I’ve been attacked again

This bloody knife is from the header design on a brand new blog called The Bludgeoner. (I suspect the "Finalist" graphic on it means this art was stolen.) The Bludgeoner blog was apparently created for the sole purpose of attacking not only my book, The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles, but me and my professional work.

He makes the following statement (I’ll refer to this person as male, though I have no idea what gender he/she is; it may be sexist of me, but I don’t feel that a woman would go to these extreme lengths or utilize these gory and threatening graphics).

“Do you think your book is made of the right stuff? Can it survive a bludgeoning? Send to me electronically and I'll review it. If it's good [sic] I'll sing your praises. If not [sic] things will get bloody.”

For one thing, I didn’t (to my knowledge) send my book to the Bludgeoner. For another, anyone who reads on to see what he did to me is certainly not going to be volunteering their work. I believe this is a flimsy attempt to pose as a legitimate review blog as cover for a personal attack. The Bludgeoner starts in on me with this with:

“Ray Ramey is an editor- sort of. He runs a blog called flogging the quill where writers can submit their work to be reviewed. He's also written five books and fired his agent after she couldn't sell them. He hasn't been able to find another agent since. He seems like a nice guy thought [sic]. He is always very polite to writers and readers. I suppose there are some people out there who believe you can't bludgeon a nice guy.

“Watch me.”

And he does, even though he is unable to spell my name correctly—a blessing, I guess. I wonder how he got a copy of the book—I only sent out e-ARCs to a small number of people, and it seems highly unlikely that this person bought the book. If he is one of the people who requested the e-ARC and already held his hatred of me, then the request was under false pretenses. His assessment of the novel:

“It's just like a Hoover, because it sucks!”

He likes to refer to the reviews that have appeared on Amazon:

”… it's received one five star, two four stars, one two star and a one star. (note: there are 3 four-star reviews)

“Of course that doesn't seem all that bad so you might just be tempted to buy his book. Stop! Poor children are staving. If you want to be generous [sic] donate money. It's important to remember he's using his blog to launch the book (unsuccessfully.) However [sic] a few readers seem to have bought his book or at least left him a good review because he seems like a nice guy. If friends are being stingy with a five [sic] that either says a lot about the friends our [sic] a lot about the book. Probably both in this case, but I digress. The point is, the people who aren't his friends are rating this book as a two and below, which is probably accurate. They're not emotionally invested in his feelings.”

For the record, I don’t know any of the people who posted reviews. A friend of the blog posted a 4-star review on Amazon UK and told me that she’d done so deliberately because she felt that people figure that 5-star reviews are all from friends and thus suspect. Well, none of the reviews for either of my books were posted by personal friends.

And, yes, there is a 1-star review (the person started out liking what she was reading and then was offended by content) and a 2-star review (the pace and plot churn were too much for her taste); no book is for everyone, and that’s fair. I can handle bad reviews, and I know that other readers love the book.

Oh, and there’s this gem, where he criticizes the grammar:

“From plot, [sic] to pacing (see books targeted at 7-10 year old's [sic]) to basic grammar [sic] this book misses it's [sic] mark.”

For this person’s information, I had the book reviewed thoroughly by a copyeditor who knows The Chicago Manual of Style, the style guide for the book publishing industry.

Then the Bludgeoner makes it personal

He first rips apart my “resume,” which is actually a very brief bio posted on one of my blogsites, not a resume at all. He feels that I “fudge” things because it’s so brief and not filled with specifics. And he likes to twist things, i.e.

“The fact that he doesn't tell us how long he was a [sic] employed writer means he doesn't want us to know the duration.”

It’s a brief bio, not my CV.

And then he attacks my professional qualifications and abilities.

“. . . he's not qualified to be giving lectures or editing books for pay.”

You’ll have to read his blog for the “reasons” why.

Since the Bludgeoner spent so much time “researching” me, I wonder why he didn’t refer to the testimonials from writers I have edited, who gave me the testimonials after the edit for which they paid their hard-earned money. If you’re curious, they’re here.

