Heacock Hill Literary Agency

Thank you for that, Queen of Swords. Saved me the googling.

I always want to ask those who swallow the 'traditional publishers only publish books by celebrities' cr*p did more than read Amazon's home page. They should take a wander around a large bookstore. Count the number of titles written by celebs and then count the number of written by people you've never ever heard of. Not just the front tables but everywhere. Then come back and say the publishers are only interested in celebs.

sriram63 said:

I will repeat here what I told him, "... Tom is for me, for ever.

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I'm glad you're heartened with Tom. I know he is capable of very professional behavior, as his two first emails to me were polite. That he failed to include the pertinent information editors need in order to make an informed decision was surprising considering who he works for. But it was the U-turn of his behavior that unnerved me a great deal. I realize I'm a small publisher, but that doesn't mean I should be treated discourteously and stalked. After all, he approached us. I hope he finds a good house for your work.

victoriastrauss said:

But has he sold your book?

- Victoria

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I'm quoting this because it's the most important part of this thread, and I don't know why James, sriram63, and other clients all have lots to say about everything but this question: has he sold your book?

elvikingo said:

My real name is James Clark. I wrote a book about how I have been able to break 27 world fitness and strength records by using Platonic Metaphysics.

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I don't know what kind of writer Mr. Clark is, but he's got some dedication, that's for sure.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB265jBR48o

Dear Forum,
I am getting very confused about this debate, and the point of it. I am an aspiring young writer, who after years of struggle, seems to be heading towards some success, which I believe I deserve. In this forum, there are writers who are also like me, though at various stages of career. Getting an agent, and then a publishing contract, are two primary significant pionts in one's career.

I thought, like me, you all too have various concerns in this regard, and hence I answered. My first book was ONLY published in India, and hence does not have anything on Amazon or B&N. My profile in Shelfari is years old, never gone there. Above all, please understand that if Tom is a bad agent, people like Lance and me will suffer worst because we are his clients. There is no onus or incentive for "saying good things about him" for the heck of it.

Having been his client, and the way the relationship has progressed, I am very positive about Tom. This is just my recomendation, like say I would say about a book I may have read and review in say Amazon.com. As authors, you do of course have the choice to make between various agents, and there are many good agents.

I tried to make the point that Tom is, like all individuals, unique, with strong flavors and characteristics. Like he insisted on doing a good round of editing before submitting.

In the last few months, we have had some rejections, and finally some offers just recently. But also please understand there are no guarantees. Plus the novel industry is slow... plus a bad year last year.

As for author agent... I think the primary issue is of any agent being legit. Tom, unimpeachably is. Heacock is a very credible, over 30-years old. Any one, therefore, they offer representation need not worry on that count.

All the best to everyone.
Good day!

Regarding Tom Dark and Book

Hello Victoria and others:
Sorry it has taken me so long to reply. I am a teacher and I have classes to teach and papers to grade, and then I train for athletic events on top of that, hence, I had to squeeze some time in to come back here.

I wanted to respond to a few comments/questions on the forum:

Tom's prose on himself.

He has shown to me his integrity and I have faith that he will succeed. He has a self effacing humor at times and if he wrote that he is an "accomplished failure" I know that he was writing a poem perhaps about romantic futility in general and not really what he is at his core or really thinks of himself specifically.

"But did he sell your book" and "That is the most important question on here"

I'm sure that the goal of some is to have big money contracts, maybe movie deals, a star on Hollywood Blvd. I am as interested in making a living as much as the next fella I suppose, and yes I would like my book to be published, but if it isn't sold this year, I will sign another contract with Tom Dark next year and if it doesn't sell then, I will sign a contract again with him the following year also. I wrote my book because I wanted to write my book, i.e., the good for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else.

Think back to when you wanted to write a book...Isn't writing the book the biggest reward you got out of it? the opportunity to perform your art the real reason you started? The same could be said for other artists out there; wouldn't you write a book even if no one was ever going to read it because you got something out of writing it. If you were a singer wouldn't you sing even if no one would hear it or act if no one would see it? Isn't what benefitted your soul the very most important reason for writing. The simple performance of your art what really attracted you to it?

So no I disagree that "But did he sell your book" is the most important question on this board.

Tom writes me two three times a week and let's me know what he is doing. He forwards me the correspondence from possible publishing houses. He helped me edit my book without compensation. He has given me the reason to write which is for the writing itself and he has given me hope that my work will not die with me and for that I am eternally grateful.

elvikingo said:

Hello Victoria and others:

He has shown to me his integrity and I have faith that he will succeed. He has a self effacing humor at times and if he wrote that he is an "accomplished failure" I know that he was writing a poem perhaps about romantic futility in general and not really what he is at his core or really thinks of himself specifically.

"But did he sell your book" and "That is the most important question on here"

I'm sure that the goal of some is to have big money contracts, maybe movie deals, a star on Hollywood Blvd. I am as interested in making a living as much as the next fella I suppose, and yes I would like my book to be published, but if it isn't sold this year, I will sign another contract with Tom Dark next year and if it doesn't sell then, I will sign a contract again with him the following year also. I wrote my book because I wanted to write my book, i.e., the good for its own sake and not for the sake of anything else.

Think back to when you wanted to write a book...Isn't writing the book the biggest reward you got out of it? the opportunity to perform your art the real reason you started? The same could be said for other artists out there; wouldn't you write a book even if no one was ever going to read it because you got something out of writing it. If you were a singer wouldn't you sing even if no one would hear it or act if no one would see it? Isn't what benefitted your soul the very most important reason for writing. The simple performance of your art what really attracted you to it?

So no I disagree that "But did he sell your book" is the most important question on this board.

Tom writes me two three times a week and let's me know what he is doing. He forwards me the correspondence from possible publishing houses. He helped me edit my book without compensation. He has given me the reason to write which is for the writing itself and he has given me hope that my work will not die with me and for that I am eternally grateful.

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Sigh. I'm sorry to see that authors are still making allowances for others like this, but it's part of a growing trend (sometimes encouraged by agents) for authors to grovel endlessly, feeling that they have done others a favor by writing their work.

We're all glad that you like your agent, and I wish you the best. He may be a great one. But in complete candor, if "writing the book" is your only reward, you could do that yourself, in the privacy of your own home. If "writing the book" is your only reward, you could go to Kinko's and have a few bound copies made, perhaps to give to a few close friends and acquaintances. If "writing the book" is your only reward, you could keep a copy on your computer and read it from time to time to feel good that you finished the book you had intended to write. These are all perfectly reasonable things to do. But this is a board for professional writers, or writers who aspire to be professional in some respect--i.e. people whose reward is not just writing a book but seeing it read by many more than just their friends and relatives. And for them, "selling the book" is the most important question in a forum such as this.

Now agents can also be great at sales and bad at everything else, and those agents are also (often) warned against and avoided for precisely those reasons. But to claim that your agent is good because he likes you--which is in essence what you've said here--and that you'll sign contract after contract no matter what he does for you professionally seems to me to be utterly off base. Why sell your work short? YOU are the creator here; YOU are the one HE should be thanking for writing a book HE wants to represent.

