It was necessary to crush the pixel-stained
technopeasants* in order to save them.

Or:

The SFWA embarrasses itself. Again.


The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer's Association has a serious hate-on for e-books and a disturbing fascination for DRM. (And weirder anti-piracy measures, such as the Shades of Grey thang.)

They don't so much embrace technology as try to be the RIAA for the cover-painting-by-Michael-Whelan set.

Summary from the Nielsen-Haydens' blog : SFWA raided a site called Scribd (it's basically Flickr for text), and sent a cease-and-desist for a whole passel of files.

Among said files are reviews, a reading list for high school kids, a novel released under a Creative Commons license, and back issues of a magazine that'd been uploaded for promotional purposes.

The list of files marked for deletion.

Note the sig: Vader said, "Luke, I am your feather." Bothered by typos? Avoid pirated ebooks.

It's not just a job for Dr. Andrew Burt; it's a lifestyle. (But if I were him, I would've gone with DO NOT WANT!!! instead.)

ETA From puipui: Nick Mamatas mocks the second take-down email to Scribd.

In other news, I just got a tin deputy badge from a box of Crackerjacks and will be placing some parking tickets I just printed out on my home computer on the windshields of cars on my block. If anyone receiving the ticket asks, yes I am authorized to hand out these tickets and they are real tickets, the fines from which I will collect. If these real tickets get me into trouble, then they are not real tickets and anyone suckered by them is to blame for his own foolishness.

Ars Technica weighs in: Worse than Vogon poetry.

[...] it quickly became apparent that the USS 1701-SFWA had a crack in its dilithium crystals.

Cory Doctorow ain't happy, either.

Indeed, I have told Vice President Burt on multiple occasions that he may not represent me as a rightsholder in negotiations with Amazon, and other electronic publishing venues.

Hi kids; I got served a C&D over summer break.

Thanks to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, I now have a terrific “teachable moment” when I start school on Tuesday. When my students ask me what I did on my summer vacation I can tell them I was accused of violating copyright and learned all about the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the SFWA and counter-notifications.

From the magazine folks: We received a notification that one of our issues had been taken down because ‘because the copyright owner contacted us and asked us to.’ That statement was of great interest to us, because we hold the copyrights for these issues at the magazine.

Lawrence Watt-Evans is not pleased with Cory or SFWA. (Afaik... I'm assuming this is him, from a brief Googling.)

( There are several reasons I quit SFWA. Cory Doctorow and Andrew Burt are two of the minor ones. )

The president of the SFWA (one Michael Capobianco, not the Andrew Burt dude) makes some statements here and officially, there.

Scribd's response to their response.

ETA Like maddened ferrets in a wet burlap sack

Speaking of Scalzi, the Whatever is back and he's putting in his two bits.

[...] believe me when I say a great number of us groaned and wondered why it is SFWA, which is often very positively helpful to writers, has to kick itself in its own balls as often as it does.

Distressing lack of wank in the post itself from the man who ran against the current SFWA prez, but it should get started once the blog's readers wake up.

ETA From limyaael: The SFWA ditches its e-piracy arm.

(* Correction: "Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretches")

Quintessential novelist L.B. Wilshere-Cumming's Intarweb Lawyer/Agent has something to say. Shame on you, fandom_wank. Shame on you for trying to bring down such a brave little soldier.

ETA: The Author herself speaks! And appears to suffer from the same Parentheses Disease as her esteemed agent!

SON OF ETA: "Lionel Austin", Sockpuppet-At-Law, has shown up on the journal of the original wank's poster, varesh. Threats and demands and legalese, oh my!

DAUGHTER OF ETA: Bahleeted! Screencap of "Lionel's" original rant here. Anyone get The Author's site?

MOTHER-IN-LAW OF ETA, SHEESH: The requisite demand on Journalfen's support page for the wank to be taken down or face LEGUL AKSHON is here.

