the left room

1. http://jerermyduns-watch.blogspot.co.uk/

The original, and still the most revealing. Its profile claims the author is Maria James, and yet the initial post begins thus:

“Dear Jeremy,

My name is Emily James, and I am a human rights lawyer who campaigns against the surveillance society.”

Its initial focus is on Jeremy’s taping of a conversation with the author Steve Roach (made without informing him) about Roach’s experiences of being bullied by bestselling author Stephen Leather. You can read a storify about that here.

[It’s worth noting that Roach did feel maligned by the attention, not least because, at this point, he felt he had buried the hatchet with Leather. Leather’s own attitude to that rapprochement was to publish a private email from Steve Roach on his Facebook page, and make fun of him.]

Regardless, this is a blog that was clearly created in haste – hence the spelling error in the title – and one which was then swiftly, even cruelly, abandoned, like a wretch.

2. http://jeremyduns-watch.blogspot.co.uk/

Also alleged to be by Maria James. Maria James 2. Ma2ia James.

[Actually, as a brief aside, no record appears to exist to support Maria’s existence as a human rights lawyer – or, indeed, as a human being. She does have a twitter account – here – which alternates between tweeting links to blogs about Jeremy Duns, and retweets of messages with feminist content. The feminist retweets may well be automated, based on keywords, as Maria has had at least one terrible misfire, involving posting an image of a blowjob. Another author who uses automated tweets is Stephen Leather.]

The content here reiterates some of the concerns of the previous blog, before evolving into accusations of misogyny, the main evidence for which appears to be that Jeremy admires the novel Casino Royale. It also has a pop at me, and others. Logic is tortured; facts, brushed aside. This is not a blog prepared or fit for discourse; it will not survive well. And indeed, it appears to have fallen into a state of decomposition, with its penultimate flail at life an almost incomprehensible attack on David Hewson for writing adaptations of the (very famous) TV series The Killing:

“Note the use of the description of a ‘gaping wound’ that is ‘like a second sick smile’. I can assume that Hewson is trying to compare it to a vagina. Sick. Just a one off? Before that Hewson published ‘The Killing I’”.

Another writer that has criticised David Hewson is Stephen Leather.

3. http://jeremydunsjournalist.blogspot.co.uk/

It is an anonymous blog, and the content is mainly concerned with whether Jeremy is a journalist or not. (Spoiler: he is a journalist).

There is some junk DNA in this thing about Jeremy editing his own wikipedia page. Which, as I check it, yes, he appears to have done – openly, under his own name, with limited success, and with the aim of correcting the malicious attentions of numerous anonymous editors. For a while, the entry was mostly focused on his altercations with other authors and journalists: R J Ellory; Q R Markham; Lenore Hart; Nate Thayer. The present version – hard-fought-for; wrangled over – now also includes mention of an author named Stephen Leather.

4. http://jeremydunsjournalist.wordpress.com/

More of the same, more-or-less. We look at these things and yawn, after a while, don’t we? The same dead eyes; a similar path worn in the dirt as the useless fucking thing circles, then circles again. But we press on. This blog is distinguished for two reasons. The first is its almost incoherent howl of plagiarism, which is based on the notion that the Telegraph republishing an article previously published (by them) by Jeremy constitutes self-plagiarism. Well, it doesn’t, obviously, but this is a blog, and it cannot possibly understand. Take this thing out back and put it out of its suffering. Wait, sorry. I get ahead of myself.

The second is this post, which is interesting only in terms of the screengrabs it uses to illustrate its points. At least two of them are clearly screengrabs made by Stephen Leather (they’re amongst the motley collection visible here). Perhaps these images have been absorbed by osmosis and incorporated into the whole of this blog-thing, this thing that not even a mother would love, and which should, undeniably, die. Leather should sue. But then, most of these blogs use photos and images they have no right to use, so perhaps he should not.

5. http://jeremydunsauthor.blogspot.se/

This ostensibly puny creation is a clone of the following .co.uk site – but dislocated to a Swedish address – so we’ll just move swiftly on to that instead, and speak of it no longer.

6. http://jeremydunsauthor.blogspot.co.uk/

Most notable for its false accusations of sockpuppetry. As any fule kno, it’s not sockpuppetry to use a pseudonym or an elaborate username online – and many people log into forums with names that differ from their given ones. The important thing is what you’re using that false name for, and whether you’re pretending to lack an interest while you do so.

For example, Stephen Leather admitted creating accounts to promote his work – accounts that readers might assume were other disinterested readers like themselves. They had no idea that the individual recommending Stephen Leather’s books was Stephen Leather himself. That’s sockpuppetry. Whereas, while Jeremy initially seems to be promoting his work under an alias, it’s clear upon reading the screengrabs that he has self-identified as the author of the book he’s discussing. He’s not being a conman. He’s not misleading anyone. He’s not using a sockpuppet.

This blog is also notable on a teeny, tiny level for using the same screengrabs of Jeremy’s reviews as the final blog to be discussed, but honestly, this blog would take anything at this point, and it’s best not to indulge it.

7. http://authorjeremyduns.wordpress.com/

This stumbling, crawling one is notable for two primary reasons. There are two posts. The first attacks Jeremy’s sales figures, using a screengrab that resembles one Stephen Leather took to misrepresent my own. (Leather is obsessed with sales figures, by the way. See the comment thread here, and likely a zillion other places). You’re tempted to say “and how many books have you sold, anonymous blog?” and also “what does it matter, anyway?”, but to do so would only encourage the thing, and it’s better to leave it be.

The second – and come on, now; we’re nearly done – is the accusation that Jeremy exchanged reviews with another writer. The evidence is that they have both favourably reviewed each other’s books. There is zero evidence – as things stand, on the basis of that – that this is a “review swap”, rather than one writer honestly admiring another that works in the same genre. And the names are not hidden. And where is my shotgun, and where is the back of the motherfucking barn?

Not that this blog has much of one, of course – but still.

The Left Room was (briefly) used as a reference on Julian Ruck’s wikipedia page, which (again, briefly) mentioned his admitted plagiarism. It doesn’t presently, due to the attentions of an editor called Bagehot1, who has been carefully curating that page (and only that page). What interests me is a comment left by Bagehot1 in defence of one of the edits made:

“This ‘controvesy’ insert is both mailicious and libellous and is not credibly sourced. The blogger John Abell is presently under police investiagtion along with the left room blogger” (17.26, 10 February 2013)

The “police investiagtion” (sic) presumably refers to this, in which Julian Ruck, a man otherwise much concerned with taxpayers’ money being wasted on behalf of authors, has lodged a claim of harrassment against a clearly satirical website that jokingly threatened to have monkeys throw dog shit and his own books at his house. As absurd as that is, I don’t have any responsibility for that website, so can only assume I’m under investigation for the mentions I’ve given Mr Ruck here at The Left Room – which amount to two.

