An Open Letter to Toni Marie Ricci…

Clearly someone’s been in this good lady’s ear….

Dear Toni Marie:

I am writing this because I cannot begin to explain it all on Twitter and I feel it needs to be said. I have always liked you and blogged about you and your events freely and often. We enjoyed a very cordial and friendly relationship and I loved meeting you. I feel that I personally have done my best to promote and support all your past, current and future projects, especially your upcoming book. Mob Mistress has also interviewed you and, I can tell from the questions, that she took great care and compassion not to hurt you, even apologizing for a past blog that was written concerning your ex-husband, which may have hurt you.

Yesterday, you came to me in DM on Twitter, and sent me a link to your blog radio interview. I said I would check it out. You said you thought it was strange that I hadn’t retweeted your interview link. I explained to you that we were in the process of doing our first blog radio show right before yours was airing, and I was distracted preparing for that because I had just learned of it. Then you told me, in that case, I should forget about listening to yours. I don’t know what one radio show has to do with the other, but I sensed you were either offended or felt slighted because we, neither Mob Mistress or myself, retweeted your link that night. In any case you found that odd because you had a relationship with both of us and “helped” MM out. Then you went on to say you were not upset with me. I thought that was the end of it.  But then you seemed to have taken issue with Mob Mistress, saying that you noticed something different (never saying what that was), she has no integrity, a bad attitude and that you give Carla credit for saying what she did about her. You asked me to relay a message to MM, which I did. When MM asked you directly what your problem with her was or if she did anything to you, you never replied. I asked MM myself, if anything had gone on between the two of you, because I was baffled by the whole exchange, which seemingly came out of the blue. I can attest that MM has never uttered one single, bad word about you to me, ever. So I feel that there is something else going on that we are not privy to, but the words you used against MM were uncalled for and unprovoked. I still do not know what brought this about.

Let me explain that we do not blog for a living, it is a hobby. We cannot monitor Twitter 24/7, but we do and have always retweeted all of your significant tweets. Okay, one fell through the cracks, but it was nothing to get offended about, it happens. I did a simple search of our blog and since May of 2012, we have posted at least 13 blogs about you or mentioning you and, in addition, I know I personally retweet several items a day from your account. I am sure if you had asked us to retweet the link to your radio interview, and we saw the request, it would have been done.

Now, although I feel very badly about what happened between the two of you, I have been placed in a very difficult position because of yesterday’s exchange. I had planned to blog about the additional paintings Michael Bell was working on, your book release, book signings and any other events associated with you. But how can I? People use the words loyalty and respect, but I take them to heart. Mob Mistress was a good friend of mine before we ever began this blog. She has stood up for me and defended me more times than I can count. I owe her my loyalty and she has always had my respect. How can I remain loyal to her and not disrespect her and still blog about you? It would be like me saying, I noticed something different about your husband, he has a bad attitude and needs to get integrity, and adding now I believe what Carla said about him…and then I still expect you to invite me to your home for dinner with him at the table. I hope you see what I mean by my analogy. While my allegiance is always going to be to Mob Mistress, I am trying to be honest and direct with you out of consideration for your feelings, which is a courtesy I normally would not extend if you were anyone else.  In the same vein, I also have not included the actual tweets and DM’s from yesterday’s conversation. I do hope you understand and I sincerely wish you all the best.

Chiara