Tag Archives: BAD INTENTIONS

My close encounter with THE HOUSEMAID author Freida McFadden … actually, a Freida imposter! Plus, it’s ‘me me me’ all the way down in two new features

Leave a reply

Authors know that book-oriented scams are plentiful. Most of us regularly get emails or private messages on social media from people purporting to be literary agents or publishers or even well-known authors. Most of them are pretty easy to see through: No, James Patterson or Lee Child is not messaging you to offer input on your novel in the works.

Here’s the story of the time Freida McFadden private messaged me on Bluesky and tried to connect me with her publicist.

The whole scam would have gone a lot better but at the time … I had no idea who Freida McFadden was.

It was a couple of years ago and I got a message on Bluesky purporting to be from an author, Freida McFadden. Freida really, really wanted to talk about books and how great a job her publicist had done for her and how I should contact that publicist.

Freida’s pitch was that this publicist had made her career and could do the same for mine.

The biggest drawback to the scheme: At the time, I had no idea who Freida McFadden was. I’d never read one of her books and had never heard of her. If I were gullible, this would have been incredibly exciting.

So in my ignorance of Real Freida, I had no idea why it would have been such a big deal if the author herself contacted me.

No, it wasn’t my suspicions that undid the Fake Freida. It was that she was incredibly pushy.

I’d answer politely when Freida would cite her publicist by name and tell me in glowing terms how great he was.

“Okay, fine … thanks,” I’d reply, little realizing that I was blowing off a “bestselling author” who wanted to bring me into the inner circle of the publicist who had changed her career.

“No, you don’t understand,” Freida would come back, trying to impress upon me how important it was to hire this publicist. “He will make your career!”

“Okay, Freida, I got it,” I’d reply. I was being polite but had no plans to contact this publicist who worked for this incredibly pushy author.

“No, please you must understand …” Freida would insist.

“Jesus, why are you being so pushy?” I asked. “Is this some kind of scam?”

At this point, I hadn’t even googled Freida McFadden. When I did, I’d see that a movie was in the works adapting her novel THE HOUSEMAID.

That pretty much settled it. No way was someone who wrote books and had a movie development deal going to spend hours messaging me to insist that I should work with her publicist.

I didn’t delete the thread of messages, were of course not from Freida or even any publicist who’d ever worked for her but from some scam artist who just wanted me to believe that Freida had reached down from author Olympus to beg me to contact him.

Very quickly after, the Fake Freida account was expunged from Bluesky and, along with it, the details of the thread of private messages. I wish I could tell you the name of the publicist Fake Freida was so urgently recommending because that was almost certainly the person sending the messages.

Just their luck that they private messaged somebody who couldn’t be impressed that Freida McFadden was contacting them.

I thought of all this today because Sourcebooks, publisher of McFadden’s nest novel, THE SLEEPWALKER, would be coming out in March. Sourcebooks noted that McFadden’s 29 books had sold 90 million copies.

Confidentially, I heard she owes it all to her publicist.

By the way, the folks at Writer Beware have created an exhaustive list of book impersonators and scammers.

ON ANOTHER NOTE:

I’m all up in your email inboxes today, even more so when the subscribers to this post receive email notification of it. But you don’t have to wait until you get this notification to tired of me in your inbox, as I’m the subject of two features today.

Friend and fellow writer Andrew Careaga graciously allowed me to answer his Friday Five questions for today. Here it is.

And as part of the promotional tour for the great BAD INTENTIONS anthology, editor Michael Downing wrote about my story, “Sunset Stakeout,” based on the Warren Zevon song “Looking for the Next Best Thing.” Here it is.

Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys meet Bob Mackie

Leave a reply

How about a two-for-one today? Okay then, buckle up for quick items on my citation of the late fashion designer Bob Mackie in a new short story as well as the Mystery of Why Public Libraries Didn’t Carry Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys Books. Lets start with the vintage stuff first:

I’m on the record about my love of juvenile mysteries like those featuring the Hardy brothers, Nancy Drew and the Three Investigators. Six years ago – and I can’t believe it was that long ago – I wrote a piece for CrimeReads about devouring those juvenile mysteries when I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s and specifically credited my school library and beloved librarian in encouraging young readers to read a little bit of everything. Here’s a link to that CrimeReads piece to check out after you’re done here.

So considering how my school library encouraged us to read everything, including the Hardys and Nancy, I felt sad to see a September 10 post in the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries Facebook page that noted that libraries – public libraries certainly but sometimes school libraries – didn’t carry the books. And many librarians considered them trash.

I think – I hope – the prevailing sentiment in recent years has been to encourage young readers to read, no matter what, because instilling a love of reading is more important than being a snob.

The Facebook post has hundreds of comments from people who said that, yes, unfortunately, their libraries didn’t carry the books.