The first is of no consequence. The second is here. That’s the one where I accuse Julian Ruck not only of writing a pathetically sexist column – as such an accusation would be tautologous – but also blatantly plagiarising Christopher Hitchens. He is a plagiarist, I say. Julian Ruck is a plagiarist. “Step forward if you’re not a plagiarist – where do you think you’re going, Julian?” And so on. And shame on the Llanelli Star, which is still, as of today, hosting stolen content and continuing to publish his column. The only reasonable assumption is that Ruck has particularly embarrassing photographs of someone in charge there, assuming anyone is.

Anyway – if Dyfed-Powys police really are investigating my blog, the relevant links they’ll be interested in are above. Always happy to co-operate.

There have been a few arguments, disagreements, debates and falling-outs on Twitter recently around the subject of illegal firesharing. The critic and writer Damien G Walter has been more-or-less at the centre, arguing for the virtues of piracy and free books, aggravating many people both with the content and the tone of his comments. Yesterday, he wrote an article for the Guardian – free to read – that explored the issue a little, although not in depth.

I figured I’d take the opportunity, skimming over some of his comments, to talk a little bit about how I feel about the subject.

All feelings, as always, are subject to change.

1. The Basics

Debates on piracy – and I’ll just use that term as a shorthand for illegal filesharing – tend to be fairly tedious, because the various arguments are familiar and the responses well-worn and rehearsed. It can be a lot like chess openings: the same moves provoke the same replies. For example, if I say “piracy is theft”, you will reply “no, it isn’t!”, and tell me why. Sicilian Dragon.

So let’s get a few basic things out of the way first. Piracy is not simple theft. It isn’t the same as walking out of a shop with a book hidden under your arm. In the latter case, you are depriving the shop of the value of that copy of the book, and – because the shop doesn’t know – possibly depriving future browsers of being able to buy the copy the shop would reorder to take its place. That doesn’t happen with piracy: the original copy remains, and it can still be bought. Theft is subtraction, whereas piracy is multiplication. Piracy, put simply, is getting something for nothing. That is the only real similarity between the two. Although it’s worth noting that the desire to “get something for nothing” is often part of the disdain people have for literal thieves.

Okay, look here:

Walter seems to think that the people who object to piracy lack technological knowledge, which isn’t particularly admirable of him. For what it’s worth, I completely understand that piracy can’t be stopped: that, without gross and wholly unacceptable limitations being placed on personal freedom, or some kind of catastrophic social collapse, it will only ever get easier to copy and distribute files. That’s a world away from claiming, as he has appeared to, that it’s a positive thing. We’ll come back to this.

2. Free books

For the purposes of what follows in this bit, I’m going to conflate piracy with giving books away for free. They’re not the same thing. Clearly, there’s a moral difference between choosing to give your books away yourself and someone else choosing on your behalf. But this is more about the benefits of having free books circulating, so we’ll meld the topics.

A key question put to Walter during the twitter exchanges can be stated as: “if you’re giving books away for free as a marketing strategy, where does the money come from?” It’s a reasonable question. Walter’s response –

- appears to reference Tim O’Reilly’s famous observation that “obscurity is a far greater threat to authors and creative artists than piracy”. Walter also mentions Cory Doctorow -

- who has achieved hundreds of thousands of book sales, even though he gives the same work away for free. Leaving aside the tiresome fact that – once again – Walter assumes his critics are less educated than he is, how does giving stuff away for free to make money work?

Well, it’s fairly straightforward. The act of giving away hundreds of thousands of free books makes no money directly but also costs nothing in itself. The readers who receive those free copies can then be divided into three categories. The largest of these – the vast majority – contains (1) the readers who would never have bought the book anyway and do not go on to support you financially in any way. (This is why a free download absolutely does not equal a lost sale; there was never going to be a sale to these people, so absolutely nothing has been lost). The remaining two categories contain: (2) the people who were not going to buy it but then do support you financially in some way; and (3) the people who would have bought it and then don’t. If (2) is larger than (3), then giving away free books has probably made you money.

It’s essentially a gamble on human nature – but one that can easily pay off, and it shouldn’t be surprising that it does. Most readers, for example, are good people with a passion for books. They want to reward the creators. And it certainly appears to have worked for Cory Doctorow.

Will it work for you? Who knows, but here are some obvious problems I see with the free approach:

a) The world has changed since Doctorow began doing this, which was (correct me if I’m wrong) the early to mid 2000s. His arguments back then included the idea that reading on screens was an unsatisfactory experience, and that many readers who enjoyed the ebook would want a physical copy, either instead of or as well as. And back then, ebooks formed a vanishingly small proportion of the overall market. Given the explosion in ebooks since, and the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated ereading devices, I’m not convinced these points hold true to the same extent.

b) Cory Doctorow is Cory Doctorow. Not only is he a bestselling writer of fiction, he’s an articulate and sought-after expert on digital media, DRM, copyright etc. His public persona, in other words, is inextricably linked with this subject matter; his reputation has been built on it. Yes, every success story can be considered a special case, but Doctorow is perceived not simply as a writer who gives his work away for free, but as a pioneer in the whole area of digital rights. You will not be a pioneer; he got there first. You will just be someone giving your work away for free. And the more people pursue the free strategy (much as with the 99p pricing strategy) the harder it will be to stand out.

c) We’re not in the music industry, where artists can at least hope to make money from won-over fans who maybe don’t pay for the music itself but at least attend tours and buy merchandise. (Writers can perform, of course, but – again – you’re not Cory Doctorow. Pub bands on their debuts get larger crowds than many midlist authors). We’re also different in that our media is produced and consumed in different ways. There are fewer readers than listeners, it takes much longer to read a novel than to listen to an album, and the replay factor is considerably lower. Those three factors combined make giving a novel away for free significantly more of a financial risk than giving away an album.

