One month and counting .....

As Anya Peter's blog approaches the first month anniversary of no updates, questions are being asked about whether it was really all a hoax and has she finally been "sussed" by her publishers. History shows us that time and again, publishers have been fooled into publishing books from wannabe authors who have stretched the truth in order to garner a book deal. Here's a few examples. Norma Khouri A Jordanian woman living in exile in Australia, she wrote about her experiences in Jordan where she worked at a Unisex hair salon with her friend who fell in love with a Christian. Eventually things turned sour for their relationship and her friend was the victim of an honour killing whereby Norma fled from Jordan in fear for her life. Exciting stuff eh ! The book was released by Random House publishing in 2003 and immediately became a best seller, shifting over 500,000 copies in Australia. Unfortunately some of the "facts" didn't add up and a journalist researched the story properly (shouldn't the publishers do this?) and found that although Khouri was born and lived in Jordan, she emigrated at the age of three. The story was made up. In August 2004 Khouri admitted that she had took "literary licence" with the book but received no payment for it (a fact strongly denied by her publishers). Helen Darville In 1993 Helen wrote about her experiences (using the pen name of Helen Demidenko) in her home country of the Ukraine and particularly about two brothers who survive Stalinism only to become members of the Nazi Einsatzgruppen death squads. The novel was widely acclaimed and won various awards including the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal and in 1995 the Miles Franklin Award (the most prestigious literary award in Australia). Sadly though, it turned out that Darville was of British origin and had manufactured a fantasy life as someone of Ukrainian descent . Critics labelled the novel a hoax and the judges who had granted the awards were ridiculed in the press. Laura Victoria Albert Presented to the public and publishers as a transgendered, sexually questioning, abused, former homeless drug addict and male prostitute called JT LeRoy, JT has produced several books and numerous magazine articles. However, after writing a piece for the Sunday Times Travel Magazine about Disneyland Paris, discrepancies were noted regarding the expenses submitted. Further investigations revealed that JT didn't actually exist but was a concoction of a wannabe author named Laura Albert. Articles in the New York Times provided evidence to this fact in January and February 2006. Kaycee Nicole Kaycee was presented as a high school student suffering from frequent and severe health problems, and had an online diary with a large Internet following. After it was "reported" that she had died of leukaemia, triggering an outpouring of condolences and grief from her readers, some wondered whether she was in fact a real person. Following an investigation, it turned out that Kaycee was a fictional person invented by her "mother". Although many gifts had been sent to Kaycee and subsequently received by her "mother", the FBI decided that t was not a case of fraud and no charges were brought. Although the last example did not end with a publishing deal, it serves as a reminder of the power of the internet and the evolution of methods employed by fraudsters in order to draw attention to themselves. Remind you of anybody we know..........