Remember last October, during the Katherine Hale controversy, when we heard about the reviewer who was whacked over the head with a wine bottle while working in supermarket Asda in Scotland by author Richard Brittain who’d travelled 500 miles to do so as revenge for a negative review?
Continue reading Author Richard Brittain Pleads Guilty for Attacking Reviewer with Wine Bottle
Should badly behaving authors scare us all into abandoning reviewing, what would a world without us look like?
Continue reading Turning Back Time: A World Without (Amateur) Reviewers #HaleNo
This is what you get when you type ‘sociopath’ and ‘entitlement’ into Google.
Continue reading Sociopathy, Entitlement and Delusion #HaleNo
“I think in my humble opinion that this is getting a little out of control. Why look through all of her articles for more ammo to call her crazy? The stalking is more than enough to hang her out to dry with. If these pieces had been written by someone else, I don’t think they’d be getting the same reaction.”
I’ve come across this sort of comment a few times.
Continue reading Kathleen Hale: Why Research Her Background? #HaleNo
Until now authors stalking reviewers had largely remained in cyber space rather than face-to-face. Kathleen Hale spent money finding the address a writer of a one-star review of Hale’s book, hired a car and landed on the doorstep of an understandably shocked and flabbergasted victim, who was then further victimised by Hale’s disturbingly vivid account of her obsessive and criminal actions in the Guardian which failed to remove identifying information.
Richard Brittain took this one giant leap further.
Panellists: Foz Meadows, Patricia Ash, Shaun Duke, Liz de Jager, Erin M. Underwood
Bloggers have become an integral part of YA book promotion. How do authors find these bloggers? Why should readers trust their opinions? What are the best book blogs out there right now and what makes them so useful?
Continue reading LonCon3 #23: On The Blogs – Bloggers Discuss their Roles in the World of YA
Brazilian Penguin-Companhia’s Tweet for a Read campaign takes authors harassing readers to a new level. They’re offering a smart bookmark to readers that senses how long it was since you last picked up the book you’re reading and lets the author know so they can tweet you to pick it back up.
Continue reading Smart bookmark lets authors tweet at readers who have neglected their novel
Rating: 
Anthony Weston encourages the use of representative examples and counterexamples, warns of the hazards of statistics (like I recently have), imparts the importance of impartial and reliable sources, explains the correlational relationship between cause and effect, presents deductive reasoning in the words of Sherlock Holmes, preaches the value of librarians, and can teach a thing or two to Badly Behaving Authors.
Continue reading A Rulebook for Arguments (Fourth Edition) by Anthony Weston
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Answer: Not really.
I’ve wanted to brush up on my persuasive writings skills for a while as it’s something I’ve been using quite a bit in recent months and I always failed that part of my English language studies at school. I picked two books: this one (obtained from the library) and Persuasive Writing: How to Harness the Power of Words (which I bought). I’m glad I made this decision.
Can I Change Your Mind? isn’t as useful as I was hoping, whereas quickly flicking through my other choice saw me finding some very clear and immediately handy tips. Of the four sections, the first is the worst. The layout and formatting didn’t help which is notably better in Persuasive Writing. Camp rambles so I skimmed, proving him right that ‘the reader never reads from start to finish’, but helpfully, someone who’d read this book previously had underlined the key points in pencil. Defacing a book is wrong, but in this case, acceptable.
Continue reading Can I Change Your Mind?: The Craft and Art of Persuasive Writing by Lindsay Camp
Literary Ames 