Pseudonym = Alias?

The follow up article clearly states his legal name. I suspect there is more to this story as they seem to be suggesting he is being "assessed". I think that would require more than literary works, or at least I hope so.

I don't know. It is really hard from the articles to get anything other than he wrote a couple books under a pseudonym, which given his profession would seem a wise thing to do, and got arrested and taken in for an eval due to the subject matter of the novels.

Those books are what caught the attention of police and school board officials in Dorchester County. "The Insurrectionist" is about two school shootings set in the future, the largest in the country's history.

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And if that is so, that is scary as hell.

I'm a nursing assistant and I've worked in several nursing homes, and done private duty in several hospitals. And so I have imagined a few half-baked plot lines about crazed killers rampaging through. And I like to think I'd have a better handle on conveying such a setting with accuracy than most other writers might. Just like Rugcat would likely be a better candidate than most to write a novel that takes place in a police station (at least in my opinion). And so it follows that this teacher in the OP would likely be a better candidate to write a story taking place in a school.

So I wouldn't be too worried about this teacher unless the plot line of his tale centered upon a teacher (or former teacher) embarking on such a rampage.

(Did it?) /hasn't read articles yet]


As for anyone here being worried abougt ME writing such a story, rest assured that my mad rampager in the nursing home is NOT a nursing assistant.

I'm sure there's a perfectly valid rationale behind this. Somebody has to think of the children, after all. It's not "just" a thought crime if it's been committed to paper, anyway.

Don said:

I'm sure there's a perfectly valid rationale behind this. Somebody has to think of the children, after all. It's not "just" a thought crime if it's been committed to paper, anyway.

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I wonder if Tom Clancy might have gotten pulled aside (or even renditioned away) if he had tried to publish his very first Jack Ryan novel, The Hunt for Red October, in 2013 instead of 1984.

Ambrosia said:

I don't know. It is really hard from the articles to get anything other than he wrote a couple books under a pseudonym, which given his profession would seem a wise thing to do, and got arrested and taken in for an eval due to the subject matter of the novels.


And if that is so, that is scary as hell.

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Why's it scary?

I find the reaction by the county scary as hell, but not that he wrote a book about a school shooting.

Plot Device said:

I'm a nursing assistant and I've worked in several nursing homes, and done private duty in several hospitals. And so I have imagined a few half-baked plot lines about crazed killers rampaging through. And I like to think I'd have a better handle on conveying such a setting with accuracy than most other writers might. Just like Rugcat would likely be a better candidate than most to write a novel that takes place in a police station (at least in my opinion).

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The first novel I got published was about a cop in Salt Lake City who goes over the edge and starts killing the people he believes to be responsible for the murder of his girlfriend.

Clearly I need to be put away.

Ambrosia said:

I don't know. It is really hard from the articles to get anything other than he wrote a couple books under a pseudonym, which given his profession would seem a wise thing to do, and got arrested and taken in for an eval due to the subject matter of the novels.



And if that is so, that is scary as hell.

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Okay, THAT got my attention and NOW I'm going to read the linked articles.

And so now the question in the subject line makes sense.

Pseudonym is the term used for a name a book author uses when publishing under a name not their own.

Alias is (among other, less pejorative things) a police term for someone operating (purportedly illegally) under a name not their own, presumably to evade police.

With police interest in an author published under a pseudonym, it makes sense that the word alias is also used.

Reading past the first sentence in the first link:

...
Phillips said McLaw was taken in for an emergency medical evaluation. The sheriff would not disclose where McLaw is now, but he did say that he is not on the Eastern Shore. The same day that McLaw was taken in for an evaluation, police swept Mace's Lane Middle School for bombs and guns, coming up empty.

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So, he's apparently being held with no charge under a psychiatric hold or "sectioning."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_psychiatry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Involuntary_commitment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5150_(involuntary_psychiatric_hold)
These are usually for three days, but I'm guessing with the perceived seriousness of this "act" he might be held indefinitely or until the ACLU decides to do something (I'm guessing they're already aware of the story).

Here's a comment on the book (or rather on the author and his current situation) on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Meanwhile-wri...d_fp_ef_tft_tp?_encoding=UTF8&asin=B0075CP2SG

His crime so far seems to be being a middle school teacher while being the author of an "inappropriate" book.

rugcat said:

The first novel I got published was about a cop in Salt Lake City who goes over the edge and starts killing the people he believes to be responsible for the murder of his girlfriend.

Clearly I need to be put away.

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They're comin' for ya' tonight, rugcat.