Hi all, first post here. I hope I don't disappoint. Let me know if I do.

This is a bit of an "archived" bit of ego-stroking-mess, as it's old, and a good number of the sources have died out. Hope this subject hasn't been covered before... but this chick's still alive and kicking, and growing worse by the minute.

Meet eternalforest. Well, her publicist, anyway--- if we're to go by posts she's they've who-the-fuck-ever's made in the past, constantly referring to the blogger as "The Author". She's written a novel called "Eternal Forest of the Soul" among a few other things. She's put up her own website at angelfire.com to promote her works. If you click that link, you'll see how incredibly pleased she is with herself.

She's also very pleased with her thesaurus, judging by this blurb from EFotS:

( The dominant adverb culls the weak text from the herd... )

So what's this got to do with fandom?

There was once an lj-user that went by the name of hothobbitgirl. Note that I said "went", as in past tense. This girl was HUGE in the LotR fandom, perving on Frolijah specifically. Proof of her existence (and perviness) can be found in various places. Her perviness and obsession included everything from making manips of her, her husband and Frodo in bed together to planning on going to conventions to interview Sean Astin with her "production company".

It wasn't long before hothob wanted to get her work published, and created--- yep, eternalforest. All of a sudden, gone was the obsessive fanaticism over the LotR boys and hobbits. The world wept as EF's journal disallowed comments, and all that was left was a girl a publicist who-the-frick-ever obsessed with her original fiction.

Then came a dark day, when she posted this in her journal this past June:

( Glad I saved this, cuz she decided to erase it... )

So her NEW journal here is full of post titles like Absolutely stunning images now up on the website, This is for those who asked for some personal guidance, and Reflection&Wonder: a sermon on life... well, the urpley-purpley-flowery-adverb-infected prose gets to be a bit too much.

Needless to say, just about everyone's defriended this sack of baloney. When your site shoves ads at you when you open each page, has gads of photos of you posing by your *self published book* that you stick haphazardly onto shelves right next to J.K.'s and J.R.R.'s work to make yourself look good, and post loads of photos showing you at book signings where the quantity of books on the table neither increase nor decrease as time moves on and your grandparents show up to make you look good, things just ain't gonna fare that well.

EDIT: One of the links in "various places" doesn't work. Sorry... um...
REVISED EDIT of Edit: Thanks, jrs1980 for pointing out how to make the link WORK. ;)

The moral of this story? Stick to hobbit-pr0n. You look more dignified that way.

Details I'd forgotten: An anon pointed this out; someone's embarrassed about being (blank)-published. She's whined mentioned many times that she's against sending one's manuscript out to EBUL PUBLISHERS, and that it's best to (blank)-publish. Can't find the link where she states that philosophy... darn, USED to be up... I'll keep looking...

Found this over at Smart Bitches Trashy Books and thought it was wanky enough to share. Over at Amazon.com, M.A. Bechaz reviews Evangelynn Stratton's novel Lady Blue. Her review is less than kind, and focuses mostly on the novel's historical inaccuracies.

( About as accurate as Hogan's Heroes... )

There is a lot of tl;dr wank on both sides, beginning when Anne Hope responds quite maturely with a review entitled M. A. Bechaz from Australia is a bitter hag.

( If you bitch about historical accuracy, you obviously don't have a life. )

Samantha also jumps in to defend the author:

( No one cares if Willow had a teapot! )

Lee C. is also quite valiant in her efforts:

( If you want historical accuracy, go read a textbook! )

The battle continues in the comments for both reviews, where M.A. Bechaz shows up to defend herself:

( Where do you find the time in your busy life to insult me? )


( Where did you go to school, anyway? )


( My reviews are more unbiased than yours. )


( Nothing says medieval times like a damsel in distress because she's lost her iPod... )

(This was written by my friend StickyKeys. I'm posting it for her because she doesn't have a JournalFen account.)

Pamie's at it again!

