A tale of the nasty Writer

UPDATE – Since this post went live it seems Mr Meredith has removed his posts and taken down his story, either that or is working through and blocking people from seeing, but he did have this to say about my post though LOL
Still confused that Kessily and I are 2 different people.

Recently in Book-land we have had a fair bit of drama on Facebook, concerning a certain writer who took a severe dislike to being given honest constructive criticism by a published author.

I didn’t bring it to my blog for two reasons .

1 – It was incredibly ridiculous behaviour

2 – He didn’t warrant the exposure

Only now, he has wandered into the very grey area of Libel and Character defamation and is trying to destroy a good friends name. An author who is well known and loved in the community. He is harassing readers and making all sorts of accusations.

Let me back track.

A few days ago a fellow author had written a post about authors being nasty to other authors in reviews. It was a pleasant discussion in which one writer – ‘Adrian Meredith’ wrote that he was struggling to get reviews and didn’t understand why he was not selling.
Kessily being a kind hearted lady, someone who helps when she can, went and downloaded the book on KU and had a read. To give him a sale and see if she could pinpoint an area he could improve and to leave him an honest review.
She came back with constructive feed back that I 100% agreed with.
Along the lines of issues with his formatting, the very short length of the book for the price and the fact that he had breached amazons 10% content rule and might get in trouble. In other words the extra filling in his book was more than 10% of the Bob story which the cover and blurb suggested the book was about. It was about 50% of the book which is a big no no. Amazon are very strict and would not only pull the book for page stuffing but permanently ban his account. Kessily did not want to see his account closed so pointed it out.
His response to Kessily.

‘F*CK OFF YOU C*NT’

(I should add that now various female authors have come forward and told us he called them C*nts in the past for other reasons too. Seems to be a habit.)

He commented harshly, and deleted it so abruptly so that no one could screenshot it and then blocked her immediately. No other contact.
Myself and the author Julia, whose post it was on saw it though and when he himself posted a status, we responded.

After this he blocked both myself and Julia.

See this is where things become bizarre.
Mr Meredith then went onto rant , lie and obsess for the entire day (frequent long winded facebook posts) about the sequence of events and what actually happened. Smearing Kessily’s name and making up nothing but ridiculous lies. You can find all of his ‘notes’ on his Facebook page under his name Adrain Meredith. Not a single thing he has written is anything close to true in anyway.
Here is one example.
This is what he posted about Julia and I after our singular comments that resulted in us being blocked- hilarious. As you can see I was never actually his FB friend at all, his post was public, therefore I could comment and had only gone to his page to check out the links to ‘Bob the potato’. He doesn’t even quote what was said to him, some fantastical nonsense he completely made up. Trying to pass it off as a guess when he had plenty opportunity to copy our exact comments. I mean I had the time to read and screenshot them.

I talked to Kessily in PM, she showed me she had downloaded the book as he was claiming she hadn’t and it was not on KU (it is….it’s still there) and explained her criticism clearly. So I bought the book myself to be able to legitimately critic it and support her. Something he claims neither of us did. He claims we have never read his ‘book’. Sadly it’s a whole 5.4 minutes of my life I cannot get back.
He also swears we could not buy the book for 99p and that no page reads had registered for KU to prove she had read it, as it was listed as $0.70 and not on KU – he has no clue how either KDP works or currency. They update reports hourly, not immediate and again the book was definitely on KU.
(The book has now been changed , more content added, new cover and a price hike.)

Let me make this clear though from here on in; nothing she said was wrong, abusive or in anyway nasty. She was helpful, gave him insight on why he was getting no sales and how to improve to get those sales and there was no other communication between them as he had blocked her. Nothing else. Nada.
What followed were fantastical posts and lies about how she was trying to ruin him, have amazon remove his books. That it was a smear campaign…blah blah blah. Major over reaction from a very unbalanced individual. He inflated what she had said and twisted it beyond all proportion.

