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"You are a big rat and a snake with poisenous venom."
BigAl posts book reviews to his book blog "Books and Pals." Recently he posted an honest but critical review of Jacqueline Howett's "The Greek Seaman," giving it a two star rating because of its "numerous proofing, typo, and grammar issues."

Jacqueline Howett is not amused.

You obviously didn't read the second clean copy I requested you download that was also reformatted, so this is a very unfair review. My Amazon readers/reviewers give it 5 stars and 4 stars and they say they really enjoyed The Greek Seaman and thought it was well written. Maybe its just my style and being English is what you don't get. Sorry it wasn't your cup of tea, but I think I will stick to my five star and four star reviews thanks.

She then proceeds to copy-paste three of her favorite Amazon reviews of her book. BigAl responds, letting her know that the formatting wasn't an issue.

Howett responds with this gem.

My writing is just fine!

You did not download the fresh copy.... you did not. No way!

As to annoymous

Al was given the option of a free copy from smashwords the following day to download in any format he preffered.

Look AL, I'm not in the mood for playing snake with you, what I read above has no flaws. My writing is fine. You were told to download a new copy for format problems the very next day while they were free at Smashwords, so you could choose any format you wanted to read it in and if their were any spelling mistakes they were corrected. Simply remove this review as it is in error with you not downloading the fresh copy i insisted. Why review my book after being told to do this, and more annoying why have you never ever responded to any of my e-mails?

And please follow up now from e-mail.
This is not only discusting and unprofessional on your part, but you really don't fool me AL.

Who are you any way? Really who are you?
What do we know about you?

You never downloaded another copy you liar!
You never ever returned to me an e-mail

Besides if you want to throw crap at authors you should first ask their permission if they want it stuck up on the internet via e-mail. That debate is high among authors.

Your the target not me!
Now get this review off here!

She then claims all the anonymous commenters are actually BigAl and that BigAl should remove the bad review or else it's "considered abuse."

She just doesn't know when to stop.

I especially like that last link for this comment: "Well what should I expect of anyone associated to Big ALs snake pit and rat hole. You are a big rat and a snake with poisenous venom. Lots of luck to authors who come here and slip in that!"

And, of course, it ends with a "Fuck off!"

EDIT: I missed the "Fuck off!" Part Deuce. And here's an excerpt of "The Greek Seaman" on her website, if you'd like to read more about Greek seaman.

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Re: Thinking too hard about this

fern_on_fen
2011-03-29 03:39 pm UTC (link)

Yeah. She definitely has some funky syntaxical problems that scan, to me, as NNS or ELL. I'd like to know how much of the travelling she did occurred when she was younger, and whether or not her parents, despite only her mother being Greek, primarily spoke Greek in her home as a child.

What's frustrating, is that since she considers English her first language, she is completely oblivious, and almost...in militant denial about her syntaxical fuckery and grammatical misunderstandings. I mean Jesus. That girl has more squinting modifiers than I've ever seen...

Erm...tl;dr: I am a writing tutor who has studied non-native speakers and I just over-thought with you.

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Re: Thinking too hard about this

solelyfictional
2011-03-29 06:48 pm UTC (link)

An ex-housemate of mine is Greek, and some of those sentences reminded me of her mother's attempts to speak English, which made me wonder. It wouldn't surprise me if Howett grew up speaking more Greek than English, and though she probably speaks English aloud as well as anyone else it's not carried through naturally to her writing.

What do NNS and ELL mean? ::nosey::

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	Re: Thinking too hard about this juliansinger 2011-03-30 03:41 am UTC (link)
	Non Native Speaker and English Language Learner(s). (New term for English as a Second Language/ESL.) (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Thinking too hard about this fern_on_fen 2011-03-30 05:06 pm UTC (link)
	Not just new term. More inclusive, slightly less looking down on people who speak languages term. Also, more frequently used in higher-levels of education, because English might not be their second language. Might be their third or fourth or even more. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Thinking too hard about this juliansinger 2011-03-31 06:53 am UTC (link)
	Well. Yes. I was going for brief. That'll teach me. (Reply to this)(Parent)

Re: Thinking too hard about this

julian_black
2011-03-30 01:27 am UTC (link)

According to her bio, her father was English and she was raised (and educated) in London. While she traveled a lot, it also appears that London remained her home base until the late '80s.

And in her very first comment to Al's review she suggested that Al didn't get her style of writing because she's English.

So she's definitely a native English speaker, even if her writing comes across as clumsily translated from Chinese.

(Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Thinking too hard about this julian_black 2011-03-30 01:43 am UTC (link)
	Ah! There's video! Make of it what you will. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	Re: Thinking too hard about this vzg 2011-03-31 11:03 pm UTC (link)
	It... it kind of sounds like a rambling grandparent story. I just kind of drifted in and out of it. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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