Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

NPR this morning discussed the fake memoir and the online previews of books. The acclaimed but fake memoir of Margaret B. Jones aka Peggy Seltzer came under attack by writers who actually did live the gang life. Needless to say, the writers feel disrespected by Seltzer’s attempt to profit off of their lives. But more importantly, Seltzer was successful because so much of the publishing white elites are unfamiliar with the gang culture experience that the “scroll of cliches” did not register.

Thanks JillF.

It only took a week to debunk supposed memoir Love and Consequences by Margaret B Jones. L&C was a story about Margaret’s “life as a half-white, half-Native American girl growing up in South-Central Los Angeles as a foster child among gang-bangers, running drugs for the Bloods.”

The author, Margaret Seltzer, is a) all white b) grew up in a ritzy neighborhood with c) her bio family. She didn’t even graduate from the University of Oregon.

How can publishers not catch this? It’s quite irksome that publishers have so little regard for the public that they continually put out books from a known plagiarist and continue to publish memoirs that are fake. Why should the reading public take these so-called gatekeepers seriously? These actions make me think that publishing is no more than a giant corporate conglomerate out to take as much money as possible, in as underhanded a way as possible, as it can. There is no lofty ideal.

Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years which related a Jewish child’s Holocaust experience including trekking 1900 miles across Europe with a pack of wolves (I know, I thought I saw that Disney movie too) is apparently not a memoir but a pack of fiction (or pack of lies, but I thought that was too easy).

Misah Defonseca’s book was translated into 18 languages and made into a french film. The author currently lives in Massachusetts and is 71 years old. I mention her age specifically because I know that we aren’t supposed to say anything negative about someone over the age of, say, 50, even if what they did would be considered a fraud on the public.

Dear Jane,

I just read The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen by Syrie James. It’s a ‘what if‘ story. ‘What if‘ Jane Austen had experienced romantic love. After all these years, how would we find out about her ill-fated romance? When and where could it have happened? Who would have been her love? Why didn’t Jane have her own happily-ever-after?

I have to tell you, Jane, this book answers every one of those questions in a completely believable way. Syrie James uses Jane’s real life travels, letters, and interactions to tell us a story that not only leaves you believing ‘it could have happened’, but wishing ‘oh, if she couldn’t have it all, I hope she had this’.

The story is written as Jane’s journal. Through it we are introduced to not only, my dear Mr. Ashton, but her large and loving family, as well as fictitious characters who are incorporated into Miss Austen’s work. We learn so much about Jane; from her love of country life to her struggles with her inner demons.

The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen is a very easy read (I set it down once thinking I …

Publishers’ Weekly reported that Plume inked a deal relating to the V Tech shootings. V Tech journalism professor Roland Lazenby will write and edit a book about the shootings from the student perspective using material the student run website planetblacksburg.com provided to the media during the day of terror.

This bothers me, the idea that someone is profiting from this tragedy. I know a portion of the proceeds will be given to the victim’s fund and a portion to support journalism, but for some reason it just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe because it is so soon after the shootings that the deal seems opportunistic.