Attack of the Insecure Writer!

Last month in one of those useless Facebook groups I'm a member of for some reason this dude advertised his free superhero book USERS and so I thought I'd go download it.  I mean it's free, right?  I read it a week or so later and it wasn't very good.

It starts out with this super-powered guy named Carter (basically a knock-off of Human Torch) who goes to his shrink.  This is told in first-person as a prologue.  Then he says he's going to tell his story.  Chapter 1 begins then in third person.  And I think, WTF?!  I mean, he's telling a story about himself in third person?  How does that make any sense?

Think of it this way:  if I tell you a story about Goldilocks and the 3 Bears I tell it in 3rd person because it didn't happen to me.  But if I'm Goldilocks, I would tell you the story from my point of view in 1st person because it happened to me.  That makes sense, right?

It gets even better when the story jumps to another character's point of view.  So, wait, not only is he telling his shrink a story about him in third-person, but apparently now he's psychic and relating what other people are thinking.  (BTW, being psychic is not in his power set.)  That makes even less sense!

This was so irritating to me that it completely threw me off enjoying the story.  Like I said in my review, it switches my brain from reader to critiquer because a mistake that obvious just screams AMATEUR!!!  Then I start looking for all sorts of other mistakes, like "dredges of humanity" instead of "dregs."  Dredging is what you do to make a river deeper; dregs are the crap left in the bottom of something.

If it hadn't been for the inept narration I probably would have just given it three stars as a serviceable but not especially good example of a superhero story.  So instead I gave it two stars on Goodreads/Amazon.

A couple days later the author throws a hissy-fit on my Facebook author page:

Stacy Buck You dont think it's a conflict of interest that you write so many negative reviews for other authors when you yourself are an author? Isn't that a little like Pepsi reviewing coke? I'm not coming after you for the negative review, but it seems like a conflict of interest. You don't think you've seen too far behind the curtain to look at the reading experience objectively?

Like his book this makes no sense and is riddled with typos.  I mean, really, authors can't review books?  Hey, dipshit, authors review books all the time!  It's like, really, dude, pick up any major book and you'll see all these blurbs from authors on it.  Because authors review the books of other authors all the freaking time!  Duh.

Here's my response:

P.T. Dilloway Sorry dude. Get in a decent critique group.

And his:

Stacy Buck No thanks. You can keep your sorry too. I accept the valid points of your review too but you have no business reviewing other authors books when you're in the god damn business. Your books look terrible. I no doubt will not like them...should I read them and leave you reviews?

Again not understanding that people "in the god damn business" review books of other people "in the god damn business" all the time.  I don't think he realized either that slamming my books out of revenge isn't really the same as me giving a book I had no connection to a bad review for completely logical, objective reasons.  And obviously he didn't because last Sunday he left this "review" on my book Justice for All:

This was taken down hours later...

After that he goes on to tell me not to read "his shit" anymore--his words, not mine, lol.  Then calls me a child molester because I guess he doesn't realize that age regression books like Transformed Into a Little Girl are not about having sex with children.  And to cap it off he threatens that he's going to talk about me on his podcast.  What a whiny little bitch.

Hey I know getting a bad review is rough, but maybe try to grow from it.  And seriously, get in a critique group that can show you what you're doing wrong before you foist it on the reading public.  I mean, if he'd posted the prologue and first chapter on writers.net a few months ago I could have told him what was wrong, though I suspect he'd have gone through with it anyway.

Certainly though you shouldn't stalk someone who gives you a bad review to their Facebook page and start ranting.  You kind of cede the moral high ground then, but I guess with Drumpf as president we are in the post-morality world now.