A Post About Censorship

by Janis Patterson

I know this is not a political forum, so I’m not going to be political... just bear with me.

I’m not much on social media - in truth, I hate it. It’s a timesink and sometimes it’s frightening to see what’s going on out there. I use it for two primary purposes - family/friends contact and publicity on my books. More, if I am to be honest, of the former than the latter. 

However, I am human, and when I see an egregious lie posted as fact I have to respond. (And it has to be a really BIG lie to make me comment.) This time I simply stated an irrefutable, provable scientific truth. So guess what? The platform froze my account, then sent me a cloyingly polite little note saying my post had been flagged as being hurtful of some people’s feelings.

What? An account is frozen because a factual statement of truth is ‘hurtful to some people’s feelings”??? It is indeed the truth...

They then said I could be completely reinstated by deleting the ‘offensive’ post. 

Hmmm - so if I want to be allowed back in the ‘tribe’ all I have to do is deny an irrefutable scientific fact - and agree to a deliberate untruth. Bad bargain. I protested, telling them I was not going to defame my honor by underwriting a lie, and since my account was locked I had no way of closing/deleting the whole account - and believe me, I tried. So I asked them to close and delete the account for me and we could call it quits.

Not surprisingly they refused. Apparently I not only have to sacrifice my honor and honesty, but I have to kowtow to their rules and delete the truth before I can sever our relationship. That’s scary. Needless to say, we are at a stalemate - I will not sacrifice the truth to have a platform on which I can sell my books. Period.

So what is the purpose of this little screed besides some personal venting? Well, this attitude affects every writer out there. Why should we be expected to allow someone - censor, Mrs. Grundy, monolithic corporation, government, anyone - to dictate unilaterally to us what we can and cannot write - especially when it is the truth? And before you say ‘truth is relative’ sometimes it isn’t. An irrefutable fact is an irrefutable fact - if you turn loose of a rock, it will fall down, not up. If you cut a piece of meat in half, you cannot make it truly whole again. You cannot cut off a person’s head then stick it back on and expect him to be the same. More frivolously, you cannot eat your cake and have it too. Some things just are, and cannot be changed simply because we want them to be - or because they “might hurt someone’s feelings.”

Now there are those who will say social media is a contract between individuals and media, meaning the individual corporations which have the freedom to say what will and will not be said upon their platforms, and in a way that is true - I am a great believer in corporate freedom. If this or any social media platform chooses to play that way, I can choose not to play with them. However distasteful I might find their actions, they are certainly within their rights to be as dictatorial as they choose. If someone doesn’t like what they are doing, they can leave and go to another platform they find more to their liking. What I object to is that this repugnant practice is it is becoming so prevalent over every branch of communication - including magazines, movies, television and books.

What if someone decrees you cannot write a mystery with a ____ (insert classification of choice here, such as man, woman, child, straight, homosexual, black, white, Asian... whatever) as the villain? Or that you cannot ever have more than two dead bodies in a single book? What if we are ordered that no one in a story can come from a such-and-such background, or be of (or not be of) a such-and-such socio-economic/racial/sexual group? That’s censorship, plain and simple.

Nor is the problem confined to social media. Not long ago a scandal erupted in Romance Writers of America about their yearly award. It used to be called the Rita, but I believe now the name has been changed to the Vivian, but egregious as the change was, that’s not the problem. The book which won was about the romance of a man who had years before as a soldier had taken part in a military action against some Indian tribe. In the intervening years between then and the beginning of the book he had reformed and found the love of his life, which was the main thrust of the story. 

The fact that this book won enraged the PC agitators in the crowd, who claimed that since he had once been involved in a massacre of Indians he should never be a romantic hero, whether he had reformed or not. He didn’t, according to some of the more vocal critics, deserve a happy ending and could never even receive redemption or God’s forgiveness. 

In a free and sane society such hysterical blatherings would have been ignored as the self-aggrandizing lunacy they were, but sadly and disturbingly RWA chose the ‘woke’ side and rescinded the award. They couldn’t ban the book altogether, though I believe they would have if they could, but it was stripped of the award in spite of the fact it was well-written enough to have won in the first place, it adhered to every rule of the contest and was by a well-known and well-respected writer. But it displeased a minority of the membership, so it had to go. Now one cannot help but wonder how many writers are hesitant to submit their books to the - or any - award for fear it won’t pass the muster of the PC hysterics even if it does follow every rule of the contest.

