Sunday, March 18, 2018

Words Kill

     I suppose I should be writing about the hit job that was done by Donald Trump and his thugs on Andrew McCabe and I suppose I should at a later date. But there's something else I want to talk about today. Bullying and the suicide that all too often succeeds it.
     I follow and am friends with literally thousands of other authors on Facebook. They range from Jeffery Deaver, Scott Turow and Anne Perry all the way down to obscure indie authors like me. So when I saw this on the feed of one of my friends, Robert Gregory Browne, I saw red. This is what Browne wrote today just before announcing he was taking a sabbatical from Facebook over this very same incident:
I don't know Lee Ching. But I've just learned that she attempted to take her own life because people on Facebook were encouraging her to. Told her she was worthless and should kill herself. Why? Because apparently she used the same stock art on a book cover as someone else and the designs were similar. According to what I read, EIGHTY authors and author sycophants were part of this bullying. One after another called her the "C" word and told her to slit her wrists, told her she would never work in publishing again. These weren't eighty brainless teenagers but eighty ADULTS, telling someone to kill herself. OVER A BOOK COVER.
I'm a nonbeliever, but I now hope Hell exists.
    Not that I'm conflating the two because there's just no comparison. But this juvenile, sociopathic behavior reminds me of what had happened 11 months ago when some British hack named Katerina Diamond decided to engage in a one-way flame war with me. Lord only knows what was said about me behind my back but this kicks up bad online behavior several notches. I only lost two dozen so-called "friends" over that non-incident. This girl almost took her life. Many if not most of us have illusions about our fellow writers being mature, compassionate people but I have no such illusions even among my Facebook "friends." And Katerina Diamond and her hysterical shrieking would've disabused me of the notion, if I'd harbored any, that such petty and sadistic behavior is solely in the domain of self-published authors.
      It is not. If anything, the reverse is true. A FB friend once shared a story about Dave Chadwick, my own personal stalker and frustrated self-pubbed author, who'd once belonged to a writing group she ran. She said Chadwick harassed a female author so much she actually had a nervous breakdown, unpublished her books and had to republish them under a pen name to get away from Chadwick. (Chadwick's indirectly, if not directly responsible for the death of a friend of mine, btw).
      But online conduct such as this is inexcusable and intolerable, to say the VERY least. I see posts all the time with which I don't agree. I see book covers all the time that are absolutely dreadful. I almost always pass over them without comment because I don't feel it necessary to waste my time to insult someone or their work and hurt their feelings in the process. But to actually encourage someone to kill themselves and over something as petty as a book cover?
     Now, places such as Photobucket and Shutterstock sell images and clip art to people like Lee Ching and my own graphic designer. And sometimes designers use the same royalty-free images when making book covers for their clients. It happens. It's no worse than two women showing up at the same party wearing the same dress.

     For instance, my first graphic designer, when looking for a picture for Scott Carson while working on the cover for Tatterdemalion, chose a fairly common picture that others had used. I've seen that model (far right) used on two other book covers, including The Whip, which I own.

     The shadow outline that you see in the cover for my upcoming novel Blue Blood is one that I've seen on at least one other cover and is also commonly sold on Shutterstock, one which I'd provided to my second and current designer. It's an occupational hazard in this business. Again, it happens. It's not a matter of life and death. But some people think plagiarism, which wasn't even close to being proved in Ching's case, is a capital offense.
     Words kill because you need to allow that some are more sensitive than others and calling them "snowflakes" or such ridiculous names is not doing the right thing. A beautiful, talented and sweet young lady almost killed herself in South Africa yesterday because of ugly words from even uglier people.
     Sorry but if you're that vicious of a human being and encourage others to kill themselves, might I suggest you lead by example?

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home

KindleindaWind, my writing blog.

All Time Classics

  • Our Worse Half: The 25 Most Embarrassing States.
  • The Missing Security Tapes From the World Trade Center.
  • It's a Blunderful Life.
  • The Civil War II
  • Sweet Jesus, I Hate America
  • Top Ten Conservative Books
  • I Am Mr. Ed
  • Glenn Beck: Racist, Hate Monger, Comedian
  • The Ten Worst Music Videos of all Time
  • Assclowns of the Week

