Secret Underground Cult...Nope, Just Some More Rabid Fangirls..

Now over at my blog, Coffee House Banter yesterday I posted that I got banned from an author's forum...Here's the story in all it's glory, but along with the story, you're going to get all of our gripes with J.R. Ward, because not only does she condone this kind of behavior on her site, but she also snubs her fans. So read on for the full scoop. We're not going to hold anything back.

This is what happens when you ask J.R. Ward some questions or state opinions that J.R. Ward doesn't want to see...

Link to "the" Post.

She makes them disappear.

Hunh?

I'm serious, I wasn't trying to be mean in my post on that board, like I was in my review here on the blog. I respected her enough since it IS her board, to not bash her. I was honestly curious to see if her other fans felt the same way as I did or if JRW could shed any light on it.

But, I guess my opinions weren't appreciated.

Because, wow did they rip me a new one, well not every single one of them ripped into me, there were some people who disagreed with me but didn't BASH my head over with million pound words, the only person that I remember not bashing me was Heidi, so Heidi and the other posters who didn't run me over with their words are excluded from this gripe, just wanted to make sure you guys know that I'm not at all talking about you guys, but to hell with everyone else in that thread. My friend had to give me some lube so that I can take the ass whipping I got a little smoother. It was NOT pretty....talk about JRW worship hall over there. The way those women ripped into me, I thought maybe J.R. Ward got her God papers or something.

If you guys want to see what I wrote, here's what I wrote, exactly word for word...

I don't know where else to post these questions, so I guess I'm just going to post it here. I'm a Brotherhood fan, I'm really down with the brothers but there are a few things that I can't really figure out and make sense of, so I'm going to just state my opinions here. I just want some clarification from J.R. Ward or anyone who knows her can relay this to her, I'm just wonderin' is all...

First of all, the slang.

Don't you find it weird that a bunch of white boys are talkin' and listenin' to Ludacris and 50 Cent? There ain't nothing wrong with it if that's what you dig, but it's just weird because where I come from, if some group of white boys come rollin' through the hood with an Escalade, sportin' tight leather pants and "shitkickers"? It don't matter how tough or how many people they killed, they're going to get laughed out of Compton. While I'm reading the books, I understand what each brother is trying to say, but if I'm picturing exactly what they look like through their descriptions, I can't help but laugh because the way they talk and they way they dress, just don't measure up...maybe my imagination just can't drum it up but I can't help but laugh, they just seem so...silly.

Second, the gay undertones. What is up with all that? Is there a gay guy in the bunch? Again, there ain't nothing wrong with gay guys, but if I wanted to read a gay romance, I'd read a gay romance, but I ain't trying to read that in these books. I want some real, manly men and well, without spoiling anything for anyone, from the last book, there were too many "You know how I know you're gay" moments that turned me off. There were too many things that the Brothers did that made me question their sexuality and I really hate that...don't make my favorite brothers seem fruity, because then it'll make me not want to read the rest of the books, and I'd hate for that to happen. So, am I the only one that has caught onto these things or does anyone see what I'm talking about?

Again, I'm just wonderin'....

Where in there did I say that J.R. Ward's book SUCKED ASS and she's the WORST WRITER EVER and I HATE THAT BITCH? Its not there, huh? Because I DIDN'T BASH HER, but the way those girls went off, you would've thought I threatened to kick her dog or something. I didn't mention anything about Wellsie and Sarelle, though I could have, I wanted to rip her a new one for writing those scenes into Lover Awakened, but I thought, nah, let me just let her know about all the other crap I didn't like. But like one of my friends said, I guess if you don't want to blow sunshine up her ass, then your comments are not welcomed.

What the hell ever.

If she can't take a little heat, then what the hell is she doing in this kind of business? A business where people will take you to task for EVERY little thing. I wasn't trying to be disrespectful, I wasn't trying to take her fans away, but because I wasn't over there blowing hearts and love up her ass, she wasn't trying to hear what I was saying and she can say that it was her Moderators that did it or whatever, but that was HER board, it's not a publishers author forum, so it's associated with HER.

