Re: Ann’s musings on writers who become scammers…how about scammers who become writers? Remember crazy conwoman-turned-literary agent/fake writers’ conference organizer Melanie Mills, a.k.a. Elisabeth von Hullessem, a.k.a. Lisa Hackney, currently going by the rather unwieldy sobriquet of Raswitha Elisabeth Melanie Mills (Remmi for short)? Remember how, having finally been extradited back to Arkansas from CanadaRead More

The story so far: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. In our eight years of running Writer Beware, Ann and I have seen a lot of scams. Hill’s (since we don’t know his real name, I’m going to continue to call him that) is one of the cruelest. All scammers promise the possibility of success,Read More

The story begins: Part 1. And continues: Part 2. The news about Hill & Hill’s closure broke on two fronts: in private email from Claire Ashton to Hill clients, and on Absolute Write, with this post from someone calling himself privateeye. The post contains damaging, if vague, allegations about the operation and a number ofRead More

For context, see Part 1. Hill’s scam was an elaborate one, featuring personal contact with clients and voluminous written documents. On intake, clients received a detailed assessment of their manuscripts, covering elements such as target audience, plot structure, and grammar. Some of the assessments I’ve seen were individual, but most were based on a templateRead More

Over the past week, a firestorm has erupted on popular writers’ forum Absolute Write over Edinburgh-based literary agency Hill & Hill. On September 14th, Hill clients, many of whom had been told that publication offers with major publishers were imminent, were shocked to learn that the agency had shut down its website, terminated its UKRead More