Okay, Who’s Been Drinking?

Remember Mandy Baldwin? I guess she’s still around but her last two books have not exactly hit the NYT bestseller list. Anyway, back in May of 2014 I wrote about her and her sleazy review tactics, twice on the 11th because I had to include a response to the Ugly Green Hate Site and once on the 14th because TUGHS just couldn’t seem to grasp what I was talking about and were flinging their usual poo with all the hysteria and enthusiasm they could muster.

Today I was skimming my emails and found this little gem:

Because, really, not posting anything on Mandy in over 4 years is the very definition of a stalker. (rolls eyes) And as for being anonymous, hello? Sometimes you just have to wonder how someone so stupid has managed to survive. And, of course, 9MM  is him?/her?self anonymous.

I needed a good laugh and 9MM (really?) provided.

 

Immortalized in Pigeon

I’ve decided that my handsome little friend needs a name. He’s a discerning little bird, and an expert on pigeon, uh, excrement.

I’ve decided he must be a he, for a close up shot like this I think a female would have had a little gloss on her beak and a little liner to accentuate those gold eyes. So my pigeon is a male. If I have a pigeon expert in my followers feel free to tell me if I’m wrong. (Annie Rice is now telling her people of the Page there’s only 9 or 10 of you so we’ll not be posting pictures of our end of summer party, that would seriously agitate the old girl)

I wanted to give him a name but not just any name, one that would show how I honor those special self-published authors. You, dear readers, know the ones I am referring to. And then, like a post popping up on Amazon, it came to me.

(drumroll please)

Gotcha.

And now, the moment you all have been waiting for, meet-

PAUL

Somewhere along the way, the whole game changed

[reblogged from Linda Hilton]

 

Once again, I can’t post this on my regular blog, because it feeds to Goodreads, and I’m pretty sure this would get me kicked off there.

 

Fortunately, you’re free to skip this TL/DR rant and I’ll never know.  😉

 

So, here’s what happened:

 

Irate author Greg Strandberg posted on his blog on Goodreads a screed against one particular reviewer there who goes by the name Humdinger C. Eggnoggin.  ‘Dinger, as I sometimes call him, writes mostly brief but often scathing negative reviews, and as far as I know all are based on a perusal of just the Kindle sample.  Strandberg took issue with this, with ‘Dinger’s overall low average rating, and posted this:

 

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_posts/6794001-reviewing-only-the-look-inside

 

(If it has disappeared, never fear; I have a screen shot.) (Update: Yes, it has disappeared.)

 

 

 

 

Strandberg, unlike ‘Dinger, was less than fully forthcoming:  He failed to disclose that Humdinger C. Eggnoggin had reviewed his book,

 

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1020246999?book_show_action=true&page=1

 

based on the free sample, and found it lacking.

 

The book ‘Dinger reviewed is The Hirelings. Apparently it’s a sequel to something, but I’m not sure what.  Nothing in the book’s official description mentions a previous book, though the reviewer does.

 

‘Dinger’s 2-star Goodreads review is the only one the book had at that time; it has one rating on Amazon, a brief and not very enthusiastic 3-star comment.  I have since added my Goodreads review as well.

 

Strandberg, who indulges the book’s listing on Amazon with his own glowing, and some might say overbearing, praises, is apparently disappointed.  By “disappointed,” of course, I really mean butt hurt.  So he wrote his nasty little blog post, put it up on Goodreads, and sat back to watch what he expected to be a roast of ‘Dinger.

 

It didn’t happen.  Oh, someone came to Strandberg’s defense, but more people pointed out that ‘Dinger was doing nothing wrong . . . and that in fact Strandberg was in the wrong for calling out a Goodreads member.

 

Though both Strandberg and at least one of his defenders insisted the blog was nothing more than an opinion piece and did not attack (or, as one wrote, “attach”), and that no one had been called names, several people flagged the blog for violating Terms of Service’s prohibitions against calling out other members/authors/reviewers.  The post was subsequently  removed either by or on the order of Goodreads.

 

In fact it was Strandberg who wrote — and bolded himself for emphasis — the following:

 

That’s why I’m glad we have people like Humdinger C Eggnoggin – dipshits that can make us all feel 10 times smarter!

 

And yes, Mr. Strandberg, just to repeat what I’ve already said:  I took a screenshot so that when the blogpost disappears, you won’t be able to claim you didn’t write it.

