Drama Queens, Sock Puppets and Character Assassination: The Case of Ed McDonald

I had the misfortune of dealing with an extremely toxic situation inflicting the SFF community in the past few days. I was not able to make public statements to avoid jeopardizing ongoing investigations and it was very hard to keep quiet through this time. It has been a hard test for the SFF community and I am proud of the whistleblowers and bloggers who have acted with great integrity. I believe the community will come out stronger after this ordeal.

I am going to copy paste what I wrote on Reddit about this clusterfuck of epic proportions. Here we go:

This should be a good lesson to learn about knee-jerk reactions, jumping in bandwagons and making quick judgements without hard evidence, on word of mouth.

Also a lesson about how important critical thinking is. The community has been subverted to slander an innocent man in the vilest and most vicious way possible.

Most people are trusting and honest but it takes one sociopath with no morals to abuse this trusting nature, take advantage of sensitivities around delicate topics and manipulate an entire community. These two very sick, very immoral and cruel individuals have planted rumors, spread disinformation and insidiously manipulated the unsuspecting good-hearted people who have great empathies for the victims of sexual predators. Their actions and the way they planned and ran this whole act over the course of nearly two years would turn intelligence agency operatives green with envy.

I have stood with Ed the entire time and tried to warn people about the possibility of those victims being fake sock puppets only to be bullied, yelled at and accused to be a victim-blamer, victim-invalidator and a defender of sexual harassers and predators.

I tried to tell friends, but they assured me they have heard from multiple victims, legitimate profiles. I nearly backed down. At some point the abuse and patronizing was so intense, I was forced to play along with the narrative to save myself the headache. For that I feel really bad, I should have done better. I should have spoken louder. I asked questions, questioned the legitimacy of those victims of Ed and received abuse, accusations and insults for it. For merely asking for proof and questioning the existence and legitimacy of the alleged victims.

Why all the trouble? CAUSE I KNOW ED and I know he would never, ever do the things they were accusing him of. We are not even close, we have been kind of friends that had arguments and didn’t talk for months on end -we hadn’t been talking for months before this dumpster fire blew up. This is the relationship I had with Ed to this date -kind of a distant friend that was critical of him and had disagreements.

My conscience wouldn’t let me sit there and do nothing while they ruined an innocent man. I tried to fight the accusatory and patronizing people accusing me of horrible things. I got constantly gaslighted by one of the perpetrators, who was rallying people into a witch hunt. I privately messaged the people, Ed’s readers I have seen falling for it and expressing their shock, told them the truth.

Most of my friends told me to stay the hell out of it and not make myself a target, They said I’d get burned too, I should step aside, wait and see what happens. I told them I was out of it, and not going to be involved anymore, but you know I just could not. I have been a victim -no, a survivor- of an extremely abusive marriage where I was kept captive and powerless to do anything with daily threats to my life and limb, so you can imagine how awful it was to be blamed to be a “victim-blamer”, “defender of abusers” and all that. Go figure. I have nerves of steel though and despite having a fever and terrible flu I fought on and stuck to my guns to defend Ed.

I did make myself a target and have been viciously slandered by the main perpetrator of this defamation campaign, including right here on reddit -they deleted their vile posts since- but know what, I don’t care. I have kicked out a murderous, extremely dangerous sociopath ex-spouse out of my life despite death threats so I am not about to be scared by some those deranged dirtbags half a world away. They can kiss my shiny metal ass!

Anyway I am getting a flood of messages from people now, apologies, kudos for standing up for Ed when no one else did. I have beaten myself for not standing up to all the bullies, not being loud enough, I am absolutely humbled people actually noticed.

Doing the right thing is difficult, especially for someone who has psychological trauma from being bullied into silence for years, been unable to defend against bullies and injustice and been burned over and over and over being paralyzed with anxiety more often than not, struggling to break out of it and stand up to all the wrongs and injustice. I am very proud of myself that I did it for someone else, someone I have known as a good person.

It is mighty difficult to go against the bandwagons and outrage, pitchforks and torches, risking my place in the community, reputation, future publishing career. Despite advice from friends telling me not to risk my future and reputation, despite other friends telling me off. It is not an easy thing to do, and I didn’t know I had the nerve to do it, most certainly not in the bad shape I was with fever and all. Literally rowing against the current.