Plot Device said:

I wonder if Tom Clancy might have gotten pulled aside (or even renditioned away) if he had tried to publish his very first Jack Ryan novel, The Hunt for Red October, in 2013 instead of 1984.

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I find it shocking that the novel was first published by, of all entities, the Naval Institute Press.

Think of the troops, er, children.

cornflake said:

Why's it scary?

I find the reaction by the county scary as hell, but not that he wrote a book about a school shooting.

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Yeah, I got a good laugh out of the reaction. It's what happens when naive worldviews and extremely superficial reasoning collide. A good ol' idiotfest. In the taxonomy of derpitude you can find it a branch or two away from the sort of "zero tolerance policies" designed to keep human children safe from pastry firearms.

The book itself does not seem odd or scary in the least.

I heard about some high school English teacher in Maine publishing a novel under a pseudonym. The plot was about a teenaged boy going on a mad rampage through a fictional high school with a gun.

The novel was Rage by Richard Bachman (which is the psuedonym for a dude whose real name is Stephen King).

There will be a lawsuit, I predict.

All the more reason I have no interest in a teaching career.

Story idea: He scores about $2.5 million in the lawsuit, and weeks later, all of the schools in the state are bombed. It turns out the novel–lawsuit episode was a premeditated scheme designed to obtain the funds to carry out the bombing.

Plot Device said:

I heard about some high school English teacher in Maine publishing a novel under a pseudonym. The plot was about a teenaged boy going on a mad rampage through a fictional high school with a gun.

The novel was Rage by Richard Bachman (which is the psuedonym for a dude whose real name is Stephen King).

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But wasn't that published well after he quit teaching?

I sure hope he never tries to go back to a high school teaching career.

Besides, I understand he (and Deanna Dwyer, et. al.) published under pseudonyms only because he wrote publishable novels too quickly, and publishers will only publish one novel per author per year. I suppose that's the curse of being a successful professional author.

Oh, FFS!

I'm reading the articles now!

FIRST -- the teacher is black! Tell me this exact same episode of involuntary detention and psych eval would have been exacted upon a white teacher!

SECOND -- he's 23 years old and was nominated last year for Teacher of the Year!

Now I'm just pissed!

LAWSUIT!

benbradley said:

But wasn't that published well after he quit teaching?
.

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Yep. Gotta be extra leery of those loser ex-teachers.

-- Plot Device, loser ex-teacher

benbradley said:

But wasn't that published well after he quit teaching?

I sure hope he never tries to go back to a high school teaching career.

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Because he's filthy rich and has an ultra-successful writing career, right?

Hope you're not suggesting it's because he might go on a rampage and kill kids . . .

cornflake said:

Why's it scary?

I find the reaction by the county scary as hell, but not that he wrote a book about a school shooting.

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I could be wrong, but I think that's what Ambrosia was saying, too.

cornflake said:

Why's it scary?

I find the reaction by the county scary as hell, but not that he wrote a book about a school shooting.

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It is scary because from my interpretation of the article he has been arrested and shuttled off to some holding cell to be evaluated psychologically because he wrote two books about a school shooting in the far future.

I wasn't saying it was scary he wrote a novel or two. But that they locked him away because he wrote a novel or two.

Oh FFS.

Someone please tell me there are attorneys salivating all over this. I imagine (and hope) there will be a lawyer stampede to get to him.

Plot Device said:

I heard about some high school English teacher in Maine publishing a novel under a pseudonym. The plot was about a teenaged boy going on a mad rampage through a fictional high school with a gun.

The novel was Rage by Richard Bachman (which is the psuedonym for a dude whose real name is Stephen King).

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Thank you for that. I was about to bring up King.




BTW, my alias is Nom De Plume. I haven't used it yet, and hope no one else has taken it.

If all of this results in even ONE writer in the USA taking pause and in any way allowing themselves to be ... afraid ... to write something, then the First Amendment has been diminished.

It's a good thing the police and administrators involved work for the state, or they might end up personally on the hook for the millions this guy wins in a lawsuit. And imagine if those administrators had to actually answer to the parents as customers? They'd get an earful, treating a nominated Teacher of the Year like that. Lucky for them they don't have to rely on customer relations to keep their jobs. At least we needn't fear that the best and brightest possible teachers will be scared off by a little thing like this happening.

Oh, there's that quote I accidentally dropped in another thread.

Jeff Deist said:

We know that state monopolies invariably provide worse and worse services for more and more money.

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Or perhaps it would be better to quote Martin Niemoller: "First they came for the pastries chewed to resemble guns, but I was neither a pastry nor a gun nut, so I did not speak up."