Another crazy blog comment:

[Jon Loomis]

I love this woman.  Every mystery has to be a cozy.  Plus, I'm far left!

I am half way this this book and I have never read such trash language in my life in a mystery book. I can read 3 to 4 books a week just reading at night and I was totally disgusted with this one. I chose it because of the setting...Cape Cod..which I love and I am enjoying the mystery part of it but I feel all the foul mouthing crap in it is uncalled for. I cannot believe you come from a place like Wisconsin and write such trash but of course you are far left (from some of your writing in the book) so that figures...anything goes. I wish you well but if this is an example of your type of writing I will not buy your books again. Yes I am a female.

Kind of hard to decide which is the funniest part. 

[Dana King]

Same here. Jon is having a little fun with her. Folks who post public comments have placed their writing and opinion in the public domain, just as the rest of us have. It is then open for comments, just as they have done. know Jon well enough to know he does, indeed, encourage folks to comment on his writing. They just have to be prepared to be treated as an equal.

[I. J. Parker]

It's been a while, but as I recall that lady's comment was a diatribe. That sort of thing tends to be irrational. What she disliked about the book could have been stated more calmly and objectively.

[Jim Thomsen]

I have no idea why I got this curious, but I found this definition of cozy mysteries at cozy-mystery.com. It reads, in part:

Cozy mysteries are considered “gentle” books… no graphic violence, no profanity, and no explicit sex. Most often, the crime takes place “off stage” and death is usually very quick. Prolonged torture is not a staple in cozy mysteries! The victim is usually a character who had terrible vices or who treated others very badly. Dare I say…. the victim “deserved to die?”

Sex (if there is any) is always behind closed doors. It is implied…. at most! Two characters may go from having a late-night, romantic dinner to----fast forward----one person taking a cup of coffee up to their partner, who is enjoying the delicious luxury of sleeping in. Enough said!

Here's a partial definition from Wikipedia:

Cozies very rarely focus on sex, profanity or violence. The murders take place off stage, and are often relatively bloodless (e.g. poisoning), while sexual activity (if any) between characters is only ever gently implied and never directly addressed.

[Jon Loomis]

Which is great, if that's your cup of tea. All for it, although it's certainly not my idea of a good time. What I object to is not that some people dislike my books--of course they do; you can't please everyone and shouldn't waste your time trying to--but that on very rare occasions they feel they get to tell you what is and isn't acceptable in terms of language or politics or whatever. That's an expression of a desire to limit my freedom of speech, and deserves to be treated with a full helping of derision.

[Christine Duncan]

Personally, what I didn't like about this whole deal (besides the snide remarks about cozies, guys. come on now!) is that you didn't choose to have this dialogue with the email writer. Instead you chose a public forum to call her crazy. But no, you were not offended by her criticism or resenting her right to say it. Uh huh.
I wonder if say, Writer's Digest or some other big name mag had been interviewing you, if you would have made the same comments. I'm pretty sure you wouldn't have said it on national TV. I'm not sure how the internet is different.
Someone needed to defend the poor woman. Not because everything she had to say was appropriate either--just because she wasn't present to do it herself.

[Jon Loomis]

Christine,

You have a point--it's juvenile, in a way, to make fun of crazy people, and of course reader "Ann" is crazy. In fact, I'm pretty sure one of the defining behaviors of "crazy" is leaving anonymous and largely incoherent comments on writers' blogs, assailing them for writing the wrong kinds of books about Cape Cod. But I'm also trying to make a larger point, which is, as I say, that it's fine to not like the book on its own terms, but irrational, naive and ultimately hugely arrogant to insist that every book conform to your terms, and then deliver a scolding to the author when they don't. Am I offended? Really, no. Do I resent what is ultimately an unwarranted personal attack? I'm not sure I resent it as much as I'm slightly outraged by it: yes, she has a right to her opinion, goofy as it may be--but do I also not have the right to respond? Really?

I think that if an interviewer asked whether I'm ever inclined to ridicule anonymous blog commentors for saying idiotic things, I would answer honestly: of course I am! It's a time-honored element of the blogging tradition, in fact--I say stuff, people respond, I respond to them. That's the conversation. In fact I did respond to her on my blog, front and center. So far she hasn't written back, and honestly I don't expect her to. Still, the comment becomes public property the moment she leaves it, and I can do with it as I like--if I want to use it to start a conversation about the unreasonable expectations of some readers, that's my business. And she's certainly welcome to show up here and make a case for herself. She obviously knows how to use Google, after all.

[Jon Loomis]

To clarify further: she didn't send me an email--she didn't have the courage to do that. She left an anonymous comment on my blog, with no contact info in her brand new Blogger profile. She looked me up on Google, in other words, and took the time to create a Blogger account just so she could leave me a little tirade, with no risk that she'd find a reply from me in her inbox. She may have made an educated guess, based on my books, about the likely nature of that reply, and decided she didn't want to deal with it. So, a tad on the cowardly side, our reader "Ann." I moderate my blog messages because I get a lot of spam, so instead of attaching it to the random blog post she "responded" to I posted it as new content. There's really no other way to have the conversation you'd like me to have with her; I could simply delete the comment, but that would be dishonest in a way, so I chose to post it and respond. I also chose to have a conversation about her comment here (nobody actually reads my blog, as it turns out), in a forum that gets a bit more traffic, because I think it's interesting and worth a bit of discussion. I'm actually glad someone's sticking up for crazy readers everywhere--more fun that way--but I think if we can get the facts straight it will help to insure that we're actually talking about the same thing.

[Jon Loomis]

You know, I'm not even exposing her. She retains her anonymity, even here. In fact I don't know her name, or where she's from, or anything about her (other than the fact that she's very conservative and a tad, you know, CRAZY)--she has me at a distinct disadvantage in that regard. But even if I did know her name, I certainly wouldn't post it on the internet.

[Jon Loomis]

"Ridiculed in front of God and everybody" would be more like it, maybe.

[J W Nelson]

Well, sir, my wholesome image of you and your writing has f'ing exploded due to this news.

[cj forrest]

Are we all having a little fun at the expense of Jon’s blogger? Ya, you can say so. Are we all egging on the circumstances of this blog because we enjoy reading responses from our favorite, loveable, smartass, Jon Loomis? Ya, I’m guilty as charged. I’m sorry, Christine, that you feel we’re being mean to Jon’s blogger. At the heart of it, I assure you that’s never our intent. I only wish the blogger was here in this discussion, slugging it out against us, with Jon at the helm, and having a blast in the process. One of us should find out who she is and invite her to crimespace. She obvious loves crime fiction and likes to read. There are worse people in the world. I would love to see her get pissed off from time to time and post a blog were it get’s fifty thousand responses. I’ll make the introductions, “Hello, So and so. We are from Crimespace. We are at times tactless, offensive, irrelevant, incorrigible, tasteless, (and that’s just from me) but we’re a friendly, diverse group of published writers and readers that welcome opinions in all shapes and sizes, and you’re just too much fun to keep away from our group.”

[Jon Loomis]

Good fucking riddance, J. W.