But you know, sleeping good and having peace of mind aside, doing whatever little part it is to help stopping malicious people from burning an innocent man is all that matters and worth all the stress, emotional abuse, missed meals and lost sleep.

I hope the damage done to Ed’s reputation can be reversed with a collective effort and the evil people who did this see the faces of justice and karma both.

Here is the links to other bloggers’ posts on the matter:

https://weatherwaxreport.blog/2019/03/27/about-ed-mcdonald/

The Fantasy Inn: Statement on Recent Events.

http://www.bookwormblues.net/2019/03/27/on-allegations-and-ed-mcdonald/

http://booknest.eu/component/k2/blog/1484

https://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2019/03/recent-me-too-allegations-ed-mcdonald.html

Here is the reddit thread about it: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/b674hy/allegations_against_ed_mcdonald_retracted/

And the official statement regarding the evidence proving the accusations 100% false:

The irrefutable evidence proves beyond all doubt that one or two individuals have utilized multiple social accounts with the express purpose of spreading malicious rhetoric against Ed McDonald, and making it appear that ‘reports’ are coming from numerous sources, where in fact they all come from a single source. This source has never met Ed McDonald.

It is now very clear that Ed McDonald has been exposed to a long and malicious campaign by someone who has abused the trust and confidence of people, over and over.

— In light of this, it is asked that members of the Fantasy community:

*Do not name the individuals behind the allegations – even if you suspect who they are. The individuals do not deserve any further attention. Their names have not been mentioned here on purpose.

*Do not pursue the individual(s) behind the allegations. Do not cause them any distress. Doing so may impact pending legal action.

*Welcome Ed McDonald as a member of the community. Any further harassment will not be tolerated.

— To prevent gossip, the following overview has been provided to summarise these events:

*A number of social media accounts across multiple platforms have been linked to either one, or at most two, individuals behind the allegations.

*These accounts use different personas (including names, real world locations and background information).

*These accounts have pretended to be different individuals to spread falsified allegations in open and closed groups, and in private chats.

*These accounts have made comments in support of posts made by each other, as well as shares and likes.

*At least one account is in a position of authority in a public internet forum. This authority was abused throughout this case, and ultimately Ed McDonald was banned from the forum after he tried to defend himself against the allegations.

Rape Scenes and The Death of Literature

Here goes another long rant post, written in the dead of the night.

I was reading this blog post about how people attacked R. Scott Bakker about the rape scenes in The Prince of Nothing. I guess those people would drop dead if they saw some of the rather gruesome pieces of Turkish literature. There was this novella I read in high school, many years ago, and that one packed more horrible, gruesome, gory rape scenes than the entire ASOIAF and The Prince of Nothing combined. A lesser known piece by a very famous, well respected author of the late 19th-early 20th century Ottoman-Turkish literature. I don’t want to repeat any details but if I say the necrophilia was the tamest scene, it should give a pretty good idea what a shocking piece it is.

The story was first published in 1913 and it has been in short story and novella collections of the author, placed in loads of school libraries nationwide, cause the man penned quite a few classics of the 20th century Turkish literature. They bundled it up in the same books with his other family friendly stories as Turkish classics and the bookish kids read it. We are talking about 10-12 year olds here, people! I was a teenager when I read it and I had a pretty high tolerance of gore and grim stuff being a black metal listener and horror movie lover, but I found it quite disturbing.

The author had served as an infantry lieutenant in the Balkans during the 1903 Macedonia conflicts and the story was inspired by the war atrocities he heard about while he served in the conflict zone.

I just looked up the novella on this Turkish forum site with millions of users and people wrote how it haunted their nightmares and ruined their psyche when they had the misfortune of reading it at the school library when they were kids. Oh dear. Did I mention the necrophilia was the tamest thing in the whole story?

Now I am not saying it’s ok for underage kids to read such horrendous stuff, hell no, kids shouldn’t be exposed to literature like that and it was wrong for the Turkish school system to allow that particular story in the school libraries where elementary school kids could read it. Perhaps because the bureaucrats ruling the country aren’t that literate. If they actually read it, they probably would take it out of those anthologies targeting the school kids.