You don't work for him; he works for you. I wish more authors would understand this. But I do genuinely wish you the best.

Hi elvikingo

Bear with me but I'm a bit confused here. I agree that not everyone who writes anything wants to sell it. The computer hard drive or the space under the bed is as good a place to put it as any. But if you hand your manuscript over to an agent, then surely you want to see it in print? Otherwise, why bother? I'm not greedy. My sights are not set on the big-time but having slogged away for years writing and polishing and bringing my novel up top a publishable standard, I don't see why I shouldn't be paid for my efforts--as long as someone considers it worth buying. I don't demand huge wads of cash.

If an agent can't sell a manuscript to the right publisher, then leaving that manuscript in that agent's hands year after year seems somewhat eccentric. Besides, true literary agents wouldn't want to hang on to a manuscript year after year because they need to spend their time pitching manuscripts they can sell. Just hanging on to it and doing nothing is a waste of everyone's time.

The be all and end all of writing doesn't have to be a sale. But if you do want to be published you need an agent who can sell your work. If they can't sell anything then they're not agents.

elvikingo said:

nokiauser1,priceless1,and revolocard or should I say Meletus, Anytus and Lycon?
... you have not spoken a word of truth.

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And you would know this how? Were you privy to Tom's and my correspondence? I suppose it's possible that someone hijacked his email and conducted business on his behalf, but I'm doubtful.

The way to get revenge on a better man is not to be crushing his reputation like this, or threatening to have him lose his job. This way is not noble or honorable.

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What is not noble or honorable is to stalk an editor with strange, senseless emails bragging about how many other editors are reviewing his client's manuscript - like I'm supposed to fall to my knees and plead to read the work after all. There are hundreds of publishers in the world, so why get hot and bothered over my simple rejection? I am of the opinion that he took umbrage over my taking him to task over submitting such an inferior query. Be that as it may, agents see rejections every day, and I find this behavior from a supposed professional creepy and alarming.

I'm not out to "crush" his reputation. He managed that all by himself, thankyouverymuch. What you're insinuating is that I keep quiet about it, and I have to ask how that benefits authors who are seeking agents. The idea is to look for an agent who has all his marbles in his head, not escaping their confines at the simplest sign of rejection.

Tom Dark the never ending saga

Hello Phoenix and Anna:
Thank you both for your response. Yes I do want to be published and I do want other people to read it.(and no I do not want to go the Kinkos route ha ha that was funny)

What I'm trying to say is that it is not about the money so much for me. If it was, I think I would doing it for the wrong reasons. I'm thankful for what I've already gotten out of the process; just the hope that I will fulfill this dream has meant a lot to me. Yet, I believe if I stay the course here with Heacock Literary Agency and Tom Dark, it will eventually happen for me. If not, I am not going to cut my wrists and curse my agent.

I waited a long time for this opportunity to show my work to a publisher and I would have waited a lot longer if it hadn't been for Tom Dark. I have a friend, who is also an aspiring writer, and he has an agent whom he never hears from. Tom writes me like I said two or three times a week with updates. He edited my work which is something that you would have to pay for somewhere else.

Tom has shown me his loyalty not just as an agent but as a friend. I was on a radio show where I was being verbally attacked for my ideas about Platonic Metaphysics and Tom stayed up until the morning listening to the show and called in to defend me. In my mind he went beyond the job description in our contract. So to answer you Nokier1, Tom did not ask me to come here on his behalf, I do so of my own accord.

And Priceless1 Using words like "creepy" is either sophomoric or a sign that it is time to switch to decaf. "You have not spoken a word of truth" was Socrates' line in the Apology to his three pretentious accusers. Posting on here 650 times shows me #1 you're not spending your time reading the classics and #2 how dead the publishing industry must be if you can find that kind of time.

Priceless, you talk like an editor.

I agree with Phoenix and the others. I'm really confused. If you submitted your manuscript to an agent, you should expect that agent to find you a publisher. That's his job, isn't it? If he isn't doing it, then how does that help you?

elvikingo said:

Posting on here 650 times shows me #1 you're not spending your time reading the classics and #2 how dead the publishing industry must be if you can find that kind of time.

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If you look closely, you'll notice that it took (escuse me...) her four years to make those posts. Seems like plenty of time to me. Forgive me, because I'm not trying to be disparaging; I just don't see how this is relevant.

Elvikingo:

Everyone needs at least one supportive friend. Sounds like you've found that in Tom. However, we're talking about literary agents here and what they do without charge. All legit agents will edit your work without charge if they choose to do so.

An agent's job is to sell books. Sounds like Tom is your mentor. Not knocking it but it's not the same thing. That's why we keep asking about sales. If your book is about your ideas on Platonic Metaphysics, though, I can see why it might be a bit tricky for even the most super-duper agent to sell.

elvikingo said:

Hello Phoenix and Anna:
Thank you both for your response. Yes I do want to be published and I do want other people to read it.(and no I do not want to go the Kinkos route ha ha that was funny)

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And it's your agent's job to sell your book to publishers. Surely you see that, and understand why in evaluating an agent we would place that ability above everything else? If your agent isn't selling books, he is in essence just a critique partner.

What I'm trying to say is that it is not about the money so much for me. If it was, I think I would doing it for the wrong reasons. I'm thankful for what I've already gotten out of the process; just the hope that I will fulfill this dream has meant a lot to me. Yet, I believe if I stay the course here with Heacock Literary Agency and Tom Dark, it will eventually happen for me. If not, I am not going to cut my wrists and curse my agent.

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That's a great attitude to have, and I mean that sincerely. But really, this is your career; eventually you'll want or need more than hope, right? You'll want an agent who actually gets the job done.

I waited a long time for this opportunity to show my work to a publisher and I would have waited a lot longer if it hadn't been for Tom Dark. I have a friend, who is also an aspiring writer, and he has an agent whom he never hears from. Tom writes me like I said two or three times a week with updates. He edited my work which is something that you would have to pay for somewhere else.

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No, it's not, not with any legitimate agency. My agent edited my work before we submitted it. Then he sold it. I don't hear from him two or three times a week every week because he's busy selling books for his other clients, or for me.

An agent is not a pen pal. They're supposed to sell your work. That's how they make a living, and how they enable you to make a living. Sure, of course I'd love to spend hours on the phone with my agent every day discussing my work and how much he loves it. But neither of us have time for that sort of thing. I'm writing books and he's selling them, and while we have a very friendly relationship (and, certainly, while something is happening, like we're getting offers or negotiating a contract or whatever, I might be on the phone with him several times a day) and I know if I wanted to I could pick up the phone at any given moment, call him, and be put right through, or that if I email him I generally get a very timely response... I don't, because that's not what our relationship is about.

Tom has shown me his loyalty not just as an agent but as a friend. I was on a radio show where I was being verbally attacked for my ideas about Platonic Metaphysics and Tom stayed up until the morning listening to the show and called in to defend me. In my mind he went beyond the job description in our contract. So to answer you Nokier1, Tom did not ask me to come here on his behalf, I do so of my own accord.

