Have it all, lose it all. You ready for more yet? (The Pettiest Blind Item You Will Ever Read part 4)

This is part four of an ongoing series. Part one can be read here. Part two can be read here. And part three can be read here.

After her time on the GRRWG board of directors, Erika took over a new committee. The “steering” committee. It was one of her parting gifts to the group that she created in her last days as president, in order to help keep us “organized.” The steering committee, chaired by Erika, had the power to redraft the by-laws and policies and procedure manual at any time. It was the ultimate power trip, though I can’t remember a time she ever actually used it after her initial revisions. It seemed like she enjoyed having control, but not necessarily using it unless she needed to punish us via inconvenience. She pulled several members into the steering committee, including me, Carol, Bronwyn, and, for some reason, Pam.

For most of my friendship with Erika, she loathed Pam. Along with the plagiarism issue, Erika felt Pam was just not a good enough or dedicated enough writer, that she didn’t pay enough attention to craft, and that she was a horrible mother. But her feelings toward Pam began to chance as the rest of us got published. With no one else to play Trilby to her Svengali, Erika revised her opinion of Pam and took her under her wing. Erika had begun working as an editor for a small press at this point, and acquired Pam’s first book. This move would obviously make Pam grateful and beholden to Erika for ever. Her loyalty was iron-clad. So now we were all expected to play nice with a woman Erika had done nothing but fill our heads with poison about. Erika had the antidote of her ego, but we had all been programmed to mistrust her.

The steering committee met on a few occasions. Every meeting wasted our collective time. No matter what objections or suggestions we raised, it was Erika at the keyboard. If she didn’t like what you suggested, it didn’t get typed into that document. Despite the fact that Ruth, then Carol, had assumed the presidency, Erika still controlled everything, and she would use that control against us if she wished.

At the same time, we began to kick around the idea of a local writing conference. One of the complaints we’d been hearing from new members was the lack of resources for writers in the area. There were groups that met at local coffee shops or book stores, but they were often populated by the stereotypical white male writer looking for an audience but seeking no real criticism. These people were looking for a secular organization (because Christian writers’ groups are plentiful in the greater Grand Rapids area) that was supportive and helpful, and while we fit that bill, we were still relatively small and hard to find. Why not have a day, we decided, where prospective members could pay to attend workshops on craft and industry? We’d invite agents and editors and set up pitch appointments. We’d get a killer keynote speaker, a nice (but affordable) hotel, and use local businesses as vendors. It could be a great opportunity, and hopefully introduce some new members to us. Everyone, including Erika, was all for it. We began meeting an hour before GRRWG to plan and strategize.

We were deep into the planning stages when the conference committee received the following email (graciously provided for reprinting by Carol; names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved):

Hi [Carol],

I’m writing to let you know I’m stepping down from conference committee. [Bronywn] has asked me to let you know she is as well. After some discussion, neither of us feel confident that GRRWG is in the position to be considering a conference at this point. Additionally, it’s unlikely that anyone will be in the position to assume leadership over this venture which would include long hours and much participation by other members to pull off. Unfortunately, we have trouble even filling speaker spots for monthly meetings.

Eventually, it would be nice to see this happen, but with a membership that’s grown only incrementally per year, the reality is a conference isn’t terribly feasible for years to come. Frankly, GRRWG isn’t really in the position to attract a big name or editors. Nor does it have the capital to support one. As it would not be an RWA event, it’s unlikely to bring in many writers. We’d have to put out a great deal of cash at the outset with no guarantee to recoup that.

My second reason for writing is to ask you to reassign my membership duties to another member. They’re small, and I don’t mind doing them, but since I’m less and less likely to be at meetings, I’ll be ineffective at acting as the membership chair. My schedule just doesn’t allow me to attend more often. I’ll be happy to hand over the attendance book, guest book and forms to the new chair.

Finally, I see in the June minutes that I was to do a cover for the writing guide. But in the July minutes, it looked as if marketing was getting ready to go. Do you need a cover still? Let me know and I’ll send this over this weekend.

I am planning to retain a membership. Additionally, I’ll continue to help [Bronwyn] with recognition and will order next year’s bookmarks.

