I’ve published a longish gest blog over at Sara Hoyt’s page. It’s about the pathological targeting of young debut authors in the Twitterverse. Please go check it out.
By now you probably all know the story of Amélie Wen Zhao and her book Blood Heir. She was a new rising star in YA publishing, about to debut a three-book trilogy with Delacorte to the tune of something like $500,000. She was justifiably stoked to land such a deal. And, aside from the money, she had the excitement that every single professional author can identify with; her first book was going to see print. I think any novelist will tell you, there is precious little that compares with that feeling. Her own words on Twitter: “I am THRILLED to announce that I AM GOING TO BE PUBLISHED.” Most fellow writers can recognize and feel her excitement with just that sentence. She expressed that excitement on her own site:
“I don’t think it’s sunk in until this very moment, when I sat down to write this post — that I am going to be a published author. I AM GOING TO BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!!!!!!”
Then came the toxic fandom.
If you’d like to read something that hasn’t been subject to a Twitter pile-on, you might like S Andrew Swann’s latest book Marked, which Publisher’s Weekly called, “bizarre, dark, and occasionally wild…”