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And I will readily say, that was a very nice thing of Tom to do. Personally I believe any agent would do that for his or her clients, but I can't say anything negative about it.

And Priceless1 Using words like "creepy" is either sophomoric or a sign that it is time to switch to decaf. "You have not spoken a word of truth" was Socrates' line in the Apology to his three pretentious accusers. Posting on here 650 times shows me #1 you're not spending your time reading the classics and #2 how dead the publishing industry must be if you can find that kind of time.

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And here is where you step over the line. Priceless is a professional editor with a stellar reputation and a valued member of this forum; every one of those posts she's made here has been a sacrifice of her time to help others. She has done absolutely nothing to deserve your ugentlemanly personal attack on her, save relating her own experiences with your agent--an experience which should and would concern any right-thinking man.

There is nothing sophomoric about using the word 'creepy' to describe someone whose behavior edged right up against stalking and was, in fact, being creepy. Do you condone the harrassing of ladies at their place of work? If someone with whom your wife or girlfriend or mother or sister had come in contact with through her work, and the man kept sending her emails about what a huge mistake she'd made in not choosing to work with him and how much she would regret it, would you or would you not find that creepy? Would you just shrug that off? Or would you use your knowledge of Platonic Metaphysics to introduce him to his own large intestine?

Priceless probably doesn't spend a lot of time reading the classics, because she's too busy acquiring and editing books for the legitimate publishing house for whom she works. And quite frankly, what she chooses to read is none of your business. Nor is the amount of time she spends here. I have a lot more posts than she does; would you like to speculate on how I should be spending my time as well? Perhaps you could come to my house and inspect my children to make sure they're not neglected savages whom I let pee on the floor and eat garbage while I waste my time on the internet.

Priceless was relating her experience, one she has every right to relate, and about which she has every right to share her feelings. You, however, have insulted her and implied that she is stupid, immature, and lazy, in part for participating in an activity in which you are participating as well.

Nice mets

"Perhaps you could come to my house and inspect my children to make sure they're not neglected savages whom I let pee on the floor and eat garbage while I waste my time on the internet."

Hey, these sound like fun kids !

THEY'd love to play with my savage little skins here in MY cave !

Hoooof hoooooof !!!

Let's define "Creepy"

Quote: "Perhaps you could come to my house and inspect my children to make sure they're not neglected savages whom I let pee on the floor and eat garbage while I waste my time on the internet."

Now that's creepy!

Let's define "Creepy"

Oh, please. She's making a point; she's not really inviting you to go to her house.

There is nothing sophomoric about using the word 'creepy' to describe someone whose behavior edged right up against stalking and was, in fact, being creepy. Do you condone the harrassing of ladies at their place of work? If someone with whom your wife or girlfriend or mother or sister had come in contact with through her work, and the man kept sending her emails about what a huge mistake she'd made in not choosing to work with him and how much she would regret it, would you or would you not find that creepy?

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Emphasis added, of course. If your agent was doing this, that's creepy. How is that at all similar to DecemberQuinn's point?

I made a few remarks on another thread that were a bit critical of their methods here, and I stand by my conviction that some of them should consider those comments, but all of them really are trying to do some good. And I, for one, very much appreciate their efforts.

Although I should not have called them "vultures" (sorry, everyone)...

If not for them, and people like them from other forums, I would have ended up in a hole long ago (with something like PA). A few years ago, I posed a casual question about PA to a friend at a forum, because PA's web site looked inviting. As a result I never contacted PA. Since then I've made a point to look up any information I can find about a publisher or agent before I submit, and I'm very glad I do.

So why did Heacock hire him?

I'm Tom Dark

It’s true in any walk of life in terms of liking, but most lucidly in the arts, if you don’t love what you’re doing and love the people you’re serving, you’re probably emotionally unhealthy. If you were fairly sane when you began, but naïve enough to quest for love through ambitions of fame and fortune, you will probably go crazier and crazier. You won’t feel any love for yourself for what you'll do. You alone know the truth of your motives. Protesting your intentions and ill luck to others along the way won’t hide this truth or your true worth from perceptive fellows you may meet.

My pal Mike invented and designed the digital systems for the Galileo Jupiter space probe. Thanks to Mike, we’ve known for years what Jupiter and its moons look like close-up. Mars too. We’re on the internet because Mike developed a good deal of the technology used for it. He’s neither rich nor famous, nor is he looking for love, wealth or fame. His first love is poetry, his second is literature, next physics, next microbiology. There’s a microbiology scholarship named for him.

I love Mike and I love his work. His poetry is not vanity. I’ve taken on his powerful study in Ovidian flattery image clusters in Shakespeare’s RICHARD II, which I edited 5 years ago for free, seeing its value. I was a freelance editor, not an agent. Among many other things, Mike’s work reaffirms “narcissism” as the Greeks meant it. It means psychosis that brings delusions and death. That’s true. As much as it’s bandied about, narcissists, Thomas Moore has also pointed out, are chronically depressive and often suicidal... often behind a cheerful face that, when you look closely enough, looks at least a bit put-on.

Obsessed with fantasies of fame, fortune and superiority, these self-unloved hope success will give them the unattainable love that always haunts their reflections. Such writers' works are usually bitter, overly critical and basically humorless. In these products is hidden a demand that their most negative feelings are facts that must be believed, and a demand to be loved. They write very little that’s memorable in the short term, and nothing memorable long-term, unless some grotesque curiosity, some helplessly negative fantasy or ludicrous critique. Ordinarily the writing involves exaggerated petty complaints. They tend to be perfectionists, but have mastered nothing. Nothing, nothing, is ever good enough for them.

My next client has mastered much.

James B. Clark, PhD, MA, etc. also understands the ancient Greeks, and has been mentoring me. I work for him. He understood Plato and Socrates well enough to put their philosophy to use, which is what it’s for. His astonishing 27 world athletic records – 22 of them after age 39, two on the same day last October – are only part of the story. He saved 6 lives towing a 15,000 pound pontoon boat 3 miles through a freezing Minnesota lake. He swam, a tow rope tied around his waist. This broke every record ever set and James didn’t care whether he got rich and famous for it. Those six men can tell you all about it. They paid for the beer afterward.

When he lived in Ecuador, James, with no weapons, single handedly cleaned out all the thieves in a city park in Quito. All of them. It was on Quito TV news. James did this for love of his wife and children; some banditos had robbed his family at knifepoints.

He single-handedly backed off a biker gang in Minnesota, as, passing by, he saw their leader slapping and abusing a four-year-old girl while the girl’s mother was off stoned somewhere. He rescued the little girl. It’s in the police report.

James’ manuscript was hardly begun when he wrote me last September. I told him to take a year and send me a rough draft. He made me a bet: if he could finish this in under eleven months, I’d owe him a bottle of Dom Perignon. If he couldn’t, he’d come to my place and shovel horse poop for me. We’ve got six. You’re on, buddy.