 

It was Sunday night when all of this happened, and I was exhausted.  I’d been at the computer all day.  Instead of enjoying my week-end as a time of relaxation, I was trying to catch up on some personal work that had been neglected during the week.  My eyes were dry and itchy, my back was tired, and my fingers were at their wit’s end.  When a GR friend alerted me to Strandberg’s post, I read it and saw red.  Fortunately, I’m old enough to know not to post in the heat of anger — or butthurt — so I wrote my piece and posted it somewhere safe.

 

After a brief night’s sleep, I lay in bed this morning still thinking about what Strandberg had posted and what I had written in reply.  And I realized there was much more to the story than what appeared on the surface.

 

And so here is my response to Greg Strandberg, greatly expanded from what a few of you saw last night:

 
Josh Olson still said it best.

 

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2009/09/i_will_not_read.php
Those of us who have been reading for a very long time, and especially those of us who have been reading unpublished and hitherto unpublishable manuscripts for a long time, don’t need to read more than a couple of pages (at most!) to know the rest of the book is crap.

 

And some of us are brave enough to risk the bullshit comments from you butthurt “authors” who just can’t bear the thought that your precious baby isn’t going to be the next superstar.

 

None of you ever bitch about the thousands upon thousands upon thousands upon thousands of fake, bought, sockpuppetted 5-star reviews.  Shall I link you to a few of the fiverr accounts of your own fellow authors who offer, for five fucking bucks, to post your own review of your own book under their account?  Where’s the outcry about that?

Where’s the outcry about the hundreds and hundreds of review swap reviews, every effing one of ’em five effing stars, from authors reviewing each other because no one else will touch their pieces of garbage?  They haven’t read those books.  Maybe they bought them, but they didn’t read them.

 

Someone has to get out there and tell readers the goddess blessed truth — There are a lot of crappy books out there.  I’m one of those someones, and yes, I frequently review on the basis of a sample.  And most of the time I don’t give very many stars.

 

But I am so damned sick and fucking tired of being called a bully or a  meanie or a troll or a liar or now a dipshit because I didn’t read the whole piece of shit.

 

It’s still a piece of shit.  Humdinger — whom I don’t know, though we follow each other’s reviews — knows a piece of shit when he/she sees it.  So do I.  There are a lot of other people who do, too, but they’ve been bullied into silence by the likes of . . . Greg Strandberg . . . because the truth is so hard to take.

 

I can’t call out the fake reviewers by name, but I know who they are.  I’ve watched their accounts disappear from Goodreads (but not Amazon!) day by day by day by day, because they’ve been identified as paid shills, as PR professionals, as sock puppets.  I can’t call them out, but you, Greg Strandberg, you blithely ignore the Goodreads Terms of Service to complain about someone who hasn’t done anything wrong at all, save tell the honest truth.

 

That’s what Goodreads has come to, and that’s damn fucking sad.

 

That’s where last night’s rant ended.  And where today’s begins.

 

It’s more, of course, than just Goodreads.  Or Amazon for that matter.  Or Kindle or Smashwords or fiverr or anything else.

 

The whole art of writing and the whole business of publishing has been turned into a really stupid game of some sort, where the object is not to write a good book nor even to sell a lot of copies.  Instead, it’s all about “winning” this game, in which “winning” has come to be defined as gathering the most reviews, the most five-star reviews, the most Listopia votes, the most Facebook likes, the most Twitter retweets.  In other words, it’s about putting on the trappings of literary success without the success.

 

I want to go back to that Josh Olson essay and post the core comment, which I’ve quoted many, many times before because it’s so spot on:

 

It rarely takes more than a page to recognize that you’re in the presence of someone who can write, but it only takes a sentence to know you’re dealing with someone who can’t.

 

(By the way, here’s a simple way to find out if you’re a writer. If you disagree with that statement, you’re not a writer. Because, you see, writers are also readers.)

 

There are plenty of anecdotes about editors, agents, critics, reviewers, and their techniques for letting writers know their writing isn’t up to par.  Damon Knight allegedly stuck a 3 x 5 card into the manuscript at the point he stopped reading, for example.  I’ve heard stories of writers who attended prestigious workshops and had their work read by noted author-instructors who drew a big bold red line at the point they felt the manuscript would have been rejected by most editors, and more often than not the red line was on the first page.  This, remember, was in the days when a hard-copy manuscript started one-third to one-half of the way down the page.  That red line often appeared in the first paragraph.