3. What this means for you.

Doctorow is certainly more aware than Walter appears to be that his approach won’t work for everyone. Walter seems to think:

It would take a lifetime to unpack everything wrong with such a blanket statement. He also appears to take the position that because the most pirated authors are the most successful, the former causes the latter:

It’s possible, in certain cases, that this is true, but I’d suggest that for the most part he’s getting the cart a huge distance before the horse there. I have more faith in another of O’Reilly’s famous observations as an explanation: that piracy is a form of progressive taxation. The most successful authors are pirated the most because they’re the most successful authors, so they pay the most “tax”. At best, it seems baseless to assume most of them became successful because of piracy. Evidence, basically, or GTFO.

4. Where you are determines what you see

There will always be a degree of subjectivity to this debate. Much has been made of Walter’s position as a largely unpublished writer. I think that’s unfair, although it’s true that the loudest exponents of piracy and free books are generally likely to be the people least at risk from it – the very successful who can weather it, like Doctorow and Neil Gaiman, and the people with nothing to lose from it. People like me, somewhere on the midlist, are more conflicted. This is human nature. But I dislike this kind of thinking:

Because, yes, obviously I’m concerned about my own position – but why imagine that everybody is purely out for themselves? The larger debate, which encompasses piracy, free books, cheap books, ebooks, and so on, is also about the kind of society you want to live in, along with the approach you want society to have to culture.

At this point in my life, for example, voting Tory would probably benefit me economically, but I would never do so, because I don’t think my actions, and the repercussions of them, should be centred solely on what’s best for me. So when it comes to ebooks and piracy, I’m not just thinking about my sales; I’m also thinking about the large number of people who have helped me get my books where they are, and the whole social and financial infrastructure that underlies that. I’m thinking, for example, about what the high street looks like. I’m thinking about sustainability. I’m thinking about where people are going to work to earn the money to buy the things people are selling at these cheap prices, and where they’re going to work to be able to afford to produce them. I’m thinking about whether what comes after is really what is better simply because it comes after. In short, it’s really not just about what leaves me with the most money. And that, incidentally, is also why I buy the media I want and like.

5. What I think

I have endless and fantastically violent contempt for the sites making money off the back of work they didn’t help create, and for the people behind them. I have nothing, really, against the ordinary people who illegally download my books – I can’t stop you, most of you wouldn’t have bought them anyway, and I just hope that, if you enjoy them, you consider buying some of them at some point, to support not just me, but also the other people, less visible, whose work made my books possible in the first place.

One last thing:

I think this is a good article to end with a link to. It’s lengthy, but very good. Along with other points, it makes the case that free isn’t really free. I suppose it emphasises the points I just made, especially directly above, and that last tweet of Damien’s. Here’s a snippet:

“Let’s look at other things you (or your parents) might pay for each month and compare.

Smart phone with data plan: $40-100 a month.

High speed internet access: $30-60 dollars a month. Wait, but you use the university network? Well, buried in your student fees or tuition you are being charged a fee on the upper end of that scale.

Tuition at American University, Washington DC (excluding fees, room and board and books): $2,086 a month.

Car insurance or Metro card?  $100 a month?

Or simply look at the  value of the web appliances you use to enjoy music:

$2,139.50 = 1 smart phone + 1 full size ipod + 1 macbook.

Why do you pay real money for this other stuff but not music?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The existential questions that your generation gets to answer are these:

Why do we value the network and hardware that delivers music but not the music itself?

Why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?

Why do we gladly give our money to some of the largest richest corporations in the world but not the companies and individuals who create and sell music?

This is a bit of hyperbole to emphasize the point. But it’s as if:

Networks: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!

Hardware: Giant mega corporations. Cool! have some money!

Artists: 99.9 % lower middle class. Screw you, you greedy bastards!

Congratulations, your generation is the first generation in history to rebel by unsticking it to the man and instead sticking it to the weirdo freak musicians!

I am genuinely stunned by this. Since you appear to love first generation Indie Rock, and as a founding member of a first generation Indie Rock band I am now legally obligated to issue this order: kids, lawn, vacate.

You are doing it wrong.”

This is a quick(ish) and off-the-cuff(ish) response to Christopher Fowler’s piece today in the Independent, about crime fiction losing the plot. You can read his piece here, and I think you should, because any thoughtful discussion about crime fiction is, I think, good for the genre and should be welcomed. My random(ish) thoughts follow.

__________________________________

One obvious problem with any kind of analysis of crime fiction is that it’s a hugely popular subsection of fiction as a whole. It sells – or rather, certain crime fiction titles sell – very well indeed. When looking at any field from afar, there’s always going to be a tendency to notice the tallest poppies first, and it’s important to remember that doesn’t mean there isn’t interesting stuff going on in the undergrowth. To put it another way, any analysis of the deficiencies (if that is what they are) of bestselling crime fiction titles is more a comment on the tastes of the masses that an artistic evaluation of crime fiction as a genre. It should come as no real surprise that if you’re looking for something unusual and different from what is mainstream and popular, you’re more likely to find it at the edges, away from the centre.

That said, I think Fowler’s right to highlight realism – or the pursuit of it – as a problem. It’s quite correct to say that one of the strengths of crime fiction is shining a light on and exploring social issues, but that’s a world away from claiming the majority of it to be realistic. And I think there are a number of problems with doing so.

1.

In a vague and airy way, I’d say that describing any fiction as “realistic” is problematic in itself. What does realistic even mean, in the context of such a claim? Fiction involves characters, events and locations, and not all of them can be real, or else we’re talking about fact or documentary rather than fiction. Realistic, as a concept, is hard to quantify when it comes to fiction. Angels and pinheads stuff. On a basic level, if you tell me “Ian Rankin’s novels are set in Edinburgh”, I’ll reply that I think “set in Edinburgh” is doing a huge amount of work in that sentence – work that, when you really think about it, is actually very strange labour indeed. Fiction isn’t set anywhere, apart from as type on a page.

2.

In the context of crime fiction, nobody really knows what realistic is in the first place. We’re often told crime readers are smart, so you have to get the details right, but at the same time, most crime readers aren’t – for example – trained pathologists. That’s a very specific example, of course, but I think it’s a useful illustration. An average reader’s conception of what an autopsy scene in a work of fiction should look like is not dictated by real world knowledge of what they do look like, but by an ever-enlarging sample of how they have encountered them before in other works of fiction. That is not being realistic. That is an arms race built around suspension of disbelief.

To put it another way, The Wire may well be very realistic indeed, but I imagine a substantial number of people who praise it as such wouldn’t be able to point at Baltimore if they were presented with a map of Baltimore. What matters is not so much that it’s realistic, but that it’s convincing on its own terms, and that it’s very good. Fiction can be just as effective and revelatory and meaningful – and real - when it’s a stone skipping across the surface of reality as when it’s one that actively dives.

