DP Foresi became the latest writer to tee off against a reviewer in social media when he posted complaints on Nancy Foster’s X.com account about her Goodreads review of his book, which gave the reasons why she voted to cut it from the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition.
SPSFC 3 began last summer with 221 entries and ten judging teams (now down to nine after one — the original Team EPIC — was dissolved in December). The opening round of the Competition begins with each team’s judges reading the first 10 to 20 percent of each of the 20-30 books allocated to their team. Then they make a Yes/No recommendation on whether the team should read further, and books not getting enough upvotes are winnowed out of the competition.
When Team EPIC was dissolved the SPSFC administrators had other judges go over the books they had cut to evaluate whether that was a fair outcome. Apparently, Foresi’s book was one of those cut by the original Team EPIC (see reference to “MS Olney” below) and received a second look.
In “Nancy Foster’s review of The eom Expression: Beautiful Chaos – A Satirical Science Fiction Adventure”, Foster said after reading 8% of DP Foresi’s entry it was a DNF (Did Not Finish) for her. On the other hand, the book is 1,249 pages, so reading 8% of it was not a trivial effort. And she wrote a 1600-word review — also not trivial.
Among the things Foster criticized about Foresi’s book was the unlikeable co-protagonist, Jeron, a character obsessed with boobs from the time he was an 8-year-old boy in an orphanage.
…And now finally, the characters. I will start with Jeron. Along with the tried & true trope of being orphaned at a young age, Jeron is… sexually very promiscuous. At only 8 years of age, he stares at the chests of female classmates, dreams about boobs, frets and obsesses about boobs (this goes on for at least 3 pages of the backstory). He never cares about the boobs of adult women, only his classmates. We are hinted he tried to sexually harass or grope a classmate more than once with this text: And he never got to feel up one girl either, so his fascination with girls was a total waste of time as well.
Yeah, this gross behavior made it really hard for me to like him at all. The book further delves into Jeron’s latent male toxicity when he is at the orphanage crying when he is alone. Never agrees to become close with anyone else and open up. But don’t worry, he is constantly looking at the boobs of his female clients. Very professional. I am surprised he didn’t grope the waitress Linda when he visited Ted’s tavern.
Save for Jeron’s off scene mom who never gets any screentime or his teachers, all of the women within the first 8% of the book are catalogued in 3 categories: waifu AI, woman that likes it when men stare at her boobs or prostitutes. I am still unsure where Linda falls into this system. Everyone seems to agree she is is not smart according to this text: Linda couldn’t hold a conversation with a three year old, not because she’s an idiot or something, but she just doesn’t like people….
After reading these criticisms author Foresi went on X.com and called her review “woke garbage.”
Foresi also wrote a post on his Substack “Woke Book Reviewer Loses Her Mind”, no longer available to read. As he explained at X.com, “This link isn’t dead. I took it down because I told @TheSPSFC that I would not take further action going forward from yesterday so I disabled the post. That said, I’m not perfect…”
However, people made screencaps of some of what he said about Foster’s review in discussion with other users.
As a result of his remarks, DP Foresi was kicked off the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition’s Discord platform. The administrators also have issued this “Official Statement by the SPSFC” that recaps both what happened after Team EPIC was dissolved in December and their response to Foresi’s social media comments.
We have unfortunately encountered some difficulties in this 3rd round of the SPSFC.
In December, one of our judging teams resigned over a dispute regarding inclusivity and disagreements over how to resolve the ensuing conflict. We apologize for the delay in sharing our next steps, but we have been busy with books and with life over the holidays.
On both sides of this issue there were miscommunications and misunderstandings, and although emotions were running high, we have not found concrete evidence of harassment. The involved parties were cautioned and despite ongoing acrimony, it was decided that a separation of this team from the competition was the best choice.
The SPSFC has created a temporary team of volunteers to read through the books that were originally assigned to the departed team. The departing team’s reviews and interviews were well received and greatly appreciated by the competing authors and the SPSFC but we still want to be sure that there is no question among our competing writers that the contest is arranged in a fair manner.
The new team has agreed to reevaluate every entry in this grouping, which is not a quick process so please expect a delay of up to one month for the announcement of the semifinalist books in this allocation, which is planned for February 29.
In regard to the books that have previously been chosen as quarterfinalists in this allotment, SPSFC believes those authors should be proud of being chosen by the previous team and supports calling the books quarterfinalists nonetheless.
In addition to this, we also want to address a more recent incident where an author personally attacked and harassed one of our judges across multiple media platforms.