 

How do we know, based on a small sample, that the book isn’t going to pan out?  Or at least not pan out for us?  It would be easy to say, “We just do,” but that’s not fair, even though it’s true.

 

First of all, the important thing to keep in mind is that the review is subjective.  Whether it’s by Humdinger C. Eggnoggin or by the acquiring editor at HarperCollins, it’s one person’s opinion.  Even the most successful editors can be wrong in their assessment of the marketability of a given book.  Reviewers aren’t “wrong,” as such, though they may get some facts wrong.  It’s still just an opinion.

 

Second of all, those of us who reject a book on the basis of a very short sample read are doing so because we don’t think we are going to enjoy the rest of it.  We may suggest that readers who share our tastes probably won’t enjoy it either, and we may even opine that the book is so bad no one will enjoy it, but even at that, the opinion stated is based on what we believe our own prospects for reading pleasure in the book are.

 

I know, for example, that if I open a Kindle edition on my K4PC app on my computer and the pages are filled with excessive white space because the text is double-spaced with block paragraphs, I’m not going to like it.  I don’t have to read even the first paragraph.  It would be the same way if the book came from HarperCollins or was a printed hard copy; my personal reading pleasure is facilitated by single spacing and indented paragraphs.

 

But it’s not just a matter of those double-spaced block paragraphs by themselves.  The poor formatting strongly suggests that the person who formatted the digital edition and/or the author who approved the formatting doesn’t know what a book is supposed to look like.  That in turn strongly suggests that the person isn’t a voracious reader who is familiar with books.  And almost every time, people who don’t read don’t know how to write.

 

Again, see the Josh Olson quote.

 

I don’t care how many five-star ratings and gushing, multi-paragraph reviews a book has: If I look at the sample and there are punctuation errors in the first paragraph, I’m pretty sure there will continue to be punctuation errors throughout.  I can’t get lost in a story that’s laced with bad punctuation.  That’s just the kind of reader I am.  I was taught how to punctuate, and when I see commas where there should be periods and apostrophes that aren’t there at all or are there when they shouldn’t be, I can’t read the text.  I don’t care how great the story is, I can’t see it.

 

There’s a corollary to that assessment, though.  If the story is really terrific, the punctuation and grammar and other errors will disappear.

 

They will.  Even to the most persnickety of grammar dragon eyes, the errors vanish if the story is good enough.

 

It never is.

 

And those of us who have read enough know it.  We know that there are elements present in maybe the first 100-250 words of any novel that will make it or break it for us.  It’s not just the punctuation or the paragraph indents or the line spacing.  It’s the word choices.  It’s the point of view switches.  It’s the descriptive narrative.  It’s a lot of subtle and not so subtle little things that are either present when they shouldn’t be or aren’t present when they should be that prove instant turn-offs.

 

Writing a book is hard work.  Writing a good book is almost impossible work.  If the actual writing takes six weeks or six years, there is also the time spent learning the craft, all the books that have been read and reread and digested and analyzed.  There’s the editing and critiquing, the rewriting and rereading.  There’s the agonizing and dreaming and determining which key scene is going to be enhanced and which beloved but extraneous scene cut.

 

It’s the understanding of character motivation and internal plot consistency.  It’s the recognition of what names work and what names don’t work.  (Hello?  Greg Strandberg, are you listening?)  It’s the careful construction of multiple character arcs so that they all come together with seamless perfection at the end.  It’s the planning and foreshadowing, it’s the backstory and set-up.

 

People who don’t know how to do that, who don’t even know that they are supposed to know how to do that, are people who write lousy opening paragraphs.  Their friends won’t recognize it, and their paid reviewers won’t tell them.  These writers are so afraid of criticism that they simply don’t want to hear about it.  Why?  Because if they acknowledge the criticism it means they have to do it all over again the right way, the hard way.

 

And that’s not what they want to do.  They don’t want to write; they want to have written.  They want the Wizard of Oz trappings of success, the medals and the certificates, the diplomas and badges, but they don’t really want to write.

 

There’s a huge disconnect here.  It’s not the same game any more.  Writers are no longer writing for readers, creating stories that they truly want readers to love and enjoy and remember.  I always felt that writers had been given a Gift, a very special Gift that allowed them not just to Imagine in ways other people couldn’t but also to share that Imagine with others.  To share the Gift, because that sharing, that ability to share, was part of the Gift.  It didn’t work if you didn’t share.  Does that make sense?

