This will be brief, folks, because you should be reading this post and following the links to the incident rather than wasting time seeing what I have to say. I’m not even the first one to get to this, obviously.
The short of it is this:
Candace Sams, author of some book whose title sounds idiotic to me, developed a particularly nasty case of complete nutjobbery. Some Amazon person gave a negative review of her book, and she decided to comment, only not in the way anyone with a brain might. There are, as of this moment, twenty-seven pages, some of them hers and a lot of them from people trying to fan the flames. Around page 15 or 16 is where she starts claiming that she is getting the FBI involved, but really, the whole thread is a enjoyable foray into one author’s psychological downfall.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with responding to a review, per se. Sometimes authors want to get a bit more information or clarify a point, or something. But Nutty Sams has done exactly what no author should do: gone off on a wild tear on the reviewer and anyone else that isn’t on her side. The good news is that Nutty Sams has received a lot of free press for this, the kind of press that most writers can only dream of getting (she’s apparently been Gaiman-ized). The bad news is that this may very well be the end of her career. At least she gave everyone a bit of fun on her way down.
That is all.
Update: The Guardian talks about this incident here.
