So, anyhow, it's been A Week. Work has really kicked my butt, and I'll not be having much weekend, but it is what it is. I'm just grateful I have work and that I can do it from home. Which means I am kind to myself – taking time-outs in my garden and also walking the dog.
LOL WHUT?
So, one of the things that happened this week was that the most inconsequential little posts on Threads went viral. What I thought was basically just a cute little story from my day has exploded. My notifications are *broken*. I expect it will die down, but as my DH pointed out, I put so much effort into crafting novels, and then this little snippet skyrockets. I am somewhat bemused, but also grateful that some new folks have decided to give me a follow. Hi! *waves*.
Playing Flirty is out!
Then, I must just spare a moment to tell you about my friend Shameez's new book. She's an amazing fantasy author here in Cape Town, and I was incredibly privileged to attend the launch of the third book in her Selene Trilogy. But this past week saw the release of her romance (in my mind fantasy romance) novel Playing Flirty, which is a contemporary romance that speaks to the gamer fantasy geekgirl in me who loves LotR and yes, plays video and board games. While I still have to do an official write-up for my reviews, I will say here that this little book was exactly the palate cleanser I've needed as an antidote to all the dross in the world out there. It's a perfect slow burn, frenemies-to-lovers tale about True Love.
Authors Behaving Badly
In other news, in author circles this week, there was a certain author whose best-selling book was revealed to have 'editing' (and I use the term very loosely here because using ChatGPT to 'edit' your book is not editing) artefacts left over by ChatGPT. This suggests several things to me: the author did not read through her manuscript again before pressing send; they likely use generative AI for nearly every part of the process; and they are a lazy-as-fuck grifter who's more interested in schnaaing readers for their clams than actually putting in the work. Seriously, mense, using generative AI to write, revise "your" writing, and no doubt generate the cover art is so fucking disgusting. I'm not afraid to say that you are a kak person. And I'm not afraid to lose followers over this statement.
But anyhoo, I'm not in the mood to go on (yet another) anti-generative AI screed. I'm sure I'll have more moments in the year ahead.
Neil Fucking Gaiman
Now the meat and bones of today's post is about Neil Fucking Gaiman. Seriously, as my friend Matt the Librarian said in a post a while back – Fuck Neil Gaiman. Yeah, I know the whole thing about heroes and pedestals, but his work on The Sandman comics that hit me with the intensity of a runaway steam train in my young adult years made him one of my favourite authors for many years.
My sense of utter betrayal when all those allegations from women he'd SAed over the years came out was immense. Here was a foundation stone in my creativity that was knocked out from under me. For years I'd been telling everyone about how my absolute favourite authors were JRR Tolkien, Neil Gaiman, and Storm Constantine. Well, shit... It's caused me to question myself. To wonder about how I can separate the art from the artist (in this case, I can't).
While I've not tossed all my NG books in the dumpster, they've all been moved to the bottom shelf in the study, where I don't have to see them.
This week past, there was an article in The Vulture, that goes even deeper into this vomitous shit pile of a travesty. I got about a third of the way through then couldn't. NG also came out with an apology on his blog. I couldn't read that either, but folks pretty much confirmed to me that it was the mealy-mouthed BS one would expect from a noxious predator who refuses to acknowledge that he has a problem with consent. I'm not even going to go deeper into this shiz-ball of a pit because I've already exhausted myself emotionally.
Going forward, I acknowledge that works like The Sandman had a tremendous impact on me, but I will no longer support Neil Gaiman's works or the man. My betrayal is deeper than the Mariana Trench. He was supposed to have been one of the good guys. Likewise, Amanda Fucking Palmer can be yeeted into the sun for enabling him all these years.
But the absolute rotten cherry on this shit cake came this week when Matthew Boroson on Facebook made this post about how Neil Fucking Gaiman ripped off UK fantasy author Tanith Lee's creations and regurgitated them as The Sandman. I am fucking LIVID.
Several things to unpack here:
Storm Contantine was my editor for many years. I worked with her on several stories that were included in her Wraeththu mythos anthologies. She edited the first edition of my novel The Company of Birds. She also worked tirelessly to help bring Tanith Lee's backlist back into print, and was highly influenced by Tanith's writing. And while I've yet to read more of Tanith's work (it's notoriously difficult to get hold of here in South Africa), I nonetheless will respect the author who was a guiding light in Storm's creative journey. They've both sadly passed away, gone far too soon, so I'm seriously a little stabby when it comes to anyone who dunks on their legacy.
While many people in my circles know and adore Tanith Lee and are influenced by her, she's largely gone unrecognised in the wider industry. That slime mould like Gaiman has clearly taken her ideas without credit and remoulded them to make what is no doubt a lot of fucking money, sticks sideways in my craw.
As Boroson states, even GRRM and others acknowledged where they got their inspiration from. NG didn't. While you can't copyright ideas, I do believe that it's important to state what inspired the story. At least, that's my take on it.
But back to my complicated feelings about The Sandman. Something that I felt over the years with Gaiman's work is that he had me at The Sandman, and even to a degree with American Gods. I felt like the latter was him trying to find his creative feet again after The Sandman, and I could sense a mythic resonance in that work, even if his writing felt as though it suffered a hangover from the comic books series. I read his subsequent works – Coraline, The Graveyard Book, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and I always felt like there was something lacking. Granted, The Ocean at the End of the Lane did feel to me more like it drew on deeper wells, and was closer in tone to the creative nuances that we'd seen in The Sandman.
But considering that NG pillaged Tanith's writing for the core of The Sandman makes me realise why I felt so much of his later works, while still admittedly excellent writing, just didn't have that something I was craving. That something I get when I read Storm Constantine and the few Tanith Lee stories I've been able to. Granted, I know when I first read Sabella by Tanith Lee years ago, I didn't *get* it. But with a bit more maturity I suspect I'll have a very different takeaway now. It's on my shelf.
Tanith's books are notoriously difficult to find in South Africa. Due to rights management, the ebooks are not available. If you're lucky and can trawl secondhand stores, you might find old paperbacks, but if I want any of the new material, I'll need to import at great expense. Thankfully, a lot of her material seems available on Audible, so perhaps that will be my avenue.
Anyhow, if you've read this far, I thank you. Go out and read more books. Set aside time every day where you put your phone in another room, go settle in a comfy chair or sofa, and lose yourself in worlds wonderful and weird.