 

And so I was in awe of those writers who had the Gift and who so generously and wondrously shared it with me.  Walter Farley and Jim Kjelgaard and all the Carolyn Keenes and Jackson Scholz and John R. Tunis and Rider Haggard and Conan Doyle and so on.  I hoped that maybe I had a little bit of the Gift and hoped that if I tried hard enough and worked diligently, I, too, could share it with readers out there.  But even if I couldn’t, even if no one else ever read anything I wrote or never liked it if they did, I knew that the Gift was never going to be mine to keep unless I shared it.

 

What seems to have happened now is that there are a lot of people who have an entirely different concept of the Imagination.  It’s not something they are inspired to share but rather something they use to justify the opposite.  They don’t owe their readers anything at all.  Not good writing, not good stories, not honesty.  They feel no obligation to learn the craft, to pay their dues, so to speak.  All of the Gift seems to be something they feel entitled to receive rather than give.

 

They pay for glowing reviews and know that it’s wrong, yet they do it because they find some justification.  They need to do it because others are doing it?  Because without reviews they can’t sell their books?  But their books aren’t good enough to sell!  No one is buying them!  Even with the glowing reviews, even with the sockpuppet upvotes and the Listopia spam, the books don’t sell.

 

And the writers of these books cannot bear to be reminded of that reality.

 

Nor do they understand how this hurts the other writers, the ones who don’t spam and who don’t buy reviews from fiverr and from social media promotion companies.  They don’t understand how it hurts readers, probably because they’ve never been readers.  It’s all a very circular thing.  They don’t read so they don’t know how to write and so they don’t understand the Magic and the Gift that writing is.  They aren’t writing to give the reader pleasure, because they don’t know what that pleasure is.

 

It’s a whole different game, with very different rules that seem to change far too often.

 

Greg Strandberg, the butthurt author whose blog post prompted this rant of mine, provides some of the evidence for what looks more and more like a true paradigm shift in the whole writer/book/reader relationship.

 

In an earlier post on his personal blog, he mocked an author who threatened to sue a reviewer over a negative review.  Defending the reviewer, Strandberg reiterated his own policy of ignoring and not responding or reacting to negative reviews.  When the reviewer came to the blog, however, Strandberg turned on him like a rabid dog.  Any credibility Strandberg might have had was destroyed; no one knew which side he was on, or even if he was on any side.  Was there any contact with reality?  or was this merely a case of an author who was going to milk a situation for all the self-promotion he could get?

 

Did he, in fact, need to be on the “wrong” side because it made him a martyr?  Was it easier to be a martyr, to gain sympathy and support, than to do the right thing?

 

Is that what he was doing with his blog post this past week-end?  Was it more about what readers owed him, and less about what he as a writer owed readers?

 

Has the game changed to the point where the writers are the fans in the stands, booing or applauding the performance of the readers?  As often as we, writers and readers, talk about the audience for certain books, the shift in attitudes actually suggests that readers in fact are no longer the audience at all.  Readers in many cases have become irrelevant, with writers now creating a kind of theater of the absurd, where the audience is ordered to perform for the benefit of the actors.  It’s all pretense and show, with fake reviews and claims of sales that don’t exist, refusal to admit the sales don’t exist or even some kind of weird validation in nonexistent sales.  The failure to sell is never the writer’s fault, but always the readers’, because readers exist to perform that service for the writers.

 

There are badges of mutual admiration for jobs not well done.  There are toddleresque meltdowns because readers failed to correct the writer’s mistakes, failed to provide the writer with editorial guidance, failed to be kind enough, failed to do this, failed to do that.  Readers fail, in a brave new world where writers don’t by definition can’t?

 

Dafuq?

 

I truly feel as if I’m the only person who cares about this, or at least the only one who cares enough to do anything.  Because it’s always been my belief that if you care, if you really care about something, you have to be willing to act.  Otherwise it’s just so much hot air, so much posturing and lip service and all that other good shit.

 

The game has changed.  Those of us who care about good books have to change, too.  Or else we just have to shut the fuck up.

 

Maggie Spence Is Totally CrayCray

Never say I don’t bring you the best in entertainment.

 

ATTENTION!

 

Author Maggie Spence just called me and is now going to give my phone number to all who will listen. Because I am the source of all her problems here.

