First Conservapedia, now the Uncyclopedia

[John McFetridge]

But be careful, you could get lost on it for hours.

Start with The Big Sleep, follow that to Raymond Chandler and then to Writers.

It can even help you learn How To Write Good.

[Albert Tucher]

Just what I needed. Now there's nothing standing between me and fame, riches, and best-sellerdom!

[I. J. Parker]

Thanks. I needed the laugh. He (she, it) is wrong about the minority thing, though. Never, but never, have any minority do or say anything bad. All truly evil crimes are committed by WASP males.

[John McFetridge]

My new book is in trouble then.

Oh well.

[I. J. Parker]

A brave man! Glad to hear it. Now and then you find an honest picture of the way things really are -- and that has nothing whatsoever to do with discrimination as long as we're even-handed in assigning guilt.

[John McFetridge]

I'm not sure I get this. Is it Mafia? It must be different in Canada. My books are full of mafiosos, bikers, natives, black guys, asians - they all commmit crimes. The cops are a mixed bunch, too, but as a recent review complained, they mostly just watch from the sidelines.

I'm trying to have my books reflect the the world I live in.

Of course, that may be why sales are so dismal.

[I. J. Parker]

Maybe that explains my dilemma. Though writing a historical novel set in a foreign land does sort of liberate its author from PCness. I also run the gamut of killers from imperial princes to street kids, and I've included some absolutely vicious females. Some Buddhist web site has me on a watchlist for dealing with murder, homosexual love, and pedophilia among monks.

[Jon Loomis]

There are Buddhist watch lists? Who knew. A great (and now deceased, alas) friend of mine had a story about going to Tibet, meeting a couple of Tibetan monks, taking them back to his hotel (my friend was gay, obviously, and a fine writer), getting stinking drunk and having sex with both of them, then waking up to find that he'd been robbed blind. The saffron robes alone do not guarantee purity of heart--as in any priesthood (see Catholic priests: pedophilia).

[Jon Loomis]

Spoken with the courage of a woman whose series is set in 12th century Japan. Heh.

[Jon Loomis]

I have Chinese gangbangers in my latest (though one of them is also an A student at MIT), but there are other Asian characters who just work at normal jobs. I've got a couple of young Eastern European girls who are trying to break into the porn industry, but there are other Eastern Europeans who are represented in a less compromising light. What you don't want is to appear to be picking on anybody that doesn't need picking on--it's one thing to go after the real estate industry, say, or TV preachers, but why go out of your way to make a Jamaican hotel-maid a bad guy? Don't Jamaican hotel maids have it tough enough already?

[I. J. Parker]

I agree. Until recent developments in our economy I used to find the Scottish insistence that wealthy men are behind the crimes in our cities biased and simple-minded. Now I no longer feel so strongly about bashing the wealthy. What I'd really like to see is a "wanted list" of all those CEOs who've been taking home million dollar bonuses on top of million dollar salaries.