Thanks,

[Erika]

The only thing that disappoints me in the reprinting of this email is that she didn’t sign off “regards”. If you know Erika’s identity and have ever been in contact with her via email, be aware that she considers “regards” to be the coldest, most impersonal way of ending an email. “Regards” is her equivalent to “fuck off”.

Carol refers to this letter as the, “Nobody can run a conference but me” letter. It did not have the intended effect. The conference committee forged ahead, including Bronwyn, who remained on the committee; she’d never asked Erika to resign on her behalf. Because she was no longer interested, Erika reasoned that Bronwyn would automatically follow along and took it upon herself to announce Bronwyn’s resignation.

Despite Erika’s insistence that we wouldn’t draw any “big names”, fantasy author Jacqueline Carey attended as our keynote, and an agent from a prominent literary agency came to hear pitches from attendees. The conference was small, but it hardly financially destroyed us. Though Erika didn’t attend the full event, she did “stop by” the hotel on Friday night during the pre-conference reception, presumably to gloat over our failure. When she arrived and found the event hadn’t crumbled without her leadership, she sat in the hotel bar while her mother came to the mixer and urged Bronwyn Green and others to leave the event to visit with Erika. We did not. The next day, she presented a workshop with two other authors, left immediately after, and didn’t sign at the book signing. Her behavior over the weekend was our punishment for not doing exactly what she wanted us to do.

As for Erika’s resignation as membership chair, she never turned over any of the materials Bronwyn needed to run the committee, another one of her little “punishments” meted out to purposely inconvenience us. Getting any information handed over was nearly impossible, even with Bronwyn, Erika’s BFF, as our middleman. When GRRWA, and later GRRWG, was established, Erika set up the email, email loop, and paypal accounts. When asked for these or any other resources (like the bookmarks she volunteered to provide), she would either make an excuse as to why she couldn’t do it “right now” or simply ignore emails and phone calls.

On the heels of our successful conference, GRRWG began to plan a second. This time Erika did help out, attending a few planning meetings here and there. She didn’t want to be in charge, she told us, as though that were somehow obviously on the table. She would take an easy job, like helping with registration. She also volunteered to put together folders with paper and pens for attendees that would be handed out at registration table. Fool us once, shame on you; fool us twice, shame on us. For whatever reason, we trusted her with this position and these tasks.

Two weeks before the conference, Erika was scheduled to go on a cruise to celebrate her twentieth anniversary. Before she left, she was supposed to give Bronwyn Green the list of paid attendees. We couldn’t access the Paypal account, because we didn’t have the passwords (she had set up the account during her presidency), and the date for her trip was approaching. Bronwyn asked multiple times for her to please send along the list, but when Erika did respond to the requests, it was always to say that she was just too busy getting ready for the cruise. We were down the wire and desperately needed the names, but Erika didn’t care. She had control over something and could limit our access to it if it got her off. Bronwyn made a final, last ditch attempt to get the Paypal information from Erika, who answered her cell phone from the airport in Detroit. Erika claimed it was too late, as there was no internet access. This was obviously a blatant lie; by 2012, almost every airport in the U.S. had some kind of WiFi. We never received the information, and simply had to trust that attendees had paid their conference fee. Someone (and my memory escapes me here) had to go through the lengthy process of creating a new Paypal and un-linking GRRWG’s bank account from the old one, just so we would have access.

As for the conference folders, those, like the bookmarks, did not arrive as promised. I ordered cases of folders and pens online, Bronwyn printed up stickers with our conference logo, and she and I and our friend Jonesie spent a frantic hour before registration opened assembling them. What Erika did pull through on was sitting behind the registration desk, greeting people as they checked in. When I went down to make sure she had actually showed up, she mentioned my new haircut: “I don’t like it. I liked it better longer.”

Despite the fact that we’d pulled in another big name author for our keynote and an editor from a major digital publisher to take pitches, our second conference wasn’t as successful as the first. Since the stress of the event had led to both Bronwyn and I fantasizing about car accidents that wouldn’t kill us, but would hurt us enough that we would have to resign from the committee, we decided to step down. No one else stepped up, which was a shame, but at that point, Carol had moved off the U.S. mainland and other members of the committee were ready to pass the torch, as well.

The conference debacles, while frustrating, weren’t anywhere near as damaging as the personal and professional attacks Erika launched during this time…

To Be Continued…