Let us return to the issue of authors and how they should respond to negative reviews

[james_davis_nicoll]

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?

Nicked from erastes

Comments

[casaubon.livejournal.com]

I don't think that asking people to post positive reviews if they enjoyed the book is particularly heinous.

OTOH the Pentagon thing is nuts. :)

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

No doubt the ninjas who so plagued Mercedes Lackey at Dragoncon (http://groups.google.ca/group/rec.arts.sf.written/msg/965eecec14118d8d) were booked.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

::goggle::

[casaubon.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's ... odd.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Isn't going after Patricia Cornwell a tad too much like plinking fish in a barrel? Big BIG fish? Teeny-weeny barrell?

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I am shocked that you speak in such terms of our century's foremost Jack-the-Ripperologist.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

"Your winnings, Commissaire."

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

I'm still bitter about the penny I paid for that damned book, too. Go ahead, mock my pain.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

The wikipedia entry on that book is nicely snarky:

Critics also note that Cornwell admits that she did not have a theory about the murders until about a year before her book came out and is convinced that the first name mentioned to her as a possible suspect must be the one who really did it. They note that, unlike authors of popular crime fiction, criminal investigators generally don't get to pick the person whodunnit before they do the research.

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

Wasn't her suspect that painter guy with the weird penis whose paintings she bought up? Yeah, that book. I don't think one can properly call it snarky when it's just....accurate.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Who she asserted had a weird penis. I don't think she actually had, you know, proof.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Why would he do those horrible things to those poor innocent women if he didn't have a weird penis? Seems perfectly plain to me...

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It's been my experience that almost every behavior of the Victorian male can be accounted for by assuming that any given one of them will be an alcoholic, a syphilitic or both. Well, and then there are the laudanum addicts and those who had been driven insane by religion.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I suspect you've just identified a significant portion of male Victorian civilized society...

[ginmar.livejournal.com]

I missed that part, but I couldn't actually read the thing.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

You don't need proof when you're a best-selling author. Your very word alone sways them.

Sickert, I think

[raycun.livejournal.com]

Even his name is suspicious

(and so what if he wasn't even in England for all of the murders?)

[blpurdom.livejournal.com]

Um, how can an author not know who committed the murders that are at the center (presumably) of a book she has written? Isn't the book (or book series?) about these murders and who did them? I know that many people who write online for fun, usually doing fanfiction, often write without a plan (just start writing and see where the story goes) but shouldn't someone writing a mystery kind of know everything that's really going on?

No wonder she's getting bad reviews.

As for "how authors should respond to negative reviews" the answer is, "By writing a better book." Of course, that's assuming that the author plans to go on writing. Otherwise, the way they should respond is by--not.

[doc-lemming.livejournal.com]

Actually, Lawrence Block has said that sometimes he didn't know who committed the murder, but he figured out whodunnit by the end. (And the second draft--I don't recall if Block did a second draft--cleans them up.) I'm sure there are other mystery writers who discover the murderer through the course of writing the book.

[burger-eater.livejournal.com]

I deeply resent the way this administration makes me feel like a nutbar conspiracy theorist.

-- tnh