Irate Vamp Queen

The Queen of New Orleans, Anne Rice was not amused by some reviews of Blood Canticle (I think I gave it a medium rating myself on the Alien last year). In the new issue of the mighty Dave Langford’s Ansible email digest this was posted:

“ANNE RICE was irked by negative Amazon reviews of her final vampire novel _Blood Canticle_ — some disappointed, some nastily personal. Pausing to award her book five stars, she posted a vast unparagraphed tirade which perhaps unwisely revealed that: `I have no intention of allowing any editor ever to distort, cut, or otherwise mutilate sentences that I have edited and re-edited, and organized and polished myself. I fought a great battle to achieve a status where I did not have to put up with editors making demands on me, and I will never relinquish that status. For me, novel writing is a virtuoso performance. It is not a collaborative art.’

Some of us lesser writers still need that editorial whisper in the ear, `Remember thou art but mortal.’ “