Hang on to your hats, kids, this one's a doozy in several parts. To start off, you might want to catch up on agilebrit's clairvoyantwank writeup. Clairvoyant indeed! To sum up, romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises teamed up with a publisher called ASI solutions to form Harlequin Horizons, a vanity press. Romance Writers of America promptly revoked Harlequin's "recognized publisher" status.

And now for a wank in several parts, involving a goodly number of awesome people in addition to a wanking Cast of Thousands (tm):

( Part 1: PubRants )

( Part deux: various forums )

( Part Three: SBTB, and Nora Fucking Roberts )

( Part the last: The NEW YORKER?! )

And finally, THIS JUST IN from PubRants. Watch that post for further fappery developments! Notably, Harlequin has decided to dissociate the "Harlequin" name from their vanity publishing rig in response to the RWA slamming them, and the MWA has weighed in. ETA: And the wank has matured nicely! Here's a couple comments of note: Anon #1, Anon #2, "Harlequin, were not stupid" [sic].

And here come the ETAS!
#1: SFWA tweets a heads-up, and the glorious katamari of wank rolls on!

#2: Coutesy of magnolia_mama, Lee Goldberg drops his two cents from the MWA soapbox. In a shocking turn of events, he seems to be making a cogent, reasonable argument. My world is rocked.

#3: annathepiper links us to SFWA's statement, which is possibly the strongest yet! For a snippet:

...Further, SFWA believes that work published with Harlequin Horizons may injure writing careers by associating authors’ names with small sales levels reflected by the imprint’s lack of distribution, as well as its emphasis upon income received from writers and not readers....Until such time as Harlequin changes course, and returns to a model of legitimately working with authors instead of charging authors for publishing services, SFWA has no choice but to be absolutely clear that NO titles from ANY Harlequin imprint will be counted as qualifying for membership in SFWA. Further, Harlequin should be on notice that while the rules of our annual Nebula Award do not expressly prohibit self-published titles from winning, it is highly unlikely that our membership would ever nominate or vote for a work that was published in this manner....SFWA does not believe that changing the name of the imprint, or in some other way attempting to disguise the relationship to Harlequin, changes the intention, and calls on Harlequin to do the right thing by immediately discontinuing this imprint and returning to doing business as an advance and royalty paying publisher.

Count on the pew-pew lasers genre to bring the burn!

#4: Found by pariforma, someone named Jackie Kessler has an excellent (and amusing) summary of the whole mess on their blog. The pricing breakdown (with reference links to the Harlequin price-sheets themselves) is particularly well-done.

#5, which should be like #3 but I missed it the first time: via lady_ganesh, Mr. Scalzi has spoken. Does anyone else smell something...burning?

( Too Hot (and big) For Your Flist )

Mmm, PR barbecue. As a bonus, there's a lovely herd of teal deer in the comments, including some truly lovely wanking by one Diana Peterfreund and a few others. Scroll on through, it's a good time.

Blooper reel: We, uh, may have played a part in crashing SBTB for a while there. please don't kill meeeee

#6: Zoe Winters continues her wanking in the comments of an article at the Examiner. Thanks dreamworld!

Since cleolinda has had more than enough Twilight, it seems, I thought I'd take her up on her offer to move the growing wank to a new post.

Previously, on the Sparkledammerug: People weren't happy.

Entertainment Weekly, previously best known in the Twilight fandom for its extensive coverage of the hype and for this monstrosity of a cover, reviewed Breaking Dawn in the issue released today. The overall grade was a D.

( lion_lamb reacts. Badly. )

lion_lamb isn't the only place where the wank is, though.

SMeyer tells MTV.com that the backlash "hurts." Most comments run along the lines of "LEAVE STEPHENIE ALONE!!!!"

The Twilight Lexicon takes a position on BD, and disallow character-bashing, expressing disapproval at SMeyer's writing, and calling Jacob a pedophile.

And if you're tired of the wank, have an extended Twilight parody in which Edward is turned into a cranky, scrapbooking virgin?

It's going to be a long August.

EDIT THE FIRST: Nora Roberts smash!

EDIT THE SECOND: Dissapointed 'Breaking Dawn' fans organize protest. Twilighters in the comments claim that the haters only make up 10% of the reader base.