What a joke.

Lots and lots of people have blogged about rabid fan girls and I've never really had anything to say about them, because up to a certain point, I thought I was a rabid fan girl myself for my favorite authors. But I'm not. I still got mad love for Harlot and Trollop over at the Book Bitches and they, *gasp* didn't have ANY love for my Sam from the Troubleshooters Series by Suzanne Brockmann (HI guys! =)) I respected their opinions and didn't immediately start hating on them because they didn't share in my enthusiasm for the SEALs.

Amongst ourselves here at Sanctuary Finest, Holly and myself don't agree on damn near anything and yet I can respect that she has her opinions about her books and I have mine on my books. There's nothing but love between us and she HATED, read that as loathed Sword of Darkness by Kinley MacGregor, I rather liked it myself, and a lot of the issues that Holly had with the book, I totally loved , but does that mean we have to jump all over each other and hate on each other. As a matter of fact, our reviews were totally different, but the comment Holly made after I put mine up was:

Good review, Dee. Since you already know how I felt about it, I'll just leave it at that.

Everyone is going to have different thoughts and opinions on EVERYTHING, it's what makes the world go round.

I guess they missed the memo.

But oh no, she didn't just snub me, my dear readers, she snubbed my dear friend, Jazz as well....so take the floor Jazz...tell them how you really feel.

Well okay. Here's how it went down.

My friend, Dylan, told me she posted up some thoughts and questions (that we all shared) on JRW's board. I go and register for the board and am expecting to get some answers to Dylans questions. But what do I find??? From the very first post through 3 more pages ...BASHING!

Bashing MY friend.

Oh hells to the NO!

I can't let that happen. They said everything from "this is hate mail" to "how disrespectful, why would you put this on an authors board". I mean you read what she wrote, right? Was it hateful? Didn't she say she liked the books and just had some questions??? And wouldn't you think a good place to get the correct answers would be that authors board? Dylan wasn't slamming her.

Goodness! So know what I did?

I copied each comment that was rude and told them exactly how rude and immature they were being and how in fact they were wrong in what they said! There was a few girls that stated how they felt in a nice respectful way and I said "OMG you have an adult on the board" okay was that a little rude? Hmmmm, yeah, but they had brung out the Bitch in me.

NOBODY trash's my friend like that!

Well Dylan calls me and is all "Thank You!" and I'm all "What are friends for", but when she got to work and went to read more.......it was gone! SHOCKER, right? lol. But that's not the end of it. Oh no, you could even say it was the beginning of a whole new war. There was a new topic posted titled "We Lost a Post"....after asking where the post went and finding out that the MOD's took it down things started to heat up a bit again. Basically rude things were said back and forth and even though everyone was being rude me and Dylan got the boot. Hmmm, I'm curious to see if anyone else got booted. Yeah, probably not. That's what I thought.

Now our question is, Do Authors really think we, as readers are going to LOVE every single thing that they write? Does J.R. Ward really think that this is how it works? She writes some fabulous books and now we have to love her and bow down to her because she wrote, Dark Lover, which got rave reviews from everyone here at Sanctuary's Finest by the way.

Because she is NOT the first author that I've had these opinions for...and with her, it's not even the book that I didn't like, it was certain things in the book that I didn't care for, but with some of my favorite authors like Julie Garwood and Linda Howard, I have hated ENTIRE BOOKS by them, I mean seriously, Rebellious Desires anyone? I hated that book and don't even get me started on Killing Time by Linda Howard. I could not STAND those books, but did that alienate me against buying any books by them in the future?

Heck no.

I understand that JG and LH are going to have bad books, all authors do, my gripe with J.R. Ward was that her book didn't fall into the category of me HATING her book, it just turned into, me HATING HER, that's all. So you can bet the farm that I will not be buying any future books by J.R. Ward, I'll READ them for sure, but I will for damn sure not pay for any of them anymore. I'm not giving my money to some coward ass author with God complexes.