 

Evidently at loooong last I HAZ THE POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!1!

 

Now go forth my minions (all 3 of you) and, you know, read a book or something.

 

God in heaven.”

Lloyd Lofthouse Trivializes

I have an anti-Semite shelf at GR, I keep it for those few loathsome souls that deserve it. To get your books shelved there you either have to proclaim your hatred for all those Jewish or you can just do what author Lloyd Lofthouse just did.

“You might even want to attempt a Goodreads Giveaway, but be warned, there are trolls who are members of Goodreads dedicated to trashing books that—they never read—with rotten reviews and 1-star ratings, and that even happens on Amazon. Trolls are mean, sneaky, mentally ill people addicted to anonymously hurting others, and standing up to them just motivates the trolls to be meaner. Consider these trolls to be the Ebola virus of the internet. If you question why there are such people on the earth, think about Hitler, Stalin, Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.” -Lloyd Lofthouse, Thank you for asking me to review your book, but …

That’s right, Lloyd just compared getting “bullied” on GR and Amazon to being murdered by the Nazis. Because while Lloyd sits comfortably at home, one of two,  with his talented wife and family free from the discrimination of being made to wear a yellow star  when in public, free to shop anywhere and anytime, free to travel, free to attend any religious institution he chooses, free from hunger, free from overwhelming fear of disappearing at the hands of a brutal regime and ending up tortured, starved and gassed, Lloyd feels that getting critical reviews and uncomplimentary descriptions of his posts and actions (like calling a local school system to report a teacher who was disagreeing with him) is just like being Jewish under Hitler. Because that is what he is saying even though I am sure he will disagree and cry “bully”.

You know what’s worse in a way than Hitler, Stalin, bin Laden, and Hussein? People like Lloyd. People like Lloyd who minimize evil and make it about their disgruntlement.  About their one star reviews. About being called bloviating. People like Lloyd who sit in their comfortable homes and dismiss the 6,000,000 as nothing but a convenient comparison.

 

 

Review- Single Therapy: Single’s Guide

You know, I don’t think I’ve read a worse piece of crap. This is 42 pages of possibly the worst formatting or maybe just the worst design an author has ever tried to foist on the reading public. I’m sure that Cartwright believes that the her ability to write and read her grocery list  means that she is also capable of writing a book or, in this case, a pamphlet.

She would be wrong.

I think the author describes her writing process for this scamphlet best:

I’m not surprised by a confession of alcohol consumption, this is a wretched, dull, dreary, deadly, little collection of uninspired “tips” for enlivening the life of singles. Some of the “tips” are just dull, but others are venal or deadly if you were brain dead enough to follow them.

The venal, and notice the blank upper half page:

The deadly, if you are dumb enough:

Scorpions get their love and affection from other scorpions, not some drunk dumbass looking to fill a few lines in something she should be ashamed to have strangers read.

Before I continue let us reread that last sentence of Cartwright’s review of her scamphlet:

Ye-ah. Maybe she is still drunk.

But let’s continue, here are a few more gems:

Aside from all the weirdness of text fonts and random capitalization for no reason whatsoever, what the hell? Tip #1 makes no sense as it is written. Then we have:

A colleague of naked photos? This is a good reason not to write anything when you have been drinking.

Deliciously squared performers? I can’t even. Note the end of the sentence, “emotionally obligated to endure”, this is not the only time Cartwright seems to be saying that marriage is gonna be a draaaaaaag and to have fun, fun, fun before you are locked away and can no longer play in your sheets. Hmmm. I think that sounds much better when I write it.

Go Hair less.  Oooooh, how edgy, how randomly capitalized and it is hairless, one word. #33, sure, now tell me where to find one, idiot.

Do you mean a children’s book? Childhood is one word unless you are referring to a very young criminal.

Get the name right.

Bathe, bathe. Ouch, sorry but no. All those hard and sharp edged little gems and I can’t quite figure out the how or the why and am just going to say this is yet another example of WWD (writing while drunk).

Ookay, just let me say that not every male is excited by the color red or crimson. Let me also say that if he is a bloodied male chances are he’s thinking more about bandages and the ER than your tacky underwear. I did not know you could speed up your temperature, raise it but not speed it up.

And then there’s that “second date invitation”, trying not to judge but invite an injured man over and toss edible panties on the coffee table in the hopes of getting a second date? Oh, honey, face it. He’s not that interested in you.

