You make me feel less like a needy pain in the ass, deb.

Um - Allyson? You want to see a dictionary description of "needy pain in the ass", try me sending out chapter sections of the Kinkaid Chronicles to the thirty or so people on my active WIP list, begging for feedback.

You are not being a needy pain in the ass. You're being a writer. The need for feedback and input, that's a humongous part of what we do.

Unless you're someone like Anne Rice, in which case you just write crap, refuse to let anyone touch it, and take out ads in "Variety".

Well, she has taken out an ad in Variety--or helped to do one.

...just not for herself or her own stuff. I'd like to beta, too, Allyson, if you think I'd be of any help.

Heh. But not to bitch at the publishing power that be for daring to want to edit her perfect work.

Sorry. Anne Rice makes me want to grab some semi-automatic ordinance and wander up into a clock tower somewhere. And Allyson can write rings around Anne Rice.

All of us can. To get West Baltimore about it, Anne Rice is a punkassed bitch. She ain't shit. But she could buy and sell us...no, I'm not bitter. Kind of picturing us typing in a dark alley, while I say stuff like "Where's your publicist now? I don't see her here. Just you and me."

I love erika.

I thought Rice's early books weren't bad, but she's definitely one of those writers that fame and adulation affected badly.

Thanks... A little too much inner-city fiction lately, but still like the thought of GWW as my crew and taking her pretentious ass down. But it's not really Rice that cured me of thinking if a lot of people like something there must be something in it as Dan Brown. God, that junk is awful. Especially the dialogue that is written as if he spent ten years in a cave far removed from human speech, which I notice because I'm good at it. And the completely not-sexy love scenes. He should be my little lap dog, bringing soda and cannoli, but I'm still a broke newbie.

I thought Rice's early books weren't bad, but she's definitely one of those writers that fame and adulation affected badly.

I don't think I know of a worse case than Rice of believing her own press. And FWIW, honestly, I fell asleep trying to read "Interview". She did one character that I could get into at all, one character that she seemed to me to be writing with genuine passion and echoes, and that was Claudia, the child vampire. And of course, Claudia was based on her own child who'd died. But everything else of hers, put me to sleep.

She even writes boring porn. If that's not a criminal offence, it SHOULD be.

COP: I'm gonna have to cite you.

WRITER: What for? All my works are cited, all my song lyrics are paid for and I got two orgasms here. His and hers.

COP: Do you think I'm stupid or something?

WRITER: No, Mister Literature Cop. I definitely do not.

COP: Well, even I know it takes more than huffing and puffing to be hot. I'm writing you a ticket for Felony Lack of Sexy.
WRITER: My mother liked it.

COP: Tell it to the judge, man

WRITER: My mother liked it.

COP: Tell it to the judge, man

erika, will you marry m - oh, wait. You already did.

For which I am profoundly grateful.