Among the eighty-two thousands things an author now needs from the web in order to publicize her book is a simple gadget called the Google alert. This alert can be used for any word or phrase one wants. I still get updates on "obesity research" which I relied on while writing ANGRY FAT GIRLS and I get daily updates on "Frances Kuffel".
This alerts have grown more necessary each year because so much is being written exclusively on the web. Despite getting a lot of updates on how my books are selling on eBay, I'm also clued in to what people are saying about my writing in blogs.
Sometimes it's not pretty.
Sometimes I have to respond, as creepy as that makes me feel.
One such blog drifted on to my radar this week. I think the real problem the writer had with the book was actually with me. It's Okay to not like me. I don't like a lot of memoirists and the ones I do, I'm scared of. However, if I was going to blog about a memoir I didn't like, I would at least check my facts.
Bloggetta scoffed at how small incidents like being yelled at when my dog jumped and barked at a man who startled her can start me on a binge. I can certainly see that most people would not gain weight over such a moment but a slightly closer reading of the book would have reminded her that I suffer from depression combined with social anxiety and that one of the things that really finished off my weight gain was realizing I had been willfully ignorant about the options I had in dealing with my abusive boss.
Obviously, someone who couldn't tell her boss not to twist her nose is going to be sort of a weenie. Part of the book is about my struggle not to be such a weenie.
Nor could Bloggetta understand why being fired, with a severance package, from a bad workplace could jeopardize my thinnosity.
What are the three things considered most stressful in life? Death, moving and job change. Job loss IS job change, and I had truly identified myself as a literary agent so much that it was difficult to find another meaning in my life -- despite the fact that I was ten months away from publishing Passing for Thin. I hadn't made the transition to being a writer.
I'm venting here because Bloggetta posts on a site that allows less response than a fortune cookie. Still, I think a slightly more sensitive reading would have revealed to her that this fat lady, for one, has to factor depression into any equation. She would also have remembered that I lived in self-blame for not having defended myself in that job, or with the guy who verbally abused me over Daisy's misbehavior.
And Daisy was OF COURSE on leash, Bloggetta -- a point you really got wrong.
I often respond to thank blog writers for taking the time to read my work. If the review is simply nasty (go look at Amazon comments on PFT if you want to know what it's like to be publicly disliked for perceived venalities), I let it go. But when it's wrong, either in fact (Daisy off leash on a busy Brooklyn Street? I don't think so) or in spirit (hadn't I described how hard it is for me to identify what emotion my reaction is and how to properly express it?), I have to respond.
Because along with Google alerts, the Web is becoming the end-all of publicity. A couple of years ago, Blogalina might have read a review in the Post and decided to read the book but now it's more likely she'll read Bloggetta's take and decide to give the book a skip.
For someone who has a hard time standing up for herself, I sure have to do a lot of it lately.
Interviews with Frances for ANGRY FAT GIRLSKATU-TV Portland
March 29, 2010 interview Balancing Act - Lifetime Network
interview with Beth Troutman Joy Cardin Show/Wisconsin Public Radio - February 3, 2010
Interview & Q&A with listeners Big Blend Radio
archived interview - January 22, 2010 The Health Show
January 21, 2010 - archived radio interview Jezebel
the ladies take their gloves off & get nasty WOR-710 TALK RADIO
Podcast of interview with Joan Hamburg - January 6, 2010 CROWDED PLANET RADIO on KFNX-AM
January 1, 2010 - one hour interview SONORAN LIVING - KNXV-TV
December 31, 2009 GOOD MORNING ARIZONA - KTVK-TV
December 28, 2009 Page to Pantry with Niki Guluchi
November 27 & December 4, 2009, KPFK Pacifica Radio  |
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Comments
Goodness, I've lost huge amounts of weight, thought I'd dealt with all of my issues (now I'm not even sure that's possible) and then found myself resorting to the same old patterns of behavior. I appreciate your honest look at this, am looking forward to reading more of your blogs and am heading over to Amazon right now to order your book.
I'm a blogger and editor at a website called Everyday Health (we're right down the road from you in DUMBO), and I posted a review of Angry Fat Girls this week. The reader responses have generally been very positive so far.
Here's the link: http://www.everydayhealth.com/blog/health-in-your-40s/are-you-an-angry-fat-girl/
Dave Rogg Sr
Well, I have been so emotionally and intellectually charged by reading both your books. (Learned of PFT while engrossed in AFG; wish, in a way, that I had read them in "order".) I have such a better understanding of my sister's emotional turmoil commencing from the time she was about 4 yrs old, when the family probably started commenting on her weight. She grew up in her biological family wherein her parents, 2 sisters and brother, and all extended family members through the next 50 plus years, as well as her two daughters and husband, have been of average weight and build.
She was bulemic and alcoholic until her 30's; very high IQ but an underachiever; depressed with little motivation. She recently had a nervous breakdown.
Anyway, I admire and like you so much. I liked that gal in PFT, too. She was (past tense?) gutsy, fun, irreverent. I do hope you write another book, soon. And it doesn't have to be about weight; just about what you do and think about.
And your niece - the birthday present? My youngest sister, and my best friend, was born 2 wks after my 12th birthday and made my life so happy. But I had never before thought of her birth as being the greatest birthday present ever, until you made that connection re Lisa. Thanks.
A thought I had while reading your books: I wanted to share with you about what I have done in my 69 years to maintain my 120-145 wts. as a 5'4" adult. Like taking diet pills, marrying 2 serial adulterers whose behaviors caused me to be so knotted up with pain that I couldn't eat. And I drank...too much; and joined AA in 1980 and stayed abstinent for 14 years.
Anyway, I enjoyed reading about your time in OA; I loved AA and bought into everything about the program then and, really, still do. It saved my life and let me be a parent to my 2 sons.
Cheers, and do write some more books. JHG