James sent me his rough draft in the last week of September – in under 3 weeks. I won’t have any two-bit “editors” belittling this accomplishment. It was astonishing. It was his true story of himself, a 22–year-old screw-up who read Plato in a Navy brig, applied it for what it meant, and wound up on the David Letterman show for setting a record nobody can even match 22 years later now. Then he went back to his job as a menial worker, and on to other incredible feats and adventures.

Incredible, true, honest, humble, and an invaluable account for anyone willing to give the benefit of the doubt about it.

I thought his manuscript over for awhile. I tried it. Over the past few weeks, I’ve upended an 834 barrel of ice -- that means 417 pounds of dead weight; cracked a cast iron water valve in half with my bare hands; stacked 10,000 pounds of hay seven feet high in under and hour; pulled a fireplace log in half, lengthways, also with my bare hands. This continues.

James is very right about what Plato meant and that others can do it. Without that meaning there could be no such feats. If anyone here denigrating Doctor Clark for standing up for me, who does anything as valuable and honorable in any way as he does, speak up. My standard for choosing writers starts at artists like James. That includes the cop, who was turned away unread because “simon didn’t say.” (His manuscript just won a national award; it was selected from 2200 police and military writers. It was for its flat honesty. I thought it would be. I see certain editors don't appreciate honesty as a selling point. I hope there aren't many of those.)

So far, this “discussion” and the blogs of those using me as a calumny object look like a hair-pulling contest among outraged little girls. Please look up “calumny” and give it a meditation, if you don’t know it.

Lance Frank is literarily capable of putting emotional bomb-holes in the arrogance of two generations, maybe more. He is not “an angry young man;” he knows what anger is and how to use it properly. His work isn’t just based on experience, it IS experience, and it has so far frightened a couple editors, in the way that raw truth depicted in any fashion tends to frighten some people. Raw truth also frightened dozens of editors away from Jack Kerouac. I’m sure the replies were as polite as they have been for Lance.

I read Lance’s manuscript in one intnese sitting. Better to say, his manuscript read me. It was more intense than Kerouac’s, more directed, more knowing, and in a psychological tour-de-force better than I’ve ever seen, it is an allegory of events from 2,000 years ago. I didn’t realize that for some time after I’d finished it, although I’d certainly felt it. Lance understands who Saint Paul was. Lance’s story entered my nightly dreams.

One day he mentioned a comedy show being filmed that he was in. He sent me a script he’d written for my critique. I’d written comedy scripts years ago, which ran for months at a theater in San Francisco. Mine were good enough to open and close the nightly shows, but Lance kicked my butt. Those who know how to handle great anger also know how to handle great humor. Lance is on the verge of a deal, incidentally. It’s been keeping him awake at night. I’ve been “Hollywood” too. It keeps you awake at night.

It takes integrity to handle a wide and intense array of emotion, despite Hollywood tales about being loved, loved, loved. That’s too bad. I’ve met lots of such lonely Napoleons, as Ani DiFranco called them. She’s not narcissistic.

If anyone here trying to pull Lance’s hair out has this kind of emotional integrity and javelin-thrower’s writing skill, you let me know.

Karri Sriram. In Temeglu this means “Honored Dark Lord.” His parents named him that. In how many languages do each of you speak and write fluently, please? And which presidents of which countries answer your letters personally even though you are a nobody who has to work for a living, please? And which of your books has been listed just above that famous best selling president’s name, please? President Kalam? Which of you writes a column for a national paper, please? Mr. Karri is a Brahmin who is a real Brahmin, not merely by privilege of circumstance, but a Brahmin as was Emerson, as was Thoreau and the New England Brahmins who set a course for American spirituality. He has been reading this little hair-pulling circus with bemusement. Hindu gods have many heads, but the American species of garden variety two-faced self aggrandizers is strange to him, even though he has worked in this country.

My nickname for Sriram is “Medhavi.” Those of you sincerely interested in what you write might look it up. Medhavi is far too wise to play the preacher of morals or vie for position of Alpha Phony, ruling a group of gullible admirers. He writes what he is, in hilarious and serious drama and expressions that do not remain mere words, but expand into clouds of emotion of sometimes godlike subtlety.

I like writing the following story to every editor I contact. I’ll write it again:

After having gone through about 3000 mediocre e-mail queries, every one of them written “right” according to the various mediocre writer’s blogs, an e-mail came in that began “[Deleted. Let’s not hand Medhavi’s ideas out to greedy mimickers here.]”

I read. I blushed. I was ready to apologize for the country this unknown writer scolded, even though I’m not an Indian. I had to know how this scolding came out – maybe it would reconcile the guilty feelings this young stranger from 8000 miles away had caused in me. The scolding turned into an epic, reaching back 3500 years. I kept peppering my wife with quotes and lines from it. I lay awake nights in uncertainty, hoping I could be honored to work for this brilliant mind. It was a great relief when he gave me his word: I am Sriram’s agent. He won’t break his word.

None of my clients will. Integrity matters. They’re more than “clients.” They’re more than friends. They are accomplished, brilliant artists in their mediums who have a focused purpose, from novelist to scientist. They can affect this world very positively to a greater degree than I have.

About me, then: I meant no blog and didn’t have time for it two or three years ago when I forgot the password and abandoned it. It was a handy place to store stuff I’d been working on, tested among friends or had published. I’m a little surprised at the imperceptivity of some here who have snot-nosed it; but their purpose is not to assess anyone’s writing, it’s to seek ammunition for this puerile hair-pulling contest.

So now, to tweak a pigtail or two myself. Have any of your essays brought a phone call from the Prime Minister of a whole country asking to translate your article to send to “every single church in his country”? Speak up. If any of you have found yet another country’s official tourist bureau using your essay to promote tourism, speak up. If any of your editing clients has gotten a flat million dollar offer, you’re in my league. If a billionaire has called and invited you to his office to see what you two can do for each other, do describe this. If a world-renown psychic healer calls you daily for two years, speaking for hours at her $5-per-minute long distance rate, from another country, for your counsel, regale us with your tale. Let me know whether Desmond Tutu passed on his regards through her, too. He liked “Pals For Peace,” the idea I gave her – free. Did Father Andrew Greeley ever write? Or a lot of such people? That’s what’s on that blog.

And if you did this between your freelance editing jobs, fooling around on the internet, living in a $375 a month studio apartment, just say so. Don’t beat around the bush.

The people I work for are in their callings for life. They understand hell, high water, disappointment, success and failure and purpose, some of them far better than I do. Doctor Professor Pasquale Schiavella, for instance, just turned 93, and still chairs the philosophy department at his college. Those of you here to pull hair won’t appreciate where he’s been, either, or how he got there.

One of my mentors is about to turn 103. I learn all about real writers, real writers, and how they behave, from her. “I still don’t know how I feel about Dorothy Parker,” she said one day. Her friends comprised the Algonquin Table; they attended her wedding, following behind as Bo Jangles danced at the head of the procession. James Thurber handed her the very first copy of The New Yorker for her birthday. Robert Benchley was as funny in person as he was in his essays. And so on. Merci herself was a publisher.

