How NOT to Win Friends and Influence People - Part 2

I woke up Sunday morning to a flurry of hits on a blog post from nearly three years ago. A bit of investigation revealed the source. I'll admit I thought about ignoring the issue; I simply have too much work to do.

But the words of romance cover model Jimmy Thomas stuck under my skin.

I've always had an issue with my weight. When I was a teen, I was chubby even though I could and did throw around 50-pound hay bales on the farm. I was mocked by classmates and family for my size.

It was bad enough I pretty much stopped eating and was on the edge of full-blown anorexia my freshman year in high school. I got sick around Christmas, damn sick because I wasn't eating. What pulled me back from the edge? The stubborn part of me that decided I wasn't going to die for these mother fuckers.

Forty years later, I see Jimmy Thomas's post on Facebook, and I want to cry. Not for myself, but for the readers and writers and cover artists who've been fat-shamed all their lives by asshats for not fitting into the asshats' preconceived notions of what a person should look like.

But hey, since I don't fit Mr. Thomas's notion of what a person should look like, then he doesn't need to be gracing any of Alter Ego's book covers anymore either. I'm moving the cover re-dos to number #2 on my priority list. And I'm going to put food on some of those damn covers.

Because right now, fifteen-year-old me is flipping off Mr. Thomas with one hand while eating an ice cream cone with the other.

How NOT to Win Friends and Influence People

Originally, I was going to title this post, "Never EVER Piss Off Romance Readers and Writers." But this topic has far broader implications.

There are two things you really need to understand in the modern world:

1) Everything on the internet is forever.

2) When you do something incredibly stupid on the internet, everyone's going to know because of Rule #1.

Last Sunday, a cover model by the name of Paul Blake thought it would be a good idea to tell an author to go eat her last Dairy Queen Blizzard and then hang herself. Rather than apologizing for his thoughtless remark when he was called out or talk to someone more media savvy than him before he responded, Paul decided double-down on the insults.

Then triple-down.

The backlash was immediate and fierce as word spread among the romance community. Paul deleted the post that started the controversy, but too many tech-savvy writers and readers had screenshots. Many people who dealt personally and professionally with him blocked or unfriended him on Facebook.

The worst thing in this whole mess? Readers and other writers said they'd boycott any books with Paul on the cover. So the writers who had hired him before the kerfluffle were now being punished for his behavior.

Then the romance community did something incredible. Other models condemned Paul's behavior and offered to do free or reduced cost photo shoots for those writers who had Paul on their covers and wanted to replace him. Cover designers offered their service for free to replace the Paul covers. Other readers begged their associates not to punish the writers of the Paul-covered books for his ugly words and actions. Hell, a couple of authors decided to have a book signing at their local Dairy Queen, and they bought Blizzards for their fans.

The lesson in this is don't insult people in the public space that is social media. I'm not saying you have to agree with everyone, but there are ways to make your point without telling someone to commit suicide.