Okay, I could have used a stronger word than irk, but that way I’d stray into language that some adults probably shouldn’t hear. So now on from the general sentiment to the particular. Barbara Bauer, one of Writer Beware’s twenty worst agents, has managed to intimidate the webhosts of Absolute Write into pulling the plug on the site. Miss Bauer made several claims to do this, none of which actually has any legal relevance. I refer the reader to this post at Making Light for more details.

Now Absolute Write is already partly back, and is in the process of moving everything to a new server, but these events still irritate me. And as the title of the post says, scammers irk me anyway. So I’ve done my part by linking the owner of the Barbara Bauer Literary Agency to the list of the twenty worst agents, to give google a little help. Of course this isn’t just my brainstorm. The inestimable Miss Snark while blogging about this included a link to this blog post by Jim C. Hines. So I’m just echoing the call.

Finally, here’s the full list of all twenty on this page, as well as through the links:

• The Abacus Group Literary Agency
• Allred and Allred Literary Agents (refers clients to “book doctor” Victor West of Pacific Literary Services)
• Barbara Bauer Literary Agency
• Benedict Associates (also d/b/a B.A. Literary Agency)
• Sherwood Broome, Inc.
• Capital Literary Agency (formerly American Literary Agents of Washington, Inc.)
• Desert Rose Literary Agency
• Arthur Fleming Associates
• Finesse Literary Agency (Karen Carr)
• Brock Gannon Literary Agency
• Harris Literary Agency
• The Literary Agency Group, which includes the following:

  -Children’s Literary Agency

  -Christian Literary Agency

  -New York Literary Agency

  -Poets Literary Agency

  -The Screenplay Agency

  -Stylus Literary Agency (formerly ST Literary Agency, formerly Sydra-Techniques)

  -Writers Literary & Publishing Services Company (the editing arm of the above-mentioned agencies)

• Martin-McLean Literary Associates
• Mocknick Productions Literary Agency, Inc.
• B.K. Nelson, Inc.
• The Robins Agency (Cris Robins)
• Michele Rooney Literary Agency (also d/b/a Creative Literary Agency, Simply Nonfiction, and Michele Glance Rooney Literary Agency)
• Southeast Literary Agency
• Mark Sullivan Associates
• West Coast Literary Associates (also d/b/a California Literary Services)

Well I never really got back into writing after my forced vacation, until today. Today I did over two thousand words on Lightning, pretty much in one sitting of writing. The last two words? “The End”. Lightning is now finished, or at least the first draft is. It’s by no means perfect yet, but it’d done and when the time comes to edit I can fix it.

And the time is coming to edit, though not for Lightning yet. I’m not sure yet which project it’s going to be, but I’ve promised myself the next thing I do will be editing, in the hopes of getting something publisher ready. But the first step, whichever project I decided to edit, will be plugging some holes in the world-building. In fact I may well plug a number of holes in the world building for several projects before I pick one to edit.