Uber Strange Story

Took a few days off to find my center again. My house always seems to look messier than before my trip. Strange.

I spent all yesterday munching on mooncakes and Malaysian kueh-mueh (sweet desserts, usually starchy). Yum. I miss Chinatown. If I live in New York City, I'll probably just pig out in Chinatown everyday.

I relax by watching lots of baseball playoffs ;-). How about you?

Of course, some people spent the better part of this weekend watching this trainwreck. Strangest true story evah:

A writer, Lanaia Lee, sends out a manuscript—alternative history/paranormal, the kind I like—to various websites to be reviewed. The book is coming out at the end of October and she’s looking to promote it, since it’s a POD (Print on Demand) book. She quotes her agent as saying that her book, which is part of a five-book series, is going be as big as the Harry Potter series, and in her publicity email, she includes her website, her agent’s name and contact addy, the URL to read her first chapter, etc.

Here is the URL to her website, if it's still not taken down today:

http://www.alongstoryshort.net/OfAtlantis.html

A reviewer read the first chapter and compared it to this:

The above, if you're a fantasy/alternative history genre reader, is the prologue of David Gemmell's Dark Prince, a five-book arc on Alexander the Great. If you read the first link, the one of the author promoting her first book, her whole prologue is an exact reproduction, word for word of the Dark Prince prologue, with the protagonist's name changed to Archimedes. Her website is also touting that this is a five-book fantasy series.

Here's the REAL long story short:

The plagiarist was outed on various fan/reader forums. Said plagiarist denied, said she had copyright and that she would sue anyone for defamation. Said plagiarist's agent came on and warned the forums to cease talking about this matter or she would sue. She topped this by saying she was "Wicca" and would send a ten-fold curse to the reviewer who broke this story.

I'm serious. She posted that publicly.

Then, after many more posts, plagiarist came back on and defended that it WASN'T her fault because she had paid a GHOSTWRITER $400 every month through PAYPAL for TWO YEARS to help her write this story, that she was in a wheelchair, had suffered numerous strokes, and if she had another stroke, and if she died, her "blood will be on your hands."

Agent came on and announced that she and her client had been scammed by a very well known scam-ghostwriter. Never mind that this agent was, and is still, scamming this author herself. If you know the ins and outs of publishing, this author was obviously paying to get published through a vanity press, and that this "agent" was obviously scamming the author because she didn't have to do anything to get this book published. Vanity presses don't need agents to negotiate anything; they basically publish anything with your name on it if you pay them.

Gemmell passed away last year, so all this talk of a ghostwriter made the plot even more ironically surreal. Not to mention that Dark Prince was an alternative fantasy/history book whereas Of Atlantis, in a mind-boggling way, was really altering history while its author suffered from alternative fantasy herself.

Crazy story, yes?

Moral of story:

1) Do not pay $400 a week for two years to anyone to write your story.

2) Do not plagiarize a very famous author's bestselling work.

3) Do not hire a literary agent who threatens to rain boils and warts on your enemies.

4) When caught, do not keep posting excuses on public boards that will forever have your posts up for many people to reread at their leisure. Do not write half-ass apologies and still have the plagiarized excerpt up for the next few days.

5) Do not pay an agent who sends your manuscript to a vanity publisher. Also, do not choose an agent whose website boasts that she has published using a ghostwriter either.

6) Lastly, do not post your real name, real address and phone number on numerous websites as well as give interviews to local newspapers touting that it took you two years to write this book.

This was almost as eventful as watching a NASCAR pile-up. So, this was part of my weekend entertainment. What was yours?

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