Lit Savvy by S.K. Salazar

Well, since I've decided to make my commentary on the whole Sarah Dessen scandal, I decided to comment on a couple more choice bits of literary drama. However, unlike the previous blog post, this one follows the trend of everything on this blog being late. To do a quick recap, author Amelie Wen Zhao (sorry, I couldn't do the accent on the "e" without messing up the format of the post) was about to live the dream. She was about to publish her debut novel Blood Heir and receive a princely advance of $500,000 before the start of this summer. Blood Heir was meant to be a dark fantasy retelling of Anastasia. However, because a small, outspoken cluster of reviewers (who had their hands on the ARC) cherrypicked anti-Black racism out of the story, Zhao was backed into a corner and decided to cancel the publication altogether. (There were also accusations of plagiarism, but without the actual text in my hand, I can't decide that for myself.) As you know, my job isn'...

Well, folks, it looks like Mercury Retrograde is in full swing. For once, I'm somewhat on-time to responding to a particular issue. If you aren't aware yet or if you aren't in the literary community, YA author Sarah Dessen made a pointed remark towards a student who made a comment about one of her books. Soon after, said author's author friends jumped in to defend her by slinging mud at this student. Get the full scoop here: https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/famous-authors-drag-student-in-ya-twitter-controversy.html  . Indeed, I'm not going to post a play-by-play of the incident. Instead, I'd like to point out that this is exactly why I'm not reading reviews when I become published. Now, hold your rotten vegetables, hold your wigs and hold your outrage, please. In a few paragraphs, I'll pick a "side", if I have to, and defend my stance. Authors know that mixed in among the scintillating praise for their works are a few steaming piles of excre...

In a couple of past blog posts, I've mentioned an author named Doreen Virtue. For the uninitiated, Doreen Virtue used to be a psychic who worked primarily with angels. She wrote many books and created many courses on the topic, as well as teaching her readership how to work with elementals, crystals and other cool New Age-y stuff. Now, I say "used to" not because she's left this world, but because she's left her niche with the New Age crowd. Allegedly, she had some kind of spiritual experience at church one Sunday that led her to switch her material and her readership towards the exclusively Christian crowd. Now, she completely renounces New Age practices, including working with the good Lord's angels. (I think she still believes in them, but she sends all her prayers exclusively to God now.) I've told you before, but I'll tell ya again: I am a Christian. Make no mistake, I worship our Lord and Savior. But I'm also incredibly open to all religiou...