3.

Hat in the ring, I think – in my darkest and most private moments – that crime fiction as an overall genre is probably more at odds with realism than at home with it.  Crime fiction demands that certain things happen (although different subgenres obviously shift the timescale, camera angle and character focus). Crime fiction as a genre is not simply fiction about crime, but fiction that deals with a crime in certain specific ways. It is usually murder, for example, and it is usually solved. If you do otherwise with your story, you risk leaving the genre.

Fowler is right to say this flies in the face of reality in itself – never mind the often ostentatious nature of the bad guy’s schemes and eventual capture or murder. But even more so, it’s the concept of bad guy that’s problematic. Anecdotally, I’d say most of the writers of procedurals I know are politically left-leaning (thriller writers, more to the right), and I’d say the kind of realistic and intelligent analysis of crime those writers can provide is actually at odds with the more conservative demands of the genre – that there is a bad guy, and that he gets his comeuppance at the end. Of course, some commercially-successful writers manage it (Mark Billingham’s In The Dark, for example, eschews big set-pieces and obvious jeopardy for quieter and more resonant drama), but it’s a tough line to walk, at least while staying in the genre.

__________________________________

And finally, I think one of the real problems crime fiction has as a genre is that our traffic is almost universally one-way. We’re all aware by now that genre boundaries are porous and genre labels somewhat arbitrary, and we’ve all heard that old saw about the best genre books being snatched away as “literary”, but it seems to me that even if all that is true, crime fiction still gives away great authors far more often than it takes them.

By now, as a genre, crime fiction has innumerable recognisable tropes, patterns, characters, settings and so on. If we’re going to suggest that crime fiction is stagnating, I’d suggest in turn that it’s only because we recognise those features of the crime genre in certain arrangements, and not when they’re employed in more experimental ways. Certainly, it is easier for a crime novel to be accepted as an SF novel than vice versa; our passport control, I think, can seem way too strict. There is no reason why China Mieville’s The City & The City, or Lavie Tidhar’s Osama, or Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn and Child, or Adam Roberts’s Jack Glass shouldn’t be considered and discussed as works of crime fiction. They use our furniture, after all – our fixtures and fittings. They just don’t arrange them in a conventional order.

But in discussions such as this, those sorts of book, and many others, do tend to get lost in the undergrowth. When you take a step back, and see the land around, I really do think that, overall, it looks like a pretty healthy field.

Readers of this blog will be familiar with the author Julian Ruck, who has darkened our hallways before. Ruck now has a newspaper column, for the Llanelli Star, and has even promised to write – at some point – about myself and David Hewson, presumably because we were both outspoken about the failure of his ebook festival, long after he’d privately exasperated at least me with his offensive and unprofessional antics.

Anyway, he has his column. His latest is called “Why aren’t women funny?” – and you can read it online here. From the title, you can imagine that it’s awful, and it is. But you can then read the article “Why women aren’t funny”, by Christopher Hitchens, here. It is also awful, although at least it has, in common with most of his stuff, a little flair. Hitchens’s article was written over five years ago, and is reasonably well-known. Let us compare it with Julian Ruck’s article, published two days ago.

1.

Julian Ruck:

“ARE women funny?

One often hears women saying: “Oh, he’s a good laugh” or “He’s so funny”, but does one ever hear men saying the same thing about women?”

Christopher Hitchens:

“Be your gender what it may, you will certainly have heard the following from a female friend who is enumerating the charms of a new (male) squeeze: “He’s really quite cute, and he’s kind to my friends, and he knows all kinds of stuff, and he’s so funny … However, there is something that you absolutely never hear from a male friend who is hymning his latest (female) love interest: “She’s a real honey, has a life of her own … [interlude for attributes that are none of your business] … and, man, does she ever make ‘em laugh.””

2.

Julian Ruck:

“So why then do women, who have all us men at their mercy, struggle to be funny?”

Christopher Hitchens:

“Why are women, who have the whole male world at their mercy, not funny?”

3. 

Julian Ruck:

“It’s probably just as well I suspect, because let’s face it, these days all we men have left, is our sense of humour. At least, when it comes to impressing the ladies.

Make no mistake, women have out-careered us, out-moneyed us and outsmarted us.

The thing is that women, have no corresponding need to “pull” men in this way.

They hold all the cards, whether men like it or not. A shapely bosom, a fine pair of legs and even a pretty smile (in that order) and we men are off with the fairies!”

Christopher Hitchens:

“Women have no corresponding need to appeal to men in this way. They already appeal to men, if you catch my drift.”

4.

Julian Ruck:

“Scientific research would have you believe that women have less expectation of a reward, which in this case is the punchline, so when they finally get the joke they are apparently more pleased about it. Yes I know, don’t we just love our modern “Cosmo” little insights!”

Christopher Hitchens:

 “”Women appeared to have less expectation of a reward, which in this case was the punch line of the cartoon,” said the report’s author, Dr. Allan Reiss. “So when they got to the joke’s punch line, they were more pleased about it.” The report also found that “women were quicker at identifying material they considered unfunny.””

5.

Julian Ruck:

“An average man then, has only one weapon left in his masculine arsenal — he sure as hell had better be able to make the lady laugh! If you can make ‘em laugh, and I’m talking here about the peals of delight, head-back, every tooth on show, and deep-throated mirth variety, then nine cases out of 10, you’re onto a winner.”

Christopher Hitchens:

 “An average man has just one, outside chance: he had better be able to make the lady laugh. Making them laugh has been one of the crucial preoccupations of my life. If you can stimulate her to laughter—I am talking about that real, out-loud, head-back, mouth-open-to-expose-the-full-horseshoe-of-lovely-teeth, involuntary, full, and deep-throated mirth; the kind that is accompanied by a shocked surprise and a slight (no, make that a loud) peal of delight—well, then, you have at least caused her to loosen up and to change her expression. I shall not elaborate further.”

6.

Julian Ruck:

“I’m not saying there are no decent female comedians about the place, but there are without doubt, more awful female comedians than there are male, and like it or not the good ones are usually either boiler- suited or Jewish — or a combination of the two.”

Christopher Hitchens:

“This is not to say that women are humorless, or cannot make great wits and comedians … In any case, my argument doesn’t say that there are no decent women comedians. There are more terrible female comedians than there are terrible male comedians, but there are some impressive ladies out there. Most of them, though, when you come to review the situation, are hefty or dykey or Jewish, or some combo of the three.”