For those of you concerned about my credentials, there’s one source from which I learn my job. I’m not blind to this embarrassingly tawdry hair-pulling and legally actionable malicious libel. I’m sorry I’ve been honored as the centerpiece.

I’m also sorry when the toilet backs up.

My hours are 8:30 a.m. to 3 a.m. seven days a week. That’s how I get the time to deal totally personally with 13 fabulous writers and thinkers. Write me if you’re brilliant. So far the queries I’ve gotten that are plainly from posters on this site are of the latter quality -- except for the fraudulent “Chinese” writer, some of whose lines were funny. But my Asian writer outdid that hoax with an impromptu parody that had me laughing when we went to bed and when we got up this morning. Oh, god, she is funny. And a warrior.

A jealous mind would call all this truth telling “bragging,” I’ve noticed on this site. And now to the problem requiring my concern.

The problem is the editor here who has been posting crap about me for a month now, without my knowledge. She and the moderator are cronies of some years, and so, the moderator refuses to accept the fact that her friend is in no uncertain terms posting defamatory lies and deliberate abuse. This editor has been “stalking” me here with actionable libel, false characterizations, violation of confidentiality ethics (we have two attorneys in the family); she has been pounding obsessively on someone she does not know, owing to 11 e-mails exchanged across a period of five months, about which she plainly demonstrated she would rather type long and haught lectures than read and understand anything intended. She is not a talented businesswoman, not a talented writer, and not a talented personality. But her phone call showed she is a loud one.

Well? Which of you has earned an agent’s contract and a publishing deal from this “helpful” advice, and these defamatory “warnings”? Didja sell yer books yet? Do any of you know what “Caveat Emptor” means? Those who do not know latin must refrain from playing witty with it. My beloved writers don't pay me a penny for my services or from any services. They can walk away any time. I earn my fifteen percent when a publisher pays the agency for their works and I write them their checks. As to whom I’ve sold, am about to, or can’t, go screw yourselves and your greedy innuendos.

On January 6, 2009, I wrote the last little note I’d ever write to this individual. It was friendly. She had threatened my reputation and, I now see, immediately charged into a defamation campaign on this board. My colleague happened check it a few days ago, not having thought of it in months; Lance hadn’t mentioned that he’d been playing around with this board, but there he was, defending me. Good man.

So now, me and my excellent reputation have been “stalked” behind my back for a month, by someone regurgitating vitriolic spew. There is a projected personal bitterness in those pitiful attacks.

Is this the same creeping malaise that’s presently damaging the creativity and profits of the book industry? While I write this afternoon, HarperCollins is axing more editors. Please let it be the corporate drones getting the axe. The industry is in trouble because they are picking books people don’t care for. What else could it be? It could also be the very arrogance displayed exemplarily on this board, seeping through the ventilators in boardrooms. It has certainly been seeping through this thread for a month.

Free speech was conceived to prevent deceivers from getting the upper hand, not the opposite. Liars are the first to screech about "free speech" when they know they have an unfair advantage. This woman is putting on a show. She knows we can't reveal those 11 emails from five months and what they were really about, and betray the clients mentioned or other details, so she is lying about them. It is the agency's word against hers. This agency has a three decade reputation for honesty. That is why I'm here. Honesty indeed would make one seem "odd" to to the calculating.

The moderator here has the problem. Her friend, the Big Editor, plays the star here. Who would contradict a real genuine publisher? Gullible aspiring writers are eager to ingratiate themselves with her, just in case. Real honesty will get you what Dr. James Clark, Lance Frank, and Karri Sriram have been getting. It's an old and very tiresome ploy.

This woman has no call for a genuine debate. She has already shown how dishonorable she’d rather behave, for her own reasons. Her unfounded, raging rants against this professional have been collected, but I think all of them should be deleted, she stop harassing me, and she discuss her own problems as a matter of edification for writers and the business, less dishonestly.

Now get real. The agency has asked this board to delete all those obsessive, calumnious postings about me, and that means from the moderator's "odd" friend of some years, here. This kiddie game is over. Malicious libel is real, and has sensible legal guidelines. It's not a pissing match for insecure egos. This agency was built on a shoestring by a tremendous man whose reputation for honesty and fairness is still longed after in many houses. I’m following suit wide awake and in my dreams. We're not going to do business with a frustrated tomboy with too much time on her hands and signs of narcissistic behavior.

May it fill this chatroom celebrity with rage to know that I'll be with this agency long after her business has folded. She also reminds me of a rich kid. They can be pretty problematical people.

And now for my own warning: there is a fraud on this site whom I complained about last spring -- the last time I looked at this board. He is back, using a different e-mail address and ISP. He is not a writer, has no business with this board’s purpose, any agency, or any publisher. He needs removed. It is not enough to delete his calumnious postings.

“Catboy,” was what I nicknamed him when I had to deal with him one more weary time a few years back; he was harassing the wife of a quite famous writer we both know and she wrote me for help. It’s pretty plain that he hates women. He knows he is forbidden in my private and the agency's e-mails alike.

I gave Catboy that nickname because of a weird masturbatory practice he confessed to me in one of the many 20-page snail mails he used to send me. He never stopped scribbling and scribbling and scribbling, largely about women. Does this obsessiveness sound at all familiar?

He lives in Wisconsin with mannequins and stacks of UFO magazines in his house, and has lived alone all his adult life. He is 55 years old. I finally gave his address to the police yesterday. He has made a nuisance of himself too often, harassing the agency too.

In his first posting here, he inadvertently admitted what he’d done a month or two ago, disguised with a hotmail address and posing as a writer with complaints about me to the agency, hoping to get me fired. I googled the real writer by that name and contacted him. The writer he impersonated was a gay man specializing in gay sexiness. Catboy's idea of what's roaringly funny. He must still refuse to think about what his own natural sexual orientation may be. My opinion has far more background than our lady editor’s opinion holds, for all her narcissistic attacks on me.

I know his friend from whom he concocted the total fiction about “the AAR,” his first posting here, also on January 6. I introduced the two of them 26 years ago. Neither has amounted to anything but a nest of bitterness. This friend of his was an editor whose two most famous books turned out to be fraudulent. He never worked at a publishing house again.

As Catboy showed up just when our moderator's pal and board celebrity did with libels for me, this means he has been lurking at this board waiting for mention of me for six months. Unless those two are in the Destroy Tom Dark Club, a disenchanted branch of the Tom Dark Fan Club (there was one for awhile. It was hilarious.)

Catboy is long-term ill. In 1995, he sent me a little stapled paper concoction called “Teenage Incest Monthly.” A new fantasy for this “confirmed bachelor.” In 1995, I wrote him to cease all communication with me. He found me on the internet later. I see today he has taken time out from harassing my employers and me to post a hearty joke about molesting another poster’s children.

This board had damned well better get rid of him.

This is not a joke, lie, libel, or a half-baked opinion from some loudmouthed hayseed drama queen. I want Mister M.G. off my back and this board needs to pay close attention to who it is harboring.

