Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Published September 5th, 2011 | 
Actually, Alice never lived here . . .
Nonetheless, for the past couple days I been receiving emails from some guy spamming me with messages intended for the Alice Blue Review. How these messages are finding their way to my inbox I have no idea (anymore than I can fathom why messages that are intended for me occasionally don’t arrive at all). What is clear is this guy named Louis Marvin is intent on getting ABR’s poetry editor, Amber Nelson, to visit his website where he has posted some poems.
Forget about the fact that poetry editors almost never accept work posted on a personal website (I say, “almost never” because I have, on a few occasions, published poetry first posted to a personal website. However, those poets were writers I’d previously published whose work I liked) — no, what is truly strange is the email message itself:
if you google: Louis Marvin Poems
writings that are from today to recent pasts come up from poems, editorials and prose stuffs.
another great day in hawaii!
fish and turtles are fed, plants watered, child tutored, and my teeth cleaned at kahala mall! listen to YES sometime and you lose your mean bones!
Right now, I’m wondering if I should forward this message to Amber Nelson.
09/06/2011*Note: “Louis Marvin” contacted me to let me know that his spam mail was an “accident.” He claimed that it was only intended as a private message for a few friends. Not sure I buy that. What kind of mail program is he using that he can accidentally send bulk email like that? And how did I end up on that contact list since I don’t even know the dude?
Posted in Happy Horseshit, Magazines, Shits and Giggles, Wannabes, blogs, ezines, poetry | 
Leave a commentMaybe Somebody Pissed in His Tea
Published April 22nd, 2011 | So my friend Cindy emails me this morning, telling me about this writer she’d published in the debut issue of Yellow Mama who requested that she remove his story and bio from the YM archive:
“I was wondering if you’d now be okay with removing it from the archives? This isn’t at all a comment on Yellow Mama, it’s simply that it’s a very old story that I’m not particularly happy with these days and, more importantly, a very out of date bio. The reason I ask now is that I’ve just sold a series of novels and this is coming up on the first page of google hits for my name; I’d much rather anyone looking for information on me was led to my current work and up to date information.”
Okay, so let me get this straight . . . guy wants his story and bio removed from her archive because he thinks the story sucks and his bio is out of date? Seriously? No, that’s not the reason because he goes on to say that he got himself a book deal and he doesn’t like it that YM’s page rank is higher than his own blog. How is that not a comment on YM? Of course it’s a comment on what he thinks of YM now that he imagines he’s in the big leagues.
Point one: As I told Cindy, since Cindy didn’t have an archive at the time she accepted the writer’s story and wasn’t accepting Internet archival rights at that time, the writer can technically request his removal. However, his reasons for doing so are ridiculous. Bios go out of date. Is he seriously going to write every editor who accepted his work and request they remove his bio? Of course not. And why would request the takedown of any link for information about him when he’s trying to promote a book? YM’s target audience is the same audience he’s trying to reach. Are you going to tell me that those readers don’t buy books?
Point two: If his blog doesn’t rank as high in Google as YM, why not, instead of fucking with YM’s page rank, do something constructive to raise the page rank of his own website?
Point three: What an arrogant dickhead! Who does he think he is? Let’s see . . . you’re an unknown writer who gets a story published by an editor and some years later, after you’ve made a little bit of a name (or at least after you imagine you’ve attained a certain level of literary celebrity), you decide it’s perfectly okay to take a big steaming dump on the editor because she knew you before you were sitting at the cool kids table. That’s fucking sad. I say, let’s dig some big ol’ outdoor fire pits, light’em up and toss his ass in for roasting.
I Gotta Take a Piss
Published April 9th, 2011 | My friend Cindy Rosmus emailed me today about a disgruntled writer who was bent out of shape by a recent rejection of a story she had sent Cindy for her ezine, Yellow Mama. The writer upset Cindy with a snarky reply to the rejection:
Hi, Cindy
Unfortunately, after reading a story in your latest edition that began with a urination I cannot submit any more work to you. There are some lines we don’t cross in life and even if I weren’t disgusted by that story, I cannot damage my literary reputation becoming associated with . . . I think you know what I’m saying. If you had accepted my story I would have had to withdrawn it anyway. I am telling you this because you seem sincere and helpful; I strongly suggest you rethink your low standards.
Sorry,
Steph
Yeah . . . Okay . . . <sigh>.
This is amusing on several levels. First, if we take the writer’s assessment of Cindy’s ezine at face value (and we shouldn’t because YM is a pretty good ezine if you’re into horror and hardboiled fiction), then what does it say about “Steph” that she wasn’t even good enough to get into a publication with such “low standards?”
Second, what fucking literary reputation? Are there parlors of literary gossip in which a bunch of literary types are sitting around in smoking jackets sipping brandy chatting about what a fine, upstanding talent this woman is? And if she were a fine, upstanding talent AND the sudden appearance of one of her stories in Cindy’s mag would sully her appeal to the dignified brandy-sippers, why the bloody fuck would she submit a story there in the first place?
The woman’s argument doesn’t hold water. And here’s another thought: If she cares about her rep, she should reconsider responding to rejections — especially with snotty crap like she sent Cindy, else the only reputation she will have is for being a stupid, stupid cunt (yes, I said it).
I’ve received a number of similar replies from rejected writers over the years, so I can sympathize with Cindy. Cindy is one of the nicest editors a writer is likely to encounter (which is probably why Cindy is upset by one of these kinds of messages since it’s so undeserving), but trust me when I say, it doesn’t matter whether you reject writers gently or hit them straight between the eyes, some writers simply cannot handle rejection of any kind. I’m sure that woman probably has sent similar messages to the fiction editor of the New Yorker when he rejected her (because I imagine she gets rejected a lot).
