I mentioned in the first post on etiquette that how you carry yourself online can affect your career.

A perfect example…my name was mentioned to Cindy Hwang by a couple of people- Angela Knight being one of them.  While I was pondering these ‘etiquette’ posts, I asked AK if she would have mentioned me to Cindy if I was a totally mean, nasty evil bitch.

Her response…

AK: Nope, if you’d been a total bitch, I probably wouldn’t have mentioned you to Cindy.  And not simply because of my feelings toward bitches.  Cindy would have to deal with you, and if you’d made her life miserable, she wouldn’t have appreciated my recommending you.  So advocating for a bitch wouldn’t have been good for my career.  When I recommend other writers to an editor, I want it to be somebody who is responsible and professional.  Bitches are neither.  Neither are people too flaky to meet their deadlines.

Thanks AK for letting me quote you on that! 🙂
If she hadn’t passed my name on, I don’t know that Hunting the Hunter would have ever been written.  I probably wouldn’t be working on my sixth (I think) book for Berkley, and I certainly wouldn’t have been asked to do a second anthology with them.  Would they have come looking in my direction?  Possibly.  Would I have submitted to them?  Maybe sooner or later.

But I can say with relative certainty, it wouldn’t have happened as early on for me as it did.  Angela wasn’t the only one who’d mentioned me to Cindy~I believe one other friend did and I know her well enough to know that if I had been a total bitch, she wouldn’t have done it.

This is just one example, one based in fact, of what can happen if you try to maintain a somewhat professional persona online.  Have I done everything perfect?  Of course not.  Nor am I Miss Congeniality.  But you need to think before putting something on the internet.  It’s pretty much there forever.  If you are going to look back in one, five, ten or fifty years and cringe…hit the delete key.