The report of the man who kept his daughter locked in a cellar for twenty-four years?

A 73-year-old Austrian electrical engineer has confessed to holding his daughter captive in a secret, windowless cellar for 24 years and fathering seven children by her, police said on Monday.

The case, centred on a nondescript two-storey building in the small industrial town of Amstetten, bears chilling similarities to that of Austrian Natascha Kampusch who spent eight years locked up in a basement before escaping in 2006.

Some parts of the 60 square metre basement in which the family were kept were no more than 1.70 metres (5 ft 6 in) high and officials said the basement even contained a padded cell.

“This is an appalling crime. I know of no comparable case in Austria,” Franz Prucher, head of security for Lower Austria told a news conference.

Elisabeth Fritzl, 42, says her father, Josef Fritzl, lured her into the basement of the block in 1984 and drugged and handcuffed her before imprisoning her.

Three of her children, aged 19, 18 and 5, had been locked up in the basement with her since birth and had never seen sunlight, police said, raising worries about their physical and mental state. The younger two were boys, the eldest a girl.

The victims are receiving medical treatment, said police.

Three other children — two girls and one boy — were brought up by Josef and his wife.

As well as confessing to locking up his daughter for 24 years and siring the seven children, Fritzl admitted to burning the body of the seventh child in the heating system when it died soon after birth, said Franz Polzer, head of criminal investigations in the state of Lower Austria.

So many questions here. Do we really believe that the wife didn’t know? How did the daughter manage to give birth to these children without medical assistance?

I can’t even tell you how sick I felt hearing this story. Those poor children.

This to me perfectly illustrates why daddy/daughter play books skeeve me out. Slippery slopes and all that. And don’t get me started on so-called romance books with incest themes. Blech.

I hope he gets what he deserves in prison. A great candidate for castration and other methods of torture, if you ask me. Sick f*ck.

Apparently Ann Jacobs, EC author, has taken it upon herself to berate JC Wilder for daring to be critical of the EC cover models behaviour at RT.

Ann (on her blog) writes:

Sure, there were some possibly newsworthy happenings…the kinds of things that always draw the attention of vultures of the tabloid press and their readers alike. If you’re interested, you can learn all the dirty details, fully embellished, at blogs like smartbitches and JC Wilder’s to name just two.

Hey, I think she’s calling us readers and bloggers vultures. How do you like that? What gratitude.

Anyway, JC Wilder then puts up a post entitled, When Good Authors Go Bad:

As the stomach turns…

I have been removed from one of my publisher’s email list entirely. Once again, I’m pretty sure it was just me that was removed – but what about the other authors who work for other publishers? Chances are they weren’t booted…just little ole me.

The last instance of removing an author from their lists (without telling her by the way) was an author who complained about the publisher’s bad behavior. They too were removed from the lists without any contact from said publisher.

Now THAT is professionalism.

So basically the mods at EC booted her off their group list. Charming.

Anyway, this is a comment from Ann Jacobs in response to the above post:

My guess is, no other EC author who writes for more than one publisher has gone out of her way to diss the rest of us, our mutual publisher and the cover models who grace the covers of our EC books.

About professionalism: people who live in glass houses should be careful about throwing stones. If an author is displeased about something she feels reflects badly on herself as an author, she should take her concerns up with people who can do something about valid complaints. That would not be her fellow authors, blog readers or the world at large.

I get the feeling that Ann’s the type that would defend her publisher even if they were shafting her fellow authors blind. I’m really starting to intensely dislike those types.

I bet she’s the black-balling type too. From the tone of her e-mail, I’m pretty sure she’d be all for ostracising any of her fellow authors who she felt spoke out of turn.

And people wonder how the Madris DePastures and the Deb MacGillivrays of this world get away with treating their authors like crap.

From a reader’s point of view, I think Ann Jacob’s response reflects far worse on her, than JC Wilder’s, especially in light of the recent e-publishers behaving like fucktards episodes.

It seems to me that not only was Jacobs trying to gag Wilder, but the above response seemed a tad threatening too. A kind of ‘Behave, or else’ message.

She obviously learned those intimidation tactics from the higher ups at EC. Did I just say that out loud?

Thanks to you-know-who for the tip-off.

Blatantly stolen from Eve Vaughn’s blog.

Anybody else notice that Kathryn (sp?) Falk’s reception was noticeably muted?

Just sayin.

I jest not.

All over one post that Jane wrote. A post that pointed out that perhaps Tess writing something as asinine as the following, wasn’t the brightest thing in the world to do:

Now, I’m not saying that Ms. MacGillivray wasn’t out of line here. But her major foolishness was that she got caught at it.

Well, Jane had a point methinks.

A commenter over at DA pretty much summed up the situation for me:

Tess’ opinion is fine, so is mine. I don’t get upset with any reviews, she gets upset with bad ones. Though fair warning that quite a few readers and authors tend to get just as pissy with authors who don’t know how to take reviews.

Right on.

Hopefully Gerritsen will get her Big Girl Knickers and put them on, because there are worse things in life than being criticised, especially when you inserted your own foot in your mouth in the first place.

