Lynne Scanlon’s Publishing Contrarian had started yesterday on a celebratory note, as Scanlon announced the formal launch of a book proposal consultancy aimed at helping writers craft more effective proposals. (One author who took advantage of Scanlon’s trial offer of a free consult called it “probably the most practical help I have received in my writing journey.”) But the party atmosphere quickly turned sour when someone posted a nastygram to her comments section after receiving an unsolicited email about the service:
“Why the fuck am I suddenly receiving junk mail from you? Stop it. I am not interested in your crap. Stop sending me email or I will hunt you down. I found your website and I’ll find you. This is your warning crazy asshole. Stop send [sic] crap to my address.”
Scanlon, who regularly footnotes her readers’ comments with responses and mini-bios, identified the sender as Nancy Fay, the vice president of the PEN New Mexico board of directors…and, oh so ironically, the co-editor of a poetry anthology called The Practice of Peace. Somehow I don’t imagine the practice of peace begins by declaring “What the fuck?” and then promising to hunt people down; I usually just hit “reply” and type UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line and that seems to work for me.
When contacted for confirmation, Fay acknowledged, “I do not know why my inbox suddenly began to get messages from this person who is unknown to me on a topic that does not interest me. I was highly annoyed and tracked down the website associated with the sender and demanded that my email address be removed.” (Note: The accomplishment of “tracking down” Scanlon’s website is somewhat less remarkable when one realizes that the URL was included in the email.) Scanlon isn’t sure how she acquited Fay’s email address, but was more than happy to demonstrate her peaceful nature by honoring Fay’s rudely worded request to be removed from the distribution list. All well and good—let’s just hope this isn’t how things get decided at the PEN New Mexico board meetings!