I’ll have to leave it there, I’m boring readers and I could never afford to sue Abrams. Let it stand with previous blogs, linked above, and this, some line in the sand!
The situation now: An ex and senior editor betrays every trust you can, then calls me mad, deluded and evil. It is known about by my own editor, yet nothing is done and damaging and impossible work conditions are imposed. That is done to threaten, under contract, to keep the secret from a CEO, while privacies here are breached all over the shop, including to another of my pubishers at Penguin US. While it is claimed there is ‘no issue there,’ my own editor of ten years, at Dutton and Abrams, makes a back room call to my agent that must have been so serious it loses me that agent. A bogus ‘enquiry’ ensues, that I force because I can’t go on, repudiation is admitted, but nothing effectively done to put the situation away, thanks to Tara Break and Sarah Van More, also in cahoots for nearly a year before, personally and professionally, itself horribly invasive. They saw the pyshologicial strain and harm from that ‘mobbing’, for months too, but three novels under contract are effectively thrown away, with the damage to two novels already there. The story in between is astounding. Tara Break asked me on the phone, months before I lost it if she was evil, when I told her what her bizarre behaviour had already put a visiting author through, and I said “of course not.” In the long run, I’m not so sure, though it is avoiding labels like that my stories are about.
Then a Publisher and far better spirit than the rest, Howard Reeves, loses his job, my editor Sarah Van More gets to the top, but a CEO, Mike Jacobson, stands over it all with no apology and no compensation. Actions over criminal libel are threatened to ‘protect careers’ there, yet they back down there too. So, they accept what I have said is not libel, and to publish to even two other people could constitute that, yet still do nothing. Have you ever come across a real publishing story that is the very definition of the corrupt abuse of power? Considering Tara Break’s history and behaviour throughout, where is the real evil and do normally sane or responisible editors usually get away with that? It is best encapsualted in Tara Break’s grand personal and work philosophy ‘life is unfair’, but each one engaged in professional negligence too. I repeat, under two contracts, I was the author at a once fine company that abused every duty of care you can. For my bads I know this, as editor, associate editor, vice president or president, just as a human being, not for one god damn moment would I have treated my worst enemy like that, let alone someone I had claimed to love, been a friend of, or an award winning contracted author, trying to tell stories that might help or inspire. Money and power alone defined it, because Sarah Van More had such success with books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Mike Jacobson had a negative agenda with Harold Rove.
Is Mike Jacobson actually serious about being the CEO of a prominent New York publishing house though, even if the key is probably the super ambition and arrogance of Susan Van Metre?
I lost, practically everything you can, and you need to learn how to lose, with the grace that vanished, perhaps, but never say it does not matter.
DCD
Phoenix Ark Press
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