We were going to put this as an addendum to our post, Author Hatred Growing at an Alarming Rate, but instead we thought we’d write about it in a separate post altogether.  After sharing our views regarding the extreme hatred directed toward authors for the books they write, we were tipped off to a story about outright violence against one:

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The article our blog reader mentions above is about an author who suffered violent attacks against her person because of a book she wrote:

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Then, it goes on to say:

The local New Port Richey Patch also published an article about these incidents on April 2nd, and another news update today shows escalating forms of violence including a plastic bottle chemical bomb that exploded in her front yard on the evening of April 15th. Interestingly, this ‘bombing’ happened just a few hours after the Boston Marathon attacks had begun to fill media headlines. Kyrja’s stepdaughter Heather inhaled fumes from the explosion and is under medical treatment for damage to her respiratory tract.

Local police are currently investigating these incidents. Kyrja is offering a $200 reward for any information about the perpetrators of the shootings and the chemical bottle explosion. Tips leading to the arrest and conviction of whoever is behind the incidents can be emailed to Kyrja at and the police department can be called at . You can visit her to send along messages of support, or visit her book fan website at www.friends-of-rupert.webs.com.

Her Pagan children’s book, “Rupert’s Tales: The Wheel of the Year” follows the adventures of Rupert the Rabbit who discovers the different Pagan holidays. A short biography of Ms. Withers’ spiritual journey from a devout Roman Catholic to a practicing Pagan, and her inspiration for writing “Rupert Tales”, was .

Please stay tuned to PNC Florida and The Wild Hunt for developing updates to this story. Our thoughts and prayers are with Ms. Withers, her family, her neighbors and community.

This is frightening — to write a book and then be physically attacked for it.  Hatred is a poison, indeed.

This isn’t an isolated incident either.  Here’s another similar story shared with us by Goronwy:

I don’t know if you’ve read that something similar happened to Charlaine Harris:

http://hillbuzz.org/beware-the-annie-wilkes-brigade-author-charlaine-harris-terrorized-by-self-professed-fans-inspired-to-jihad-on-the-internet-72113

A group of readers formed the “Annie Wilkes Brigade” and threatened the life of Charlaine Harris, author of Sookie Stackhouse, promising to destroy her and her career:

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In a comment on our last post, Karig describes this kind of behavior perfectly:

Well, we have the phrases “road rage” and “nerd rage”; I guess in this case “book rage” would be appropriate for “‘That’s All’ Ash” above.

Carroll also has some apt descriptors for it:

Book-rage, reader-rage, review-rage, all would aptly apply. I still call it hate though.

Above, Karig is talking about That’s All Ash’s review that we featured on our previous post.  In it, she takes out her anger from reading the author’s book on the author herself.  Something that should never be done and yet happens all the time on GR.  In the past, we’ve given numerous examples of hatred directed toward authors because of harmless books they’ve written.  For example, in our post Bully Wank, we shared a few reviews that show just how unhinged readers can get over books:

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Here’s one from our post, Bully Attacks This Week:

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And here, we show Mahala threatening an author, saying she has a loaded gun:

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But our classic example of author hatred can be shown quite concisely in our post, Authors, I Will Destroy You, where crazy Ridley threatens to “destroy” any author that approaches her:

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There are many, many more examples.  Too many to put into one blog post and unlike what the bullies believe, this kind of hatred toward people who write books is not harmless.  We strongly beg to differ on that opinion.  It’s not only unhealthy, it’s dangerous and potentially lethal.  This book rage — this is the kind of hatred that leads to stalking and violence, violence like the kind directed toward authors such as Charlaine Harris and Kyrja Withers.  This hatred runs rampant on GR and it’s irresponsible of Amazon to let it continue.  If they don’t put a check on it sooner or later, it’s only a matter of time before an author is killed.

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