In an extremely tardy response to my blog post about The Gazette’s bitchy review of Jon Paul Fiorentino’s Stripmalling (written way back in April), I recently received some email from the bitchy reviewer himself, Claude Lalumière! He said not to bother responding, after his editor at ChiZine Publications, Brett Savory, left me a bitchy comment on my blog, which was promptly deleted. I wrote to Savory to inform him that his comment was being deleted for its rude tone, and instead of forming a civil response (so as to ensure the hoped-for correction), he wrote me a nasty email arguing the same point in an even bitchier tone. And they say editors today have no people skills!

Since they two of them decided to tag-team me, I obviously have no choice but to correct the mistake from my previous blog as publicly as I can.

According to Savory, Lalumière has never engaged in vanity publishing, and after looking over a list of his publishing credits, I will admit I miswrote. The original comment I had written in my blog read:

“According to your blog, you’ve got some online fiction, zines, and a few stories that have been included in anthologies. Wow, that’s really ambitious! You haven’t even written a novel, much less a full volume of poetry, and your only publisher so far has been… you. Oh, and someplace called ChiZine Publications, who will be publishing your very first work.”

Clearly, what I meant to write is that Claude Lalumière has never published a book-length work in his life, much less a novel, and therefore has no business arguing that someone like Jon Paul Fiorentino has created a work of fiction that is somehow lacking in “ambition” [his term, as argued in his bitchy Gazette review].

So, no, Lalumière is not a vanity presser. He’s just not a novelist, nor is he a person with ambition, judging by the lack of novel-length works on his list of publications. Considering that this was, essentially, his beef with JPF (saying “[…] he can’t be bothered to at least try to create a work of some ambition”), I guess that makes him a hypocrite! And also, given his über-bitchy email to me (which he actually told me was “not fodder for your blog,” btw, as if he has any right to tell someone else what subjects or material they can or cannot write about in a personal blog—an arena that does NOT go by the same journalistic standards as a newspaper), I’d call him a straight-up douchebag. You know: the type of person who, when misrepresented, decides to pick a fight with the person in question, rather than attempting to correct the matter like a civil member of our nice, polite society.

You know what, Lalumière? You’ve already dug your own grave. After reading your bitchy review, I decided I’d never bother reading any of your work, and I bet plenty of other people felt the same way. I wasn’t alone in thinking the review was needlessly catty, that’s for sure. But now that you’ve taken your attempt at defending that bitchy review to the level of writing bitchy “personal” emails to the person who dared to call you on your bad public behaviour, don’t think for a second that I’m going to just sit back and let you walk all over me, too. I have the right to express my own opinions, and I have, and I shall. So get over it, because that’s what people do in their blogs.

In the future, if anyone wants me to correct factual inaccuracies here, all it takes is a polite email or comment. I have corrected and will continue to correct mistakes in my blog, if supplied with proper counter-evidence. However, I simply cannot be bothered with responding to angry, ranty, or purely bitchy comments, regardless of the nature of the requests that may be buried in the venom. If you want results from this blogger, you’ll have to try being polite for once in your life. Period.

P.S. I did finally read Stripmalling, after my original blog post, and my review of it has been online at Fiction Writers Review since June 1, 2009.