I don’t need to post again. There are no opportunities here. I hope you who strive for integrity and fairness have read this and understand it clearly. Otherwise, my friends appear to be enjoying the exercise, dealing with the negative and insecure groupies here. They’re bound to meet lots more when they take their places in this world. It’s good practice.

And yes, Lance, I agree, 650 postings on a single site, even over 4 years, makes one suspicious. It’s trolling. One can’t interrupt himself every so often to try to zing someone else with imagined superiority while he has serious work to do. Which I have right now. Yo Clarkie, yo Sriram.

Tom

Well, that's proved something.

Old Hack said:

Well, that's proved something.

Click to expand...

Amen. What an embarrassment.

Tom Dark said:

I don’t need to post again.

Click to expand...

Is that a promise?

I just want to quote this in case someone decides to edit (edit it again, I should say) or delete it.

And I'd also like to say: being passionate is not the same as being professional, nor is it the same as being able to make a sale. A cool-headed post would have done much to allay some of the questions that have come up about your professional abilities, Mr. Dark. You've done yourself no favors by making just the kind of vitriolic, rambling statement that confirms, for me at least, everything that priceless1 has posted in this thread.

Tom Dark said:

It’s true in any walk of life in terms of liking, but most lucidly in the arts, if you don’t love what you’re doing and love the people you’re serving, you’re probably emotionally unhealthy. If you were fairly sane when you began, but naïve enough to quest for love through ambitions of fame and fortune, you will probably go crazier and crazier. You won’t feel any love for yourself for what you'll do. You alone know the truth of your motives. Protesting your intentions and ill luck to others along the way won’t hide this truth or your true worth from perceptive fellows you may meet.

My pal Mike invented and designed the digital systems for the Galileo Jupiter space probe. Thanks to Mike, we’ve known for years what Jupiter and its moons look like close-up. Mars too. We’re on the internet because Mike developed a good deal of the technology used for it. He’s neither rich nor famous, nor is he looking for love, wealth or fame. His first love is poetry, his second is literature, next physics, next microbiology. There’s a microbiology scholarship named for him.

I love Mike and I love his work. His poetry is not vanity. I’ve taken on his powerful study in Ovidian flattery image clusters in Shakespeare’s RICHARD II, which I edited 5 years ago for free, seeing its value. I was a freelance editor, not an agent. Among many other things, Mike’s work reaffirms “narcissism” as the Greeks meant it. It means psychosis that brings delusions and death. That’s true. As much as it’s bandied about, narcissists, Thomas Moore has also pointed out, are chronically depressive and often suicidal... often behind a cheerful face that, when you look closely enough, looks at least a bit put-on.

Obsessed with fantasies of fame, fortune and superiority, these self-unloved hope success will give them the unattainable love that always haunts their reflections. Such writers' works are usually bitter, overly critical and basically humorless. In these products is hidden a demand that their most negative feelings are facts that must be believed, and a demand to be loved. They write very little that’s memorable in the short term, and nothing memorable long-term, unless some grotesque curiosity, some helplessly negative fantasy or ludicrous critique. Ordinarily the writing involves exaggerated petty complaints. They tend to be perfectionists, but have mastered nothing. Nothing, nothing, is ever good enough for them.

My next client has mastered much.

James B. Clark, PhD, MA, etc. also understands the ancient Greeks, and has been mentoring me. I work for him. He understood Plato and Socrates well enough to put their philosophy to use, which is what it’s for. His astonishing 27 world athletic records – 22 of them after age 39, two on the same day last October – are only part of the story. He saved 6 lives towing a 15,000 pound pontoon boat 3 miles through a freezing Minnesota lake. He swam, a tow rope tied around his waist. This broke every record ever set and James didn’t care whether he got rich and famous for it. Those six men can tell you all about it. They paid for the beer afterward.

When he lived in Ecuador, James, with no weapons, single handedly cleaned out all the thieves in a city park in Quito. All of them. It was on Quito TV news. James did this for love of his wife and children; some banditos had robbed his family at knifepoints.

He single-handedly backed off a biker gang in Minnesota, as, passing by, he saw their leader slapping and abusing a four-year-old girl while the girl’s mother was off stoned somewhere. He rescued the little girl. It’s in the police report.

James’ manuscript was hardly begun when he wrote me last September. I told him to take a year and send me a rough draft. He made me a bet: if he could finish this in under eleven months, I’d owe him a bottle of Dom Perignon. If he couldn’t, he’d come to my place and shovel horse poop for me. We’ve got six. You’re on, buddy.

James sent me his rough draft in the last week of September – in under 3 weeks. I won’t have any two-bit “editors” belittling this accomplishment. It was astonishing. It was his true story of himself, a 22–year-old screw-up who read Plato in a Navy brig, applied it for what it meant, and wound up on the David Letterman show for setting a record nobody can even match 22 years later now. Then he went back to his job as a menial worker, and on to other incredible feats and adventures.

Incredible, true, honest, humble, and an invaluable account for anyone willing to give the benefit of the doubt about it.

I thought his manuscript over for awhile. I tried it. Over the past few weeks, I’ve upended an 834 barrel of ice -- that means 417 pounds of dead weight; cracked a cast iron water valve in half with my bare hands; stacked 10,000 pounds of hay seven feet high in under and hour; pulled a fireplace log in half, lengthways, also with my bare hands. This continues.

James is very right about what Plato meant and that others can do it. Without that meaning there could be no such feats. If anyone here denigrating Doctor Clark for standing up for me, who does anything as valuable and honorable in any way as he does, speak up. My standard for choosing writers starts at artists like James. That includes the cop, who was turned away unread because “simon didn’t say.” (His manuscript just won a national award; it was selected from 2200 police and military writers. It was for its flat honesty. I thought it would be. I see certain editors don't appreciate honesty as a selling point. I hope there aren't many of those.)

So far, this “discussion” and the blogs of those using me as a calumny object look like a hair-pulling contest among outraged little girls. Please look up “calumny” and give it a meditation, if you don’t know it.

Lance Frank is literarily capable of putting emotional bomb-holes in the arrogance of two generations, maybe more. He is not “an angry young man;” he knows what anger is and how to use it properly. His work isn’t just based on experience, it IS experience, and it has so far frightened a couple editors, in the way that raw truth depicted in any fashion tends to frighten some people. Raw truth also frightened dozens of editors away from Jack Kerouac. I’m sure the replies were as polite as they have been for Lance.

I read Lance’s manuscript in one intnese sitting. Better to say, his manuscript read me. It was more intense than Kerouac’s, more directed, more knowing, and in a psychological tour-de-force better than I’ve ever seen, it is an allegory of events from 2,000 years ago. I didn’t realize that for some time after I’d finished it, although I’d certainly felt it. Lance understands who Saint Paul was. Lance’s story entered my nightly dreams.

One day he mentioned a comedy show being filmed that he was in. He sent me a script he’d written for my critique. I’d written comedy scripts years ago, which ran for months at a theater in San Francisco. Mine were good enough to open and close the nightly shows, but Lance kicked my butt. Those who know how to handle great anger also know how to handle great humor. Lance is on the verge of a deal, incidentally. It’s been keeping him awake at night. I’ve been “Hollywood” too. It keeps you awake at night.