Please.

Holly had some reasons why she didn't really care for J.R. Ward and here is her story.

My beef with Ward is a bit more personal, but before I get into that, let me share my opinions on what happened to Dee. I wasn't involved in any of it. I didn't even know that Dylan had posted anything on the Ward board. Not until AFTER it was taken down. I also didn't see the second post or have anything to do with that. Does it stop me from being pissed? Hell NO! Why? Because you back your friends, no matter what. And my friend was NOT in the wrong. She didn't go over to that board and BASH the author. She didn't go there with the express intention of stirring up trouble. She simply wanted her questions answered. What's the harm in that?

Even though I'm pissed for my friend, I still would have reserved judgement about the author except for one thing...it's an Author Maintained site. Which means, regardless of who the MODs or Admins are, JRW herself is responsible for it. You have to understand, this isn't some site moderated by a publishing house, such as the boards at SimonSays.com. This is a board created by the author herself. If a bunch of Rabid Fangirls had started crap at say, The Julie Garwood BB on the Simon Says site, then I couldn't blame JG herself. Why? Because she never visits the board, she has no control over the content or the fans there and because it's SS who moderates. That's not the case with JRW. THe WARDen is on her board ALL THE TIME. She visits DAILY and I happen to know from an inside source that she keeps her finger on ALL HAPPENINGS there. What does that tell you? It tells you that she KNEW what was going on and did nothing about it. She didn't scold her Rabid Fangirls for acting the way they did. She didn't step in and speak directly to Dee. I CANNOT respect an author who behaves that way. Nor do I really want to.

I wasn't that impressed with Lover Awakened. I thought the slang was WAYY over the top, and unlike the rest of the girls here, I didn't like Bella and Z. Z drove me nuts! But I still probably would have bought the next book, if it weren't for how her Rabid Fangirls acted on her message board and if I hadn't had a personal issue of my own.

Not too long ago, Ward was visiting a site that I frequent and answering questions from her readers. Which I thought was hella cool. So I posted some questions as well. But my questions were of a more personal nature. Here's what I said:

Hello!

I'm definitely a fangirl. Not nearly as bad as my friend Jazz, who litterally SCREAMED at the top of her lungs in the middle of Wal-Mart the other night when she found LA, but still...LOL

I wanted to ask you a couple of questions, too, if you don't mind. They're of a more personal nature, so I hope you don't mind....

How do you think the popularity of the series has affected you, personally? Do you think you're a different person now than you were before, or are you still the same?

Along the same lines, did you ever expect your Brotherhood to become so popular, so fast? You have MILLIONS of fans! Does that scare you a little, or are you just totally stoked about it?

I haven't read LA yet, but I plan on it soon. I truly enjoyed LE and DL, though. Amazing!

Happy Release Day!

Was I rude? No. Were my questions inappropriate? I don't think so. Did she answer? Uh, no. No she didn't. Now, the thing is, I understand that she was being inundated with questions at the time, but the 2 posters just before me? Yeah, she answered them. And the two posters just below me? Yep, them too. So...what does this tell me? In light of her recent behavior, I have to guess that Yes, her "instant" fame changed her. Made her someone who feels she's above the "little people."

The thing is, there's a lot of drama that goes on here in Blogland. Authors snarking readers, Readers snarking authors. Insults traded. Offense intended. Things like that. But we've stayed out of it. Out of respect for the authors, readers and bloggers, we chose not to comment on things. But I think this time Ward and her Rabid Fangirls have gone too far.

Like we said before, everyone has different opinions. That's what makes the world go round. But we've always had respect for people who had different opinions from us. Go, look around our site, check out our reviews and the comments people left about them. Do we go around bashing other readers because they didn't agree with everything we said? NO! In some cases, we even agreed with them after they stated their opinions. Because we have RESPECT FOR THEM.

Too bad the same can't be said for J.R. Ward and her rabid fan girls.