About 8 or 9 years ago, I used to listen to "Jamie & Danny" on STAR 98.7 FM in Los Angeles. I never knew Jamie's last name until I looked it up right now - Danny was Danny Bonaduce, well-known for - well, being Danny Bonaduce. Jamie's last name is White, by the way. Jamie was and is super-pretty, I knew, but she was hysterical. One day, she was talking about how she was thirteen and was super gangly and had braces and she would talk in that "braces" voice and ask her mom, "Maw, Why Don't the Boys Like Me?" I thought I was going to bust my sides laughing, it was so ridiculous.
So I haven't said too much about this recent controversy that began with the ridiculous rejection letter that I saw Kynn reprint on his Live Journal. This is so par for the course that I thought Kynn was doing a service by passing the information along, in case there was anybody who didn't know that they'd be out of their minds to let their work anywhere near William Sanders. When that magazine started, I actually thought Sanders was being a good booster and creative by promoting it using his "controversialism." Nah.
Now this thing has gone far beyond Helix, and the depth of knee-jerk defensiveness of the oldschool apparently extends to covering for Sanders' piglike unprofessional behavior in any and all circumstances. Apparently Gardner Dozois blamed the original writer for recopying the email rejection over the internet. In this circumstance, it might have been better for Gardner to have let it rest because it may give some people the impression that Gardner himself may ever have written a letter like the original Sanders' letter or others. This is not the case - Gardner never did, I am certain, and would never have done such a thing. Thusly, it is a joint contract - the writer expects a professional editorial response (which in many cases is a form rejection letter), which doesn't need to include any type of editorial criticism or response. The writer should then respond by respecting their interactions with the professional editor. This is so far from the controversial current circumstance that I don't think those rules apply.
Some writers, including Yoon Ha Lee, have pulled their stories from Sanders' magazine. Yoon had some information about Sanders' statements regarding pulling her work on Toby's blog. Here's a link to her original LiveJournal coverage of the situation.
I'll pull aside from the various crudities and piggish behavior to a very specific thing that Sanders has always been super-hoggy about, making this type of comment almost daily in public online areas. Privately, he's informed me via email that, due to his status as a "major name," he knew exactly what would sell to Asimovs and he knew - I think this could have been regarding a specific story TAGLINE (not manuscript) - it would never sell.
So his nice response to Yoon's request to remove her work from the magazine's archives (notice there is no link to this publication - my apologies to my friends and good people who were willing to take some type of percentage cut of donations to have their work spewed on the internet and names associated with Sanders) included the information that, and I quote,
Sanders flounced off in a huff, stating that the story "never did make any sense" and that he only accepted it to "please those who admire your work"--what altruism!--"and also because (notorious bigot that I am) I was trying to get more work by non-Caucasian writers." If I were a writer currently submitting to Helix, I would kind of worry about that bit--all things considered, if a story really does suck, I'd rather have it rejected so I can fix it.
He then played psychic and claimed that I only asked for the story to be withdrawn "because, let's get real here, you feel the need to distance yourself from someone who is in disfavor with the kind of babbling PC waterheads whose good opinion is so important to you, and whom you seem to be trying to impress with this little grandstand play."
He closed with: "There was a suggestion I was going to make, but it is probably not physically practicable."
The old-school wisdom was that we keep our mouths shut, and we ask, maybe, only our mothers, "Maw, Why Don't the Boys Like Me?" Gardner Dozois was clearly upholding the old-school contract with his statements that it was a poor idea to share rejection letters around, or to complain about rejections. It is a poor idea, in general.
But, there are exceptions. Prior to the time that I realized that William Sanders was not merely a bigmouth, a loudmouth, and someone with few, if any brakes on his attitude and behavior - but was actually a vicious, cruel and ill-intentioned man who'd do just about anything to hurt others in order to make himself feel better, I responded to his magazine information.
He requested that I give him the contact information for a friend of mine - a writing friend who I've been close to for a number of years, and had a lot of friendly contact with. This is somebody special to me, and a highly-talented, beautiful writer. I got the two together, and Sanders immediately responded by taking a dump all over my friend and informing me callously that "it didn't work out." I was fairly certain his motives were exactly as he described to Yoon: "to please those who admire your work" - my friend being someone who's gotten a lot of critical attention and praise.
