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Month: July 2009

Public Service Announcement. You Are The Public, And I’m Gonna Fucking Service You.

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Okay, I know that authors, especially female authors in genre fiction, are supposed to be this supportive little cluster of hens who never say anything bad about each other because viewing other women as competition is wrong and we’re above that and also we’re really creative and creative people need to stick together because we’re so misunderstood blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit let’s pretend like this isn’t a business and we’re a big sorority instead.

That’s why I’m not going to name names here. I’m just going to give a little constructive criticism, okay? And it can be about whoever you want to make it about, or maybe you could just take it to heart, in case you start spouting off incredible bullshit one day.

If your first novel came out in the early nineties, you did not “pioneer” vampire fiction. You did not create the Urban Fantasy genre. Buffy did not steal anything from you. Twilight owes nothing to you.

You are still relevant. You are still special. You are still selling more books than anyone else in your genre.

You do not need to wave the banner of “I was first.” Because you weren’t. Vampire myths, even vampire fiction, was around a lot longer than your books. Unless you wrote that first vampire novel while in the Tardis visiting Queen Nefertiti, you didn’t start the vampire trend.

A lot of people have been first. Marie Curie was the first person to discover radium. She died from radiation poisoning. Being first isn’t always the best.

Buck up, buttercup. There are literally hundreds of us out here, our noses to the keyboards, trying to make a living with our writing. You did it. You succeeded. You’re good enough. Stop with the ridiculous claims that no one is buying. You didn’t pioneer the vampire genre anymore than Al Gore pioneered the fucking internet. Be happy with what you’ve done and the success you’ve got, and stop acting like your readers are fucking idiots who never heard of Anne Rice, especially when you’ve got a carbon-copy of her main character swishing around your books, okay?

Frank McCourt

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I tend to roll my eyes at celebrity death mourning. You don’t know Farrah Fawcette, you don’t know Betty White. You know what they did, who they pretended to be, and how much you enjoyed it. But Frank McCourt’s death hits me like a truck. This isn’t a celebrity who got famous being someone else. This is a man who shared his life– no matter how controversially– with the world and did it poetically, beautifully, and touched many people’s hearts.

I count myself lucky to be among them. Rest in Peace, Frank.