{"id":1881,"date":"2015-11-08T10:07:18","date_gmt":"2015-11-08T10:07:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/?p=1881"},"modified":"2020-01-18T09:22:08","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T14:22:08","slug":"authors-can-be-sitting-ducks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/authors-can-be-sitting-ducks\/","title":{"rendered":"Authors Can Be Sitting Ducks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Isn’t it amazing what people think they can say to authors at signings or readings?<\/p>\n

They’ll criticize characters, plot, writing style, or the way a book ends–and rudely, too.\u00a0 And then not even buy a book.\u00a0 They’ll just unload on the author who’s a captive and has to be polite and just take it, no matter how unfair and uninformed the comments may be.<\/p>\n

Sometimes events can work your last nerve, but sometimes the situation’s just different enough where you don’t just take it.\u00a0 That happened to me once at a university where things went awry from my getting off the plane.\u00a0 The minion picking me up announced that she had no sense of direction, and got me lost 1) in the airport 2) in the parking structure and 3) in the city on the way to my hotel when we went drove in the wrong direction for at least ten minutes.<\/p>\n

When we finally got to it, the hotel room in a dinky “annex” was filthy with cobwebs and dust balls everywhere.\u00a0 I called the host professor and asked to be moved somewhere else, but he insisted on seeing it for himself, assuming I was a diva, I guess.\u00a0 He took one look and moved me to a Hilton Garden Inn.\u00a0 But that was the end of his competence, because rather than do a short intro to my talk and reading, he read from my official, page-long author biography.\u00a0 Slowly.<\/p>\n

I timed him.\u00a0 It took ten minutes.\u00a0 And he stuttered.\u00a0 Still, I made it through and was doing fine until the Q&A when someone raised my first novel Winter Eyes<\/em> where a son of survivors is unsure of his sexuality and sleeps with a man and a woman at different times.\u00a0 That gay reader accused me of “brutalizing” him with the open ending, and leaving him alone with his pain.<\/p>\n

\"wintereyes-new\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I wasn’t rude, but I said plainly that he had misread the book and the characters who believed at the end that labels didn’t matter at that moment in their lives.<\/em>\u00a0 And if he was in pain, it wasn’t the fault of my book, but his issues that he needed to deal with.<\/p>\n

I’d never been that assertive in a Q&A, but it had to be said.<\/p>\n

Would I have replied as I did if the afternoon and early evening had gone better?\u00a0 Maybe not.\u00a0 But I felt I had to stick up for myself as an author and stick up for my book.\u00a0 And for authors everywhere….<\/p>\n

Lev Raphael is the author of 25 books in many genres which you can find on Amazon.\u00a0 Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com\/LevRaphael<\/a><\/b><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Isn’t it amazing what people think they can say to authors at signings or readings? They’ll criticize characters, plot, writing style, or the way a book ends–and rudely, too.\u00a0 And then not even buy a book.\u00a0 They’ll just unload on the author who’s a captive and has to be polite and just take it, no … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,4,63],"tags":[603,349,591,292,601,602,422,198,604,290,214,600],"class_list":["post-1881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advice-for-writers","category-authors","category-book-tours","tag-bisexuality","tag-book-readings","tag-book-signings","tag-book-tours","tag-coming-out","tag-coming-out-novels","tag-fan-comments","tag-fans","tag-sexuality","tag-the-writers-life","tag-the-writing-life","tag-winter-eyes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1881"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5484,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1881\/revisions\/5484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}