Saturday, September 13, 2003
Yesterday, I wrote 1,473 words on Chapter Nine of Murder of Angels. And was dumbfounded to discover that almost two weeks have passed since Dragon*Con. It feels like a few days, four or five, but I've been wrapped up in this fuzzy, sticky coccoon of words and time flows differently in here than it does out there where all of you are. I've only left the apartment three times, I think, since we got home from Dragon*Con. Tonight I might reward myself with a movie, perhaps Once Upon a Time in Mexico, because it has Johnny Depp and Willem Dafoe and Antonio Banderas and Mickey Rourke and Salma Hayek and it was directed by Robert Rodriquez, so what more reason could I need. I don't think I've seen a new movie, at the theatre, since . . . I can't remember. Pirates of the Caribbean? Good heavens, worse than I thought. I takes Johnny Depp to get me into a theatre these days. Of course, what better reason might one have. But I begin to repeat myself, don't I?
I wish that I had been sentenced to be a writer in an age before Amazon.com. Or I'd have settled for doing my time later on in this timeline, any time after 2017 when Amazon.com stops carrying books so that they'll have more room in their warehouses for the v.4.2 GameBoy neocortical implant units. Either would have sufficed. Better yet, an alternate timeline where Amazon.com never included the idiotic "review" feature as part of its format. Yes, I am going on about that again. Every Don Quixote needs windmills at which to tilt her lance. One of mine is those inane Amazon.com "reviews." Everyman may be heard. Blah, blah, blah. This latest "review" was pecked out by some frellnik named Ja're Smcha (name changed via a Star Wars name generator) from Charlotte, NC, Amazon Reviewer Rank 225,511 (they get numbers, just like prisoners and dog-show contestants). He'd be ranked higher, but he's only written 22 reviews, the poor dear.
Anyway and as I was saying, he wrote a "review" of Threshold back in early August, in which he claims that the book is "incomplete." That's not so uncommon a complaint with my work. I know it's finished, because I came to the end of that which I'd intended to do, but as the standard plot structure doesn't obey the conventions that we've been spoonfeeding our children and ourselves (royal "our," not including me) for decades, Ja're's expectations were not appeased. And we (royal "we") all know that good fiction is about appeasing the expectations of the multitudes. Yes, well. Then I am a total failure.
Ja're, should you be ego-surfing one day and read this, if you'll send me your name and address, I'll send you a Webster's dictionary, free of charge, no frelling fooling.
Never mind that he finishes his first sentence, which isn't a question, with a question mark. Or that he engages in the obscenely common use of capital letters and strung-together punctuation to achieve emphasis ("!!!!" - because "!!" just wouldn't do). Or that he only seems to have a faint grasp of adverbs and none of commas. All that dren, I can look the other way. It's his spelling that drives me fahrbot. For example, "archeological" is spelled "archeoligical" (never mind that the book involves geology and paleontolgy, not archeology). He uses "aloud" when he means "allowed," so I'm guessing he has some homonym trauma lurking about in his past somewhere.
But I am nitpicking, aren't I? Poor ol' Ja're. I ought to be ashamed, I know. He can't help it if he was born into a world that allows — indeed, encourages — the marginally literate to publically hold forth on the value of a novel. Or if his grasp of climax and anticlimax is as stunted as a bonsai tree. There should be federal funding available for people like this, the fictionally-challenged, who so need to mouth off about everything they read, but sadly lack the skills to do so without looking like a total goofus. And annoying authors, in the bargain.
Oh, and should Ja're discover this entry at some future date, he will, of course, be completely outraged that I have so taken him to task for having written such a lameheaded and grammatically questionable "review" of Threshold. Someone, somewhere, assured him that it was his sacrosanct right, never to be challenged, and that he should jack off like this in public every chance he gets. He will probably retaliate by writing additional bad "reviews" of my other books. I expect this. It's happened before. It's a sad and vicious cycle. But I'm serious about that free dictionary, Ja're. 'Cause it's not your fault. I blame your English teachers. They should have failed you and obviously hadn't the heart. You are merely a victim of their weaknesses.
I think that I shall go and bite someone now.
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