At this stage in my career, I’m trying to follow the strategy of pissing off the fewest number of people possible

One thing I never do with people, is play the guilt-by-association game. Just because Mamatas and I have gotten sideways with each other on-line doesn’t mean you and I can’t be copacetic. Nor do I expect my feelings to have any impact on how you feel about Nick.

And the subculture of which I speak is the controversy-mongering, fail-accusing, snark-festing subculture. So far as I’ve been able to discern, you’re not part of that group, regardless of whether you hold Mamatas in esteem or not.

Heaven forbid either Nick or I — or anyone else — ever demand that you choose sides.

People ought to be free to create relationships as individuals. To demand that Person A stop being friendly with Person B because Person C is friends with Person A and also dislikes Person B…. I dunno, that’s just so gradeschool.

Sorry, one last comment. I’d urge you not to exclude yourself from a “whole subculture”.

For instance, if I ever become friends with Nick, rather than just acquaintances (at best), are you and I going to cease being friends? I hope not.

Personally, I really admire Nick. For instance, when I was just starting out with this blog and was a complete unknown (rather than just “obscure” like I am today), he linked to this blog from his. Also, his rejections from Clarkesworld were treasured possessions.

When I went down to LA for WotF I was going to e-mail him and invite him out to lunch as a thank you for that personal feedback, except that I was too nervous to do that out of the blue.

I remember that spat you had with Nick, and I stayed out of it basically because I never want to have to “pick sides”. I admire Nick and am friends with you, and I don’t really want to have to give up either.

Now that he’s not editing any market to which I could possibly submit, he’s mostly off my radar. Especially since he’s friendly with a few other genre personalities with whom I have also had uniformly negative interactions.

There’s a whole subculture there that just doesn’t mesh with me.

He sold us a story for the first issue of Innsmouth Free Press, so obviously I like his writing. But even before that, he had made a good impression on me. As an editor and writer, he’s got talent. And as a blogger, he’s entertaining. Now you can take or leave the blogging part but that’s separate from the other stuff.

And I actually think he’s a nice guy, which is a personal assessment.

Thanks for commenting!

The problem is that A) writers are terrible judges of the quality of their own work, and/or B) writers have no idea what kinds of decisions editors have to make. This leads to thoughts like “Hey, my rejected story was way better than this printed one. Must be the name!”

I wouldn’t say that’s particularly “evil”, just ignorant. In Chris’ defense, he wrote the comment two years ago when he was at a different stage in his career.

About your second point, I, personally, heard about Nick’s rejections before I heard about Clarkesworld the magazine, so I guess my own experience was different. However, Nick is more well-known as an editor than the editors of many other magazines, so perhaps you’ve got a point.

Sure, he tends to dismember people when a more subtle approach might work just as well, but at least his voice gets heard.

It’s perfectly fine to say you don’t like a story, but not okay to prejudge the reason a story was taken. I mean, it just is almost *evil* because you can’t possibly know the backstory behind an acceptance.

For the record, I’ve never agreed with Nick Mamatas’ approach to rejections, as it’s entirely too self-aggrandizing. And it put him centerstage rather than the magazine.