I'd hate to relate in poor taste and showing poor judgment one of the tales told to me about Mr. Sanders following his and Bud Webster's public insistence that I was completely making up every single story about sexual harassment I'd detailed in late 2006 following the Ellison/Willis blowup. Of course these two, only seldom leaving their residences, and neither ever having met me in person, nor being in attendance at the events where these incidents occurred - were the final arbiters of whether or not I was telling the truth - just as Steve Perry, someone I'd met a few times in Oregon at a convention, and was familiar with from the old-day AOL message boards, thought it was a good idea to write an abusive, mocking letter detailing how, again - none of these things could possibly have happened, also at events, and at times and locations where he was not present. One of the events I described, I did make a written complaint about, and it was handled privately, as I wished and as was best to do for everyone concerned in the situation. Part of why I spoke up was - that incident occurred fully ten years ago. Even then, I was aware that, had the person done what he did to ANOTHER female other than myself, he would NEVER have gotten off so lightly. Any of the other women he might have done this to would have created a horrible scene immediately, and he probably would have faced some type of charge or lawsuit. Today, I have spoken out because I am fairly certain that any young female writer would be far more assertive in speaking out immediately and publically about things a lot less extreme than what happened to me.
Of course, in the parlance of Sanders - this is the guy that walked into the SFWA suite at the Nebula Awards on the morning after his loss at the prior night's banquet (I don't know what year or where - and I don't care to look it up - sometime in the 90's) and yelled, "I only joined the organization because I wanted to win the award. I just pretended to like all of you so I would win. I really hate all of your guts."
This isn't about Sanders' copyright of his letter, or whether or not "sheet-heads" is a good term or a bad one. This is about how the "community" in the past has protected complete and total creeps and pigs, while hurting decent people.
Maw, Why Don't the Boys Like Me? I'm not going to lobby my friends to pull their work from this magazine. It's their choice - same as mine was - and has been for many years. I put my work with people of professional demeanor and behavior. It should go without saying that after the initial correspondence with Mr. Sanders regarding my friend (this was prior to his and Webster's psychotic attacks) - that was it. He could find his fine quality material elsewhere and split his pennies with them.
I want to say that I wish that some people who aren't bad would wake up and stop tolerating the antisocial, very ill people (a small minority, but a horribly harmful one) and protecting them by the "rules" that apply to genuine professional behavior. I want to say that. But I said it before - and I was attacked by people that live in shacks and not defended. That okay. I can and do defend myself. And I'll defend the other writers too. This crap needs to stop. It's a shame to everyone.
Coda - "Maw, Why Don't The Boys Like Me?" means this: You're not supposed to ask people or wonder out loud if the boys don't like you. You're supposed to stay quiet, and make them like you.
Regarding professional editorial behavior - nothing about anything I've seen Sanders say or do following Day One remotely resembles anything I'd estimate as professional (that's what "par for the course" means). I consider it unnecessary for other professionals to defend his behavior and statements, because - they're not professional. These people (such as Gardner) are inadvertently associating themselves with something that they've never themselves done and I don't think - would ever even consider doing. Sanders is a walking ball of crazy evil ego waiting to attack anyone and everything to maintain his image that he's a "great writer." He treats people like crap and always has, then passive-aggressively covers up by freely admitting he's an evil bastard. Many who don't care for him pay grudging respect to his writing. Well, since I know he internet ego surfs constantly, I think he's a lazy, undisciplined writer whose personal issues and lack of insight glare forth on every page, and most of the stories I've seen in that magazine since I first looked at it (first two issues) are pretty sucktastic.
Not supposed to say this type of thing: it's a Bozo No No. Why, I might not sell something for $100 or even $125 by saying such a thing! I might have just cut myself out of a $2,000 novel contract!
I dealt with Brian McNaughton's collections in 2000 and 2001. Brian had a very poor, depressing job as a night hotel manager, and not at a good place. He was a Harvard graduate and, while I never met him in person, he was a modest man whose work, vision and mind put me in my place, and put me in awe. He was five hundred thousand times the writer that Sanders even thinks he is. And he died, and nobody even hardly knows about him outside of diehard horror fans these days, and much of his work is out of print. This crap isn't just upsetting and insulting to the younger writers who are amazed that pig crap behavior is tolerated and even sometimes rewarded. It's an insult to the real writers out there - and many times, they do have situations like Brian. They aren't all like me, somebody who doesn't care, and who cares only about what I literally am working on at the time. They are shamed, and they can't even speak up and defend themselves and say "I'm not like this - I wasn't like this."
