Strangely enough, just as my ancient post on Mr. Patrick “fiction writer working at the very highest level today” Roscoe gained some renewed attention, another author decided to break the cardinal rule of writing in the age of the internet, that rule being: “Thou shalt not start a flame war over a review of thine book.”
I will not fully engage my snark here because Jacqueline Howett does not seem to fit in the same category as professional authors undergoing a review meltdown (Anne Rice for example). She seems slightly more entitled to a bit of sympathy for her misstep. Her repeated misstep. Missteps ending with the eloquent:
“Fuck Off.”
More’s the pity because the review in question actually suggests that she has promise as a writer, and just needs some fairly serious copy-editing. (Note to self-publishers: Everyone needs copy-editing. Get yourself some before you start uploading files. This is one of the responsibilities you assume by bypassing traditional publishing.) Now, because of her public tantrum, she’s now known for being the author who had a hissy fit over her own bad sentence construction. (She’ll be lucky if the following sentence does not become an internet meme: “Don and Katy watched hypnotically Gino place more coffees out at another table with supreme balance.”)
So it doesn’t matter if you’re professionally published, self-published, or uploading things to fanfiction.net. All public internet whining gets you is a fist full of abuse from folks who love this sort of thing, and a reputation as one of “those” authors. I mean, editors do Google you, and it doesn’t help you if this or this is one of the top results.
