I have no doubt whatsoever that "Writer Jane" is a complete fraud.
1. She introduced herself as a would-be agent, in partnership with an experienced person, and asked for recommendations of reads, promising proper reviews. Many people were, naturally, excited about this and the possibility of publication.
2. She then endorsed a dodgy vanity-publishing site set up by a second-hand car salesman, who had touted for business some time ago and been thrown off the site.
3. The vanity publisher then came in on the act, and posted on the thread, proclaiming his genuineness.
4. The 'would-be agent', when pressed for the promised reviews, threw five books onto her shelf with Comments along the lines of: "This is great! I'd buy this!" No reviews were forthcoming.
5. Next, she went from being the 'daughter of a well-known agent' to 'I had dinner with a bunch of agents last night and they said this...' We had a lot of recycled guff lifted straight from the Web, and peddled as "This is what I learned from our conversation".
6. 'Writer Jane' then sent a message to Jay Too (Jay Greenstein), a thorn in the side of the contributors to the "If I were an agent... I'd stop reading" thread. The message was provocative, designed to stir controversy and foster dissent. In it, she referred to the members here as "moronic wannabees". The thrust of the message was to agree that Jay was right about everything (historically and persistently hotly denied on the thread!) and that the 'faux agents' on the thread were wrong.
7. When I challenged Writer Jane over this message, she denied sending it. When I pointed out that only 'Writer Jane' could have sent it, she deleted the message from Jay's wall, and accused me of being a liar and "spreading malicious gossip" about her.
8. Writer Jane then posted a submission to the Faux Agents thread. It was a piece written by the author Jack London, and quickly spotted as copied. When she was rumbled, she hastily claimed she had been discussing her love of Jack London on another thread, had announced her intentions (on that thread) to post the piece on the Faux Agents thread and had invited the posters on the other thread to join her there for a jolly party discussing Jack London. However, a search of the database revealed Writer Jane had never so much as mentioned Jack London on any thread. It was a not very well executed trick -- the anticipation was that the Faux Agents would negatively crit the piece and be revealed as know-nothings.
9. By now the net was closing round Writer Jane. So she came out with --- ta daah! -- the great Reveal. In it, she claimed to be Kate Colquhoun, a published author, gathering research for a new novel, the MC of which was a would-be novelist. No explanation, incidentally, why 'research' for being a novelist included posing as a trainee agent. No rationale for causing trouble on the Forum.
10. By way of 'making amends', 'Kate Colquhoun' offered to answer questions about being published. No one -- except me -- raised the point that we had only her word that she was, in fact, the author Kate Colquhoun. No definitive proof has ever been provided. By the way, I notice that she has edited all references to 'Colquhoun' from her post.....
11. No word of apology has been offered to myself for branding me a liar and a spreader of malicious gossip. No attempt has been made to actually prove who she claims to be.
If you give this person even a moment more of your time, then you deserve to be taken in by her.
Posted: 08/02/2012 10:23:39
Last Edit: 08/02/2012 14:04:38 by Richard Maitland
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