This wasn’t just a coincidence, scholar James D. Keeline wrote. There was, particularly in the first half of the 20th Century, a coordinated effort by some to keep those books and other series books out of libraries.

From the 1940s through the 1970s, the librarian school programs had an organized method to exclude popular series books from school and public libraries. They started to exchange lists of books “not to be circulated” in “standard libraries.” These were published in regional library journals. These lists were devoted to series authors and series.

Even in the late 1970s through the 1990s this practice continued in SOME libraries. Other libraries were led by people who had grown up reading books like Nancy Drew and did not find them harmful, despite the librarian training. So the practice of excluding series books reduced but was still present in places like San Francisco in the late 1990s.

Keeline produces a list of dozens and dozens of series books authors from 1949, published by the University of the State of New York, an umbrella organization that oversees educational and cultural institutions.

If you’re a fan of the books, the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Facebook page is well worth following.

On the Bob Mackie front, the veteran clothing designer died September 14. He was best known for outfitting Cher and other celebrities in the 1960s and 1970s in flamboyant gowns festooned with feathers and sequins.

As a kid who absorbed everything to do with Hollywood and show business when I was growing up, I always paid attention when a talk show host or celebrity credited Mackie with a gown. I knew – and still know – nothing about fashion, but Mackie designed outfits that looked like wild, sexy science fiction universe clothes to me.

His name got stuck in my brain, of course, and I name checked him in “Sunset Stakeout,” a short story I wrote for BAD INTENTIONS: Crime Fiction Inspired by Warren Zevon. (The Literary Garage anthology was edited by Michael Downing and has a great cover by Frank Vatel. Link to it at the end of this post.)

In “Sunset Stakeout,” which was inspired by Zevon’s “Looking for the Next Best Thing,” I wrote about three hapless guys moving through the Hollywood backwaters in January 1979. They’re the producer, co-star and novice screenwriter for “Sunset Stakeout,” an action/crime drama that really wanted to be “The Rockford Files” but was really more like “Riptide.” When the show is on the brink of cancelation, they team up with Hollywood’s most dangerous drug dealer to find a path forward.

I don’t write a lot of stories like this – it’s set in Hollywood, for one thing, and for another is a little more humorous than my usual – but I’m proud of it.

So with players in Hollywood in the mix, you just know I had to namecheck Mackie.

“I asked you to give me some time to think, Jimmy,” she said. Corbett looked like an unmade bed but Melody wore a sequined hot pink pantsuit. Hornblow recognized a Bob Mackie design from going to every awards show for the past 20 years. When you’re always a bridesmaid, you gotta have something to concentrate on.

I hope you enjoy “Sunset Stakeout” and all of BAD INTENTIONS. It was a labor of love and proceeds go to Philabundance, a non-profit food bank.

Here’s more about BAD INTENTIONS:

https://literarygarage.com/bad-intentions-anthology

The year of anthologies for me – three of ’em, anyway

Leave a reply

Two of the nicest folks you’d ever want to write for, Shelley Kubitz and Lawrence Allan, today released the cover image for DAYDREAM BELIEVER, an anthology of crime fiction inspired by the music of The Monkees. I’ve got a story in the anthology and I’ll tell you more about it on or before, as they say in legal documents, the book’s publication on September 29. (Or slightly after, depending on how my September goes.)

The table of contents for this anthology is a dream team of crime writers, and I’ll get into that at a later date also.

I’d hoped to have a story in four crime fiction anthologies in 2026, but that was not to be, for reasons too sad to get into here or almost anywhere.

So in 2026, a year in which I definitely de-emphasized short stories to work on novels, I’ve got stories in FIGHTING WORDS, BAD INTENTIONS and DAYDREAM BELIEVER and I couldn’t be happier about that.

The experience of writing short stories in any small bit of spare time I wasn’t working on getting my crime novel SEVEN ANGELS ready for publication by our Constellate Publishing – link at the end of this post – and working on my next three novels, I was inspired me to write an upcoming article for CrimeReads interviewing seven – count ’em! – seven crime writers about what they preferred to write, short stories or novels, and where they love to see their short stories published.

I’ll write more about that and talk about those seven wonderful authors closer to the time the CrimeReads story comes out.

Here’s that link to Constellate Publishing, by the way. We’re still looking for manuscripts of all kinds to consider for publication. We’re offering various editing and marketing services as well.

Constellate Publishing

To ‘stack or not to ‘stack: Substack

1 Reply

I’ve no idea when I first heard of Substack, the online writing and posting platform that a lot of people use and quite a few people forego. For the time being, and probably into the future, I’ll be in the latter camp. But Substack has become a hoppin’ place, especially for writers and other people who express their thoughts.

I was thinking about Substack today after reading the latest newsletter from writer Andrew Careaga. You should look him up and enjoy his writing, not only on his various platforms but also his fiction, including his short fiction story in the brand-new Bad Intentions anthology. (I’ve got a story in the anthology too; Michael Downing edited the book and Literary Kitchen published it. It’s out now.)