As for teaching, I will refer you to a sampling of the comments I received from the 110 or so writers who attended my last workshop at Write on the Sound. The conference asks for ratings and comments—the huge majority of the ratings for my workshop, on a 5-point scale, were 5s (the largest amount) and 4s, and the few negative ones mostly had to do with the fact that there wasn’t enough time allotted for the workshop, a phenomenon due solely to an unexpected level of enrollment that was beyond my control. Those quotes are here, on the right side of the page. They are representative, not all-inclusive.

I’m worried about violence

This knife is what the Bludgeoner uses for his photo on his profile page. He has chosen a violent name for his blog and features two bloody knives. There was a report on the news yesterday morning about a waitress who was murdered by a stalker.

I’m findable. My address is out there, and when I do workshops in other places, I let people know. This attack, the brutal blog name, and the bloody images make me nervous. I think they are a threat. I don’t think I’m being paranoid, not in this violent world where a stranger can attack with impunity.

I just found this on his blog:

1. I have too much time my hands. If that's not enough explanation for this blog, see number 2.
2. I'm crazy, obsesive [sic] and very very ill.

Beyond that, I like to eveserate [sic] people. Call it a hobby if you like. I'm sadistic that way. I don't care about being fair.

I’ll tell you something; this makes me question whether I should continue blogging.

What troubles me is why

What I can’t get my head around is why this has happened. To the best of my knowledge, I have done no one harm enough to warrant this venomous attack. It appears to me that this person has a great deal of anger about something, and I’m a handy, vulnerable target with no recourse because he hides behind the anonymity of the Internet. Don’t you think that, if this person were not in some way cowardly, he would use his name? Why is he hiding?

And it looks like there’s more to come; he has also created a blog that uses the title of my book, THE VAMPIRE KITTY CAT CHRONICLES. Using this, he could impersonate me to say vile things. I am going to ask the police about this, but I live in a small town that has little cyber crime, and am not hopeful. If you have any recommendations, please let me know.

I’m trying to figure out how to report this to Blogger, but their automated abuse categories don’t match what’s going on here.

Does anyone out there know how to send an email to someone at Blogger?

An appeal to The Bludgeoner

Come out from your anonymity. Contact me via email or on this blog and let me know your name and, more importantly, what you hold against me. You can hate the book all you want, but your other attacks are clearly personal, yet I don’t know you, as far as I know.

If any FtQ readers can suss out who this is, please let me know. The language on the Bludgeoner’s post reminded me immediately of a commenter last month called “R.B.” who said very similar things. He, too, seems to have gotten the book, though I know not how. But I won’t accuse that person without solid evidence.

I wish 2 things for you, Bludgeoner

That whatever is bad in your life that has driven you to do this goes away and life is good again. Truly I do.

And then, when life is good again and you work and work and work to write an entertainment for people and put it out there, this will happen to you. Truly I do.

I'm only human.

An apology to writers in the flogging queue

As we used to say in Texas, my dobber is down. I dreamed about this the night after it arrived. It has thrown my writing off-stride as well as my editing/critiquing. So I’m going to leave this post up for a few days while I regain my composure. Your flogging will be a little delayed, and for that I apologize.

Friday Fun

Lastly, I promised “Friday Fun” podcasts from the novel. Well, this Friday is no fun for me, but I try to keep my promises. It's below.

Chapter 3 Meg's got balls

Ray Rhamey's Podcast

© 2010 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[D. Robert Pease]

Due to this great review (if someone hates it this much, it must be pretty darn good) I just bought the book on Amazon.

[Sandra Almazan]

I'm sorry this is happening to you. I hope something can be done to bring you peace of mind. And for what it's worth, I think your critiques on this blog have been very professional and helpful.

[AnnG]

I really hope that whoever thinks this is funny to do to someone... stop. It's not funny, it doesn't make you a better person than anyone, and it proves nothing.

Ray, if you feel threatened, report the site. They take things like that more seriously these days, after all the evidence people leave on blogs before crimes.

[Ray Rhamey]

D. Robert, thank you. I'm sure that this is not what the Bludgeoner intended.

And thanks to everyone else for your support.

[LJCohen]

Ray,

Definitely report this to blogger. I would also recommend you take screen shots of the blog, in case the person takes it down or changes it, so you have some proof of what it originally said.

This is a terrible thing to have to go through.

[Jean]

This is so sad. You have a wonderful site and go out of your way to be so helpful to all of us.