UPDATE

Oh apparently her blog hiatus or whatever it was, didn’t last very long, she has another post up telling her readers that Dear Author are calling them ‘Flying Monkeys’, and urging her sainted followers to stop bashing in the comments section. Oh yeah, and she also thanks Nora Roberts for being supportive.

At this point, one commenter used the term flying monkeys, not Dear Author. She should at least get that right. But I guess she’s too busy crying in her cornflakes to at least check her facts.

If you guys don’t really believe that there’s a Reader v Author disconnect here in Blogland, well I just see this as further proof. Because unless you’re fawning over authors, deep down, a lot of them just aren’t that interested in hearing your opinion as a reader. I could name a few who belong in that bracket, but I just don’t have time for the drama or the RFGs.

Oh wow, I haven’t laughed so much since Mrs Giggles’ Trixy Lion Publishing website.

Lisa Charlton a newly self-published writer, put the following post up on Lulu.com:

My new book is called in a childs heart and i am really very interested to know what everyone thinks about it. If you’re interested then please feel free to visit my link at http://www.lulu.com/content/2122930 Thanks for your time reading my post guys i do really appreciate it.

Now, what was I saying about authors and coherent writing in public?

For you lazy buggers who can’t be arsed to click on the link, here’s how the first few responses went:

(David, a regular at the forum speaks up first)

You have numerous English language usage problems on that page–too many to make me want to review your work. (Right at the beginning, “Hi guys welcome to my storefront i do hope …” should be at least corrected to “Hi guys, welcome to my storefront.

I hope …” ‘Guys’ is also a little too impersonal and unprofessional a term to greet with, in my opinion. And your English doesn’t improve later in the page.) The giant Forex add is also a giant turnoff. Are you selling your writing, or multi-level-marketing stuff? Focus the topic of the page to one or the other, not both–you lose the message in the forest.

In my opinion, ‘hedonism’ is not a good term to use to use in conjunction with the title, “in a child’s heart” (it should be capitalized to “In a Child’s Heart”). I’m not interested in reading about the perspective of a spoiled brat, and that is what your quotation seems to imply the book is about.

If it really is, why would I be interested in that? Does the child change? What is the catharsis that brings them to a greater understanding of humanity? The portion of the blurb I read doesn’t give any clues about such an event taking place.

I sincerely hope that this brief critique is helpful, and is useful on your quest to make the writing appealing to a wide audience, and a commercial success. If it isn’t, respond accordingly, and I will remove the body of this post if possible.

David

Lisa, (bless her cotton socks) then replies with:

It is my very first time writng a novel and i obviously know that i have alot of learning to do where this subject is concerned. Did you actually read what it is about or just jumped to conclusions before you carried on?

The charactor in the book is fighting an illness called obsessive compulsive disorder. You would do well in getting your facts right before getting insulting towards another persons work. And read carefully about what the charactor is going through in the stages of her life coping with a mental illness.

David then writes back in response to her unintelligible comments:

I read this:

…Having tantrums on occasions suits me fine, for my folks on the other hand, its either respiratory problem, angina or manic depression, anxiety attack and a generous helping of stress and high blood pressure. And I haven’t even started yet!…

I said what I said hoping that it might help fix the problems. If you don’t want input towards improving your work, I’ll remove the body of these posts.

Best wishes,
David

Lisa, poor deluded Lisa (what was I saying about authors and public writing?) responded with this rant:

Help is one thing insults are another thing entirely. Did you actually read the novel, or does the fact that i written about a mental illness insult you enough not to read about the subject? You, clearly have chosen to be out of “context” about my work over two paragraphs i have written in my book.

I do take constructive criciticism very well and appreciate a wide variety of comments, what i do find insulting is people whom find themselves being called a professional is when they don’t even try to read what the author is promoting, instead only finds that a critic has not done the job properly by not reading the material that is available to them and still thinks that they can comment on something they have no idea about what the subject the book is based on. Does this sound familiar to yourself?

oh and by the way, you didn’t read this ” I am here to do something very obsessive, very compulsive and very much needed advertising for my new hedonistic novel In a childs heart! it is based on my charactor aisling who is having to live with both of parents whom personalities match those of a mis-guided missiles, whilst having to deal with fact that she has obsessive compulsive disorder.” Meaning that obsessive compulsive disorder is known as a serious mental illness.

Emily Veinglory then chimes in with what most people are thinking at this point: (more…)

Wow, I only just realized that the Romantic Times convention has been going on this week.

Is it me or has there not been much buzz about it this year?

I’m not a tree hugger by any stretch of the imagination, and I rarely sign petitions, but in light of the whole Deborah MacGillivray scandal, I want Amazon to make a change that prevents this kind of crap from ever happening again.

Jane at Dear Author has organised a petition, and we need as many people to sign it as possible, so that she can take it to Jeff whatshisface, who can hopefully do something about the current reviewing system.

For those people who have been living in Timbuktu for the last week, Jane gives a great summary of the events here.

So what are you waiting for? Go and sign!

The name of the current British Prime Minister?

This is a serious question. Without the aid of Google, would you know what his name is?

The reason I ask is because he’s currently in the US, and nobody there seems to have a clue as to his identity. I daresay The Pope got a better reception (which I guess is par for the course anyway, seeing as he isn’t a politician) than he did.

It has to be said though, he’s just been voted the most boring man in England. Ouch.