Summer Plans
For the past few months I’ve been using this website to post videos from my YouTube show Ellroy Reads. I’ve been having a blast recording the show and have more episodes planned. Thank you to everyone who has been watching, and do subscribe if you haven’t already. However, I feel that this website should have more diversity and Summer is the time I usually spending writing some long-form essays, so over the next few months I’m going to be posting articles about real-life crimes I was involved in, or perhaps I should say I had ringside seat to these crimes before anyone misreads my motivations. Stay tuned. I think you’ll enjoy them.
On another subject, I seem to have inadvertantly incurred the wrath of some Michael Jackson fans. My crime was to make the following tweet or post on X:
Within minutes I was bombarded by angry responses from an army of Jackson fans accusing me of every form of prejudice under the sun. It went on for days and got quite unpleasant. Although the conversations became more positive as they went on. Some people came to my support and colleagues approached me at work with warm words. Was my tweet justified? From a freedom of speech point of view, I had every right to say what I did. Regarding the other issues at stake, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comment thread. Hopefully, we can keep it more civilised here than it was on X.
One of the tactics the Jackson trolls employed to try and make me take down the tweet was to leave one-star reviews of my biography, Love Me Fierce in Danger: The Life of James Ellroy on GoodReads. This is blatantly unfair as they haven’t read it. The book has already been nominated for and won several awards and made critics year-end lists, so there’s little they can do to tarnish its reputation. However, the effrontery of it rankles me.
If you have read Love Me Fierce in Danger and liked it, or even if you didn’t like it, please go to GoodReads and Amazon and leave an honest review. Hopefully, this will prove to the MJ trolls that they can’t intimidate an author by dragging his name through the dirt.
Aside from that, I am currently writing another book and editing a special James Ellroy themed issue for a prominent journal. It’s going to a be a busy Summer! Thank you all for your continued support.
The Venetian Vase 
Complete insanity on the one-star reviews- somehow I doubt there is much crossover between people this obsessed with MJ and Ellroy readers. I’ll share this on the Ellroy fanpage on FB to bring in some reinforcements.
Thank you Dan! All help is much appreciated. I don’t mind a bad review if it’s honest and by someone who has read the book, but what they are doing really takes the biscuit. It would be great to see it backfire on them.
I answered to the call thanks to Dan on this one. Posted a review on amazon.
Regardless, sorry to hear you had to go through that on the social media formerly known as twitter, aka X.
For what it’s worth, 90% of the ones attacking were likely bots.
Thank you Carl! I appreciate it. And no worries about my troubles on social media. It’ll teach to do more writing and less scrolling.