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.
Sad to say, though we try out best, Writer Beware can’t save all the writers out there from scam agents, publishers, contests, book doctors, editors, etc. This grieves us. Some of the toughest letters we receive are the ones from from writers who write something like, “I paid Agent B a $50.00 “submissions fee” andRead More
This article in the Times UK describes yet another of those experiments where famous published authors’ manuscripts are sent anonymously to publishers and agents in hopes that they will be rejected and thus provide grist for the “publishing ain’t what it used to be” mill. There are so many problems with this experiment that it’sRead More
On December 21, 2005, literary scammer Lisa Hackney (a.k.a. Melanie Mills, Elisabeth Von Hullessem, Roswitha Von Meerscheidt-Hullessem, and several others), lost her fight against extradition from Canada to the United States. She was wanted in Arkansas on multiple charges filed in 1999, including battery in the first degree, aggravated assault, theft, possession of stolen property, passing bad checks, forgery, and failure to attend court. Hackney also has multiple felony warrants in Missouri, and was under police investigation in North Carolina, where, as "Melanie Mills," she ran a fraudulent literary agency and engaged in a number of other scams.
She was delivered by US marshals to Arkansas from Vancouver, BC, and transported to Fayetteville, where she was officially booked into the Washington County Jail on Dec. 22, 2005 (her 51st birthday). She's being held on $750,000 bond on her failure to appear on the original charges.
We have a lot of strange stories in our scam archives, but the saga of Lisa Hackney is right up there at the top of the weird-o-meter.
Well, this is one of those cases where if I had a buck for each time this had happened to me since 1998, I could take most of us to dinner at Outback Steak House. I got a letter the other day from a poor, benighted soul who was obviously the personification of “desperate.” She/heRead More
Got a second “cease & desist” notice the other night from a fee-charging agent whose company is one of those outfits that wrap themselves in a cloak of religion and Christian mission-speak, while taking advantage of writers. These deceptive operations abound in the Christian marketplace, and I find them especially reprehensible. The very Godly ownerRead More
I’ve gotten permission to post Ann’s full interview with SciFi.com. It includes lots of interesting info on Martha Ivery and how she was brought to justice, but SciFi.com felt it couldn’t publish the interview without giving Martha and/or her counsel a chance to comment. (!!) Since Martha’s lawyer didn’t respond and they couldn’t find contactRead More
