The review thread.

[Jon Loomis]

You guys were right, I was wrong. I apologize for the petulance. Won't happen again.

Okay, it probably will--but I'm working on it!

[I. J. Parker]

Hey, been there. Don't feel bad. Sometimes you have to react. Nobody's quite as helplessly exposed to attacks as an author.

[I. J. Parker]

Oh, mystery! The original thread has disappeared. Not only here, but also from Crime Spot Net. How in the world did you do that? I wish I'd known when I thoughtlessly laid into a recent award winner.

[Jon Loomis]

What the hell is Crime Spot Net?

[minervaK]

It's a blog clearinghouse site: http://www.crimespot.net/

I can't figure out how to get my blog included, despite requests. Although, given my other discussion here today ('what's the point?') maybe I should just shut up.

MK
www.minervakoenig.com

[jKathleen]

It's another cool "let's Read site" The Graveyard shift" Lee Lofland has been around for awhile and is really one of my faves.

[John McFetridge]

Well, you did get a good review in the Toronso Star today, and Jack Batten does know what he's talking about:

http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/article/691568

Mating Season isn't exclusively a novel about the solution to Kenji's murder, though the sleuthing is what keeps the book on the move. It's equally a novel that gets maximum mileage out of the place where the story is set, namely Provincetown and the surrounding Cape Cod territory, and out of the local cop who is assigned to the case, the grouchy but engaging Frank Coffin.

[Jon Loomis]

Holy crap--and with Denis Johnson, too! Okay, I'll shut the fuck up now.

It was actually your response that convinced me to pull the other thread--the thought of doing anything to offend the wondrous Barbara Fister made me feel positively queasy.

Thanks for both of these things, John. Now can you get me a job writing for Canadian TV?

[John McFetridge]

First I have to figure out how to keep the TV job myself!

[Pepper Smith]

I just about had to bite my tongue to keep from replying to your other thread. I know how you feel, and hope my own bad review has sunk into oblivion by now.

But I agree, sometimes you just have to gripe.

[Jon Loomis]

My earlier post was actually a modulated response. You can probably imagine what I said when I first read the review.

[Pepper Smith]

I made the mistake of griping about mine in what was supposed to be a private email but accidentally got posted to a list where a reviewer with a similar name hung out. (The error in posting was mine.) It was one of those moments when you wish the ground would open up and swallow you. Especially since my publisher is too small for MWA to count them on their approved publisher list, the only reviews I can get are online ones. These are folks it pays not to antagonize, when you're in that position, because they do talk to each other about the authors who tick them off.

Sigh.

[Jon Loomis]

I still feel that talking back is a viable option--I'm just not happy with the way I chose to do it. What I dislike is the casually snarky review; I'm not crazy about the smugly patronizing review, either. Writers of such reviews deserve a swift kick in the ass, but for me the question is how it's best administered. Probably not on crimespace or Twitter, although there might be a way to do it better than my attempt today. What I don't want is to appear to be picking on someone who's powerless to respond, but of course Ms. Whatshername will always have the option of going after me next time around. In fact, I'd be kind of disappointed if she didn't. But yeah, it would suck to be entirely at the mercy of online reviewers.