To Julian Ruck – Criminal Writer.

Dear Mr Ruck,

I have just noticed that you are a regular visitor to my blog, a constant and loyal companion it would seem.

[Actually, quick heads up old chap, that would be better with a semi-colon after ‘blog’ and then the comma after ‘companion’ – oh, I know, I know, the written word deserves to be treated with contempt, doesn’t it?!]

I have often wondered (you don’t need a comma there! You like putting commas after verbs for no particular reason, don’t you? Please stop!) what drives an individual to say all sorts of unpleasant things about all sorts of people, with as much publicity as possible, and then act surprised when other people don’t like them (you might want to have a word with PR 4 Books about that – you’re meant to be improving your ‘likeability’ when you blog!).

You’re convinced that everyone hates you, aren’t you? To be honest, I think you get a little frisson of self-pity out of the thought; but it’s wide of the mark. I certainly don’t hate you – I just think you’re a dreadfully bad writer whose self-publicity is based largely on dishonesty – and as for the monkeys, they asked you to be their Valentine! You missed an opportunity there, I can tell you.

But one point I must, sir, insist upon. This is NOT a ‘fake Julian Fuck blog’. This is the REAL Julian Fuck blog. To the best of my knowledge, and believe you me I’ve set my monkey researchers on the question, it is the ONLY Julian Fuck blog in existence. If you persist in calling the REAL Julian Fuck blog a fake Julian Fuck blog, I shall have little choice but to report you to the police for harassment. I do not make empty threats.

Yours, more in sorrow than in anger,

JF

Oh, I see you’ve deleted your delightful ‘threat’ to give Steve Mosby and David Hewson bad reviews in, no, the Llanelli Star! And your charming boast about blog views; so here it is for posterity:

(6,145 views on this blog so far this month – pull your socks up, Julian!).

***

Julian is starting to lose it, isn’t he? All this ‘Sniff, sniff, why are you being so beastly to me, I don’t deserve it’ stuff has the whiff of a man slowly realising that posterity will remember him more as a prize fool than as any kind of writer.