Who: The Infamous Pamela Ribon, BFF AB Chao, Hubster Stee, and "Patrick"

When: A few days ago

Where: Book reading f. Pamie & AB at Barnes & Noble at the effing Grove in LA.

What: DRAMA! evidently.

Why: Well, that's where it get's a bit tricky...( Read more... )

(Editor's note: Pamie doesn't have a Wiki article, but she should. She gives an explanation for her "red stater" insult here:

By the way, I’ve lived in as many red states as blue, and nothing makes me bristle more than when someone claims a joke is too smart for a “red-stater.” I know that insult toward me is coming from the infamous TWoP recap where I vented some serious frustration (and then took a much-needed break from recapping). If you re-read it, you will see that I wasn’t calling anyone a red-stater as an insult. I was venting that at the time I was working for a show [Mind of Mencia] that said I was writing jokes too smart for the red states, and it infuriated me. I’ve lived in more red states than blue in my life, and I know it’s a bullshit excuse. Tell me it’s not funny or tell me you don’t get it, but don’t tell me that people in gigantic areas of this country aren’t smart enough to understand why what I wrote makes me laugh.

Okay, sure, Pamie, but you do realize that nobody could guess that reading your recap?)

ETA: Pamie, Stee, and AB Chao are all past and present TWoP recappers. Pamie also writes - wrote? - Mind of Mencia and her two original novels, which apparently suck.

Posted for a mouse on wank report. I love author wank, and this one even features a fake love letter between two authors, making it honourary RPF.

Okay. So, this is a link to a New York Times article about two feuding biographers. One, A. N. Wilson, has just been discovered to be the victim of a hoax, in the form of a fake letter which he published in his recent book. The letter contains a rude message about Wilson. The chief suspect is the biographer with whom he has been feuding.

The story in short in the NY Times.

There's a link about the feud in the Guardian and this article includes a denial of blame by the chief suspect. And a columnist's reaction here.

It's all really rather civilized -- if you discount the rudeness of the letter and the folks pointing, laughing and denying culpability, but I think the letter elevates this to wank status.

-undomielregina on lj

ETA: A mouse informs us that Hillier has confessed to scamming Wilson.

This wank report owes its existence to a request from the lol_meme. I hope you all find it full of LOL.

There's no wank like author wank, as we've seen before from Anne Rice and Laurell K. Hamilton. Now throw some zealous fans into the mix, and you get Terry Goodkind's wikipedia page.

For those of you not familiar with his output, Terry Goodkind writes novels (don't call them fantasy!) in the 'Sword of Truth' series, beginning with Wizard's First Rule and now up to I don't know what. They've garnered comparisons with Robert Jordan in terms of size and the tendency to go on and on and will probably eventually sell for $2.99 a pound. He's also a serious devotee of Ayn Rand, works grand philosophical insights into his books, and is very insistent that he's not writing fantasy--the nasty publishers have just miscategorized his books:

( Terry Goodkind Speaks! )

The Buffy shipper wank made me nostalgic for the days when David Boreanaz was thin and pretty, so I went and dipped my toes into the Bones fandom. Guess how long it took me to find wank..?

TWO MINUTES FLAT!

It starts back in February, over on the books discussion of the Fox forum for Bones, when tcjmom sounds the alarm about the first spin-off novel, 'Buried Deep', written by Max Allan Collins: "I'm only on page 14 and have quit reading. I got so mad. ... It seems that not the person who wrote the book or any of those editing it has ever watched one single episode. If they had how could they have gotten something so grossly wrong!!!!! ****steam if coming out my ears***** Oh, you're still waiting for me to tell you what's irritating me so much?! The description of Agent Seeley Booth ...."with his square jaw, close-cropped brown hair, and (***gnashes teeth***) steel-blue eyes..." BLUE EYES!!!! How could anyone mistake them for blue?!!!