But those American college students and the other 30-something 40-somehing whiners are friggin’ adults and it makes me cringe to see them try to whine and bully their way into censoring literature, art and culture. They are behaving like overgrown 10 year olds. I guess the 21st century people have become fragile little flowers who whine trigger this trigger that like no tomorrow and can’t stand even a 2 line mention of rape in a book. Such as the crap people gave Mark Lawrence over Jorg hinting about raping a farm girl in Prince of Thorns. Or the shitstorm R. Scott Bakker received over the rape scene in The Prince of Nothing.

I think the people -especially the American people- have become ridiculously coddled in this century. The modern books people whine about have nothing on the harsher pieces of literature from the past. Go read some 19th century literature to see what I mean. Especially the non-western literature if you can read it or find translations. Some of those put even the modern grimdark fantasy books to shame and I seriously doubt they could see the light of day if they were written today. Not meaning to disrespect the modern day grimdark, it’s my favorite genre after all, but you know people published some harsh pieces of literature back in the day and no one made half as much noise as the people of this day and age.

Let literature be free. If you find it offensive, don’t read it. Grimdark books should be pretty damn obvious, they are not about flowers and fluffy bunnies, you know. I can’t understand why on earth people read those books then whine about how offensive they are and how it shattered their little glass shelters and ruined their day. Too bad there’s no English translation of the 1913 Turkish novella I mentioned. I have written this whole post cause a friend of mine, dear Anna Smith-Spark is unable to find a publisher for her book cause it’s ‘too dark to be published’, well I read the early version of it and I can safely say that it’s nowhere near as dark as the aforementioned war crime gorefest Turkish novella. I think the publishers of the old times were more about contributing to the collective culture of the mankind than making money. Many of them did it out of love and catered to elite intelligentsia sort of readership, for the literacy rates were considerably lower back then. Publishing was more about producing culture and not an industrialized capitalist machine as it is today. Literature was definitely more free.

Stuff happening in works of fiction doesn’t disturb me no matter how gruesome and harsh it is, but the publishing industry becoming more like Disney and Mac Donald’s and favoring the cookie cutter pulp fiction does. Rape scenes in books are fictional but the rape of literature is quite real.

Why Are Female Fantasy Authors Pushed To The Back Of The Bus?

There was an interesting thread on reddit /r/Fantasy

where I learned some rather disturbing facts about the publishing industry. The person who opened the thread was wondering why women prefer writing teen romance centered Urban Fantasy and YA Fantasy and why there are too few female epic fantasy authors.

I have to shamefully admit I had the same misconception myself since this is the pattern I see in the best seller lists, book blogs and the word on the street. Big shot female authors who write fantasy write YA and UF centered on romance. Hardly any female names pop up in epic fantasy category. There is Robin Hobb, but she is where she is today because Robin Hobb is a gender neutral pseudonym. I had no idea she was a woman until last year. I know I am not alone in this, I talked to a number of her readers who thought she was a man until they saw her interviews. She actually became successful after being relaunched with this pseudonym. Here is the interview with her publisher: https://blog.sainsburysebooks.co.uk/how-megan-lindholm-became-robin-hobb/

In another interview she stated the gender neutral pseudonym was absolutely necessary to sell the books. How many people even know about Megan Lindholm, the othen pen name of Robin Hobb? She has published a number of books under that name but they were light years away from the success of the Robin Hobb books.

Several people mentioned the established epic fantasy author Janny Wurts in the thread. She chimed in there and her long replies utterly terrified me.

I had no idea she had to fight a battle to get her name put on the famous Empire Trilogy she co-authored with Raymond Feist with the same type face and same size. Quoting her:

There is another aspect to Empire that is interesting to note here. Ray and I had a ‘contract’ between us detailing several things up front. (mostly to do with what happened IF one of the partners dropped out)….In that contract, by MY request: there is a hard fast line assuring that BOTH NAMES will appear in the same type face, and be the same SIZE on the book cover.
I must have been prophetic.
Does anyone realize how MANY TIMES we had to enforce this point in a publisher’s contract, all the way down the line, with reprints, EVERYWHERE – because in almost every if not EVERY incidence the book was reprinted: the publisher would have made Feist’s name prominent and mine minimal.
That one line saved me a lot of horrible grief, but if it had not been CONTRACTED by us in advance, we’d never have been able to get publishers to honor that.

