Sick Mick Whines Again

Poor Sick Mick, she must be fatigued from jumping to conclusions in a sad rant that she tried to post to my blog review of her book. Here's what she had to say (I'm posting it instead of allowing it as a comment, as I wanted to respond.) "My book was specifically written for people who can relate to the hardship of falling ill, falling from grace and struggling to survive. There are many of us and we are an invisible subset of society. Hopefully you will be blessed and illness and hardship will never find you. As I so clearly state within the book ... and as you so clearly demonstrate in your "review" ... people who have their health "just don't get it." You should probably consider who the intended audience is before assuming you are qualified to write a review with understanding and intelligence. I suggest you continue reviewing fiction; you seem to like it and the real world isn't nearly as pretty." I must reply to this because Micki Suzanne's rant doesn't take into account the fact that I DO have a very complete understanding of falling ill and struggling to survive. I have had Crohns Disease for the past 7 years, and have had to deal with the pain of the disease, trying to work at a newspaper when you are in pain and have to be in the bathroom for long periods of time, having to raise a child and keep a household running when you have pain, etc. Prior to being diagnosed with Crohns Disease, I had severe asthma and allergies from age 5 on, in a state where I was allergic to everything growing there. I was told, when I was 12, that I probably wouldn't live to adulthood. Yet I continued to go to school, work hard, read continually and build a life for myself. I didn't fall into the trap of self-pity. I didn't have the luxury of having parents with money, or husbands with money, I've worked my way through college and graduate school, and I worked all through my pregnancy. Six weeks after delivery of a premature baby, I was back at work, and struggling with Crohns Disease, though I was misdiagnosed and didn't know it. So I am more than qualified to write a review of Sick Micks book, unless she is only marketing it to those who have Lyme Disease. My review made many important points on the validity of the book, which is neither fully a memoir or a guidebook, just a badly rendered hodgepodge of the two. If you want to explain your life and your trials and tribulations in a memoir, then do so, but don't try to tag an incomplete guidebook onto it. Or better yet, just write a guidebook, which is useful for others to read. And as a person who has made her living writing non fiction, I know what the world is like, Ms Suzanne. I would hazard that I've seen more horrors and more nobility working as a nurse in the projects of Boston, working with hospice patients and working with disabled children than you have in your lifetime. I've also published at least a thousand articles in the past 20 years, and I've won 12 awards for my work. I've reviewed both fiction and non fiction on my blog because I read a great deal of both, and because, as a former editor, I know good writing when I read it. I asked Angela and Richard Hoy before I began writing reviews for the POD books they sent to me if they wanted real reviews, or if they were looking for someone who would just say nice things about the books, regardless of the quality. They told me that they were looking for honest reviews, both good and bad. I've done that, honestly reviewed your book. It looks to me like Sick Mick is the one who just doesn't get it.