It takes integrity to handle a wide and intense array of emotion, despite Hollywood tales about being loved, loved, loved. That’s too bad. I’ve met lots of such lonely Napoleons, as Ani DiFranco called them. She’s not narcissistic.

If anyone here trying to pull Lance’s hair out has this kind of emotional integrity and javelin-thrower’s writing skill, you let me know.

Karri Sriram. In Temeglu this means “Honored Dark Lord.” His parents named him that. In how many languages do each of you speak and write fluently, please? And which presidents of which countries answer your letters personally even though you are a nobody who has to work for a living, please? And which of your books has been listed just above that famous best selling president’s name, please? President Kalam? Which of you writes a column for a national paper, please? Mr. Karri is a Brahmin who is a real Brahmin, not merely by privilege of circumstance, but a Brahmin as was Emerson, as was Thoreau and the New England Brahmins who set a course for American spirituality. He has been reading this little hair-pulling circus with bemusement. Hindu gods have many heads, but the American species of garden variety two-faced self aggrandizers is strange to him, even though he has worked in this country.

My nickname for Sriram is “Medhavi.” Those of you sincerely interested in what you write might look it up. Medhavi is far too wise to play the preacher of morals or vie for position of Alpha Phony, ruling a group of gullible admirers. He writes what he is, in hilarious and serious drama and expressions that do not remain mere words, but expand into clouds of emotion of sometimes godlike subtlety.

I like writing the following story to every editor I contact. I’ll write it again:

After having gone through about 3000 mediocre e-mail queries, every one of them written “right” according to the various mediocre writer’s blogs, an e-mail came in that began “[Deleted. Let’s not hand Medhavi’s ideas out to greedy mimickers here.]”

I read. I blushed. I was ready to apologize for the country this unknown writer scolded, even though I’m not an Indian. I had to know how this scolding came out – maybe it would reconcile the guilty feelings this young stranger from 8000 miles away had caused in me. The scolding turned into an epic, reaching back 3500 years. I kept peppering my wife with quotes and lines from it. I lay awake nights in uncertainty, hoping I could be honored to work for this brilliant mind. It was a great relief when he gave me his word: I am Sriram’s agent. He won’t break his word.

None of my clients will. Integrity matters. They’re more than “clients.” They’re more than friends. They are accomplished, brilliant artists in their mediums who have a focused purpose, from novelist to scientist. They can affect this world very positively to a greater degree than I have.

About me, then: I meant no blog and didn’t have time for it two or three years ago when I forgot the password and abandoned it. It was a handy place to store stuff I’d been working on, tested among friends or had published. I’m a little surprised at the imperceptivity of some here who have snot-nosed it; but their purpose is not to assess anyone’s writing, it’s to seek ammunition for this puerile hair-pulling contest.

So now, to tweak a pigtail or two myself. Have any of your essays brought a phone call from the Prime Minister of a whole country asking to translate your article to send to “every single church in his country”? Speak up. If any of you have found yet another country’s official tourist bureau using your essay to promote tourism, speak up. If any of your editing clients has gotten a flat million dollar offer, you’re in my league. If a billionaire has called and invited you to his office to see what you two can do for each other, do describe this. If a world-renown psychic healer calls you daily for two years, speaking for hours at her $5-per-minute long distance rate, from another country, for your counsel, regale us with your tale. Let me know whether Desmond Tutu passed on his regards through her, too. He liked “Pals For Peace,” the idea I gave her – free. Did Father Andrew Greeley ever write? Or a lot of such people? That’s what’s on that blog.

And if you did this between your freelance editing jobs, fooling around on the internet, living in a $375 a month studio apartment, just say so. Don’t beat around the bush.

The people I work for are in their callings for life. They understand hell, high water, disappointment, success and failure and purpose, some of them far better than I do. Doctor Professor Pasquale Schiavella, for instance, just turned 93, and still chairs the philosophy department at his college. Those of you here to pull hair won’t appreciate where he’s been, either, or how he got there.

One of my mentors is about to turn 103. I learn all about real writers, real writers, and how they behave, from her. “I still don’t know how I feel about Dorothy Parker,” she said one day. Her friends comprised the Algonquin Table; they attended her wedding, following behind as Bo Jangles danced at the head of the procession. James Thurber handed her the very first copy of The New Yorker for her birthday. Robert Benchley was as funny in person as he was in his essays. And so on. Merci herself was a publisher.

For those of you concerned about my credentials, there’s one source from which I learn my job. I’m not blind to this embarrassingly tawdry hair-pulling and legally actionable malicious libel. I’m sorry I’ve been honored as the centerpiece.

I’m also sorry when the toilet backs up.

My hours are 8:30 a.m. to 3 a.m. seven days a week. That’s how I get the time to deal totally personally with 13 fabulous writers and thinkers. Write me if you’re brilliant. So far the queries I’ve gotten that are plainly from posters on this site are of the latter quality -- except for the fraudulent “Chinese” writer, some of whose lines were funny. But my Asian writer outdid that hoax with an impromptu parody that had me laughing when we went to bed and when we got up this morning. Oh, god, she is funny. And a warrior.

A jealous mind would call all this truth telling “bragging,” I’ve noticed on this site. And now to the problem requiring my concern.

The problem is the editor here who has been posting crap about me for a month now, without my knowledge. She and the moderator are cronies of some years, and so, the moderator refuses to accept the fact that her friend is in no uncertain terms posting defamatory lies and deliberate abuse. This editor has been “stalking” me here with actionable libel, false characterizations, violation of confidentiality ethics (we have two attorneys in the family); she has been pounding obsessively on someone she does not know, owing to 11 e-mails exchanged across a period of five months, about which she plainly demonstrated she would rather type long and haught lectures than read and understand anything intended. She is not a talented businesswoman, not a talented writer, and not a talented personality. But her phone call showed she is a loud one.

Well? Which of you has earned an agent’s contract and a publishing deal from this “helpful” advice, and these defamatory “warnings”? Didja sell yer books yet? Do any of you know what “Caveat Emptor” means? Those who do not know latin must refrain from playing witty with it. My beloved writers don't pay me a penny for my services or from any services. They can walk away any time. I earn my fifteen percent when a publisher pays the agency for their works and I write them their checks. As to whom I’ve sold, am about to, or can’t, go screw yourselves and your greedy innuendos.

On January 6, 2009, I wrote the last little note I’d ever write to this individual. It was friendly. She had threatened my reputation and, I now see, immediately charged into a defamation campaign on this board. My colleague happened check it a few days ago, not having thought of it in months; Lance hadn’t mentioned that he’d been playing around with this board, but there he was, defending me. Good man.

So now, me and my excellent reputation have been “stalked” behind my back for a month, by someone regurgitating vitriolic spew. There is a projected personal bitterness in those pitiful attacks.