EDIT THE THIRD: The Twilight Lexicon is hacked! EDIT THE THREE-POINT-FIFTH: One of the Lexicon mods posts about it on her journal. Is the Lexicon no more? ETC: Screencaps of a troll post made to the Lex shortly before the hacking. ETC THE RECKONING: The hacker speaks? ETA SQUARED: Lexicon admin claims it's not an inside job, posts messages from the hacker. ARE YOU KIDDING ME: And the hacker speaks again! (deleted) THIS DESERVES ITS OWN POST: Amazon.com boards on the hacking, with a surprise guest appearance by Laurel K. Hamilton's personal assistant?

EDIT THE FOURTH: ... off-topic, but were we just deleted for a bit?

EDIT THE FIFTH: Twilight Moms have possibly gone underground. FIVE-POINT-FIFTH: Confirmation! YEAH, WE'RE STILL GOING: The TwiMoms have returned, and ready to stroke Steph's ego all over again!

EDIT THE SIXTH: The Washington Post review of BD. Not wanky, just hilarious.

EDIT THE SEVENTH: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books weighs in. Smug Twilighter alert in the comments.

EDIT THE EIGHTH: Twatlympics?

EDIT THE NINTH: The haters draft a petition!

EDIT THE TENTH: You don't know the history of Twilight. Darla Cook does. TEN-POINT-FIVE: And she keeps on going, too.

DOES IT EVER END: Publishers' Weekly article on the protest. They think Twilight's audience consists entirely of teenagers. Ahahaha... ha.

Dearest, beloved, Fandom Wank.

I know you were looking forward to great excitement today. Some of you said words to me that indicated you anticipated fiery 'judgement' upon those who remained fresh and dewey white, those you call n00bs.

Anyway, you got today instead.

Stop anticipating things, we'll just break your hearts.

Sincerely,

Sepia P. Magpie, Esq.



PS: Use this post to reflect on how you could be better people. Or just fuck around in the comments.

Candy and Sarah of Smart Bitches who Love Trashy Novels are having a hell of a week. They're embroiled with two fights of quasi-celebrities in the Romance community -- or at least their sockpuppets.

In corner one lies (maybe) Tony Cantazaro, cover model of Sexy Beast III. The Smart Bitches snarked at him a bit last month, particularly when he said his abs were what got the book great reviews, but nothing as bad as what they do to romance covers on a regular basis.

Cantazaro (maybe) writes to the bitches a month later, displaying all the charm of Fred Phelps at a gay man's funeral.

( Le Flame )

The bitches snark, but also are none-too-pleased with the clear threat in the letter.

Then, Cantazaro's wife (maybe) shows up to defend her husband, saying that he wouldn't have to resort to such douchebaggery if those mean ladies would JUST BE NICE, and that anybody commenting on the site IS nice. It's just the mean ones he wants to kidnap.

Amy in my husbands defense he did NOT direct this message to you or anyone else that didnt trash him. It was directed to the few who have on these messages. He is a good man and he was very upset when he read this blog.

To the women that did not talk crap about him....this was not geared toward you. When people make fun and insult other people, especially people that they dont know, that hurts… I’m sure no one else would like it.

Sarah is not impressed.

First, your husband’s behavior, if indeed it was him, is not excused by either his offers to pray for us, or your defense that someone “trashed” him. Good men, to my definition, do NOT threaten perfect strangers or state that they plan to throw people in the trunk of their cars and toss us off the Belt Parkway. Good men don’t hurl insults, and they don’t throw tantrums.

Your husband, to put it bluntly, made a public ass of himself, and you’re not helping in the least. It would be my pleasure to contact the police department, his manager and agent, and my attorney, to discuss his threats further.

For the Love of God. Shut Up.

Also, the bitches also engaged in mockery of an essay by Kathryn Falk, the C.E.O. of Romantic Times magazine. In the article, Falk decried all the meanies on the interweb who are ruining the kind, gentle and loving land of romance novels through all their negativity. The bitches mock verily. But then it takes an odd turn when Kathryn Falk e-mails Sarah, saying that um ... wasn't her and she does not understand this new invention of the internets. But the person might have made arguments that she made or ... something.

Carol said it sounded like me, and it probably is me, but I’m retired.... Carol says it my words about positivity and positive energy, but not the rest.

There’s nothing I can do about it, but I’m not set up to go online. That’s not my focus. Someone took my words but that isn’t me.

But it’s not important. People shouldn’t get off on controversy or nastiness, when it’s more important to be positive to attract good things.... When you fill your bowl of abundance with love, you receive love.

Some of this could get ugly, folks ...

ETA: issendai summarizes an update. It seems like Tony and his wife might really be sockpuppets.

Also, I might have misread Sarah and I think Kathryn Falk may have called her. Not e-mailed her. At least her "I don't get teh internets!" deal makes a little more sense.

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... )