Drew Montgomery Literary Management / The Montgomery Literary Agency

James D. Macdonald said:

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is 24 frames per second, and this video is 31 seconds long, here's a 744,000 word explanation.


Warning: May not be safe for work.

(Depending on where exactly you work, that is.)

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A minor point, but video, unlike film, is structured to operate at 30 frames per second.

Writer Beware has now blogged about the Drew Montgomery Literary Agency. It's a fascinating story, but I'm very glad I'm not represented by Montgomery.

Farcical entertainment at its best!


Well, from the sidelines, at least. My sympathies to those who got caught up in the scam.

Who says there's no such thing as bad publicity?

I don't think it was a scam. I think it was Literary Agent, the Role-Playing Game. Of course, from the writer's perspective, there's not much difference. At least she wasn't in business for long.

- Victoria

victoriastrauss said:

Who says there's no such thing as bad publicity?

I don't think it was a scam.

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Well, except for the sockpuppeteering and the steering "clients" from one fake "agent" to another--those were scammy no matter how good DrewJuliaSara's intentions might be.

Your blog on this was a beautiful thing.

Wow....what a great thread...I seriously laughed out loud several times. You guys are a witty bunch! Now I'm wondering if this "agent" is in some new incarnation, since several years have passed....

My hunch: she has reincarnated as Jane Dowary, who has a thread here. I can't prove it, but that's my guess.

- Victoria

This has been one of the most entertaining things I've read on AW in quite a while; four pages of solid-gold hilarity.

What makes it harmless fun is the agent (?) in question seems to be the literary equivalent of the old bag lady who haunts a bus stop near where I work, and claims she's actually Queen Elizabeth's long-lost younger sister.

Where this will stop getting silly, of course, is if Montgomery/Levin/Dowary actually snags some poor clueless scribe's work.

Then it's no longer funny at all.

jewelssarah said:

Carl Johnson who wrote a sci fi thriller about ailens taking over the planet and killing all humans. It's called Alien Invasion. Drew sold it to HarperCollins.

I hope this helps.
Julia Levin

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Necro-thread! (I looked over here because of references in Jane Dowary Agency thread.)

The quote above was from 2009. As we sit here in 2014, I thought I'd check on the publication of the referenced book.

HarperCollins did publish a book called Alien Invasion!

Alas, it was written by a gent named Michael Morpurgo, it's an illustrated children's book, and it came out a year before the quoted post was made, but by golly! A book by that name, from that publisher, exists!

Alas, I can find no record of any book by Carl Johnson being published by HarperCollins.

Perhaps it was retitled and he used a pseudonym?

James D. Macdonald said:

Alas, it was written by a gent named Michael Morpurgo, it's an illustrated children's book, and it came out a year before the quoted post was made, but by golly! A book by that name, from that publisher, exists!

Alas, I can find no record of any book by Carl Johnson being published by HarperCollins.

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I know Michael. I don't know Carl.

EDIT: Former UK Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo, Author of War Horse.