Is this the same creeping malaise that’s presently damaging the creativity and profits of the book industry? While I write this afternoon, HarperCollins is axing more editors. Please let it be the corporate drones getting the axe. The industry is in trouble because they are picking books people don’t care for. What else could it be? It could also be the very arrogance displayed exemplarily on this board, seeping through the ventilators in boardrooms. It has certainly been seeping through this thread for a month.

Free speech was conceived to prevent deceivers from getting the upper hand, not the opposite. Liars are the first to screech about "free speech" when they know they have an unfair advantage. This woman is putting on a show. She knows we can't reveal those 11 emails from five months and what they were really about, and betray the clients mentioned or other details, so she is lying about them. It is the agency's word against hers. This agency has a three decade reputation for honesty. That is why I'm here. Honesty indeed would make one seem "odd" to to the calculating.

The moderator here has the problem. Her friend, the Big Editor, plays the star here. Who would contradict a real genuine publisher? Gullible aspiring writers are eager to ingratiate themselves with her, just in case. Real honesty will get you what Dr. James Clark, Lance Frank, and Karri Sriram have been getting. It's an old and very tiresome ploy.

This woman has no call for a genuine debate. She has already shown how dishonorable she’d rather behave, for her own reasons. Her unfounded, raging rants against this professional have been collected, but I think all of them should be deleted, she stop harassing me, and she discuss her own problems as a matter of edification for writers and the business, less dishonestly.

Now get real. The agency has asked this board to delete all those obsessive, calumnious postings about me, and that means from the moderator's "odd" friend of some years, here. This kiddie game is over. Malicious libel is real, and has sensible legal guidelines. It's not a pissing match for insecure egos. This agency was built on a shoestring by a tremendous man whose reputation for honesty and fairness is still longed after in many houses. I’m following suit wide awake and in my dreams. We're not going to do business with a frustrated tomboy with too much time on her hands and signs of narcissistic behavior.

May it fill this chatroom celebrity with rage to know that I'll be with this agency long after her business has folded. She also reminds me of a rich kid. They can be pretty problematical people.

And now for my own warning: there is a fraud on this site whom I complained about last spring -- the last time I looked at this board. He is back, using a different e-mail address and ISP. He is not a writer, has no business with this board’s purpose, any agency, or any publisher. He needs removed. It is not enough to delete his calumnious postings.

“Catboy,” was what I nicknamed him when I had to deal with him one more weary time a few years back; he was harassing the wife of a quite famous writer we both know and she wrote me for help. It’s pretty plain that he hates women. He knows he is forbidden in my private and the agency's e-mails alike.

I gave Catboy that nickname because of a weird masturbatory practice he confessed to me in one of the many 20-page snail mails he used to send me. He never stopped scribbling and scribbling and scribbling, largely about women. Does this obsessiveness sound at all familiar?

He lives in Wisconsin with mannequins and stacks of UFO magazines in his house, and has lived alone all his adult life. He is 55 years old. I finally gave his address to the police yesterday. He has made a nuisance of himself too often, harassing the agency too.

In his first posting here, he inadvertently admitted what he’d done a month or two ago, disguised with a hotmail address and posing as a writer with complaints about me to the agency, hoping to get me fired. I googled the real writer by that name and contacted him. The writer he impersonated was a gay man specializing in gay sexiness. Catboy's idea of what's roaringly funny. He must still refuse to think about what his own natural sexual orientation may be. My opinion has far more background than our lady editor’s opinion holds, for all her narcissistic attacks on me.

I know his friend from whom he concocted the total fiction about “the AAR,” his first posting here, also on January 6. I introduced the two of them 26 years ago. Neither has amounted to anything but a nest of bitterness. This friend of his was an editor whose two most famous books turned out to be fraudulent. He never worked at a publishing house again.

As Catboy showed up just when our moderator's pal and board celebrity did with libels for me, this means he has been lurking at this board waiting for mention of me for six months. Unless those two are in the Destroy Tom Dark Club, a disenchanted branch of the Tom Dark Fan Club (there was one for awhile. It was hilarious.)

Catboy is long-term ill. In 1995, he sent me a little stapled paper concoction called “Teenage Incest Monthly.” A new fantasy for this “confirmed bachelor.” In 1995, I wrote him to cease all communication with me. He found me on the internet later. I see today he has taken time out from harassing my employers and me to post a hearty joke about molesting another poster’s children.

This board had damned well better get rid of him.

This is not a joke, lie, libel, or a half-baked opinion from some loudmouthed hayseed drama queen. I want Mister M.G. off my back and this board needs to pay close attention to who it is harboring.

I don’t need to post again. There are no opportunities here. I hope you who strive for integrity and fairness have read this and understand it clearly. Otherwise, my friends appear to be enjoying the exercise, dealing with the negative and insecure groupies here. They’re bound to meet lots more when they take their places in this world. It’s good practice.

And yes, Lance, I agree, 650 postings on a single site, even over 4 years, makes one suspicious. It’s trolling. One can’t interrupt himself every so often to try to zing someone else with imagined superiority while he has serious work to do. Which I have right now. Yo Clarkie, yo Sriram.

Tom

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I told you so before.

What did I tell you? Convinced yet?

Holy cow! What a long winded bellowing bail of bovine fodder! Phew !!
THE WIZARD behind the shower curtain!

I could hardly stand the G force and hot bad breath at nuclear propelled force while reading that big diatribe declaration of his! I have a title for HIS book, however.

"HOOT AND HOLLER: The chronicles of a delusional dork."

Are we supposed to be cowering in fear of the almighty as of this moment or what? I'll bet he THINKS he'd just left us gray matter stirring thought to have nightmares about in our sleep tonight. He really thinks he's that brilliant. I got news for him.

And so, the big question still stands and is valid:

DID HE SELL ANY BOOKS YET ? Yes or No? Pick one!

He "doth protests too much!" Equals GUILTY as charged.

Off with his head at the crack of dawn!

So be it, sayeth the court of public opinion!

As those who have read all the way through Mr. Dark's post know, I've been under some pressure to delete posts, ban AW members, and close this thread. The allegation has been that certain posts here are libellous and damaging to Mr. Dark's reputation, and that one or more of the people who've posted here is/are stalking and harassing him and the agency.

I have no way of knowing whether the allegations of stalking and harassment are true (no documentation has been offered to me), nor any way of knowing whether the individuals allegedly doing the stalking and harassment are the same individuals who are posting here. However, on reading through the thread, I did find Nokiauser1's posts to be unnecessarily confrontative and insulting; in addition, two of them made potentially damaging unsourced second-hand allegations about Mr. Dark's actions and reputation. Also, Nokiauser1 has never posted in any thread but this one; so it would seem that he or she has a specific agenda for being here. So I made the decision to delete his/her posts.

I've let the most recent one stand, however. It's offensive and insulting--but no more so than Mr. Dark's remarks about me and priceless1, which I think edge closer to being defamatory than any of priceless1's remarks--not to mention his absolutely unproven (and, I believe, completely erroneous) allegations about Nokiauser1's identity.

- Victoria