So far as I know the mystery community has not succumbed to such lunacy, but one never knows. We can only hope it stays sane and free of such irrational control.

I believe such blatant censorship is something against which all writers should fight, whatever they write. BUT in spite of that statement I will say there are some things which definitely be kept out of some hands, such as pornography and children, for example - after all there are the structures and decencies of civilization to consider - but as writers we exist to communicate. If that communication is stifled, distorted, controlled, or negated, the world is doomed.

To Blog or Not to Blog

Some years ago—I can’t remember how many—we writers were first told to set up a website. Then we were instructed to blog. “Blogging is an essential part of your marketing arsenal. You will attract readers this way.” I took an online course in blogging. I started my own blog, which I only wrote sporadically. I joined a group blog. It disbanded. A few years later, I joined another.

I blog. Almost every author I know blogs. But like many of my fellow writers, I’m beginning to wonder if blogging gets me new readers or sells copies of books. Most of the people who respond to my blogs are my fellow writers. Most of them are my friends. Of course they’re all readers, but I’ve no idea what to blog about so that readers who aren’t writers will read what I’m writing,

Every day I receive notices via Facebook, Twitter, and Yahoo groups of new blog posts. I don’t have the time to read most of them. Everyone’s blogging, but who’s reading them? The posts I read and comment on fall into three categories: 1) the topic is interesting, 2) it may prove helpful regarding marketing, and 3) it’s written by a friend. One of the best reasons for blogging—though not its original purpose—is to keep in touch with writing friends.

But maybe I’ve become too pessimistic. I think blogging is here to stay as a means of communicating with others. I don’t blog very often on my own blog, Tides and Tidings, but when I do, it’s about a subject I care deeply about. A few weeks ago I blogged about “Life Changes” and how life changed for me after my husband died. Many people responded to it. And I’ve won several books by leaving a comment. How cool is that! Most recently, I left a comment on one of my cyber friend’s blog, and her editor emailed me regarding my books. The upshot is, I’ll be sending her a manuscript.

And so, for now I’ll continue to blog. Who knows? Soon another social media may arise, one we can’t even imagine. What do you all think about blogging?

Fans, Death Threats and The Question of Ownership

by Janis Patterson

It’s getting scary out there, people.

Fans are turning from appreciative readers into ravening packs of dictators and usurpers.

Is there anyone who hasn’t heard about the outrages perpetrated against Charlaine Harris?

Charlaine – who is one of the nicest people on the planet – finally ended her long-running Sookie Stackhouse series after umpteen books. She ended it a logical and nice way, but it just proved that you can’t please everyone. A portion of her fans erupted into a frenzied storm of verbal violence, sending her hate mail and death threats and fervent wishes that she would be raped and murdered for daring to end the series that way. Just because they didn’t like what happened.

First of all, it’s fiction!

Second of all, it’s her story, her characters, her vision – she and she alone should have the right to decide the ending. The fact that anyone should think otherwise is downright frightening, bringing up the image of a writer chained to a desk in a basement writing to the order of her fans. Sound over-the-top? Remember Stephen King’s MISERY? That too was fiction, but I wonder how close real life might be getting to these scenarios.

Just about the same time this was going on, there was a horror story making the rounds of the writers’ loops about some fans at a conference getting on their high horse and declaring that the writers should stop feeling that they own the characters and the stories – that they really belong to the readers.

Huh?

That makes just about as much sense as some weird political pundit announcing a few weeks ago that “parents have to get over the belief that their children belong to them personally and not to the state.” Crazy talk! Parents have the children and the children are their family and their responsibility. The writers have the vision, the writers do the work, the writers create. Readers read. How in the heck does that make them think that the characters and stories belong to them? What gives readers the right to believe that they make the decisions?

To me, this is an example of today’s all-too-prevalent entitlement mentality run totally amok. They want, so they feel they should have, so they demand – and then they get bent out of shape when they don’t get exactly what they want. Yes, there is a definite resemblance between this and a badly-behaved toddler having a tantrum.

There once was a day when authors were regarded if not with awe, at least with respect. They created living characters and entire worlds out of little more than imagination and caffeine and readers respected them for it. Now, however, things have changed. While there was once a respectful distance between writers and readers, the internet and its resulting social media have thrown the two close together, which is both good and bad.