7.

Julian Ruck:

“Finally then, quick witted and incisive humour is I am told, a sign of intelligence, and many women (at least those of more mature years) still believe that appearing to be too bright can be rather off-putting to those men showing an interest as it were.

Either this, or men just simply don’t want women to be funny.”

Christopher Hitchens:

“Precisely because humor is a sign of intelligence (and many women believe, or were taught by their mothers, that they become threatening to men if they appear too bright), it could be that in some way men do not want women to be funny.”

_____________________

Ruck ends his piece with a plaintive “You decide.” All right – I will. I decide that, aside from being sexist and unpleasant, Julian Ruck is a plagiarist. I look forward to reading whatever he eventually writes about me – assuming, that is, I haven’t read it somewhere else before.

It appears that Amazon has instigated a new policy on reviews: one that has seen many existing book reviews being deleted, and others being refused. This has, understandably, caused much consternation and discussion online. Here is an initial post on the subject. Here is a more recent one, which goes some way to explaining what Amazon’s new policy is:

“We do not allow reviews on behalf of a person or company with a financial interest in the product or a directly competing product. This includes authors, artists, publishers, manufacturers, or third-party merchants selling the product. As a result, we’ve removed your reviews for this title. Any further violations of our posted Guidelines may result in the removal of this item from our website.”

Taken at face value, it appears – put bluntly – that Amazon no longer accepts book reviews from people within the publishing industry. This is presently limited to accounts where the connection is made explicit (eg accounts that are linked to a specific author page), but presumably the spirit of it, at least, extends, and things may change. There are many things to say about this, but here are some initial thoughts.

1. Free speech.

This is not an issue of free speech, a term which is much abused and debased. Amazon is a private company that owns its own web space; it has no more obligation to allow you to speak on its site than I do to allow you to stick a sign up in my garden. It could conceivably become a free speech issue if Amazon controlled so much of the available reviewing space that it became impossible to review outside of them in a meaningful way. But that is not the case, and, if it were, there would be other discussions to be had. Presently, the idea this is a free speech issue is risible.

2. It’s unfair.

Yes, I would say it is. It seems to be completely over-the-top. Perhaps that’s simply because Amazon sells such a huge volume of material that any new algorithm intended to sieve it all will inevitably be blunt and cumbersome in its first few iterations.

As things stand, it flies in the face of conventional criticism, in which writers reviewing writers has a fine and long-standing tradition, and it makes the mistake of assuming that writers are in direct, one-to-one competition with each other. (We aren’t, although all of us are competing for time). Even worse is the troubling coda: “Any further violations of our posted Guidelines may result in the removal of this item from our website”. This is not only absurdly heavy-handed and misdirected, but clearly open to mischief. Finally, these measures are unlikely to stop abuse of the review system; they barely even make it difficult.

In short, if things are as reported, Amazon’s changes are a massive failure.

That said, kudos is still due to them for doing something. Because they didn’t need to, and I didn’t expect them to. Amazon barely break even (if that) on sales of physical Kindles and they lose money on heavily-discounted traditional ebooks. In the case of self-published ebooks, they take a tremendous cut for doing practically nothing (just hosting, basically). It shouldn’t matter to them which of those books sell as long as enough books sell; they get their cut regardless of the quality of the content or why a particular book makes the bestseller lists. So there’s no impetus on them to act even vaguely as gatekeepers, and I’m quietly impressed that they want to, however minimally and ineffectively.

It’s actually one of the reasons why the No Sock Puppets Here Please letter was directed towards readers. I personally had little faith that any forward movement on this issue would come from above – either retailers like Amazon, or publishers – as there was no reason for it to. Plus, I tend to favour grassroots-driven change over top-down movements. So I was pleasantly surprised at Amazon’s actions, at least, if not pleased by they way they acted.

3. It’s the fault of you bastards.

Some people have centred on this – that Amazon’s reaction is heavy-handed and self-defeating, and that this is the fault of both the people behind and signatories to the No Sock Puppets Here Please letter. There was certainly a lot of press coverage around the letter, along with the issues it raised, and it seems fairly likely that all of that was a motivation for Amazon doing what they’ve done. Since some people feel we shouldn’t have written the letter, it’s natural to blame us when Amazon do something else those people feel they shouldn’t do as an apparent consequence. Joe Konrath, as is to be expected, is annoyed. His latest blogpost, and his comments under, contain the following direct opposites of insight:

“Congratulations, NSPHP signatories. Because of your concerns about Amazon’s review policy and your ridiculous little petition, and the resulting media witch hunt, thousands of legitimate reviews have now been deleted. Good thing you brought it to Amazon’s attention. You should be very proud.

I was going to use a “one bad apple spoils the whole bunch” analogy here, but that isn’t appropriate, since that petition had over 400 author signatures. I think it’s more like tattling on a fellow student for making fart noises in class, and then the teacher making the whole class skip recess as punishment.

But let us all applaud Democracy In Action. You complained. Amazon listened to you. And now you’ve lost thousands of honest reviews.

If it makes you feel better, I’m sure a few sock puppet reviews were also deleted along with all the legit ones. So once again, congrats. You have killed an annoying mosquito using a nuclear weapon, collateral damage be damned.”

And:

“Amazon reacted to a bunch of holier-than-thou authors. I don’t like how Amazon reacted, but causality is key here.

Without the NSPHP hullabaloo we wouldn’t be having this discussion. But I’m very curious if anyone who signed that petition is applauding Amazon’s actions here.”

And:

“I’m not absolving Amazon. They screwed up. But they were responding to moral panic started by a few misguided morons who didn’t think things through but loved to point fingers and get their names in newspapers.

If I invented a time machine and eliminated three or four pinheads, we wouldn’t be having this problem. Which I still might so, as no on will mourn their erasure from human history.”

Yeah, well, good luck with that.

Also in those comments (and below John Rickards’s excellent piece) Barry Eisler invokes the Law of Unintended Consequences – presumably because, having waded through the free speech debacle, many of Joe’s audience will just be grateful for the merest flickering thought that someone around there has a clue what they’re fucking talking about. Similarly, Blake Crouch on Twitter comments to one of the people who signed the letter: “I’m pissed b/c your self-righteous bluster has cost me and many others good honest reviews. Thx for that.”

