Revenge is a dish best served cold...

So as I mentioned yesterday I had originally been royally pissed off at an author named Rebecca.



She and I had met in Calgary, after we had been discussing my mother in law and her shennanigans at my wedding through our blogs. Go back and follow the threads, you'll see what I mean. It actually started with her commenting on how my wedding was unbelievably ruined by my MIL, and that it would make a good book.



So I emailed her back asking if she knew the best way to go about getting a book published, and she offered to help write the book with me. I was so happy I cried. I have NEVER cried out of happiness, before or since and I have since had a kid. Judge me if you will, but I was unbelievably happy. So we continued to email each other, and she gave me the guidelines for writing a successful book proposal, as per her agent.



Joyously I wrote it all, and we conferred on things like book titles, and possible chapter headings. She told me not to tell anyone about it, because someone might find out our idea and steal it from us. That should have been my first warning flag. I went along with it. When we finally met in Calgary, I had completed the book proposal and gave the finished copy of it to her. When I returned home, I went to her blog and saw that she had written a post about our meeting, and this should have set alarms off in my head, but again I stupidly trusted her. Listening to her talk and how cavalier she was about the meeting, and about how she thought I might have been a crazy person, so she wanted to meet in public. I was fairly disappointed and wondered why she would portray me as some sort of fan-girl she obliged by meeting up with. Because she was discrediting me to anyone from the publishing world who might have been reading. That's what I think anyway. Call me crazy if you want, but that's what I think.



Anyway, so I waited. And waited and waited. And never heard anything from her for a while. So I pestered her with emails until she responded. And it wasn't good news for me. Her agent loved the idea of a book on inlaws, but apparently she was under contract to not write anything with another author, because I was an unknown. It made sense to me at the time, but now just sounds pathetic. To make things worse, she told me that she would continue shopping it around if it was ok with me, and if anything came of it, I would be asked to write a foreword to it. Might not be paid much, but would help me get my foot in the door of the publishing world. Of course I eagerly said yes, anything to help me get started as an author.



She took my permission and ran with it. I haven't heard from her since, and this was like three years ago. I guess you could say that maybe nobody bought into the idea, and she just moved on to other things. True, and she probably did since nothing has come out with her name on it about inlaws. However, it might just be that she has since split with her fiancee and maybe, a book on inlaws from someone who has no inlaws might be redundant. And hilarious.



I still have all the email correspondence between the two of us. My mom, the ever trusting soul that she is (haha) warned me that maybe I should still keep everything from her, just in case I got screwed. Glad I took moms advice this time.



Guess which "famous" author named Rebecca this is, and I will inform you if you are correct. That's your prize, I hope that's enough, because obviously I am not a published author, therefore I am not swimming in money to hand out. I basically gave up writing after the reality of being screwed over sank in. But still dream of it occasionally... maybe one day I'll start again.



Now how to get the word out to those in the right places so maybe she will never do this again?