To cheer Kessily up and distract her we made the situation into something funny. Focusing on the book and actually generating some sales for the man. Our Motto in the writing world is ‘Kill it with Kindness’ and he did brag how he had almost made it to best seller rating that day. Our post and hilarity actually got his book seen and he gloated on his page how he had made sales. Unbeknownst it was down to our #SaveBob campaign. I made very many memes that became a very short story board, because I did actually think ‘Bob the potato’ could have potential if he rewrote it and added illustrations.

We thought that was the end. A day of jokes, laughter and putting it down to someone over reacting like an absolute nutjob and Kessily ended the day smiling instead of being stressed. Job done. We wanted to move on and forget him.

We were all now reading Bob, ironically, and I left him a very generous review that was based in complete honesty. I even upped a star because I felt bad for the poor eaten potato.

So I bet you are wondering why I made this blog post right? ….

Ahhhhhh. The plot thickens.

The lovely Adrian. The poor little fellow has been so obsessively fixated on the lovely Kessily, that he continued to post very libelous things about her and her publisher – for days now. Claiming Kessily has fake reviews on her books among other things. He seems to have spent the last few days doing nothing else. It’s alarming, to say the least.

It was brought to my attention that not only has he continued to make untrue statements and kept stalking, obsessing and lying, but he wrote a short story about Kessily and posted it in his writing group. (one of his own members sent it, proof they are disgusted at his behaviour too). It was in public domain so I can post it freely.

The truly appalling thing is this is a clear aim at our lovely girl (her name is very unique) and implies he wants to rape her?!?!?! I mean well, keep her as a sex slave and force her to do heinous things to him before he discards her.

How very noble and a clear insight into how his brain works. I am starting to think he has some serious women issues.
I would see that as a veiled threat myself, along with his continued statements about her. It’s a very clear personal attack for sure.

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So yes I outed him on Facebook and made people aware that this form of bullying and harassment from one unstable person who cannot take criticism has become something very serious. Some of the readers who bought the book themselves and reviewed it have been accused of lying too.
Jodie – this is a woman who was defending him, who came onto Kessily’s profile to harass her, blocked me and implied she would be stalking Kessily from there on in. She had defended Adrian.
She also posted a review on amazon implying she had been told to do so.
ADDITION – since this post went live Jodie has contacted Kessily and myself and apologised profusely. She was defending someone she trusted and has come to realise she had been misled. Jodie is now stepping away from him after being equally mistreated and wants it to be known she has made amends with all that were hurt .

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Kessily has not said much more about this matter , publicly at all, so his posts are obviously about mine. He can’t seem to tell the difference between us despite the very obvious different name. Confusing himself with who exactly thinks he should be arrested. Kessily has said nothing of the sort , but a lot of you are very vocal about what a creep he is.

This man is trying to intimidate and bully and harass a fellow female author. Ruin her name with lies and he does not seem to understand that she can in fact sue him for libel for his FB posts and his story. That she can actually go after him for character defamation and the story with the veiled threat will be taken very seriously in the country he lives. He is Australian where they have very strong cyber bullying laws, which this falls under.
This is a man so delusional about his own self he thinks he is above the law.
This is #internationalwomansday we say NO to abusive arseholes who try and destroy someones life for being helpful.

He is obsessed.

Stalking her.

His wall for days is nothing about anything else except her and his Bob story.

We won’t stand for this.

Intimidation, slander and threats. Constant barrage of BS.

We as a writing community need to shine light on this crap when it happens and stand together to support our friend. She did nothing wrong at all.
She is obviously very distressed and saying nothing much on this topic but gave me permission to talk if I wanted to. I feel helpless as I cannot personally have it out with this man.
He is a coward and a bully, who is hiding behind his FB account and spewing such toxic nonsense I actually feel sorry for his wife. What must life for her be like if this is an example of his character.
He has no grasp of the reality in this situation, that it was self inflicted nonsense he continues to feed and twist.
Show Kessily the love by visiting her here. Our girl wants nothing but love and sharing and for all the drama to stop. She has no ties to the man and no desire to have anything to do with him.
We can show our support by simply showing her love, saying we support her and no one believes the BS pouring forth from that hell hole.