  • Links to the first 33 Assclowns of the Week.
  • Links to Assclowns of the Week 38-63.
  • #106: The Turkey Has Landed edition
  • #105: Blame it on Paris or Putin edition
  • #104: Make Racism Great Again Also Labor Day edition
  • #103: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Toilet edition
  • #102: Orange is the New Fat edition
  • #101: Electoral College Dropouts edition
  • #100: Centennial of Silliness edition
  • #99: Dr. Strangehate edition
  • #98: Get Bentghazi edition
  • #97: SNAPping Your Fingers at the Poor edition
  • #96: Treat or Treat, Kiss My Ass edition
  • #95: Monumental Stupidity double-sized edition
  • #94: House of 'Tards edition
  • #93: You Da Bomb! edition.
  • #92: Akin to a Fool edition.
  • #91: Aurora Moronealis edition.
  • #90: Keep Your Gubmint Hands Off My High Pre'mums and Deductibles! edition.
  • #89: Occupy the Catbird Seat/Thanksgiving edition.
  • #88: Heil Hitler edition.
  • #87: Let Sleeping Elephants Lie edition.
  • #86: the Maniacs edition.
  • #85: The Top 50 Assclowns of 2010 edition.
  • #(19)84: Midterm Madness edition.
  • #83: Spill, Baby, Spill! edition.
  • #82: Leave Corporations Alone, They’re People! edition.
  • #81: Hatin' on Haiti edition.
  • #80: Don't Get Your Panties in a Twist edition.
  • #79: Top 50 Assclowns of 2009 edition.
  • #78: Nattering Nabobs of Negativism edition.
  • #77: ...And Justice For Once edition.
  • #76: Reading Tea Leaves/Labor Day edition.
  • #75: Diamond Jubilee/Inaugural Edition
  • #74: Dropping the Crystal Ball Edition
  • #73: The Twelve Assclowns of Christmas Edition
  • #72: Trick or Treat Election Day Edition
  • #71: Grand Theft Autocrats Edition
  • #70: Soulless Corporations and the Politicians Who Love Them Edition
  • Empire Of The Senseless.
  • Christwire.org: Conservative Values for an Unsaved World.
  • Esquire's Charles Pierce.
  • Brilliant @ Breakfast.
  • The Burning Platform.
  • The Rant.
  • Mock, Paper, Scissors.
  • James Petras.
  • Towle Road.
  • Avedon's Sideshow (the new site).
  • At Largely, Larisa Alexandrovna's place.
  • The Daily Howler.
  • The DCist.
  • Greg Palast.
  • Jon Swift. RIP, Al.
  • God is For Suckers.
  • The Rude Pundit.
  • Driftglass.
  • Newshounds.
  • William Grigg, a great find.
  • Brad Blog.
  • Down With Tyranny!, Howie Klein's blog.
  • Wayne's World. Party time! Excellent!
  • Busted Knuckles, aka Ornery Bastard.
  • Mills River Progressive.
  • Right Wing Watch.
  • Earthbond Misfit.
  • Anosognosia.
  • Echidne of the Snakes.
  • They Gave Us a Republic.
  • The Gawker.
  • Outtake Online, Emmy-winner Charlotte Robinson's site.
  • Skippy, the Bush Kangaroo
  • No More Mr. Nice Blog.
  • Head On Radio Network, Bob Kincaid.
  • Spocko's Brain.
  • Pandagon.
  • Slackivist.
  • WTF Is It Now?
  • No Blood For Hubris.
  • Lydia Cornell, a very smart and accomplished lady.
  • Roger Ailes (the good one.)
  • BlondeSense.
  • The Smirking Chimp.
  • Hammer of the Blogs.
  • Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.
  • Argville.
  • Existentialist Cowboy.
  • The Progressive.
  • The Nation.
  • Mother Jones.
  • Vanity Fair.
  • Salon.com.
  • Citizens For Legitimate Government.
  • News Finder.
  • Indy Media Center.
  • Lexis News.
  • Military Religious Freedom.
  • McClatchy Newspapers.
  • The New Yorker.
  • Bloggingheads TV, political vlogging.
  • Find Articles.com, the next-best thing to Nexis.
  • Altweeklies, for the news you won't get just anywhere.
  • The Smirking Chimp
  • Don Emmerich's Peace Blog
  • Wikileaks.
  • The Peoples' Voice.
  • Dictionary.com.
  • CIA World Fact Book.
  • IP address locator.
  • Tom Tomorrow's hilarious strip.
  • Babelfish, an instant, online translator. I love to translate Ann Coulter's site into German.
  • Newsmeat: Find out who's donating to whom.
  • Wikipedia.
  • Uncyclopedia.
  • anysoldier.com
  • Icasualties
  • Free Press
  • YouTube
  • The Bone Bridge.
  • Powered by Blogger