What Normal People Do....

Once,  a blogger was "mean" to me.  Here, let me explain...

The blogger followed me on Twitter, so I followed her back.  That's generally what I do.  My debut YA novel, HAVEN, was coming out soon, and she DM'd me, asking for swag.  I sent her some.  She asked if I could add her to my publicist's ARC list.  I did so, and presumably my publicist sent her an ARC (or, at least, approved her for the online galley).  We chatted casually on Twitter now and then.  Weeks passed.

One day, my Twitter feed was filled with this blogger's minute-by-minute reactions as she was reading HAVEN (not Goodreads status updates--more like she was "live tweeting" as she read, dissecting the book sentence by sentence).  Let's just say she hated it.  Her live tweeting went on for two or three days, with several of her friends getting in on the action.  I mostly tried to stay away from Twitter during that time.  At the end of it all, she posted a link to a YouTube vlog review (not sure if it was her's or a friend of her's), which I didn't watch.

Fast forward a few weeks, to a big group signing I'm participating in at Books of Wonder.  Said blogger comes to signing (presumably to see a *different* author, LOL!) and sits directly in front of me.  I recognize her immediately from her Twitter profile pic, and yeah, I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me a little self-conscious.  I do my reading from HAVEN (we're all reading a couple pages from our books).  As the signing wears on, I surreptitiously check my Twitter feed on my phone.  I see that said blogger has Tweeted about me while I was doing my reading, something along the lines of, "Kristi Cook is such a moron!"

(For the record, what I did that she was judging as "moronic" was that I read a few pages from the last quarter of the book, rather than reading from the beginning, which I felt--and said--was only marginally spoilery but a far better representation of what kind of book it was.  I still stand by that choice and, when called upon to read from HAVEN, still read that same selection.)

I don't care that she didn't like my book.  I really don't.  I was, however, bothered that she would mock me publicly while sitting right there, ten feet from me.  This makes me think she's not a very nice person, but what do I know?!  I don't really *know* her.

HERE IS WHAT I DID IN RESPONSE:  I unfollowed her on Twitter.  And...that's it.  I've never checked her Twitter page since, never visited her blog (I have no idea if she's even still blogging or not), have no idea what her "real" name is, have never visited her Goodreads page (no idea if she has one).

You know why?  BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE DO!!!!!!!!!!

I know bloggers are scared right now--they have every reason to be, given the crazy out there.  But just know that most authors--at least, those who are normal, non-sociopathic people--don't stalk, threaten, or otherwise harass reviewers for ANY REASON.

To quote that lady in the funny esurance ad, "That's not how this works.  That's not how *any* of this works...."

/ENDRANT