Men are so turned off by Random Capitalization.

 

Dear STGRB,

I didn’t say Becky’s and Naomi’s (Pigglywiggly on Amazon.uk) reviews weren’t “on the up and up”, I said the reviewers were Baldwin’s daughters. Did you miss that? Sorry, let me make it perfectly clear- reviews and ratings by Naomi and Becky on GR, and reviews by R. Vowles and Pigglywiggly on Amazon.uk are by the author’s daughters who never mention their relationship to the author.

Considering that Amazon frowns on and usually deletes reviews by close relatives and others they consider to have an interest in the book(s) succeeding, I can see why Mandy would want to keep this quiet.

 

Here is her dedication to her three children.

 

 

Look who is living at the same address.

 

Her bio from poetry site.

 

If Mandy had just gracefully accepted that 2 star review and kept quiet she would still be cheerfully gaming the system. But she overreached her talent as a scammer and got caught. You want to support her and condone her actions, well, that’s no surprise at all. But in case you missed this part too, she lied.

She lied on KDP:

 

She lied on GR:

She denied any relationship, however casual, with Naomi and Becky. She lied and accused other posters of having sock accounts and creating “fake” reviews. I didn’t review her books, I didn’t even give them a 1 star rating, I left this:

 On all three books.

Linda left a review  stating exactly how much she had read and what problems she found. Were either of these fake? No. Are  the ratings left by readers fake? No. You can rate books based on whatever you feel like. Some people don’t like being lied to.  Some people didn’t like her revenge review of Linda Hilton’s book, it appeared right after she accused Linda of accusing her of having sock reviews, something that Linda did not do. And some people left a rating after Mandy posted this blog.

Isn’t Mandy a real sweetie? I can’t understand why everyone just isn’t bowled over by her charm.

Back to those reviews, I have no idea who Susan Smith is, but she has been around Amazon.uk for a few years before she was roused to leave a review.  I had wondered if she was a friend of Baldwin’s “helping” her by posing as a “bully” reviewer so Baldwin could cry abuse and be one of  your gang, uh, group.

I do know that looking at some of her other 4 and 5 star reviews that I am not easy about some of them and as soon as I finished this little costuming project I’ve got I’ll give them a closer look.

So, let me reiterate, I never said I found the reviews by Becky and Naomi suspect, I said they were by her daughters and those daughters never disclosed their relationship in said reviews. Baldwin lied repeatedly to readers, reviewers, and other authors when she claimed she did not know who wrote those reviews.

She is definitely your kinda author.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of Pits…

From the biggest pit of all:

I don’t recall accusing Mandy Baldwin of having sock puppets, but let’s go here and look. Nope, no mention of socks. And what about that comment by Gavin?

I don’t see any socks, do you? No? Well then, I guess J. is just lying to his/her “friends” about what I really said. Just like Mandy Baldwin lied to pretty much everybody when she claimed she didn’t know that  positive reviewer and hated fakes, and just like that reviewer and one other lied to everybody when they did not disclose their relationship to Baldwin.

Speaking of fakes or, in this case, made up names (Mandy really, really hates those):

Hello, Mandy/Rose. I see you are proud to join the rank. (No, that isn’t a typo or an incomplete sentence.)

 

Mandy Baldwin Plays The Game

I love the internet, don’t you? You can find out the most interesting stuff.  For instance, today I found out that Mandy is claiming to have left GR but I’m not so sure about that. Mandy doesn’t believe in telling you the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  Wanna see what I found?

Our Mandy is a poet!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Notice anything else? Stay with me…

Mandy got herself all worked up over “fake” reviews and imaginary reviewers in this blog. (If it goes away I have screenshots)   “Given that the writers who have experienced this phenomenon produce notably original, vibrant work, I find myself extraordinarily proud to have joined their ranks.” M. Baldwin.  Yeah, honey, you’ve joined their ranks alright. I wouldn’t be so proud or so outspoken about it.  Such vehemence arouses suspicion.

Here is Mandy in KDP support bewailing the removal of a positive review and expressing disgust for the “fake” review:

She certainly is upset, isn’t she? I feel her pain, really I do. Stop laughing, poor Mandy is being targeted by evil reviewers bent on destroying her. I wouldn’t want that to happen, she isn’t the worst author I’ve ever read.

