The official blog of Writer Beware® shines a bright light into the dark corners of the shadow-world of literary scams, schemes, and pitfalls. Also providing advice for writers, industry news, and commentary. Writer Beware® is sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
Here’s post number three in my series on “What do REAL agents do?” In this post I’ll answer the question posed in the comment section, plus cover some miscellaneous tasks most agents do: First of all, the question: What happens to a writer’s book(s) if his/her agent dies or retires? First, we have to makeRead More
The recent flurry of news about supposed teen novelist J.T. LeRoy and the probable hoax of his/her identity has got me thinking. No, not about the long and fascinating history of literary hoaxes. Not about the rather annoying cleverness of the people who sat down and cooked up the perfect literary persona, with a sensationalRead More
Writers’ services are proliferating across the Internet, targeted to both aspiring writers and writers who are self/vanity/POD-published. There are submission services and manuscript display sites; there are book marketing services and electronic press release websites and book review services. Some are free. Some are modestly priced. Some are eye-poppingly expensive. Are they worth it? Well…Read More
Okay, here’s the second post in my “What REAL agents do” series. This is a big topic, so I’ll probably devote the entire post to this one subsection, which is: RECEIVE AND DISBURSE ADVANCES, ROYALTIES AND OTHER MONETARY PAYMENTS. (At this point we’re far beyond the point people who deal with scam agents would everRead More
Being the third installment of the continuing saga of Lisa Hackney, a.k.a. Melanie Mills, a.k.a. Lisa Mills, a.k.a. Lisa Thomas, a.k.a. Elisabeth V. Thomas, a.k.a. Elisabeth von Hullessem, a.k.a. Roswitha von Hullessem, a.k.a Roswitha Thomas, a.k.a. Roswitha von Meerscheidt, a.k.a. Roswitha Mills, a.k.a. Hullessem von Meerscheidt, a.k.a. a number of others that I don’t know. For those who need a refresher course, Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.
Megan MacBeth is notified that her mother has died in Germany. Months later she goes to the airport to pick up her mother’s boyfriend who, she assumes, is bringing back her mother’s personal possessions and there’s her mother, alive. Later that same evening her mother tries to kill her and by accident, she runs over her mother with her car, which saves Megan’s life. Her mother survives and accuses Megan of trying to kill her. Eventually, charges against Megan are dropped.
So begins the synopsis for “Elisabeth von Hull’s” thriller Sins of the Mother, a spinetingling novel of greed, murder, money, sex, and betrayal. According to Ms. “von Hull’s” query letter, “This novel is based on actual events that occurred in my life and have been fictionalized.” (Um...yeah. Really, really fictionalized.) Despite the not exactly scintillating writing skills demonstrated in these documents, Ms. “von Hull” did manage get her novel published, under a different title, Sins, and a different name, L. R. Thomas. The publisher is--wait for it--PublishAmerica!
Here in this blog, we talk a lot about what fake agents do to rip off unsuspecting, naive writers. It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to discuss what a REAL agent does. Once you know what a real agent does, it’s easy as falling off a log to spot theRead More
