Living It Up on the Blacklist

So I was blacklisted recently.

 

Actually, they TRIED to blacklist me. Try being a key word, because this Twitter account, this Pub Net account really reeks of a unique kind of WTFery. Anyway, the didn’t try to blacklist just me. Dozens, if not hundreds of authors. Why? Because we donated money to Dear Author’s legal fund to help her fight a defamation cause. She’s being sued by a publisher.

I’m not going to give a giant run down events. All you need to do is go HERE to read the post which gives great background on what happen. Or THIS post.  Or you can look under the #notchilled hashtag on Twitter.

Guys. GUYS. This is a big deal. It’s horrifying to think of these authors, editors, and artists not being paid or paid in a timely matter. It’s scary to think of a publisher smacking down a blogger with a freaking lawsuit because they did a post about it. And it’s frightening to think of a publisher demanding the names of authors who confided in the blogger. And it’s really terrifying to think of the kind of precedence this could set, where you have libel and defamation lawsuits flying around the interwebs because people got butt sore over something.

A fund was set up for Dear Author to help fight the case. You can donate HERE.  I, as many other authors, donated.  To be honest, I made my donation and went on with my life. And then this weird Twitter account pops up.

And then they began tweeting publishers

Actually. No. We  donated money. We aren’t participating. And the lawsuit was filed BY THE PUBLISHER against the blogger. Not the other way around. But anyways, you know, intimidation tactics to silence authors…

And then there was this tweet:

The link they are sending to publishers is actually a list of authors who supported Dear Author and was created by people who wanted to support those authors.

Oh, look.. who’s the second name on that list. That would be me.  At first I was like LOL, really? They are legit trying to blacklist us by contacting our publishers? There was only one way I could respond to this.

And…

And you know what?

The authors who are potentially effected by this whole mess need a voice. They need to make sure people know what is happening. The last thing anyone needs is some egg account trying to intimidate random authors into silence by spamming everyone under the sun. But you know what, you strange little, really suspicious Twitter account, that isn’t going to stop anyone from talking about this. It’s not going to make authors take back their money. Sorry.