FOR WRITERS AND READERS
Today’s reader topic comes from QSFer Angel Martinez:
Let’s talk Catfishing – the practice of assuming a fictitious identity in order to pursue relationships with unwitting victims.
Sometimes writers pretend to be entirely different people – creating a fictional life solely for the purpose of sales and/or sympathy.
Just to be clear, we’re not talking about pen names here, which many writers use for totally legitimate reasons.
Instead we’re talking about large scale deceptions – like when a writer pretends to be an abused teenager, or fakes a major illness, or co-opts whole-cloth an identity not their own.
What warning signs do you look for and how do readers and writers protect themselves?
After getting very swept-up in one writer’s blog (which was more about their personal life than their writing- and to this day I don’t know how much was actually true), I pretty much just steer clear of reading anything about an author’s life.