Yesterday was not a good day in the social media department. I received not one but three separate nasty-grams—communications from people who went out of their way to say what a terrible writer and awful person I am. That’s fine. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but just because they think it doesn’t mean I have to read it or respond.

For the past several months, my spam folder has been alive with AI generated letters that begin by giving me effusive praise for one of my books and inviting me to to participate with their various book clubs — the European Book Club, the Seattle Book Club — and offering me an “opportunity” (for a certain price, of course) to interact with their hundreds or thousands of members who would then post comments on the book in question on the web and thus raise its profile. Hello. Paying people to write positive reviews may not be illegal, but it’s certainly immoral.

When the first one of those came in, I followed up on it. Bottom line, I finally figured out it was a scam. Since then I’ve received dozens of almost mirror image emails about any number of books. Yesterday I hit the wall and wrote back: This is a scam. Shame on you.” Nasty-gram número uno soon followed.

A little later in the day, someone who is one of my regular correspondents let me know that the bio on my Wikipedia page had been altered by an unauthorized individual in a way that was designed to undermine me publicly. That comment has since been deleted, but I know who sent it. It was the same person who sent me an email a month or so ago demanding information that was none of her business. But since the website says I respond, I did so, answering her question honestly and saying that I hoped we could agree to disagree. Evidently not!

As for number three? Yet another woman wrote to express her “dismay” over the misogyny exhibited in The Girl from Devil’s Lake which clearly showed my contempt toward Indigenous and Latina women, claiming that my story had set human rights back decades. That’s when I hit the wall. I did NOT respond. I hit the delete key instead.

So yes, I broke my own rule. I will continue to reply to the SERs—the sharp-eyed readers who point out errors in my books. One of those came in yesterday, too. Someone mentioned that Gelert, the wolfhound mentioned in a poem my father used to read to us, was actually from Wales rather than Ireland, and that I had it wrong in one of my books. I’m going to correct that error as soon as possible, but since all the wolfhounds I’ve ever met were called Irish Wolfhounds as opposed to Welsh Wolfhounds, I can see how I made that mistake. That writer, by the way, received an immediate response expressing my appreciation.

So this is my official notification that, from now on, I will NOT be responding to ALL correspondence. The ones that cross the line and are written with evil intent will be sent into the great beyond of my Spam file.

While my first husband and I were teaching on the reservation, our washing machine was literally struck by lightning. At the time, I told Jerry Janc that if God had wanted me to wash clothes, He wouldn’t have struck the washing machine with lightning. From then on, once a week, we dropped our dirty clothes off at the laundromat in the reservation in Sells once a week and picked it up after school washed, dried, folded, and ironed.

In my book this is the same thing. If God had wanted me to respond to ALL messages, He wouldn’t have given me a delete key.