Favorite Bad Authors

[Pyeknu]

That was a point I tried to make late in the thread, that you have grown as a writer over the past ten years -- possibly more than I have in some ways. You have your preoccupations when it comes to subject matter and plot development, but don't we all? I mean, quite honestly, nothing you do is any worse than or any different from, say, the late Jack Chalker's interminable obsession with body-switching and gender-changing in his novels. And my initial comments in the original post were indeed skewed heavily by your late 1990s-early 2000s work -- many of which, may I please note, I keep in my "old favorites to frequently reread" archive that lives on several different devices for easy access regardless of what hardware I'm using.

I hope, by the way, that this thread wasn't why you scuttled "The Loon and the Ladies from Avalon". If so, I apologize thoroughly.

Admittedly, it was, Bob.  And I both accept your apology and apologise in turn for asking you to remove TLatLfA from the site.
To better explain what happened, I refer you to an interview that Steve "Nightman" Cornett did with Mike Smith and I over the Internet for the Chicken Ball Award concerning TSY while I was still in Korea.  Here's something I said about what happened to me during my first job while I was in Soul:
Nightman: UY-TSY started out as Classic UY, and then was rewritten in its
present form. Who decided to rewrite the series, how did that decision come
about?

Mike: The original title just sort of appeared because we couldn't think of
something better to call the series. It was Fred who decided to change the
title and rewrite parts of the series. He had done some surveys on the Net and
found a lot of people didn't like what we were doing, so he took some of the
more serious concerns and changed things accordingly.

Fred: Well, actually, I didn't do "surveys" as Mike said.

When I was working in Seoul, I was cut off from Net access (this was just before
the big PC-game room explosion that's come across Korea in recent years) for a
while. Patrick Vera, a reader from the Philippines, kept me somewhat in contact
with the Net. Finally, I discovered a local Internet café which was just a
subway ride away from the Tuson Academy, so I got a new Net account and was
pretty much back in business.

At that time, I learned that while I had been off the Net, a lot of readers of
our stories had chatted about it between each other and had come up with a lot
of criticisms about the series as it had run. Those comments were brought up to
me by another reader, Sean Gaffney. And hearing these sorts of things, my
friend, I have to say, royally pissed me right off.

This is my big bugbear about writing fanfics. Night, you know this as well as
we do. We do this because we enjoy doing this and want other people to enjoy
reading it. That's why we want to get comments and criticisms from our readers.
If people have a problem with what we've done, tell us about it for Lyna's sake!
And not wanting to tell we, the writers, about it, but at the same time telling
other people about it and spreading all sorts of biased opinions about some
stories, really hits me the wrong way.

Anyhow! (breathes out)

Once I took a few cold showers, I looked over what was said, then picked out
things I agreed with, then started reworking some of the scenes. At the same
time, I decided I wanted to rework the "Tiger Saga" storyline (Sakura's Class
Reunion, Arrive Reiko-chan, Tag Race Mark Three, The Return of Koosei Ryooki and
Spirit-War Tomobiki plus Together The Outland) to better reflect the idea that
in spite of what happened in Enter Space-Hybrid Hazel that starts things off,
Ataru's and Lum's feelings for each other don't fall apart, but begin to grow
stronger. In essence, the story where the "break" between them happens (Ataru's
First Girlfriend: Arrive Windy-chan) comes much later, but by then, they've
gone through the Spirit War and realize that no matter want, they want this to
work out.

By the time I got back to Canada, I'd convinced Mike to go along with it.
Around this time, the title of the series was changed to UY-TSY. Looking at it,
that was a logical decision.
The whole interview can be found here, BTW:  http://www.rakhal.com/cb/nightman.txt
Put simply, when I read through this thread, it reminded me of the shock and anger I felt back in late 1996 when I was in Soul and getting connected back to the Internet.  Much that I understand deep down that what I write may not chime with people, what I - and I'm sure others feel this way - don't like is experiencing the feeling of people "talking" behind my back.
And as I stated before, I didn't visit your site at all for a few years after I came back to Canada, so I couldn't know what others were saying.  How would you feel if someone did that to you?