Stalking issue?

GailD said:

I'm only a few miles away from a town called Adelaide. Though you've probably never heard of it.

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You've moved to South Australia, Gail?

I don't use my actual location because I like to be silly sometimes. I'm somewhere north of BF, and south of Helix... think I'm a bit south of McCardey too, but not entirely sure of that one.

Jaymz Connelly said:

I'm somewhere north of BF

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I reckon from here on out, everyone should simply list their location relative to me:

"Somewhere north of BF"
"A loooong way north of BF"
"Moderately west of BF"
"North by northwest of BF"

be frank said:

I reckon from here on out, everyone should simply list their location relative to me:

"Somewhere north of BF"
"A loooong way north of BF"
"Moderately west of BF"
"North by northwest of BF"

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That'd totally work for me!

If it mattered where you were, say this was a sports club forum, then I think it would be an issue but we're writers selling a product that can go anywhere instantly.

- Mark Charke

be frank said:

I reckon from here on out, everyone should simply list their location relative to me:

"Somewhere north of BF"
"A loooong way north of BF"
"Moderately west of BF"
"North by northwest of BF"

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That works.

I once put my real location on here (only the state/country because it's the internet and thar be creeps in existence, not specifically on this site, just in the world in general), but eventually stopped, not because anything happened, but because I like my privacy and using a fun location that goes with my avatar is fun, so that's the main reason put something else there. It's one of the same safety precautions I use on all websites, not just AW.

There is no real Albany, Oregon. Even Northwest Editors Guild shows my location as Corvallis. If Portland weather mentions us, it's "south of Salem." Eugene weather calls us "the mid-Willamette Valley."

Kay used to live near Crabtree, Oregon, which is vaguely east of Albany. I accused her of making up the name to avoid me stalking her. Didn't work.

I've critted a lot of manuscripts, and I've noticed that, without exception, women strip their addresses from the title page*, while men are all: OH HI HERE IS EXACTLY WHERE I LIVE.

*On the rare occasion where I forget (when I send out my own MS), I slap my forehead and think: I hope this person isn't a stalker!

I'm generally pretty laissez-faire about personal data because, for all that I know about the horrors of tech in-depth from my chosen industry, I'm ultimately a child of the 90s who's very happy to have nice friends on the internet (and this was reinforced into adulthood because my industry encourages having a public person to gain a reputation and 'brand'). And since I live in a country without legal guns, I didn't feel too worried about people hunting me down--and given I live in a part of the country that's remote, hard-to-navigate, and pretty brutal, a part of me laughs at the idea of someone with a grudge hunting me down.

...But then this incident happened, in a part of Scotland very like my own.

EvilPenguin said:

I used to have my actual location on here, until I read this article: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-34775814

I'm not really a "mean" person online, but I do worry sometimes that if I agree to critique someone's work and say the wrong thing about it, they'll hunt me down. But that's mostly because I worry too much about everything. And you never really KNOW someone you meet online. They may seem friendly and perfectly stable, but the smallest thing might make them snap.

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As a minority (of various stripes) on the internet, I haven't been stalked yet. But it really does just feel like a matter of time before some bloke decides I've wronged him enough that he has to try and lay hands on me. If they'll travel 400 miles from London to blimmin' Glenrothes (TWICE!), they'll do anything.

I'm sure I'm insulting a fine little place, but if you had any inkling that stalker was on his way, couldn't the local police just set up a check-point at the one road into town?

frimble3 said:

I'm sure I'm insulting a fine little place, but if you had any inkling that stalker was on his way, couldn't the local police just set up a check-point at the one road into town?

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Are you talking about the Glenrothes attack Frimble3? I don't think you're insulting Genrothes, but it does feel like you're victim-blaming a teenage book blogger a wee bit.

A) There's at least a dozen routes into that town, local police wouldn't be able to do a check-point (and road check-points aren't really a done thing in the UK--they're impractical to staff and easy to avoid). It's a small town but it's surrounded on three corners by Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh so there's access from every direction. You'd need to declare a major police operation and pull in police from all the surrounding cities to man the checkpoints, and you'd cause traffic jam mayhem for tens of thousands of travellers.
Can't remember off the top of my head if he took a car--which would be a very long drive for a lot of Brits, especially Londoners--or used a train or a bus, both of which have notoriously useless CCTV.

B) That's assuming police would actually listen to a teenager saying "I left a lukewarm review of this older man's book and now I'm worried he'll travel up from London to shout at me". They wouldn't. The whole situation is improbable, and 2015 Scottish police wouldn't know a thing about book blogging or angry self-pub authors.

C) He struck her on the back of the head, while her back was turned, with a bottle. She was working her day job at the time. His visit and attack was unannounced, so there no way for her to see the attack coming or to prepare for his arrival.

(It's possible the police might have been able to take action when he stalked a woman a month prior and prevent this, but I'm unable to find any articles that confirm if the prior incident was reported and ignored before he attacked the blogger.)

I apologise if this reply sounds a bit growley, Frimble3. It's a good question that made me think, and you deserve a less hackles-up answer, but I've tried to de-growl this post with multiple edits and I'm failing at it. I get rattled a lot about this particular story because graaahhh she was just a young woman who loves books and it really breaks my heart that this happened to her. It makes me so sad that two women had to be victims of this toerag before it became violent enough to get attention and be brought to a stop, and he's already finished his sentence and is back out there blogging about it.

Nonsense! You were not 'too growly'. I was overly flippant about a serious matter, an attack on a defenceless and unsuspecting young woman, by a crazed stranger.
And I was not blaming the victim - people working out near the public see the worst of human behaviour. It's bad enough that they are shouted at, but to be physically attacked? And, the jerk is out on the streets already? That's ridiculous.