Worst Authors

  • 🏰 The Fediverse is up. If you know, you know.
  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
On the topic of Harry Potter, I'd like to bring up Nancy Stouffer, the lady who wrote The Legend of Rah and the Muggles and claimed JK Rowling ripped her off. Her book is so badly written that the publishing company selling it went bankrupt.
 
Tailypo said:
On the topic of Harry Potter, I'd like to bring up Nancy Stouffer, the lady who wrote The Legend of Rah and the Muggles and claimed JK Rowling ripped her off. Her book is so badly written that the publishing company selling it went bankrupt.
Click to expand...
That book was batshit retarded, I read a sporking of it and it was... bizarre.
 
He's certainly not the worst author ever and has even definitely written good books, but Piers Anthony would be the absolute worst author I've read lots and lots of.

His modus would be to write a good book and then write an endless series of shitty sequels, the Xanth books being the prime example. I don't even know who read past ten or so.

Also he's a creepy pervert, a lot of his books are "problematic" in more ways than being shitty, and he's personally kind of a dick.

One day a little light went on and I realized how completely horrible he was and immediately sold a few dozen of his books to a used book store to get some Philip K. Dick.
 
Anne Rice will always be the #1 batshit author to me. I couldn't make through a single book of hers, and her antics, from trying to get fanfiction banned to the "interrogating the text from the wrong perspective" fiasco, never cease to be hilarious.
 
Hey, remember "Benjanun 'Bee' Sriduangkaew?" A young, poor, brown-skinned woman from a developing nation, she effortlessly transcended her marginalized origins through the powers of cheerfulness, positivity and talent, becoming an award-winning SFF writer and rising star in the community.

Except that was all - ahem - BS.

From her Wikipedia page, "In 2014, Sriduangkaew was revealed to have been the controversial blogger and book reviewer "Requires Hate" (also known as "Requires Only That You Hate", as well as "Winterfox"). Using these internet identities, she composed violently intimidating and harsh critiques of many writers she believed to have paid insufficient attention to racism, sexism, heteronormativity, or colonialism in their fiction; many of her targets were themselves writers who were young, female, transgendered, and/or persons of color." In a nutshell, she fucked with her victim's careers, harassed people to the verge of suicide, and then mocked them for being suicidal.

Apparently, her real name is Venesa Burranupakorn and her relatives are among the wealthiest people in Thailand.

Moreover. "According to one of her former friends, Venesa was part of the management of the Downtown Inn in 2011 when at least half a dozen people died there during the months of January and February. [...]It turns out they were killed by an overspraying of pesticides, but this was only discovered when New Zealand’s 60 Minutes posed as tourists to gather samples themselves because the Thai authorities kept 'losing' theirs."

Since her reprehensible behavior has been made public, she's now claiming to be "a survivor of mass online abuse."

Stay classy, Bee.
 
buster_kitten said:
Hey, remember "Benjanun 'Bee' Sriduangkaew?" A young, poor, brown-skinned woman from a developing nation, she effortlessly transcended her marginalized origins through the powers of cheerfulness, positivity and talent, becoming an award-winning SFF writer and rising star in the community.

Except that was all - ahem - BS.

From her Wikipedia page, "In 2014, Sriduangkaew was revealed to have been the controversial blogger and book reviewer "Requires Hate" (also known as "Requires Only That You Hate", as well as "Winterfox"). Using these internet identities, she composed violently intimidating and harsh critiques of many writers she believed to have paid insufficient attention to racism, sexism, heteronormativity, or colonialism in their fiction; many of her targets were themselves writers who were young, female, transgendered, and/or persons of color." In a nutshell, she fucked with her victim's careers, harassed people to the verge of suicide, and then mocked them for being suicidal.

Apparently, her real name is Venesa Burranupakorn and her relatives are among the wealthiest people in Thailand.

Moreover. "According to one of her former friends, Venesa was part of the management of the Downtown Inn in 2011 when at least half a dozen people died there during the months of January and February. [...]It turns out they were killed by an overspraying of pesticides, but this was only discovered when New Zealand’s 60 Minutes posed as tourists to gather samples themselves because the Thai authorities kept 'losing' theirs."

Since her reprehensible behavior has been made public, she's now claiming to be "a survivor of mass online abuse."

Stay classy, Bee.
Click to expand...
Oh, her. I remember her well from my LJ days- she was a particularly vicious poster in various LJ comms under the alias of winterfox. It was also well-known that she was a very wealthy and highly privileged person who nonetheless went full SJW on other people.

She was so infamous, absolutely no one was surprised when the whole Sriduangkeaw/requireshate thing blew up.

ETA: Whoops, hadn't seen there was a thread on her here.
 
Last edited:
The guys behind the Left Behind books (both the adult ones and the "Kids" series...). I don't think I need to elaborate why...
 
Personal bias on my part but James Patterson is the biggest hack in the literary world right now. He's the Jim Davis of crime fiction.
 
