I Deny Being Taylor Swift

VERY MINOR SPOILERS
VERY MINOR SPOILERS
I'm stupidly fortunate in many things, one being how often readers take time out of their lives to give me feedback on my books. It's always a kick to hear from readers, even if (the epilogue for UNDEAD AND UNFINISHED) they occasionally (the epilogue for UNDEAD AND UNFINISHED) get in touch (the epilogue for UNDEAD AND UNFINISHED) to register (the epilogue for UNDEAD AND UNFINISHED) their (the epilogue for UNDEAD AND UNFINISHED) displeasure.
Also in the category "Things MJ Is Stupidly Fortunate In", my assistant Tracy, who is my first line of offense. Yeah, that's right, I didn't mean defense; I pretty much like to hit the ground running. Anyway, Tracy sees virtually all of my fan mail and does her best to reply to all of it.
Now, I would have written "always replies to all of it all the time because she's weirdly interested in helping me come off as a professional instead of the drooling psycho I am occasionally taken for", but Tracy herself would have forbidden it. "I don't, though! I try to answer all your mail and all the FaceBook posts, but sometimes I miss a few," she admitted to me with the air of someone confessing she had spent her weekend painting her house with cat feces. You know, shameful yet crazily proud? So a happy medium would be "Tracy responds to 98% of my fan mail and FB posts".
All this to say that when the torrent of reader mail started coming in for UNDEAD AND UNFINISHED, she saw the letters from readers who were ecstatic, thrilled, shocked-yet-impressed ("your book caught me by total surprise; what an exciting turn the series took and I'm gonna raid the kid's college fund so I can buy the next one, UNDEAD AND UNSTABLE, the day it comes out instead of waiting for the paperback which isn't as big a ripoff for the consumer".
She also saw feedback that was not as giddy: "Why do you hate America, you stupid thieving whorish jerky hack beeyatch? Sinclair rules, MJ drools!" "Tracy, would you tell her nobody says beeyatch anymore? Thanks."
So far, my favorite not-as-giddy feedback has been the reader who tried to extort me. I'm paraphrasing our written exchange so as to protect the innocent, who in this case is me, from needless prosecution. And I might have exaggerated here and there for humorous effect. Naw! Okay, yeah, I did...but surprisingly little, that's the weird part.
"Dear Shitty Writer: Your latest abortion ruined the entire series for me. It was so awful it tainted all the good things you wrote in all the other books. Not only do I want my money back for UNFINISHED, I want you to pay me back for ALL the Betsy books, since they've been tainted forever by what you did in UNFINISHED, you awful awful awful writer. Send me a check for $92.64 to..." and she listed her address. She finished with, "If you don't send me a check by the 12th, I'm going on every blog I can find, every chat room, every online bookstore, every reviewer site, I'm going everywhere to tell everyone what a bad writer you are and how shitty UNFINISHED was."
Yep! She added up the damages, gave me a street address, gave me a time limit to tremble and obey, and then threatened a...a...I dunno, what would it be called? A smear campaign if I was a politician, I s'pose. "A desperate man at the end of his pitiful rope," as Jim Carey described himself in Liar Liar?
My response to the sobering demand was...okay, I kind of laughed until I gave myself the hiccups, and then spent the morning holding my breath for long periods of time and trying to drink water upside down. I hate the hiccups! Curse you, extortionist thug, already I rue the day. I'd never been extorted before, so it was interesting if nothing else, and I told Tracy I'd write the extortionist back myself. Tracy then made an admirable attempt to hide her relief, but my hiccups sometimes give me the power to cloud assistant's minds, and I wasn't fooled.
Dear Extortionist Thug: My assistant passed your demands on to me and I'd like to address them. First, thank you very much for your feedback. I'm always happy to hear from readers, even the bitchy entitled ones.
Second, your extortion demand was way off. If you bought the hardcovers when they were hardcovers, that would mean I owed you around $160 or so because the first three were released direct-to-paperback. So you should definitely check your math. Maybe you forgot to carry the remainder? I do that all the time, so don't feel bad.
