Back when I was in high school, I read Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire. When a classmate asked me to describe it, I remember saying that, while it was a two- or three-hundred page book, it felt like it was five- or six-hundred. It wasn’t terrible, but I remember it mostly as slow and somewhat…lethargic. It was a bit of a slog.

There are those who say it’s all been downhill since then.

I don’t know. I’ve never felt any great compulsion to read the other books in her Vampire series (or any of the others), and the compulsion I had to watch the film of Queen of the Damned wasn’t exactly what I’d call rewarding. Maybe the books are okay, maybe they’re piles of dren. But, regardless, I think it’s foolhardy for Rice to start attacking readers for not liking her latest book, Blood Canticle. It’s probably even more foolhardy for her to boast that she won’t let an editor near her manuscripts — especially since, from what I’ve seen of her writing online, she’s in need of at least a proofeader.

Again, I haven’t read the other books in the series or this latest one, but Rice’s proud declaration that she feels “utter contempt” for her Amazon readers hasn’t left me too eager to continue. As Neil Gaiman points out, it’s probably best for authors to “resist the urge to put [responses like this] to paper.”