The SPSFC strives to make this competition a safe space for female judges and authors and encourages diversity because we live in a diverse world. We recognize that there is a possibility that a book will be assigned to a judge with a different worldview but our judges strive to remain fair in their assessments nonetheless. The judging and reviewing of art can never be truly objective though (that’s why we have multiple rounds and do as much as we can to ensure equal treatment) and we understand that receiving criticism about the result of the hard work of writing a book can be difficult, but we do want to remind everyone that this competition is run entirely by volunteers and takes up a significant amount of their time.
If you do feel that there is a serious issue in regard to the handling of your book, please reach out to the moderators of the contest rather than personally attacking any of the judges. We understand that emotions can run high sometimes when someone doesn’t love or agree with a book but that is no excuse to harass someone on multiple media platforms.
The SPSFC has removed the author in question from their discord and blocked them on other accounts after asking them to stop attacking our judge multiple times because we do not condone this behavior. We have evaluated the review in question and do not agree with the assessment that it was inappropriate. The judge stated her opinion about the book in question and did not make any comments about its author.
It is not appropriate to contact individual judges about their reviews, and there is absolutely no excuse for harassing judges through any outlet. We again ask that you contact contest moderation directly if you feel that there is an issue with how your book was handled.
Foresi’s choice of terms in dismissing Foster’s review has led to some other authors promoting their books as “woke garbage” and “woke trash.” There is even a #wokegarbage hash tag. 🙂
[Thanks to Anne Marble for the story.]
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Those “woke garbage” promotions are a lot of fun. Sort of making woke lemonade out of lemons.
“, we learn more about the favorite brand of beer of secondary characters than anything about the Saturn moon where the first 10% of the story happens.”
That is a worldbuilding fail, especially because it is a fictional moon at that.
I mean, making it 8% feels like a real accomplishment. I’d DNF just after the title.
1249 pages? That there by itself should disqualify the thing!
1249 pages of obsessing about boobs? Ye Gods.
People seem deeply thin skinned and rage filled.
@Paul Weimer
That reminds me of the “suspense” novel I started in high school. It became filled with maybe two dozen minor characters — many of whom had their own POV scenes. Who cares about the plot and Baltimore setting? We have to learn more about the random shopkeeper. Or the lazy cop close to retirement.
After reading more novels, and reading more about the writing craft, I realized that my book was a slog. So I went to the next one.
Today, I learned that distaste for sex-obsessed pre-teen characters is “woke.” Good to know. Too bad Jeff Epstein is unavailable to write a blurb – but maybe DeSantis can help out.
I read Foster’s full review. The “boobs” complaint only comes in near the end of her long review. Plenty of other, more technical reasons are given earlier to explain why she DNF’ed.
But just to be fair, I went to Amazon and read some of the sample pages provided. Or tried to. I don’t think I have ever seen writing so desperately in need of a red pencil. Maybe an entire box of red pencils. (Opening paragraph was from an AI’s point of view, so give that some slack for feeling unnatural and overwritten. But went to the part where a human appeared, and . . . just as bad.) I admire Nancy’s Foster’s fortitude in reading as much as she did.
David Foresi is not doing himself any favors.
Wow.
Well, this guy sounds like an ass.
But 1249 pages? Good lord. The length alone would put me off that book. Especially being self-published. That’s just a red flag screaming “NEEDS EDITOR.”
I forwarded the link to Publishers Weekly…
It looks like that “1249 pages” is 375k words (via https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1505851), which is certainly in ‘doorstopper’ range but not without equal. (Victoria Goddard’s “At the Feet of the Sun”, which is about 3 or 4 places back on my reading list right now, is also 375k words https://www.victoriagoddard.ca/products/at-the-feet-of-the-sun-1 and comes in at 914 pages).
Judging from the strategy, the author appears to be auditioning for a Castalia House publishing contract.
@jake
Thanks! I’d missed that one, and she writes well!
Sounds like the other authors have taken the ‘WokeTrash’ badge and are wearing it proudly! Long live the ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ spirit, authors!
Just to correct you. Team EPIC was not dissolved nor removed from the SPSFC. We voluntarily left the competition due to the clear bias of the other judges in favour of one of the participants who had deliberately stirred and made what was a completely separate issue far worse than it needed to be and led to attacks against Team EPIC members and myself in order to cause further drama.
“Dissolved” is a neutral description of what happened, the full account of which is reported at the link, including your own public statement. I do not accept that your comment here is a correction.
Bleh! The length and subject matter are a turn off. I don’t think it is woke to not want to read books with characters who are uninteresting and toxic at the same time. I read a few Hemingway stories and thought they were terrible.
An unexpected comparison. If DP Foresi wrote like a Nobel Prize winner I expect his book would have made it past the first round.
Whatever his faults, Hemingway would NEVER blather on for 1249 pages.