This is just… wrong. The fact that she had to fight so hard and make a contract to cover her interests alone is disturbing.

It gets better, quoting Janny Wurts again:

My point in bringing up Hobb is as much this: SHOW ME any other female Epic fantasy author who got ‘big budget launch treatment’!!! for a first novel in a series – show me ONE, that wasn’t doing YA or paranormal or UF….and let’s not mention Suzannah Clark (not epic) because as well as being an excellent author in her own right, she’s married to a MAJOR mainstream book critic…..yes, it required great work for her to be recognized for her excellence – I maintain the inside contact made a huge leap, for her, in treatment and how the book was handled.

She also wrote the publishers put girly, romancey covers on the books by the female epic fantasy authors, even if there’s no romance in the books:

You also must consider THIS: Carol Berg – awesome epic fantasy, female author – gets COVERS that (ugh!) Look Like she’s writing more romantic work…..and that may well turn away a male reader checking her out. Her Lighthouse Duet, read together (Flesh and Spirit, Breath and Bone) is a totally gorgeous work, absolutely finished and well done – and yet – the cover treatment is enough to scare even ME away, had I not known from reading her other stuff she doesn’t DO ‘romance’. So there is a further cover bias at work where publishers tend to package women authors differently, and that sucks big time.

I have just seen one such cover last night. It was a brand new war fantasy book by a female author but the cover looked like a romance novel. I wouldn’t pick it up from the shelf if I was looking for a war book. The author stated it is a war book with little romance element yet the cover screams chick lit. Nothing wrong with chick lit but the book is not that, it’s a war book and it will never meet its real readers with that kind of cover. The author even said “It doesn’t look much like a war novel, does it? (But it is.) I suspect if I were a man, the book would not have this cover image!”

This is so wrong in so many levels. How many great epic fantasy books by female authors fell through the cracks because of this attitude? I write gritty fantasy with no romance at all, I would be mighty pissed off if they made a girly, romancey cover for my book. It’s wrong! The cover should reflect the content of the book, not the gender of the author. I can’t believe this kind of gender bias exists in the 21st century.

Mark Lawrence has written a blog post about this issue and shared some disturbing facts: http://mark—lawrence.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/whats-in-name.html

Teresa Frohock addressed the same issue and made a case about the back blurbs focusing on the romantic elements in dark fantasy and horror books written by female authors: http://www.tfrohock.com/blog/2014/2/6/being-a-woman-and-writing-dark-fiction-its-complicated-sfwap.html

I am originally from Turkey, for those of you who don’t know, the publishing industry is quite different there. For example there is a well known male romance author whose every book gets in the national best seller lists. I can say there isn’t so much gender bias in literature there. SFF scene is very small, but literary fiction is quite huge and there’s no gender bias to speak of. People will buy the war books written by a female author, just as they buy romance books written by a male author. But in America, where the publishing trends are born and spread to the rest of the world, the gender bias is at medieval levels and the publishing trends keep making it worse in a vicious cycle. What’s worse is the people are constantly feeding this beast.

Janny Wurts made a good point about this fact also:

Post 2000, since the birth of paranormal romance and UF, and the huge growth of YA success: it has increased the percentage of women DOING those books in those areas where success comes more readily, and it has ALSO shoved women who are not writing in those areas into prejudice – where it’s just plain assumed the work is ‘for kids’ or ‘Romance’ where the relationship is the primary plot driver, and not secondary to a larger plot. The upshot of this surge in YA and romance and successful female writers in those venues has created backpressure for female authors to leave epic fantasy and move into those areas – better pay, better odds. If you think this is false, it’s not: directly, I’ve been pressured to CONSIDER moving to YA rather than continue writing adult epic fantasy. I resisted, no matter the fallout – because I am already writing what I prefer to write/refuse to shift that for a trend.

Now, as a female gritty fantasy author who is getting ready to be published, I’m quite troubled to read all of this.  I want people to read my books. Should I hide behind my initials or a gender neutral pseudonym or should I fight against the wrongs and use my real name? I’m lucky to be with an idealist publisher who fights against the gender and race bias, but what about the general public? What will happen when my books hit the shelves of Barnes & Noble? Will a female name turn away the male readership? How deep does the prejudice run?

I brought this up with my publisher and suggested hiding behind my initials and he said ‘Don’t you dare!’