As writers we are pretty much responsible for our own publicity nowadays, which means a lot of interaction with readers. That has removed a lot of the aura of specialness that writers used to have, and has made the readers more involved on a closer scale, which is not altogether a good thing nor a bad thing, though it has the potential to be either. Readers feel entitled to approach the writer, even feel that the writer has become their friend. All too often, though, for a certain kind of reader, this freedom of association becomes license. They feel the writer is their employee, bound to produce what they want at their order.

That is not altogether untrue. This is a free market, and if a what writer is producing is something a reader dislikes, the reader has the perfect freedom to stop buying it and take his business elsewhere. It does NOT give the reader the right to issue orders or make threats disguised as demands and threats as if they were some wild-eyed Middle-Eastern fanatic. On the other hand, if a reader is unhappy, I don’t know of a writer who would be upset about a civil, rationally phrased letter unemotionally stating their concerns. Hysterics, accusations, threats and ill-wishes are beyond the pale and unacceptable!

Now I like getting to know my readers – to a point. I enjoy chatting with them, hearing their concerns (when  civilly and politely phrased) and most especially their validation of my work when it pleases them.

On the other hand, simply because I am open to communication does not mean that I take orders from them, that the characters and stories which come from my imagination and hard work belong in any way to them, or that they have the right to demand anything of me. I am one of those people who have to write; I do not have to make what I write available to them, and when I do it is on my terms. If they are so unhappy, let them go create a world and the characters to populate it on their own. That they can do anything they want to with.

And I would be sardonically gleeful to see exactly what would happen when some other reader tried to dictate to them. The results just might be memorable.

Like I said, it’s getting scary out there, people. 

What’s a Blog Hop? Social Marketing 101 Series

No Bunny Hop - Blog hop is a different animal.

(First a teaser – Laura Bradford, writing as Elizabeth LynnCasey, will be my guest on November 13^th.  Her latest Southern Sewing Circle Mystery, Let it Sew, a holiday story, will release November 6^th.)

Social Media is an uphill learning curve.  Marketing isn't for sissies.  Or a one-time check off your list action. You have to get your name out into the universe. Richard Bach said (Paraphrasing here…) writers are just amateurs that didn't give up.  So I keep going.  Just when I get a handle on how to schedule and complete a blog tour, I’m confronted with this new animal.  The Blog Hop.

Mostly a blog hop is a group of authors who band together to promote a theme across a variety of websites.  I've signed up for hops with themes like Autumn, or Black Friday, or even the one I've just finished as this blog runs, The Alpha Male Blog Hop.

I wonder if this is more a romance writer’s tool.  I haven’t seen a Black Friday Noir Hop, or a Kill Your Favorite Mystery Character, or Cozy Cookie Exchange Blog Hop, although these would be kind of fun. Maybe I’m just not on the right loops.

Setting up a blog hop is like herding cats as my Crimson Romance author group found out earlier this month.  First, you can’t do anything that will please everyone, so make a decision and go with it.  We tried making group decisions on the yahoo loop with little success.  Finally, we appointed a group of three authors to spearhead it, gave them our proxy to make decisions, and they came back with a great button, dates, process and a handy ‘how to’ sheet. 

Each author sets up a blog hop button (or widget – I won’t get too techy here because I’m already in technical deep water for me…) Then on the first day of the hop, participating post a blog that relates somehow to the theme and hopefully to their books.  This is a marketing tool. The blog host gives away a small gift (I like to do $5 Amazon cards because it’s easy.) And usually there’s a large giveaway from the hop organizers.  Again, the power in this is numbers.  At a $5 donation from each author, the prize can be pretty amazing, without a huge investment from an individual author. 

Blog readers go from one blog link to the next, reading and commenting, to increase their chances at winning a prize.  The more comments, the higher your chance to win.

But what’s in it for the authors who are participating in these blog hops?  Hopefully promotion and sales. You can check out my web page for examples of blog hop buttons here.

Bottom line, I’m out $10 and had to post and monitor my blog for three days.  Hopefully, I’ll see sales from the effort.  As I write this today, it’s early.  But I’m getting people to my blog which for me is great.  I’m new and I don’t have a lot of traffic, unless I beg.

What about you?  Have you participated in a blog hop either as an author or a reader? 

(Off Topic - A Member of the Council, a paranormal romantic novella, and my 2nd release ever - comes out November 5th. - I thought I'd share my cover, just in case you haven't seen it.) 

Lynn