I wish your book great success in spite of this attack.

[LisaP]

Ray, so sorry you have to go through this. I went through something similar a couple of years ago.

Blogger will remove content found to impersonate user identity, however, they will not remove content deemed a personal attack or defamation of character without a court order. As far as contacting them, you can use this link http://www.google.com/support/blogger/bin/request.py?page=main_tos to report violations of their terms of service.

I very much appreciate your blog and everything you do for aspiring writers and I wish you a peaceful and speedy resolution to this disturbing situation.

[The copy editor]

If he's created a blog with the title of your book, you could probably get him for copyright--I'd think if it's hosted on Blogger, they'd take that seriously.

I didn't want to add a click to the guy's stats, but I visited his blog anyway. And, uh...yeah.

A message for the "bludgeoner," if he ever actually comes here:

Take care of your own grammar, spelling, and punctuation before you attack anyone else's. To me you don't look twisted and dangerous, you look like an obnoxious idiot. For now, I'll echo Ray's sentiment: I hope whatever is making you miserable enough to behave this way gets better. And I hope that sometime later, when you've made your best effort to create something or actually help someone, and you're feeling good about it, you get your own medicine shoved straight down your throat.

Keep on truckin', Ray. We've got your back.

[Trip Volpe]

Wow. What a sad, sad, weird little person. I too am struggling to imagine how anybody could have such apparent animosity toward you, Ray. It's probably like you say: just some insecure, angry person who latched onto you as a target for whatever reason. Maybe some time in the distant past he solicited your critique on something he had written, and became _deeply_ and personally offended when you corrected a grammatical mistake. :-P

But considering his own masterful command of teh Englsih langauge, his criticism is pretty stinkin' rich. That and all the obviously ripped-off stock images really do a lot to what for lack of a better word I will call his credibility. When you consider that your most vocal detractor is so obviously incompetent, you gotta figure it could be worse.

For whatever it's worth, I've loved FtQ ever since I first laid eyes on it just a few months ago. This is a great thing you're doing here; both in giving your valuable advice and insights to aspiring writers, and in your exemplary efforts at bringing your own stuff to market in an unconventional way. Don't let anything (least of all the nearly incoherent words of some anonymous heckler) prevent you from continuing your awesome work.

I also have a story I'm working on whose first page I'd love to submit for a flogging some time soon, so definitely hang in there! ;-)

As far as this creep goes, I very much doubt he's actually anything to worry about, but it's worth being careful. Definitely talk to police about it, at the very least so there will be something on record if he continues harassing you.

Has he ever posted a comment here that you know of? You might be able to get his IP address and run it through a location lookup service like this one: http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm

Depending on his ISP and proxy configuration, that might give you a good idea of his physical location.

Good luck, and remember we're behind you 100%!

[Doug]

There's a trope often seen in mystery novels, especially cozies, where at some point the investigators escape getting killed themselves. This is usually followed by a comment like, "We must be getting close."

Being the target of bullies and other strange-oes seems to be an unavoidable side-effect of being visibly successful to any degree. I was once targeted online myself, and there were probably only a hundred people who knew me in the particular milieu.

It's unsettling at first, but one either comes to terms with the dark side of (even a tiny bit of) celebrity, or one chooses to slink away.

Ray, I didn't see any physical threats against you on the site. It basically seems to be a lame attempt to mock FtQ. I would think that if one were planning to mock an editor's site, one might choose to (at least) put one's text through MS Word's spell-checker and grammar-checker, but it seems that the Bludgeoner isn't as sharp as the knives in the images.

Oh, a note to Bludgeoner: one bludgeons with a blunt instrument, not a knife.

As to "why you", I suspect it's mainly summed up in this bit: "I suppose there are some people out there who believe you can't bludgeon a nice guy. Watch me."

I'm not convinced that T.B. (what a great initialism!) has actually read your book; the comments were basically rehashes of what other people have written plus some unsubstantiated potshots. T.B. acknowledges not having read the entire novel, and you've published the first couple of chapters online.

My advice would be to try to ignore it. Yeah, easier said than done. But there'll always be people who don't like us, or don't like our works. If we let those people get to us, it sucks the life out of living.