We’ve been watching Sarah Daltry for a while and now, fortunately, we have enough information about her to share with our readers. First off, Sarah Daltry is one of the many pen names or aliases or socks or whatever else this author uses as a means to gain publicity and promote her work. We first noticed her back in February when she wrote her pen name’s first blog post called Open Letter to Bullies:
When we checked to see where she had been bullied, we could find NOTHING to show that it had actually happened. We also knew by what we’ve heard from those who have experience with this author, what this was. An attempt to gain attention in a new political landscape that is sympathetic to bullied authors and when we say bullied authors here, we mean the real bullied authors. Not Sarah.
So, two months later, to no-one-at-STGRB’s surprise, she wrote another post, originally called Closing Time, talking about how horribly mistreated she has been and because of it, has decided to call it quits:
We already knew that Sarah had no intention of shutting down, but what sparked our interest in this post was her mention of the title and character of her book. This is a precursor of more “hooking the reader” to come. Keep reading.
Yesterday, we were alerted to an article by Mercy Pilkington (who has covered author bullying in the past and has done a very good job of it) that featured Nadine Christian (an author who has truly been bullied, post on her to come) and Sarah. The article is titled, The Bullies Win: Authors Abandoning Publishing Over Online Behaviors:
Unfortunately, Mercy was fooled, as have been so many others, by Sarah and included her with Nadine, who, again, is a truly bullied author. We’ve since informed Mercy of Sarah’s real intentions regarding her blog posts and Mercy invited us to leave comments on the article. Instead, we’ve chosen to let our readers know the truth with this post.
So, where is this leading?
Well, now that Sarah has caught the attention of Goodereader and their readers, her next blog post was — wait for it — an entire post on her book’s characters, including chapters from the book and the epilogue (complete reader hook), still claiming that she’s going to shut it all down. Gee, what a surprise.
This is what she is saying: “See what I have written? I’m going to throw it all away because I’ve been such a victim. Don’t you feel sorry for me? Don’t you want to support me and buy & read my book so that I don’t stop writing?” She also includes a brief explanation of why she hasn’t shut down by now, thus dragging it out.
You all see what she’s doing?
And :
Then, what next? Her next post is called Thank you and an Explanation, telling her readers that she’s actually not removing her books (giving some made up story as to why) and that she’s not shutting down, but “going off the grid” for a while:
Uh, okay… *sigh* If you haven’t figured it out by now, this is bullshit, everyone. There was no suicidal person who messaged her. No one called her an attention-seeking whore. No one has bullied her and we can guarantee that she never had any intention of shutting down her books or her social media. We know this for a fact because people have seen this author, under other names, do this before. Her next move will be to suddenly reappear and tell everyone that she has reconsidered and will continue writing and publishing for public consumption because all of the encouraging messages from readers have changed her mind.
Don’t be fooled by this.
Also, several people have had experience with this author in other social media before this whole episode and have told us about it. All we want to say to our readers regarding this is that whenever someone solicits funds online, be it in the form of cash, services or donations, exercise EXTREME caution. There is NO reason someone should be asking you for money online, unless you are making a legitimate purchase.
Now, why are we telling you about this?
Because we’ve seen other authors cry bully before. Last year, author Jac Wright attempted this by emailing us and claiming that he was the next Lauren P. When we checked out Jac’s books, there was NO sign of bullying whatsoever. Then, he confided in one of our blog readers that he was doing it to garner publicity to sell his books. When authors do this, they are abusing people’s sympathy and trust. They are crying wolf or more appropriately “crying bully” when the bullies have never touched them. This is incredibly unfair to those authors who have actually been bullied and whenever we see an author abusing people’s trust like this, we WILL call them out.
And we have called out Sarah.
Please, DO NOT feel to sorry for her. She is not a victim.