In the newsletter from Andrew I received today, he talks about the pros and cons of being on Substack and – this is oversimplifying, so I apologize – notes that he’s got his hands full, like a lot of us, with being ON EVERY FREAKIN’ PLATFORM IMAGINABLE. It’s the online presence writers feel they must maintain if they want to reach readers and, truth be told, people who will pay to read our work.

Andrew cites the good and bad points of Substack and links to a Guardian story from February reporting how Substack is generating revenue for and from what the Guardian calls “Nazi newsletters.”

Considering the number of people who are acquainted with Substack’s platforming of white supremacist groups and writers, it’s a little surprising that so many people who are definitely NOT Nazis, like Heather Cox Richardson, are so present on Substack. Richardson is one of 50 million Substack users worldwide, according to the Guardian.

There’s unlikely to be a mass exodus from Substack similar to that when the new owner of Twitter took over and threw the doors open wide for white supremacists and Nazis. The frequently-cited point is that if you start letting Nazis into your bar and more Nazis follow, you eventually become a Nazi bar,

And yes, I’m still on what used to be Twitter. I made the move to Bluesky for my social media platform of choice a couple of years ago. And I should note that a lot of people who temporarily left Twitter have come back.

I’m on social media platforms owned or run by truly reprehensible people and corporations, namely Meta – three separate Facebook pages – plus Instagram and Threads.

Don’t bother to tell me if Nazis own Pinterest. I have a page there, created just this year to promote my new crime novel SEVEN ANGELS. But I’ve all but given up on posting anything there because I have virtually no followers. So I don’t care if it turns into a Nazi bar with kicky hairdo and decorating ideas.

FFS, I’m even on LinkedIn.

There’s no social media or writing platform that is without concerns and extenuating circumstances. If we’re waiting for a platform owned by a corporation that isn’t reprehensible in some ways, we might have a very long wait. Why? Because there are few good corporations when it comes to mass communication. It’s their real estate, obviously, and we just toil there. That’s the case with virtually any social media platform.

And, of course, wherever people gravitate, dating back to the days of the town square, aberrant and abhorrent views will be presented.

I post on many of those social media platforms – I’m calling out my own compromised moral stance – and will continue to post here, a WordPress site I’ve had for 15 years and one on which I have subscribers (all unpaid) and which gets a couple of thousand views each month.

So my problem with Substack, overlooking the kind of moral compromise that allows me to keep using social media platforms that are equally awful, is that I’m not likely to start over and do anything but spin my wheels, i.e. the Pinterest Effect.

Is all of this thinking flawed? Yes. Is there a good solution that gives me and my work some exposure but doesn’t compromise my morals? No.

But Substack is, for the moment, a bridge too far for me. Your mileage my vary.

Here’s that Guardian story Andrew and I refer to:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/feb/07/revealed-how-substack-makes-money-from-hosting-nazi-newsletters

Do you have BAD INTENTIONS? The crime fiction anthology inspired by the music of Warren Zevon? Cause it’s here!

Leave a reply

Maybe you’ve seen some of us online talking about the BAD INTENTIONS crime story anthology. Hopefully we’ve caught your attention. Fifteen great stories by fifteen crime writers, all taking their cue from the music of the late, great Warren Zevon, edited by Michael Downing and brought to y’all by Literary Garage.

But did you know the anthology is OUT? Huh? Didja?

Okay, forgive me. It’s a project I’m excited about and I hope you are too.

My story SUNSET STAKEOUT is included in the anthology and it was inspired by Zevon’s “Looking for the Next Best Thing.” It wasn’t the Zevon tune that was uppermost in my mind when I was pitching this story to Michael. Until I listened to the song for the first time in years and realized what I was hearing. The “what the hell” lyrics. The soaring electric guitar.

To me, this all sounded like the theme for, each week, a “Rockford Files”-style TV series, featuring the rambling adventures of a private investigator named Jim Rock- wait, scratch that.

It’s not a story about Jim Rockford, played by James Garner as the personification of the best 1970s TV PI. It’s about a bunch of guys who’ve created “Sunset Stakeout,” a Rockford-adjacent TV series that, in January 1979, is facing cancellation by NBC.

How desperate will the producer, co-star and fledgling screenwriter of “Sunset Stakeout” be to save their series? Would they start looking for the next best thing – a movie financed by Los Angeles’ biggest drug dealer, the coke-purveyor to the stars?

Where else are you gonna find this level of Hollywood desperation, played for all the laughs and danger inherent in it PLUS a cameo from the Six Million Dollar Man?

You can find my story SUNSET STAKEOUT in BAD INTENTIONS, and you can find BAD INTENTIONS at the link below. I hope you love all these stories. And feast your eyes on that Frank Vatel cover!