In one of the comments on Ms. Genoese’s first post today, a poster mentioned not liking Susan Kearney’s “The Challenge” (Ms. Genoese is the editor who bought/handled this book for Tor.). I posted a response in agreement saying (and I’m paraphrasing here for reasons that will become clear below) that I thought Ms. Kearney was a good writer, had a good imagination, and knew how to put a story together, but that the “forced seduction” in the story ruined the romance for me because I thought that to be insulting and demeaning to the heroine. I also said that I liked the heroine a lot; I just thought she deserved better treatment than the hero gave her. Finally, I made it clear that this was just my opinion, and I knew that others had different ones.
Does that sound harsh? I didn’t think so. The nice stuff started out the post, and I also mentioned a couple of other books put out by Tor that I really enjoyed. And "forced seduction" is a topic that's been discussed in on-line romance circles before, and people have a variety of opinions. I was curious what others thought.
So this afternoon I checked back to see if any discussion had occurred on the posts and found the posts had been deleted. Ms. Genoese had this to say in her second post today:
Two things that make me crankier: when people slag off on my authors in the comments, and…(Don't bother going to look for them [the posts]--after I made snotty remarks to the posters, I screened the posts. I am totally piqued.)...Go write rude things about my authors and me [on your own blogs].(This is not to say that everyone is supposed to agree with me all the time. Far from it. However, gratuitous rudeness and a confrontational attitude is not welcome here.)
Later, in the comments, she referred to me as an idiot.
WTF?
Slagging off on her authors? Um, I said nice things about the author. In fact, I said nice things about several authors. I said I didn’t like certain aspects of this particular story.
Confrontational? **scratching head** I have no idea how what I wrote could be seen as confrontational.
Gratuitously rude? **scratching head still** WTF?
I never saw her “snotty comments” so I have no idea what she said in response to my post. Maybe that would explain her choice of adjectives.
Now I respect Ms. Genoese’s right to delete whatever comments she wishes – it’s her blog after all. And maybe I shouldn't have posted anything at all. Perhaps this was not the venue for this discussion. However, I strongly object to having what I wrote so grossly mischaracterized. I like Tor’s paranormal romance line, and I’ll continue to read/buy the books – but my days of reading Ms. Genoese’s blog are over.