Chains of causation are complex things, and one of the interesting things about them is that, when we don’t think, our personal biases tend to dictate where we stop and point and say “it’s because of this”. If I wanted to, I could take this all the way back to Stephen Leather. After all, it was his admission on stage at Harrogate that he used sock puppet accounts that led to Jeremy Duns chasing and exposing him for what he was. That, in turn, led to the environment in which R J Ellory was exposed. John Locke’s revelation fed into that from an angle, but would probably have amounted to less in isolation.

Then, there were all the people who stepped up in support of these authors’ behaviours – I lost track of the number of “all authors do it” comments I saw online – and who also helped cause the letter. And then the letter itself, with the publicity around it (very little of it sought out, by the way; the story was already running). The bloggers who then picked it up and discussed it, including Barry and Joe, the latter of which boasts of his audience and influence. And so on.

Then finally, Amazon, taking the action they have.

(And us, obviously, now talking about it again. So it will go).

You can assign “fault” at any step along the way, and clearly, personal bias will come into it as no step is inescapably inciteful of the next. I don’t really see the No Sock Puppets Here letter in itself as being devalued because it may have helped to contribute to a dubious outcome. I see it more as pointing out “there is a wasp on your collar!” If the person then smashes themselves repeatedly in the neck with a hammer, that’s clearly quite bad, but the overly exaggerated response doesn’t mean there wasn’t a wasp there, and that it wasn’t worth pointing it out in the first place. So – if we need to apportion blame – I’d say it’s obviously Amazon’s fault.

Of course, I am biased. And people who are biased in other ways may well disagree, and find other ways to frame it.

Where am I at, politically?

I’d hesitate to call myself a feminist, not because I wouldn’t personally identify as such, but because I know it can piss some women off to have a man do so. At the same time, I wouldn’t call myself a “feminist ally” either, as that sounds absurdly subservient, and also implies a degree of activism I don’t really partake in. I’d say that I’m interested in feminism, see things generally from a feminist point of view, and think concepts like patriarchy are enormously useful and revealing ways of looking at the world.

None of which I want a cookie for, incidentally; I’m just trying to explain. Basically, it’s why I feel slightly awkward being a man writing in defence of a woman, when no defence is, really, required. And yet here we are.

What happened recently is this. A site was set up attacking Jeremy Duns. (There have been two sites, actually, but the person couldn’t spell Jeremy right the first time they tried). Jeremy spends a lot of time chasing people online, so it’s natural he makes enemies, and since he’s generally right, it’s also natural that those enemies manifest themselves in fairly pathetic ways. This particular one focused on the allegations around Stephen Leather, although it’s hard to say whether that was the real motivation behind it, or who might be responsible. Jeremy responded in the comments, linking to an interview Leather gave about his attitude to Thai bar girls. Fairly unpleasant stuff, albeit typical. I hadn’t read it before, so – bored – I randomly tweeted the link to it, along with a quote from him about how the girls these days weren’t as pretty as they used to be.

In reply, Leather tweeted three times, the last of which was this:

A few people were shocked by this, and I understand. But it’s basically just bargain-basement misogyny – depressing and depressingly familiar. Let’s look at it.

First, there’s the implication that a woman can “improve with age”. This is basically saying that your partner is there to look good: as a trophy on your arm; as a prize; as an object. The idea is that women should be valued solely by the way they look, not who they are, and that if they fail to meet a particular man’s criteria, they must be judged on that. They must be made to feel unworthy. Because that is all women are.

Second, there is an implicit attack on what is clearly seen as property. Leather has no interest in engaging in argument, but seeks to win a point with a spurious trump card. He might as well have said “your house is run down”. He is seeking to diminish me, or make me feel diminished, by attacking something he sees as belonging to me and which is somehow depreciating in value. Of course, my wife does not belong to me, but it speaks very clearly to how he sees women (and also, ironically, to the views expressed in the interview I linked to). Women are currency to him, and he is showing his wallet, and thinks it is impressive. He thinks insinuating “your wife is ugly” is a reflection on me, not on her – and more to the point, not on him for doing so in the first place.

Those two points tie together. What is made clear by this (as well as the otherwise irrelevant “I sell x number of books and they’re just envious!” comments he’s scattered across the internet) is that Leather requires the admiration of other men. I sell this many books! My woman looks like this! Admire me! It would be offensive if it wasn’t so risible and pathetic. Or perhaps, vice versa.

___________________________

Just quickly: one keen memory I have is of the birth of my son.

It was a difficult birth; afterwards, more than one midwife would tell us that if we’d asked for the worst birth possible, well, we got it. It was a bad and busy forty-eight hours, and I don’t remember a lot of it. But I do remember that my wife, throughout it all, kept apologising to the doctors for putting them out. With everything that she was going through, she was still thinking of them, and how she was making things harder for them. Because that’s the kind of person she is.

Listen: she doesn’t need to improve with age (whatever that even fucking means) and she doesn’t need to be or become anybody apart from who she is. If that’s your argument, then sorry, you’ve lost.

But you know what? It wouldn’t matter anyway, what she was like. You don’t win arguments by doing that. You don’t do anything except make yourself look bad. If you have something intelligent to say to me, about what I’ve said and what you think about it, then just be brave and say it. To me. I’m not fucking hard to find.

Earlier this week, I was one of several people involved in drafting the open letter in the previous post, to which I also added my signature. Since then, the letter has been posted online (here), where others are welcome to add their signatures as well.

At the time of writing this, nearly 400 people have done so. Naturally, there has also been a degree of discussion and criticism of the letter from others, including (but not limited to) Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath. This post is not addressed to either of those critics in particular, but I wanted to mention a few points of criticism and clarify where I stand. It should go without saying that the opinions below are mine, and do not represent any of the other signatories to the letter.

1. It’s a witch-hunt, specifically of the three writers named.

Well, not in my eyes, it’s not. As you can imagine, one of the lengthiest discussions had while drafting the letter was whether to mention the three writers by name. Arguments were made on both sides.

My view was that the focus of the letter should be on the behaviour itself rather than the individuals, but that there was no reason not to name them. For readers unfamiliar with what had taken place, it explained the context for writing the letter in the first place; for readers familiar with events, the names were known anyway. And all three writers were already in the news, frequently mentioned in the same major articles.

As long as the focus of the letter was on condemning the behaviour rather than the writers, I felt it was okay – and I think that was achieved. There is no baying mob. There is no moral panic. There are simply objections to specific types of behaviour. In a piece of advice that will be quoted again shortly, if you don’t like the letter, you don’t have to sign it. You can always write your own, or not, or whatever.