So here is the discussion on Amazon.uk:

 

Pigglywiggly has a legitimate complaint but it seems that it might have been one of Amazon’s bots being picky. It seems her review is gone again. Here is one of the two five star reviews for A Festival of Cherries.

Ms. Vowles really appreciates Mandy’s book. Ms. Vowles appreciates  all three of Mandy’s books, here are the reviews for Going Down to Burgois:

And for Quarter Past Summer:

Wow. Mandy has some dedicated fans, so dedicated that Pigglywiggly rushes to defend Mandy’s book on reviews she doesn’t think appreciate Mandy’s true genius. First up, that nasty review that Susan Smith posted:

 

Then the three star review:

Pigglywiggly sure does like Mandy, too bad we don’t know her real name. Mandy really hates it when you don’t use your real name, you might be imaginary. But wait, I have this little screenshot:

There she is, Miss NS Vowles, not imaginary after all. Hold on, Vowles, Vowles, where have I seen that name before? Why, I do believe right here:

 

Hmmm… Now let’s wander on over to GR, Mandy isn’t there anymore but that shouldn’t be a problem. Besides that blog I linked to near the beginning of this blog, Mandy also started this discussion:

Mandy is angry, isn’t she? What about her ratings and reviews on GR? Is this poor author getting any good reviews? A few and look who I found:

 

Becky’s profile page:

And she’s a librarian! But wait, here’s someone else familiar:

No reviews but two five star ratings:

And Naomi is a fan of Mandy’s. Aww, that’s cute. And Naomi and Becky are cute, too, and look so much alike. Like the sisters that they are:

Remember this part of Mandy’s bio?

I found this:

So let’s revisit some of Mandy’s best fiction:

“…but there had also been a flame-war between “Susan Smith” and a couple of people who loved this book, and had seen their reviews removed…”

“I don’t know the reviewers…”

“The positive reviewer evidently does still exist…”

“And are you really saying that I had some relationship with the positive reviewer?”

Oh yes, Mandy, we are saying just that.  Happy Mother’s Day.

 

 

 

Thanks to Tina Nicole and Linda Hilton for screenshots

 

 

 

 

 

 

Suzanne Dome- Total Idiot Pt II

Because she just can’t stop digging a bigger hole.

 “Since this morning, I now have 6 retaliation ratings on one book, just for having an opinion. No readers. Just ratings that don’t actually matter, with no names attached. I know exactly whose doing it. Karma is a bigger bitch than me. If you can’t handle the truth that pre-rating is corrupt, then get over it.” May 7, Suzanne Dome

Oh, honey, almost everybody is a bigger bitch than you are and smarter, too.

I can’t imagine that little, old educated you has no clue what has happened. Could it be that you aren’t quite as smart as you want us to think you are? Suzie sounds a tad upset.

Suzie, if the ratings don’t actually matter why are you mentioning them? Pre-rating is corrupt? Why, because it’s allowed? Because those ratings are one star? Bet you wouldn’t be having this cow over five star pre-ratings. And speaking of cows, this is what a lot of people took away from your “slightly snarky” vid.

 

That’s right, Suzie, a big, steaming pile of BS.

Protest all you want but there was no “slightly snarky” vibe about your vid. I don’t think you meant to be snarky and if you did, by some slight chance, you failed miserably.

“Authors are not the intellectual property of the readers. We are independent of each other and choose to interact.” May 7, S. Dome. This is good because if you were my property I would have just donated you to the city for landfill. You got some interaction you don’t like, boo-freaking-hoo.  You talk one game, you play a different one entirely.

You took some of your stuff down, why? Because there were good reasons for doing it? Could you be specific, give it in one of those critiques you find necessary before you pay attention to what someone is telling you. You weren’t at all specific so I have no idea whether you were right or wrong and so I’ll ignore it except to say that if you feel you were right you need to own your words, your opinion. Isn’t that the battle cry right now?

Stand tall behind your words. Unless you’re a writer, then use a pseudonym or socks or better yet, both. Funny, I thought writers were the ones who stood behind their words. Not us, the unprofessional reviewers/bloggers. No, we are not worthy of attention, our opinions should be ignored. So why aren’t you ignoring?

What did you think was going to happen when you made that video? In the hostile climate between authors and readers/reviewers today, what did you think was going to happen? Be specific. Give me examples, don’t focus on just one thing.  If you keep harping on one thing then I know you didn’t understand the reaction, you weren’t smart enough.  And, honey, you weren’t smart enough.

