Did Kat Kennedy Bully Me?

Recently, there have been some false claims about Kat Kennedy.

I don’t know about other authors’ experience, but my email exchanges with her, discussions on Goodreads, and the review she did for my book was excellent.

So I had to ask myself . . . Why was Kat Kennedy nice to me, but an alleged villain and bully to others.

Was Kat attempting to suck up to me due to my celebrity status? Lol.

• Well . . . I am no celebrity, especially when compared to her. Her online platform makes my online platform look like a limp penis. Thousands upon thousands of people are fans of her reviews and guest post! Whereas my mother hasn’t even read my book or followed my blog.

This leads me to an even bigger question . . . Why the hell did she read my book in the first place?

• I’m a new, unheard of author that wrote an urban fantasy. The story is unique in some ways, but very similar to most paranormal romances in lots of ways.

So I asked myself:

What if she was bullying me and I simply was too stupid to see it!? Is that even possible?

I had to know!! So I went back to my emails and our Goodreads’ exchanges to really analyze whether I was bullied by Kat.

(Disclaimer: Kat did give me permission to post these exchanges.)

Evidence of Possible Bullying #1

Kat Kennedy said,

Goodreads message. Feb 17, 2012

My email address is (Kat’s Email address was hidden).

An eBook is fine. It's expensive to send print copies to me.

I honestly apologize. I do get a lot of review requests but I would have remembered one from you and helped to promote your book.

Analytical Results:

Wow!

What a mean, vile person! Clearly this is a reviewer that authors should stay away from! Here she is not only willing to review my book, but is making sure that I don’t spend too much money sending it to her.

That’s awesome! Especially since some bloggers are adamant that they won’t review eBooks and demand print copies.

Evidence of Possible Bullying #2

Email on Feb 22, 2012

Kat Kennedy	Feb 22
to me

Thank you so much, Kenya!

I'll be starting your book soon.  I take being sent ARCs very seriously.  These aren't protected files so I wanted to ask your permission to forward to my coblogger Stephanie.    Generally, if we both like a book then we review it and do an author interview to publicize it.  If one of us doesn't like it then we do a review war.  If you're not comfortable with that - then I'm happy to be the only one who reads and reviews it.

I'm glad you enjoyed the video!  Hope all is well.

Kat

Analysis Results:

OH MY GOD! Did you see how she is trying to intimidate me? (And I say that with mock sarcasm just in case you didn’t get that . . . internet sarcasm is so hard to execute).

Let me tell you something that has happened to me and others. I’ve signed, sent my book to bloggers, and seen the signed book sold on eBay later. Another created a torrent out of it.

Giving a blogger an ARC can be a scary situation, if you give it to an unethical blogger. Clearly, Kat and her blog the cuddlebuggery are not unethical

Evidence of Possible Bullying #3

Kat Kennedy's Reviews > Fire Baptized

Kat Kennedy's Profile Picture

Kat Kennedy's review of Fire Baptized

Mar 21, 12 

bookshelves: death-by-paranormal-romance, romance-romance-romance

Read on March 19, 2012

This is not a book I’m happy about review­ing, because I really wanted to like it and its rat­ing doesn’t truly reflect its quality.

You know how you love some­thing like ice cream (note: I don’t like ice cream) and so you eat lots and lots of it.  Then one day you pick up your favourite ice cream and it looks extra sump­tu­ous.  Even though there is noth­ing wrong with that ice cream, and even though it’s just like every other ice cream you’ve bought, you just sud­denly can’t stom­ach it.
 

That was my read­ing expe­ri­ence with Fire Bap­tized.  Don’t mis­take the three star review.  This is a well-written book with a very inter­est­ing, lik­able cast of char­ac­ters.  Fans of Para­nor­mal Romance will prob­a­bly eat this right up and love it.  In fact, many, many do.

 

I got this book very, very excit­edly because Wright was not only an author who com­poses her­self amongst the review­ing and read­ing com­mu­nity with excel­lent man­ners, but the very syn­op­sis was intrigu­ing.  I WAS INTRIGUED, I SAY!  Bloody intrigued.  Fas­ci­nated.  Prac­ti­cally slob­ber­ing to get my greedy lit­tle paws on it and take it for a roll in the metaphor­i­cal read­ing hay.

 

But I’ve gorged myself, you see. After tak­ing so many oth­ers to my not-so-metaphorical-bed (that’s where I read!  Get your mind out of the gut­ter), I just found that I couldn’t do it again.  For now, I’ve had my fill of para­nor­mal romance for now and, unfor­tu­nately, I just didn’t real­ize that until I started this one.


 

Despite being rea­son­ably well-written with fresh, dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters, there was enough sim­i­lar to the for­mula to make an engorged para­nor­mal fan­tasy book worm grab her tummy and reach for the pepto bis­mal.  From the intensely alpha males to the mys­tery that can only be inves­ti­gated by the heroine.

 

On a per­sonal level, I’ve just read too many sim­i­lar things too often before.  BUT on a purely objec­tive level, I really can’t fault Fire Bap­tized or Wright.  It’s not her fault I’m the floozy of the PNR read­ing world, that the glam­our of the illicit para­nor­mal smoochies has ebbed.
It’s not you, Fire Bap­tized, it’s me.

 

Can we still be friends?


 

Oh, by the way.  Did any­one else know that the angry, flam­ing woman on the cover is wear­ing a bikini or has years of heavy drink­ing and ram­pant book-promiscuity (read­ing at night!) destroyed my vision?  You know, it’s nice to know that in the midst of burn­ing, heinous, fury-fire of epic pro­por­tions, she still thought to wear a nice bikini.  And she has an excel­lent brazil­lian.  At least I think it is, but there’s only so much burn­ing crotch you can look at to deter­mine these things before peo­ple start think­ing you’re crazy.   

 Oooooooohh­h­h­h­hhh! You know, I bet she’d be MARVELOUS at a barbecue!

Yeah, okay, I just crossed the line.
 

unlike 26 likes

Analysis Results:

Gee . . . I may need to flag this review for bullying . . . NOT! Lol! I think that was an outstanding review. I mean truly better than my own reviews to books. I would have been harsh.

You can tell that although Kat didn’t enjoy the book as much as she thought she would, she took a great amount of care and respect with reviewing it.

My only problem with this review was Kat’s lack of respect for ice cream. WTF? How do you not like ice cream?

But let’s rewind all of this and create an

alternate world where Kat did give me a bad

review!

Let’s pretend like she filled the review with gifs of people taking a crap and then said that those gifs were better than my book. Let’s say she also called me a moron with the brain size of a peanut and recommend that I never write again.

None of that would matter.

It would all just be her opinion.

So why didn’t she supposedly attack or bully me?

This is a guess . . . and only a guess, but maybe she isn’t a bully OR maybe it was because I didn’t attack and bully her to the point where she believed she had to defend herself.

I’m just saying. . .

So DEAR Authors that believe they are bullied on Goodreads,

Watch this video by Lauren DeStefano. She has the best advice for us all (well after my Bad Reviews and Orgasm plan).

Lauren DeStefano discusses the perils of the Goodreads's site