2. It’s badly worded. You should have said this or that instead of this and that.

The writers who signed the letter were happy with the wording, as were the people who signed it online afterwards. If you don’t like the letter, you don’t have to sign it. You can always write your own, or not, or whatever.

3. You don’t say what’s wrong with the activities / don’t differentiate between them in terms of badness / don’t invent and define morality from first principles in front of my eyes.

No, indeed. I suppose there was a general consensus that it was fairly obvious that these activities were wrong. Many people seem to agree. However, we can have a quick run through this.

Four behaviours were referred to:

a) Using sock puppet accounts to create buzz;

b) Leaving positive self-reviews under assumed names;

c) Leaving negative other-reviews under assumed names;

d) Paying others to purchase and review one’s own work.

Behaviours a) and b) are arguably illegal (the vendor posing as a consumer), but here is why I believe these things are wrong: they are attempts to deceive the reader of the review or comment to procure an advantage at their expense. In each case, there is a relevant piece of information obscured from the reader that would change the reader’s perception of the review or comment, and therefore its impact upon the reader.

Barry Eisler brings Kant into it, but only quotes the first formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which feeds into the fairly obvious idea that this behaviour is wrong because if everyone behaved like this then the review system would collapse. But the second formulation (roughly “Treat others not merely as means, but as ends in themselves”) speaks more appropriately to intent. Readers were in those places to find information that would help them choose whether to buy a book. The writers in question disregarded the ends of the readers, treating them merely as means to further their own. And they directly intended to do so.

With each behaviour, there are individual wrinkles. So, does the letter differentiate between the four types? Well, it lists them separately. Does it condemn them all? Yes, it does. Does it argue that they are all equally wrong, or wrong in the same ways? No, it does not.

It’s worth pointing out again that other signatories may feel differently from me; they may explain their objections in other ways entirely. But you know what? They all signed the letter. And they don’t have to show you their working. If you don’t like the letter, you don’t have to sign it. You can always write your own, or not, or whatever.

4. Other activities are just as bad.

They may be. One example that keeps being raised is blurbing. My feeling is that this is very different, as the blurber generally receives no direct material advantage from the blurb, and is putting their name to their opinion. (In fact, they’re risking their name).

That’s a separate argument. The letter condemns the behaviours mentioned – it says nothing about other behaviours. From my point of view, the behaviours listed are all clearly wrong. They are definitely over the line. It may be that others are too, in certain circumstances, but that would require an argument from someone as to why. You can always write that letter instead, or not, or whatever, and it’s possible I’d sign that too.

5. Comments were deleted from the blog post.

Yes, they were. That website is set up with the intention of allowing people to sign it if they wish, not to debate its merits or self-promote in the thread below. If you don’t like the letter, you don’t have to sign it. You can always discuss and debate it on your own website, or not, or whatever.

6. Worse things happen at sea! It’s not that bad!

Indeed, they do. You can always write about the worse things that happen at sea, or not, or whatever

7. You’re sanctimonious, smug etc.

Possibly. But look. In the past month, I’ve been called ugly and told that I only have tattoos because of a lack of self-esteem. I’ve been accused of envy, had (inaccurate) sales figures posted in various places, and been told I have no future as a writer. I’ve been a thinly disguised character in a terribly written short story, where I’m described as looking like I’ve just come out of prison and being a ”wimp at heart”. People who have reviewed me in good faith have had their reviews voted down. I’ve had defamatory lies posted about me by a friend of Stephen Leather who publishes daddy-daughter incest porn. I’ve had people attempt to organise online campaigns targeting me for abuse. And so on.

In short, you’re going to have to try harder to upset me.

8. I have another point to make.

The floor is open. I’ve been a bit slack, last week or so, replying to stuff. I have a book to write – I really do! – but if you want to comment below then I’ll get back to you as quickly as I can.

It’s not an unreasonable question.

The past few weeks have seen a lot of posts, here and elsewhere, around the behaviour of Stephen Leather, all of which have touched at least peripherally on the subject of the ethics of marketing techniques, especially given the constantly changing digital environment. These techniques (some, but not all, of which can be attributed to Leather; all of which can be attributed to various authors across the board) include:

1. Using sock puppet accounts to talk up one’s own book;
2. Giving positive reviews to one’s own book under a sock puppet account;
3. Giving negative reviews to a “competing” author’s book under a sock puppet account;
4. Spreading lies about “competing” authors online;
5. Bullying and harrassing other authors;
6. Shilling – ie talking up the book of a friend without disclosing a personal interest;
7. Astroturfing – ie the overall cumulative effect of the above. Artificial buzz.
8. Attacking reviewers for negative but honest reviews, and/or encouraging their readers to do so.

To which, we can also add this: paying (substantial amounts of money) for reviews. The successful ebook writer John Locke is named in that article. To quote:

“Mr. Locke is unwilling to say that paying for reviews made a big difference. “Reviews are the smallest piece of being successful,” he said.”

Well, that may be true. But ordering 300 reviews will have set him back $6000. At the 0.99 he charges, for which he would receive around 0.30, those reviews would need to have generated him 20,000 book sales just to break even. That is not an insignificant number. You assume it was worth it, but prospective self-publishers may wish to consider their disposable income first – and also have a good, long look at themselves in the mirror.

And I’m sure there are countless other activities as well.

Why  does any of this matter? Well, a lot of this behaviour is technically illegal (a vendor pretending to be a consumer, etc), but all of it is dodgy and what I, at least, would consider to be unethical behaviour for an author to be involved in or encouraging. The online review system (along with other online feedback systems) is imperfect, but it exists, and people use it. If they didn’t, it wouldn’t be worth authors gaming it in these underhand ways, often at great expense. So these are acts of deception that betray both the reader and other writers. They are acts of selfishness. They are attempts to grab as much of the “open ground” of self-publishing for themselves as possible, by whatever means possible.

It’s possible you don’t care. Well, if so, move on. But if you feel strongly about these issues, what can you do? Here are some quick, initial thoughts. They’re mostly obvious. Please feel free to add other ideas in the comments.

1. Readers

The oddest thing about the Leather business is that, really, I’ve just been reacting to stuff and posting on topics that have arisen. I never had any endgame in mind; I wasn’t trying to achieve anything. When Leather accuses me of being jealous (sic) of his sales, or wanting to harm them, that’s absolutely not the case. I couldn’t give two fucks if he sells a million books in the next day, or none ever again. It has no impact on me. More to the point, a lot of writers over the years have been vile individuals; the books stand alone, their merits independent (for the most part) from the character of the writers.

