7
7:49 pm
*gasp!* You would NOT dare to call me Scotch, Karen! If you dared, I’ll … *thinking* … drag you into a match of hands flapping! I’m THE queen of hands flapping, I’ll have you know!
The blog job is nearly done. It’ll be all worth it, you’ll see, you ungrateful wench.
Janet Dailey – ah. She’s [or was] actually a good writer. She’s better suited to writing category romances [they were original, so different from the typical Harlequin Presents of the time], but, um, someone in her life “encouraged” her to write single titles.
Her CALDER series is quite good [I read first three], but *very* gritty [e.g. in one, the hero drunkenly had sex with the virgin heroine and doesn’t remember the following morning, and years later when they get together in the end, she still doesn’t tell him], not all that suited to romance genre. I’d describe them as the ‘family saga’ type [which actually suits her best].
Anyhow, she was to write contemporary romance novels, and I think that what was where she got desperate enough to get fucked up. Dailey doesn’t need to copy Nora Roberts to get published [she was a huge name].
From what I see, Dailey was having trouble getting love scenes right for her ‘glitz’-type contemporary romances and went looking for a way to do them. Incredibly stupid move.
IMO, in spite of her fuck-up, she is – or should be – considered one of pioneers in the romance genre, but I don’t think she’ll ever get the credit.
Karen Scott
August 7
9:17 pm
I found it very fascinating Angie, I actually thought that the editor might have been the actual author, and Richard was a pseudonym, either that or she was banging him, which isn’t beyond the realm of possibility, either way, talk about unprofessional.
Jenn, I’ve got to say, I’ve deffo never heard of her. I wonder what made her decide to copy Nora’s stuff? I mean come on, why pick Nora? Why not some obscure no-fame author? What an idiot.
Tee, Hee Hee!! Now Maili, I didn’t actually call you Scotch, I just said that I might if you don’t sort out your blog, lol!! I can’t wait to see what you finally decided on!
As for Janet Dailey, I still haven’t got the foggiest idea who she is, she may have been one of the authors I read as a teenager, but I certainly dont remember her name. So the whole plagiarism thing was because she couldn’t write love scenes? Wow. Mind you, I imagine that plagiarism goes on all the time, it’s just that most people are clever enough not to copy stuff from international best sellers, what a dumb tart.