More Letters To the Ether..

To my darling daughter–

I’m sorry the bands on the Rose Bowl parade were not as exciting to you as they were to us. And forgive us for the miscommunication–honey, we didn’t know you expected to see “Martians” there. We were only looking at the “marching” bands.

Love Mama, who used to be in a Martian band herself.

To the people who make the rules at iUniverse–

Although it’s nice of you to offer me a chance to edit one last time, I ask you, what good are fifty changes going to do in a 220K manuscript? That’s all you’re allowing me, and I think expecting me to only make one mistake every 4,500 words or so is WAY too optimistic.

But, uhm, it’s looking pretty good so far, right? (What do I know–I’m only the writer with a comma splicing addiction… all my editors are kept out of this stage. HELP ME, GRAMMAR GODS, HELP ME!)

Excuse me, I need to go have a short, meaningless fling with the Chicago Manual of Style now…

Amy Lane

To my dear husband who is trying to do home improvement around dinner time:

Please excuse me while your legs stick out from under the sink, directly blocking the stove–may I make some pizza bites to feed our family? *whimper* Nevermind.

Amy

And finally, with a little less good cheer…

To the woman who reviewed Vulnerable today:

Dear Madam–

I understand that you wish to keep from your son every hint of sexual innuendo and to never expose him to books or ideas outside of your personal scope of comfort. I do get that. However, I think that destroying my book in front of your son and then giving the book a poor review because you failed to read the information posted about the book to be excessive, violent, ignorant, and counter productive.

The book is listed under paranormal romance–that should be a big hint that something of a sexual nature should occur. Nearly every review listed–both the good and the bad–talk about the highly erotic nature of the book. There are seventeen tags of the book under ‘erotica’. There is a swear word in the book description–that is a big clue that this book is not for the squeamish. The book selling site has a ‘look inside’ option–that there is another way for you to investigate the content of a book that you are buying for your beloved adolescent. There is NO listing under Young Adult–None. I’ve actively discouraged people over the internet from buying the book, based on sexual content alone. Your claim that you thought it would be Young Adult because it is part of ‘The Little Goddess’ series is really very disingenuous. Anne Rice puts out a lovely series of Sleeping Beauty books. Would you like to purchase those too, based on title alone?

But we’ll put that aside for a moment. I don’t object to people disliking my books–really. I do object to a violent reaction, and destroying books to me is the ultimate in violence. You are destroying ideas. You must be so very proud of yourself. In fact, why don’t you treat yourself to a book? How about Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, J.K. Rowling, Jonathan Swift, J.R.R. Tolkien or Judy Blume? Oh, I’m sorry– are those authors too inflammatory for you? Too sexually charged? That’s funny–they can be found on one of your favorite websites, this one right here: The one with Sarah Palin’s picture on it, (because, you know, she’s such a sterling example of parenthood for our young people.) But I understand. I’d offer you a Bible, since that may very well be your leaning, except that’s one of the most censored books in THE WORLD, and I don’t want to offend your sensibilities.

But now you leave me in sort of a quandary. I’ve always firmly believed that censorship is unnecessary, and book burning is ludicrous–someone once said that the only way to fight bad ideas is with better ideas, and that’s impossible to do when the book is in ashes or lining a parrot cage. Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, for example, contains all sorts of flaws in logic and terrible self-contradictions that prove that he was a madman and his ideas were untenable (in case the pile of innocent bodies doesn’t do it–but you know mankind–our memory is abysmally short.) If we had destroyed that book all over the world, those ideas would still be floating around, but we wouldn’t be able to prove they were less stable than cat-diarrhea on a heating grate (and a good deal nastier) and show people how they didn’t add up. We might be set up to do the same bullshit fuck-ourselves mess all over again.

The problem is, this belief that censorship is unnecessary is predicated on the fact that people can be self-censoring when they have all the information. You have just proven that this is not the case, since you were too ignorant to educate yourself on what you were buying. And to add insult to irony, amazon.com won’t even let me block your ignorant, emotionally unstable review from my sight! But really? I don’t have to read the review. In fact, I don’t plan to. I don’t read a lot of things I find on amazon.com–and from now on, your posts will be on that list.

So I guess, really, it’s no harm no foul. I CAN self-censor the things that annoy me without destroying the written word. I suggest you do the same.

Sincerely

Amy Lane

P.S. I was once asked to burn a trashy romance/porn by my parents, just because it was fire day and the damned thing was cluttering up the top of the refrigerator. I was aghast and spent some of my time at the fire pit, trying to see what was so bad about that book. As I watched the pages go up in flames, every forbidden word was seared eternally in my gray matter. I’ll bet that any words your son read of mine have that same destiny. Since the first love scene in Vulnerable was m/m, I’m thinking that maybe you’ve done yourself a disservice. You certainly can’t blame me anymore. Like you said–my book no longer exists in your home.

P.P.S. My latest book, title ‘If I Must’, features a cuddly kitten wrapped in tinsel on the front. I sincerely beg you not to buy it.

Amy Lane