That said, numerous people have contacted me, either publicly or privately, to say they won’t be buying Leather’s books again. That’s fine. Voting with your feet is a time-honoured tradition. One obvious way you can react to an author behaving in ways you disapprove of is to not support them anymore. That aside, you could also let them know what you think, or engage them in conversation around issues that concern you. And do you know what? The forums and channels these writers are hijacking to promote themselves, however imperfect they are, they belong to you. They are meant for you. Your voice matters more than theirs, so you should use it. And at the absolute least, you can be aware enough of these authors to treat future “buzz” around their books with whatever scepticism you conclude it deserves.

2. Organisations

There have been a few suggestions that organisations such as the CWA could introduce a charter of some kind – listing behaviour they expect their members to refrain from, and so on. I have some sympathy with this as a symbolic gesture, but I don’t think it would make much difference for a number of reasons. I doubt someone like Stephen Leather or John Locke cares very much about being a member. I also doubt – with the greatest respect for the organisations in question – that the reading public would pay much attention either. It wouldn’t be awful for it to happen anyway though.

3. Publishers

It’s far more likely that wayward authors would take notice of publishers condemning these activities, but there are numerous problems with this as well. For one thing, obviously a proportion of this activity is by authors who are self-published, so it wouldn’t matter. For another, I expect most publishers would condemn this sort of behaviour anyway. Because, in my experience, most people who work in publishing are nice and decent and working in publishing in the first place because they love books.

The issue here is that publishing is a business, but the people who work in it are individuals. Those individuals have their opinions, but it’s often difficult politically to voice them. I think it’s a truism that most editors will have writers they like and want to publish but, for various reasons, it can’t happen, while also having authors they dislike intensely but are stuck with. But at the end of the day, it’s a business – it has to be, and it should be. That’s not to say they should turn a blind eye.

4. Writers

It’s much the same as readers, I think, with some additional caveats. Obviously, regardless of your profile, you can use whatever social media platforms you have to express your opinion. You can refuse to blurb or share a platform with people who engage in this kind of behaviour. You can put forward your point of view; you can let readers know what’s going on. If you think someone’s attacking you, say so.

So. That’s just some initial thoughts and ideas. Feel free to chip in below the line with others…

My attention was drawn to a post on Facebook today, which reads as follows:

“So, it looks like a guy named Steve Mosby is so insecure about his own book sales that he is deliberately and covertly going to Smashwords and using troll tactics to squash the sales of fellow Brit author Stephen Leather. Let Mosby know your views on his dirty tactics by visiting his page at: https://www.facebook.com/theleftroom?ref=ts“

There’s a screenshot of it here.

Given it’s likely this rubbish will crop up again at some point, let’s make a few things clear.

1.
The accusation above is utter bullshit. Unlike some people, I don’t even bother giving myself good reviews covertly, never mind bad reviews to others. If I was going to do the latter, I’d do so under my own name, and I would likely do so here. I think I’ve made it pretty clear that my objections to Leather centre on his marketing techniques and – in terms of some of the comments he’s made subsequent to Harrogate – his personality. I have no opinion on his writing. I went onto Smashwords today, for what may be the first time ever, curious to see what was behind this accusation. I see that Leather has a small handful of reviews (four and five star), so presumably very few people there have an opinion on his writing either. Since Mr Drake (above) doesn’t clarify what on earth he’s fucking talking about, it is both difficult and unnecessary to respond in greater depth.

2.
Frankly, I  couldn’t care less if Leather’s the bestselling writer in the history of the world. This keeps coming up: people – including Leather himself – suggesting that the motive of his critics must be jealousy of his sales. (Although they mean envy). Firstly, this is what happens when all you have intellectually is a hammer: everything looks like a nail. If all you care about is sales, then you assume that’s all anyone else cares about as well. Secondly – and this is nobody’s business but my own – I do okay, actually. If you don’t know me, you’ll just have to take my word for this: insecure, I am not.

3.
Unless you send a friend request, I’m afraid you can’t let me know your views on my “dirty tactics” by visiting my Facebook page. It’s set to private. However, it’s possible you might find your way here. If so, the comment thread below this post is open, so feel free to present your fascinating opinions on my “dirty tactics” there. Please be aware that without corroborating evidence (of which there is none, because the above statement is a lie), you will be soundly and viciously mocked. At a bare minimum.

**UPDATE – 19 August 2012**

Okay, I sent a message on Facebook to Jake Drake, explaining that his post was defamatory and untrue, and inviting him to reply either by return of message or in the comments below to attempt to justify and provide evidence for his accusations. Needless to say, I didn’t receive a reply. My understanding is that, instead of doing so, he posted my message on his Facebook page, along with a similar message from Jeremy Duns.

Since then, it has emerged that Jake also writes erotica under the pseudonym “Whiskey McNaughton”. His favourite subgenre of erotica is “family relationships, if you know what I mean”, which – yes – is exactly what you imagine it to be. His Amazon page is here, but basically he writes explicit pornography about men having sex with their own daughters.

(It goes without saying that you should exercise caution clicking on these links. All are technically SFW – Amazon, Goodreads, etc – but if incest is a trigger for you then please, please be careful).

Many of Whiskey’s stories have a five-star review from the same reviewer. Of one of his stories, this reviewer writes:

“This author seems to like stories involving older men and younger women barely old enough to enjoy sexually. I think Whiskey either fantasizes a lot on this topic or he gets a lot of side action from girls he knows. I hope it’s the latter and wish I was one of them, though i might be just a bit too old for him. Love this story.”

All of which is – fairly obviously – stick-your-fingers-down-your-fucking-throat stuff. I would hesitate to suggest that’s Jake himself there, but he certainly does review the Whiskey McNaughton books under his own name, for example “Night Swims With Daddy”, which you can see here.

Now, there is a legitimate discussion to be had about the acceptability or otherwise of this kind of horrendous fucking shite, but that’s for another day. For now, let’s just note that, under his McNaughton twitter identity, Drake posts that he’s just finished editing one of Stephen Leather’s stories for him. So there’s the connection. That’s likely the only relevant evidence you’re ever going to see in connection with the original accusation.

You may recall, from Jeremy Duns’s original investigation, that the writer Steve Roach advised against crossing Stephen Leather because of his “powerful friends”. And now we begin to meet them.