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Author Can’t Take Criticism, Stalks Bad Reviewer and Hits Her with Wine Bottle

28-year-old Richard Brittain, a British man minimally famous for a 2006 victory on the quiz show Countdown, had posted a draft of his unfinished novel The World Rose on the fan fiction hosting site Wattpad. He had good things to say, for the most part.

“The praise I received was remarkable and made me feel great; I was compared to Dickens, Shakespeare, Rowling, Raymond E Feist and Nora Roberts.”

High praise indeed! Here’s the summary of his book, which is available to purchase on Amazon, so that we know what these amateur critics and fellow writers are raving about.

An epic fairytale romance set in a semi-fictional ancient world, containing elements of action, adventure, poetry and comedy. The title has a triple meaning: the central character is a renowned beauty – ‘the rose of the world’ – while the rose flower features heavily in the plot, and it also implies that the world rose up. When Ronwind Drake discovers treasures in a distant paradise, a new golden age seems set to begin, but Ella Tundra will find that all which glitters is not gold as she faces many obstacles in her quest for true love.

Cool! I mean, I would never read it but whatever. However, in this blog post he also goes on about bad reviews from “idiots” and “teenagers.” Who recommended he do such things as “show, don’t tell” and “avoid purple prose”, both pretty quintessential rules of writing that Brittain prefers to ignore. OK.

One teenaged reviewer, Paige Rolland, was particularly harsh, but not mean. It seems like she just knows what she likes and what makes a good book. Gotta respect.

“Not only does it begin with “once upon a time” which you could argue is perfect as this is a fairytale (and it doesn’t work, it’s incredibly pretentious), but it’s filled with many writing no-nos. Way too much telling, pretentious prose, and a main character that I already hate. Ella is the perfect princess (true to fairytales, so we can at least give him a little credit despite how painfully annoying this is coupled with a complete lack of real personality shining through).”

Yeah it sounds awful. But it gets worse. Brittain decided to stalk her Facebook page, find her place of work, and allegedly traveled 500 miles to confront her. He found her at the supermarket where she worked, snuck up behind her and struck her on the head with an unopened wine bottle. It knocked her unconscious.

Brittain pleaded guilty to the assault on Monday.

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