🙁 I am sitting here, alone, fuming about something I’ve just read. In truth, I’m a bit upset about it too.
I’m a member of a number of book forums, and on this particular one, there are links to my website, etc. in my signature. I only did this because another forum member advised me to put my details in my signature, so that everyone knew my pseudonym – I personally didn’t set out to go on the site and promote my book (as you know, I’m the worst self-promoter in the world). Anyway, this particular ‘member’ seems to have a bee in their bonnet about the various mentions to Karma on the site, and seems to suggest that it’s inclusion is lowering the tone of the book forum! The thing is that many other links appear on the site: to other people’s websites, to books…and occasionally to some very dodgy sites indeed (but these are spam, to be fair). She seems to have a problem with me being there and I feel she has attacked my work.
When I think how hard it was for me to even complete the book, it get really frustrated that someone can dismiss my work just because it doesn’t fall within her view of literature. I respect anyone who has put in the time and effort to write a book, and certainly wouldn’t denigrate their work because it wasn’t within a particular genre.
I feel as though I am no longer welcome at that particular forum, which is very sad. I am also angry at myself that I allowed myself to be provoked into defending my work. Stopped short of picking her up on a word she mis-typed in her posting, though – that would have just been petty and childish…but it was tempting!
Glad I got that out of my system. Am a lot karma now – geddit? Calmer? Think I must be very tired to be coming out with pathetic puns like that! Laughing
My promotional leaflets arrived yesterday – they’re very nice. I’ve put my name down for the book event at Blaydon Festival in June – more details to follow. Am waiting to hear from Waterstones in Newcastle via Natalie, and hoping to speak to the Sunday Sun journalist this week. Still no word from Borders in Gateshead, but Natalie’s working on it. Just thinking, I never did hear anything from WHSmith…so the places that I thought were most likely to stock the book (ie those most local to me), WHSmith and Waterstones in the Metrocentre have shown no interest. Oh well, can’t win ’em all! Ooh, one more thing before I go – I’m now in the A-Z listings of Literature Northeast with REAL writers:
http://www.literaturenortheast.co.uk/writers/Holly-Harvey
Bye for now!