Third, I'm not sure the relationship you and I have (had, now that I think about it...yep, definitely sounds like past tense) qualified as a legal contract, wherein if I failed to meet your specifications I would be liable for financial damages. No, my job was to write a book. I double-checked my contract, and nowhere in there does it say it has to be a book you liked. In fact, you're not mentioned anywhere in my contract. Now, Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Borders (may they rest in peace) might have a sort of 'satisfaction guaranteed' thing going on with their customers, but you'd have to ask them. Not me. Them. Not the writer. The supplier. Me, no. Amazon, yes. They might very well be willing to refund you money for a book you bought and read and loved six years ago, and one you bought five years ago, and one you bought four years ago...like that. I dunno. Like I said above, you'll have to ask them. Not me. I assume you kept the receipt every time you bought one of my books and can back up your demands with years of a paper trail?
Finally, all jokes aside, I am sorry you didn't care for the book. I try to write the best book I can, every time, and that's all I can do. Sometimes readers agree I did; sometimes they do not. If you ever do feel like taking another chance on Betsy and the gang, I hope you'll think it was an improvement, or that it at least laid your fears about Betsy's future to rest. May I suggest the library, so you won't be out any expenses? If you end up hating that book as well, keep track of your expenses (driving to an from the library, two or three dollars for late fees, etc.) so if you decide to try the extortion thing again, you'll have a paper trail to threaten the librarians with.
Finally (wait, that's another finally, which makes the earlier one the opposite of finally), you were not alone in your loathing for the book. If you go to my Facebook page, you'll see plenty of annoyed readers more than willing to share with you how much they thought UNFINISHED sucked, too. There's also a discussion tab wherein readers have registered their displeasure and I've laid a few fears to rest with my postings. It's not a fangirl site at all; you won't be shouted down if you don't PTL (an acronym I just now made up for Post The Love). If nothing else, it might make you feel better to vent in a more public forum. Because I took from your extortion demand that you're itching to do just that.
Thank you again for your feedback, sincerely, etc., etc.
Hilariously, the reader wrote back (more annoyed than ever, what were the odds?), "I don't have time to go traipsing all over the web to find your stupid website and Facebook page; I'm a real person with a LIFE unlike writers like you who ruin their own books, hiss, rant, spew, etc., etc."
This is where our correspondence broke down, mostly because I had the hiccups again from another giggle fit. I adored the way she first promised to unleash hell on me via blogs and forums and review sites all over the Internet, sites she would tirelessly track down and research and then post my suckiness on, but did not have the time to click on the link to my FB page. Other than writing back, "Bwaaaaah-hah-hah, hee-hee, ohmigod, hic that is so...bwaaaaaa! Hic. Aw, hic, dammit," there didn't seem to be much point in any more needling (on both our parts).
All this to get back to the name of my blog posting: I deny being Taylor Swift. The latest e-mail from a reader who wasn't too cool with the ending for UNFINISHED wanted to know if I'd been having boyfriend trouble or marital problems or something which made me hostile to Sinclair, a male (imaginary, but still male), thus resulting in Sinclair's (maybe) fate.
This, too, made me crack up. I've been married for ages (we've been together twenty-three years and married for seventeen), and the teenage boyfriend dumping trauma crap is well behind me, but I still found the question to be hilarious.
So! My official answer is this: Thank you for your feedback. No, I didn't just break up with my fry-cook teenage boyfriend days before writing the epilogue. In fact, everything in my life was okeley-dokely (as Ned Flanders would say). It's just, that is where those characters needed to be at that point in the series for me to keep on with the series, which is not even close to being finished. And since it's paranormal romance, emphasis on romance, it's a safe bet that Betsy and Sinclair will have their HEA.
In other words: I am not Taylor Swift. I did not get dumped by a douchebag and then compelled to write about it so millions (okay, thousands...hundreds?) will know how badly I was treated.
Also on the list of people I am not: Alanis Morrissett. Though I loved "You Oughta Know" because my daughter was born that summer, and when she'd need a 2:00 a.m. feeding I'd often flip on MTV (this was waaaay back in olden days, when MTV did this weird ancient thing my generation called 'playing music videos') and there would be Alanis, wailing and shrieking away.
So even now when I hear the song about heartbreak and betrayal and revenge, I get sentimental and remember how it was. My daughter's plump little body (she's about 5'9" now...so far) and the sweet baby smell, and how sometimes I'd doze off to Alanis's soothing angry lyrics ("And every time I scratch my nails down someone else's back I hope ya feel it...WELL CAN YA FEEL IT?????") as the milk-sated contented baby in my arms dozed off, too.
Heck, to this day when my daughter hears "An older version of me, is she perverted like me?" she gets reeeeally sleepy. I started to explain why, and needed a nap myself. "A mysterious creature is man", and all that.