The best revenge, besides living well…

In my experience, bullies LOVE being punched in the mouth, because it gives them life and oxygen.

What doesn’t give them oxygen is when people read your work and like it, and then find out you are actually a good human.

There are plenty of caveats where this doesn’t work, like abusive relationships and Comicsgate Twitter mobs, but for the overwhelming majority of human situations, when I find people engaging with trolls I just tell them to finish the next book, and then the next one.

Haters want to fluster you, knock you off your game, and slow your progress.

Their narrative is that you are talentless and cruel, and the only way to really show them otherwise is to be kind to everyone and make good work.

Stooping to their level is when they win. That is how they say “see, they are a meanie.”

They are filled with hate, and they are directing it to you. Their hate is probably not even about you. It’s from some deep-seated stuff. They need help and you should block them, get away from them, and then keep moving forward.

In the same way that haters want to hate, lovers want to love, and there are plenty of those, too. There are MORE of those, but they are quieter.

Haters lose when you keep going through it all and come out with a quality book on the other side of it. They lose when your support is so overwhelming that it drowns them out. They lose when your body of work can crush them.

I can’t even fathom how many people have talked trash to me over the years, but they are all blocked, and I am focused on those people that support and don’t drag me down.

I say don’t engage from 10 years of being a lightning rod, responding to every negative person…until I just stopped, and let the consistent work speak for itself.