What Are You Outraged About Today, My Dear SJW Friends?

A lot of what I do is point out that so much of these little cliques of Science Fiction writers focus their entire lives on (they certainly don’t focus on selling books) is how they make FAKE OUTRAGE stories out of something that shouldn’t be a story at all. The last week exemplified this as, incredibly, the community of internet science fiction writers collectively lost their minds when:

1.  A professional Science Fiction writer with the qualifications joined SFWA.  This is a writer’s guild. I am a professional writer. It’s that simple. Not liking me doesn’t have anything to do with it. The entire point of  the club in theory is to protect writers like me from suffering undue hate or illegal discrimination from the industry. Yet that didn’t stop File 770’s nasty hate brigade from going off the rails over my joining. A lot of the anger must have been because it very uncomfortable about themselves, as it really points to a LOT of ugly truths about them with some of the nasty things they said.
2. A professional Science Fiction writer is attending a Science Fiction convention.  Like with Diversity & Comics earlier this year, I  was immediately targeted by low-level professionals to try to preemptively get me kicked out of the con for my mere presence. This is exactly why I have  to wear a body cam to go to the con to begin with, some of these folk will almost certainly try to frame me for a crime, and I will have evidence to the contrary. Worldcon needs to step it up and make sure I’m protected from these crazies so my friends and fans can have fun.

But look at the first sentences of these points before the commentary about the bizarre behavior of these people who I’ve never talked to in my life. They are proud to try to threaten and hate a Hispanic author out of being in a professional guild and attending a convention. It’s that absurd. Sad part is, if most of these folk just talked to me, they’d find I’m a very nice fellow who just likes to have fun. Instead, they make two very mundane, normal professional matters that should never even be on anyone’s radar, into the outrage of the day. Because everything is outrage.

Let’s see how outraged they get about my next thing that is completely normal: submitting a short story to an anthology. I fit all the qualifications for their submissions (especially being a “Writer from under-represented communities and groups” on multiple levels), and so does the story. I’m sure I’ll get some people saying ridiculous things like I “shouldn’t be  allowed to submit a story”, or writing a very good genre fiction story is somehow “harassment”. They’re predictable in the way they out themselves as complete crazies. Readers see this, and they keep flocking to me.

No one is outraged about For Steam And Country. Even the people who hate me with the very fiber of their beings say my writing is “average” or “adequate”. They can’t even bring themselves to lie and say it’s bad, which says a lot about how strong of a book it is. Meanwhile the vast legion of readers who don’t have political agendas all say it’s great. You’ll probably enjoy it  too. Check it out here.