Anne Rice is at it again - oh dear.

- back to that Amazon Badly Behaving Author side-show with the whole Bullying - Anne Rice (no, not Anne Rice being bullied, Anne Rice doing the bullying), and the wonderfully insane hypocrisy of the STGRB Website:-

Well, come closer people, this is gonna shock you. The world famous Author of Vampirey things has gone and done it again! Another author, Jenny Trout, published a book, (a very short book but still a book) that Ms Rice did not approve of. Hell, I am so glad she doesn't read my stuff. Said book was due to be published as part of a collective with (I think) eleven other authors. Ms Rice found out about this and apparently decided that, as she didn't like it, or the author, then she would exude the influence that a rich and famous author can exude, and have Jenny Trout's book dropped from the planned collective publication. Yet again her oodles of fan's were actively encouraged to contact the publishing company and voice their 'own' displeasure at Jenny's book being published - at all. 

Now, some say the pressure was directed at another of the 'collectives' authors who was suddenly 'uncomfortable' with her work being published alongside Jenny's. And some say it went directly to the publishing house - who knows. (SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF PAGE)

On hearing that her book was being pulled, most, if not all, of the other authors that had a stake in the collective withdrew their own books - Power to the people! So outraged were the majority of the forums on Amazon, (the one's that Ms Rice refers to as 'gangster bullies, trolls, anti-author career reviewers, blah blah blah') that Ms Rice has been so instrumental in the destruction of the collective, that many of them went and purchased Jenny's book as a single item - solidarity brothers and sisters of the revolution!

Why oh why would someone of Ms Rice's stature and standing, within the world of authordom, take such a personal interest in the destruction of a fellow author's written work? Her deliberate actions meant that eleven or twelve authors lost the opportunity to have their work published as a collective, taking food off of the table of her supposed colleagues in order to feed her own ego, to prove the power that she wields, to confirm the control she craves. Up until now people have been advising Ms Rice to disassociate herself with the farcical STGRB website - I believe now people should be advising STGRB to disassociate themselves with Ms Rice.

If it is control and power she craves (and in my opinion this does seem to be the case) then the solidarity of the authors and the reviewers on the forums and Twitter (and general Joe public that got to find out about this) have proven that you aint got it anymore. Even the publishing company issued a statement to the effect that it was a mistake, a project manager had ooops in an unofficial capacity, and they were sorry - Translation - Oh crap, that wasn't suppose to back fire on us, how do we recover - I know, find someone to blame.

I believe I would equate the experience to being slapped in the face with a cold cod, a big fresh cold cod. Will she learn from it? Absolutely... not. Will she care? Absolutely not - there are some people that just don't see the world outside of their own importance, is she one of those people? Absolutely.

Oh, by the way, at one point Jenny's book was at number 32 in the Amazon best seller charts. Remind me, the purpose of Anne Rice's interference was to punish Jenny for being a non worshiper - gotta be wondering who won this battle with numbers like that Anne.

UPDATE FROM JENNY TROUT: 19/3/15

Anyway, this person was the project manager, but she doesn’t work for Excessica. Think of it as an independent contractor scenario. When Selena Kitt wanted to leave the anthology to avoid the drama surrounding me–which I don’t blame her for, and which I don’t feel was unreasonable given the circumstances–she planned to simply pull her story. However, when the scenario was presented to the other authors in the set, the project manager told them that their options were to cut me or Selena Kitt would walk, and Excessica would withdraw promotional support. I don’t know what the motivation behind that lie was. I assume it was because this person felt they could profit more off a boxed set with a Selena Kitt title than an Abigail Barnette title, but that’s still a shady way to do business, especially when that lie hurt Excessica and hurt Selena Kitt, who simply didn’t want to run afoul of STGRB and their obsessive league of stalkers.

So, Selena Kitt and Excessica are totally blameless in the failure of this anthology. The person who tanked it is someone I really enjoy as a person. To be honest, that’s probably another factor in why I’m not naming names to go with this pointed finger. But either way, everyone in the set was hurt, but not by Selena Kitt or Excessica. Unfortunately, this has put me off anthologies/boxed sets/collaborations for a while.

There are loads of places that you can find info on all of this, and the book, here's a couple:

Amazon book link (59 page novella)

http://jennytrout.com/