You think it is funny that people took it seriously? You still giggling? You aren’t at all smart.

So you called out someone for a one star rating and because they didn’t use their real name. You aren’t anywhere near smart. Smart is one town over and you can’t find your way off your front lawn.

There are many, many reasons people do not use their real names, some of them have absolutely nothing to do with you hard as that is for you to believe. Some have professional reasons- now are you sure you just didn’t call Stephen King a coward? Some have security reasons, read this and this or any number of other online articles or maybe even a book or several. If you can’t think of any reason anyone would prefer not to put their real name on the net besides being a “cowardly troll”  after reading up a little then you are not worth our time.

“This morning, some kind person told me that they’ve been witnessing this black-labeling for some time, and built a “recovery” level to put books in that have been troll-marked, and give them high marks to even-out the average again. I’m not sure this will help, but it was interesting to see someone doing something about it.” May7, Suzanne Dome.

That’s called gaming the system. Good move. You don’t like those ratings because you shit on readers/reviewers and they expressed their displeasure by saying they aren’t going to ever read your  books.  Hey, that’s an informed opinion. I won’t read Vox Day or Orson Scott Card because I don’t like their opinions either. You are in such good company.

 “If you have an opinion, be attached to it.” May 7, Suzanne Dome. Yes, I (we) do, so why are you complaining? You are the one taking down your opinions just because your opinions made some of us decide not to read your books. How chicken-shit is that? Guess that book rating is far more important than your opinion?

And then you whiiiiine some more. Damn.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This guy is more attractive than you are.

You are amazed that people use the rating system to leave themselves notes on what they want or don’t want to read.  You are amazed that they  and their friends look at covers and read the excerpts and decide yes or no. You never read the blurb and the first couple of pages and put the book back on the shelf? Never? Ever? You never told your BFF that the new book you both were looking forward to started out sucking Nile water and you had better things to read? Now that’s amazing.

I don’t believe you.

Then you go and say a one star rating meant the reader read your book and it sucked. No, SuzieQ, it meant whatever they wanted it to. It’s a rating, not a review.  A rating.  There is a big difference. I know you find that hard to understand so maybe you can find a friend who can use pictures and small words to help you.

Then you say you checked out a bunch of the reviewers who were unhappy with you and they weren’t writers and didn’t read the right books. Isn’t this part of what got you into trouble in the first place? And if they/we don’t matter then why are you still whiiining? You just have . Absolutely. No. Fucking. Clue.

And I don’t think you ever will.

” One person was so personally offended by me calling out low-raters who hide, you could feel the drenching sarcasm on their vicious comments. Of course, no one could admit that they missed the point. It’s my right as an author to write. You don’t have to read it. You also have to consider that I knew what the potential consequences would be of posting something opinionated. People are so easily inflamed right now, and a problem in the book world is this “pre-rating” and “author black-listing” because one or two people are offended by that author’s opinion.” May 7, Suzanne Dome.

There was a point? Oh, wait, it was that if the review, excuse me, critique wasn’t in the accepted (by you) format, didn’t include notes to help the writer, didn’t come from someone in a writing or writing-related profession then just ignore them. No, we didn’t miss any of your points, SuzieQ.

Yes, you haz the right to write-anything. We haz the right to ignore it and give it a one star rating. Now you are saying that your vid wasn’t “slightly snarky”, it was an opinion piece. Make up your mind. Are people easily inflamed right now? Of course, I see it so clearly, what else could you do but make this particular video right now. Timing is everything. Good judgment, good timing, you don’t have either.

“Pre-rating is just a way of being a vindictive asshole. Pre-rating doesn’t help anyone.” May 7, Suzanne Dome. You know, I still think you wouldn’t say that if the rating was five stars.  Everywhere I post there is a list of what the stars mean and what the ratings can be used for, just because you don’t agree with them or have fallen afoul of reviewers who do know the rules and use them, is your little problem and no one else’s.

“Whether you like my book or not, you are still people that I know.” May 7, Suzanne Dome. No, Suzie, you don’t know us at all and we don’t want to know you.  So to make sure we don’t accidentally end up with one of your books we’ll just add a one star and shelve on our “never-ever” shelves because that’s what the rules allow us to do.

 

One last thing, stop calling yourself a bitch, you are giving us a bad name.