****slams down books and stomps off****"

She's mildly worried that she might be over-reacting, until Edgeoforever assures her that she isn't. Just to *really* show her that she isn't, Edgeoforever does what anyone would do in a situation like this, and emails the author to let him know that she most certainly won't be buying the book: "What is the point of writing a book based on a TV series if your characters are not going to be based on the characters in said TV series?( Read more... )

Max Allen Collins allegedly takes some time out of his busy schedule of knocking out CSI novels to actually respond:( Read more... )

Edgeoforever emails him a picture of David Boreanaz to "express her feelings".

Collins considers the picture and loses his cool:( Read more... )

Edgeoforever explains that she has a very rare medical condition: "I won't argue with you about my people skills, but maybe, like Brennan, I also have a mania for truth."

fluteishness offers a valuable contribution to the debate about Boreanaz's features: "His face is square-shaped, not his jaw. His jaw is prominent, but it tapers normally like most other guys'."

Edgeoforever sends Collins some of Boreanaz's interviews to aid him in writing future books about Boreanaz's dreamy eyes and hair Bones and magnanimously offers to actually read 'Buried Deep'. It transpires that she has in fact had "many lengthy exchanges like that with writers, radio personalities, journalists etc.  I don't find anything unusual in that."

And all is momentarily quiet, until lasakra invokes the First Amendment to defend the writer's freedom to give the character whatever eye colour he wants!

Edgeoforever: "Freedom of speech is all fine and dandy, but then don't put on the cover "based on the TV series" - because then the so call freedom becomes deceit and false advertising."

After a little more tedious mudslinging, fluteishness steps forth again to illustate that paying attention to detail is important when it comes to Bones, by talking about how she created Sims of Seeley and Tempy: "I just created their faces with the Simulator. Several hours, and several downloaded pics later (including quite a lovely one where someone was in a bathtub...) two lovely sims were born (and later married *g*)."

And there was still wank coming out of this thread five days ago...

Anne Rice is getting biblical in her next book, due out in November from publisher Random House. "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt" will tell the story of Jesus' early years in his own words.

Yes, his own words. Lestat wasn't enough, now Christ the Lord is speaking through Anne Rice.

She even wrote a lengthy letter, as we well know is her habit, to go with advance copies of the book:

"I'm not a priest, I can't be one. I'll never be able to go to the altar of the Lord and say the words of consecration at Mass, 'This is my body. This is my blood.' No, I can't work that magnificent Eucharistic miracle. But in humility, I have attempted something transformative which we writers dare to call a miracle in the imperfect human idiom we possess. It's to bring Him here in the form a story, and that story is Christ The Lord."

A miracle, you see. I can just see the news now: Anne Rice Heals The Lame And Writes Crappy Book In One Day!

This is straining my Dickensean principles to the max.

ETA: Thanks to jessicareeves we have the entire EW article and excerpted "letter of truth."

"What does it feel like to be Jesus? What did it feel like to be God and Man as a child?"

Tune in for my book when, I, Anne Rice will tell you what it feels like to be Jesus. EXCLUSIVE!

I thought long and hard about posting this wank as it's my first time. Nevertheless, this one's going to explode pretty soon, if not by the time I've finished writing this.

Poppy Z. Brite is a former horror writer, who's a lot like Anne Rice in that the more you know about her, the less you want to read her books.

And then... Miss Brite finds a community sort of named after her which mixes childfree-ers and yaoi/slash lovers, two of the most explosive materials known to fandom. So she makes a post to it questioning the adoption of a childfree identity. Our lovely mod Kwobtchan tells her she's off-topic while all Miss Brite can do it whine about how this proves she's not one of the "Cool Kids". I recall there being a F_W law about that...

I bet you've never heard of this community before, right? Nor had most people, so this wank would have died, if only Miss Brite hadn't (within minutes of posting and receiving replies, no less!) written about it in her journal. The "Cool Kids" analogy is mentioned yet again.

Have fun! :)