I have read this masterpiece by Kameron Hurley and it got me to think. It made me decide to do the right thing and fight. Someone has to act. Someone has to do something. Rosa Parks refused to stand up and be pushed to the back of the bus. Maybe it’s time to take a page from Rosa Parks’ book and not stand up.

I am “nobody”, one of the little people, and fighting against the immense avalanches with a wooden sword doesn’t sound very appealing. But as Kameron Hurley puts in her award winning article, someone has to act. No one will do anything until someone stands up and does something. It’s long overdue.

Why should I have to hide behind initials or gender neutral pseudonyms to make a career writing dark epic fantasy?  This is wrong and female authors shouldn’t have to do this. Maybe it’s time to educate the readership. Publishers will change their attitude only after the readers start talking with their wallets. Publishing industry is a business for profit after all and money talks as it does in every business.

Quite a few of you folks who read my blog are book bloggers and  I need to ask you to consider this: Give female epic fantasy authors a chance. I know some of you review trendy YA books, I follow hundreds of your blogs and see you guys reviewing the hyped up YA/UF best sellers written by female authors, but please consider reading the works of these great authors too. Here are some lists to start with:

Reddit female fantasy authors list 1

Reddit female fantasy authors list 2

I will start by reviewing more female epic fantasy authors myself. My blog is not high traffic, it may not make much of a difference but I am hoping some other bloggers would follow my example. If you are on reddit, make a thread about a great epic fantasy book by a female author you read. Post reviews on your blogs and Goodreads. Tell your friend to read the books. We can make a difference.

I am going to put my full name on the book cover and I don’t care if I’m shooting myself in the foot by doing that. There is nothing wrong with my name. The world is wrong and I am refusing to bow to the wrongs.

I want to do the right thing even if it hurts me.

** Corrections to the first reddit link and Megan Lindholm being a pseudonym.

 

 

Of Controversy

I am going to tell you a true story. If you are a softie please don’t read, it’s a bit disturbing.

When I was in 3rd grade, I read this story in a children’s magazine (for those of you who don’t know, I was born and raised in Turkey.) It was written by a local Turkish author -the same magazine published translated stories like Charlie and The Chocolate Factory.

Anyway, the story went like this: The protag is a 6 or 7 year old kid, he’s traveling in a ferry with his parents. He goes walking around and finds this baby seagull who can’t fly just yet. He takes it in his hands, pets it, then strangles it on a whim and feels the life drain from it. The story goes on describing how its body went cold and stiff and how it didn’t take much effort to kill it, just a little squeezing in the neck. He half expects it to come back to life but it doesn’t. He was actually experimenting, like those kids breaking their toys for the hell of it. It was written in first person from the kid’s perspective. The kid was not the villain, that’s what makes it so fucked up.

The whole thing was described in such vivid detail I remember it even after 30 years (fuck, am I really that old?) then he feels guilty and tells an adult (either his father or the someone from the ship staff… can’t remember…) They scold him and give him a lecture. He really feels bad after the adult explains how wrong it is and he killed an innocent thing without even thinking, he should repent and beg for forgiveness from god and the spirit of the baby bird.

That dark story got me to sit down and think about how fragile life is and how easy it is to take the life of something weaker than you. I thought I’d beat that kid up for killing that poor baby bird if he were real. I have read hundreds and hundreds of short stories as a kid but this one is one of the few I remember to this day. It was a powerful piece of writing. I wasn’t mad at the author, though, I was mad at the character. Never at the author. And I was a 9 year old kid for crying out loud.

I think that story would not see the light of day in a first world country as children’s literature. If it did there would be war. I am not sure if it was wrong to publish that a children’s story, I don’t have an opinion. But I can say it was enriching for me.  I’m glad I read it.

I remembered this whole thing when I ran into some debate about the controversial Justice scene in Mark Lawrence’s book. And now this whole thing got me to sit down and think how stupid people can be. I don’t mean to be arrogant but I was hell of a lot smarter as a 9 year old than all those grown ups who get mad at the authors like Mark Lawrence and R. Scott Bakker for the vicious actions of the characters they write.

Life is cruel and far worse shit happens in real life than what you read in works of fiction. If you can’t handle reading about vile people doing horrible things, don’t read grimdark. Simple as that.