Bugaboo said:
Isn't the guy who wrote Ender's Game (which I have never read but is apparently very good) a huge homophobe? I'd vote him just for "worst person award"
Click to expand...
Orson Scott Card, yeah. Not only that, but he's prone to throw a hissyfit whenever somebody touches him. Classic Asperger's.
 
Worst authors would be George R.R. Martin, James Joyce, J.R.R. Tolkien and Steven King.
 
Ruin said:
Personal bias on my part but James Patterson is the biggest hack in the literary world right now. He's the Jim Davis of crime fiction.
Click to expand...
I'm on the fence about Patterson. The guy is a big-time advocate for improving childhood literacy, and won an Edgar Award for The Thomas Berryman Number. I guess for awhile, he was doing something right. He predominantly collaborates with other writers now, and is a recurring guest star on Castle. I don't hate the guy, but I do agree that his body of work is more flash than substance. Still, they make the number one spot on the Times Bestseller List, so...
 
nyess said:
Worst authors would be George R.R. Martin, James Joyce, J.R.R. Tolkien and Steven King.
Click to expand...

James Joyce's entire literary career was a giant attempt to troll people. Everything he wrote was penned with the express intention to fuck with his audience. He wrote Finnegan's Wake the way he did because he wanted to write a book that "people a hundred years from now still won't be able to understand". This is the main reason why whenever someone claims to have read Finnegan's Wake they're lying through their teeth. Joyce wrote it specifically to be unreadable.

I agree with you on Steven King to an extent. The man is chock-full of interesting story ideas, but his writing process is what ends up killing most of his plots. King starts a novel without any plan as to how it will end. His method is to let the story develop as he's writing it. Now, there's a lot you can't plan for in the outlining stages, but a well-crafted story requires a sense of direction. The Dark Tower series became stuffed with filler by the second book because Steven let the plot meander at every opportunity. He didn't know how the series was going to end until he was forced to reach it after three decades of inconsistent installments.

Anyway, I have never seen someone suck the life out of a vivid setting and premise quite like Frank Herbert. I've lost track of how many time I have attempted and failed to read Dune. The farthest I ever got was almost halfway through, but there is no sense of beauty in the man's writing style. It's a damn shame that a creative project so brilliant and monumental is - in the end - so empty to me.

And every single word John Green writes reeks of pretentiousness and I want to smack him.
 
Norman Boutin by far.

You want a strong female? Try "Empress Theresa". After reading page 1, no, never mind that, after reading the second paragraph on page 1, you know nothing will stop this girl! ................... In the cultural wasteland of today's heartless media, Empress Theresa is a breath of fresh air. Show it to your 8 year old daughter and show it to your grandmother. They'll both enjoy it. ……Empress Theresa is a very different kind of story, incorporating situations never seen before. It is a beautiful story in how Theresa deals with her "impossible problems" and how people react to her. It is full of meanings, for Theresa doesn't act like this world is all there is. "I was sure I was immortal and that gave me courage." ……This is a book about a heroic teenage American girl winning against impossible odds and changing the world. ……So is Empress Theresa a 'Young Adult' novel? Not really. Theresa doesn't deal with the problems of a teenager's life. She deals with problems that involve all humanity. It should be called an 'Old Adult' novel because old people, having seen everything, will see its meaning. It has themes seldom seen in other books. But the story itself is worth reading just as a story. ……On page one Theresa describes herself as a ten year old: “…when I was a little girl I didn’t have a clue about anything. My job as a kid was to figure out what the heck was going on and what to do about it.” Later, when she is challenged with global problems, it turns out that nobody else knows what to do. Theresa has to figure it out herself. Her husband Steve complains, “Politicians are hiding under their desks. Theresa has to do it all”. ……This one of a kind story is an inspiration for a teenager. An 18 year old girl gets enormous power over the whole world. What will she do with it? …… DESCRIPTION: Theresa is honest, courageous, brilliant, loved by everybody ( even China wants her to take herself out of danger ), happily married, powerful but harmless, thoughtful of others' welfare not just her own, a believer in God, and an inspiration to the young and old. She attacks "impossible" problems with everything she's got and she never gives up. ……"Those who challenge Theresa Hartley's power are fools" says the Israeli Prime Minister. "She could destroy the world." ……"Don't mess around with Empress Theresa!" says her husband Steve. ……Empress Theresa is what some people would consider impossible, a book about a good girl, with no sex, foul language, or violence, but still giving the reader an action-filled fascinating story.
Click to expand...

http://www.amazon.com/Empress-Theresa-Norman-Boutin/dp/1495450422/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8
 
I kind of wish I could remember the book, or the author, but I tried to read a book I had bought, a physical book, and this thing had the most horrible lack of editing I had ever seen. It made things written by 12 year olds on ff.net look professional. I remember one line, where characters were running through a city and it said "they ran down the ally to escape." It was like it had been run through spell check and then published.

I flipped through the rest of it before I threw it out, later on there was a character Rose, who had roses in her garden. Half the time the book didn't capitalize the name of the character, but did for the plant. I swear there were errors in every paragraph of the entire novel.

The only use of it would be to give to English majors as a gag gift. Something to send a grammer nazi into orbit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom