We wanted to let our readers know that Gavin Hetherington just recently contacted us to thank us for setting the record straight regarding the “Gavin the thief” fiasco. If you all remember, a blog reader left a link on our blog weeks ago about a Gavin Hetherington in the UK, living very near Gavin the author, who stole money from an old woman. Suspicious that it might be the same Gavin, we stated on our blog that we would do some digging to find out the truth. After a bit of research, we discovered that Gavin the author and Gavin the thief were two completely different people. Apparently, Gavin the author hadn’t seen our post on this when we published it. Gavin also apologized for any wrongs he may have done or any hurt he may have caused anyone. Because of this, we have removed from public view the two posts we published on him, here and here. We leave them as a record and will only allow viewing upon special request. We are, however, leaving up our four part series Once Upon a Time in the Land of BookLikes to show what the bullies did to him. This story we feel is important for illustrating to our readers how quickly the bullies will take a false claim, utterly destroy an author with it, and then blame other people (like us) when they find out they were mistaken. Gavin gave us permission to post his email to us: 
Thank you for contacting us, Gavin, and good luck.
*********************************************************************
An addendum
Below is a screenshot of a comment by KarlynP left on Gavin’s recent BL post explaining that he sent us the above email. We are posting it to show people how easily the bullies lie and end up believing their own lies much like the time they thought Google had blocked us. Remember that?
We have one word to describe your comment here, Karlyn: BULLSHIT. We are calling you on your bullshit. You need to get your facts straight, sweetheart. But of course that always seems to be too difficult for you, doesn’t it? There was no blood on our hands and you know it. We don’t know who left the link to the article on our blog nor on Shelby’s and we certainly didn’t call Gavin a thief. Nor did we “make” Shelby accuse him of thievery. She did that entirely on her own. What we said was that the two Gavins could be the same person and that we would do some digging to find the truth. Well, guess what. We found the truth and we posted it for the sole purpose of clearing Gavin’s name. Why did we do that? Because your friend, Shelby, and her minions smeared him throughout the ENTIRE blogosphere. They were wrong and they owe him an apology. And we have yet to see that apology given.
That’s great to see. I think it’s good that Gavin was able to feel what it’s like to be a victim of that group of narcissistic bullies and I’m thinking that you’ll begin to see more of these people stepping back for a clearer picture. Especially writers. I remember when I was told about Badly Behaving Authors, I figured they must have done some horrendous things. But when I found out many were put on that so-called list, it was for very stupid reasons. Mostly, for being human and asking questions or just sticking up for other authors that had been targeted.
First Parogar now Gavin, is this a positive upward trend of less drama and more getting on with your work with writing?
That’s what we’re hoping. The three men who’ve apologized and made amends are Bobby Adair, Parogar, and now Gavin. We admire them for what they did and then not dwelling on it and moving on with their lives. This is something we’ve never seen one of the trolls do… yet. But we’re not going to hold our breath.
Those people just don’t get it, do they? Good for Gavin apologizing. Now for them to apologize for accusing him without finding out the truth.
Shelby isn’t just a nasty bitter woman to her victims online, but also to her family. Have you seen this about her story involving her own children not wanting to see her and her ex-husband taking her to trial for custody: http://www.shelbypj69.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/my-story.html
Her friend J. From Goodreads told me that her ex isn’t parent to her kids, but the court are seriously considering giving him custody, which means she must have done something awful for a non-parent to get custody in a trial.
You don’t have to approve this as per your new rules, but I thought you guys should know, maybe investigate? She sounds like a vile person and the sooner the internet is rid of her trolling, the better!
It’s fine, Obvs. Your comment doesn’t violate our commenting policy. If this is a public blog of hers, it’s not against the rules or the law.
The judge called Shelby vindictive. It seems the judge is spot on. Shelby’s online behavior could only be described as vindictive, she takes real pleasure in hurting people. I think everyone, except for Shelby, can see she is a bully. I’m surprised that she blogged about such personal stuff. Imagine how hurt her Daughter would be if she saw her Mother telling the world her private business. No wonder her Daughter wants to move away. The judge seems aware that there is a whole other side to this story.
If Shelby cares about her Daughter, then she should delete this blog post. She should definitely delete the photograph of her Daughter. Shocking!
I feel like this is not needed on here. We don’t want the bullies to talk about what authors do and say in private lives and I think that we should lead by example. It’s ok to talk about their on-line behavior when it comes to personal attacks against authors or fake reviews. I don’t see how bringing up her personal life issues is good for this site. I don’t like these jerks but I don’t want to bring more pain to an already painful (I’m sure) situation. I think we are better than that. better than them!
Point well taken, Anon. But we also have to keep in mind that Shelby made all of this public. Once a person makes something private public, it is no longer private information. Not that we’re going to plaster her whole story on our blog. We’d never do that, but what I’m saying is that Shelby invited people to her blog to talk about her problems and ask for money. The reason we let Obvs bring up the subject is because MANY of the bullies have problems in their private lives that causes them to be online bullies (not that that excuses it an anyway — it doesn’t). When we explain to the victims of the bullying that these people have miserable private lives, it gives them a sense of peace to know that it wasn’t them that brought on the abuse but rather the internal, personal problems of the bully. In this case, if Gavin is reading this, it’s important for him to know that Shelby has these problems and that it wasn’t him or anything he did to be bullied by her the way he was. We think it’s important for him to understand this in order for him to heal and move on from his experience.
I understand the second part of your response, Johnny but I don’t know if I agree with the first. She did make it public but I don’t think it was meant to be seen outside her friends and family. She either didn’t know how to make a blogger blog not public or she didn’t think it would be found. It’s a very blank blog with little thought behind it. I also think, not that it’s against the law or anything that even if it is public information that be found doesn’t mean that it should be brought to other places. For her famiily’s sake, not hers. The bullies like to use the excuse that things authors say are public so they can respond and react and talk crap. I’m not trying to come across as argumentative. I wanted another point of view here. :o)
I do think that talking about this sort of thing in private through Pms or private group is an ok thing to do. Or sending the info to Gavin to know what kind of person he had to deal with.
I agree with most of what you’re saying, Anon. But the fact of the matter is that stuff on the internet IS public. A lot of authors have been attacked because they didn’t seem to grasp this: they’d complain about one star reviews on their facebook pages or their blogs, thinking nobody would read them, or only their friends would. If there is one lesson to take away from all this, it’s Be Careful What You Say Online. And that applies to everyone: blogs, facebook, twitter, etc. are not private. You can’t control what your enemies do, so the best thing is not to give them too much ammunition.
In fairness, Shelby has no problem figuring out how to hunt down authors, and then attacking them and their books. So I’m quite sure she could figure out how to make her blog post private if she wanted to. Shelby knows what she is doing. She is trying to punish her Daughter, she even posted a photograph of the poor girl. I don’t believe for a minute that she didn’t know how to make her blog private.
Even so I don’t think it was meant for our eyes. She wasn’t advertising her blog everywhere and I disagree about what you said about her daughter. I like to see facts her based on their behavior toward authors or other readers. The personal stuff seems too mean for me, I’m sorry. i always put myself it other’s shoes and I wouldn’t want someone to kick me while I’m down, even if I were a bully. I think we are better than at and I know most of us are!! :o)
The way we see it, Shelby knew that it was a public blog and she also knew when she created it that anyone could stumble across it, even accidentally, just by doing a Google search that happened to have keywords in it that would bring up her blog. If she didn’t want the public to see, she shouldn’t have published it. The reason she did it is obvious. She wanted to garner sympathy from people, putting up pics of her daughter etc., so she could start a gofundme campaign, which in our view is unethical. Using your kids like that to ask for money? Not something we would condone. Yes, it seems that her story is very sad and she seems to be hurting, but people who are really hurting like that don’t usually plaster it all over their blogs for the world to see, which suggests she had other motives for doing it. We allowed Obvs’s comment and the other comments on this subject through because reading and talking about something on a public blog is neither against our commenting policy, nor is it against the law.
Didn’t Shelby plead for even strangers to help fund her. Isn’t that what a gofundme project is about? Not just family and friends to fund, but anybody willing to hear her story. She made it public for anyone who could give her money. Maybe Obvs shouldn’t have posted the link to the blog which she has now deleted conveniently, but you can’t argue that Shelby didn’t want anyone to see what she put online publically.
Fortunately, these are just the comments and STGRBs haven’t done a blog post about Shelby’s personal life, accusing her of this that and the other because that would be stooping to her level. Unless we find out she’s actually a criminal, then showing people what Shelby has posted online for the world to see is not a crime either.
Looks like she removed it. Just further proof they watch this site like hawks.
Not surprising. We knew she’d do that. We were surprised she put all that private information out there in public view, though. For her family’s sake, it’s good she deleted it. A point that the others here made was that they weren’t surprised she had personal problems. What we’re finding in our research of online bullies is that the majority of them have some major personal problem in their lives. Thus, their need to hurt people online. It’s sick. It’s almost like a disease.
I really don’t care what a person’s been through. It gives them no right to treat others like shit, whether online or in person. I’ve been through a lot of crap, including poverty, molestation, family illness and deaths. Never knew my real father and I’m not on speaking terms with my stepfather, but so what? It doesn’t give me the right to be mean. I’m not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but try to live by this philosophy: Give without remembering; receive without forgetting. Try being kind. You just might like it.
So does she have the right to accuse people of being a criminal without any evidence? Just because it looks like she could have done some awful things and has been to court so really she is the criminal. Hypocrisy is a confusing thing there Shelby.
I’m not going to accuse her but her buddy J. has told me things about what kind of person she is in real life, how her temper has gotten her in trouble before. If she has ever done anything abusive to anyone in real life, then she should be locked up. How anyone can be friends with that kind of person is astonishing. She even asked people to ‘fund’ her through her crisis with an online campaign that she removed not long after because no one was giving her their money. With good reason!
No, absolutely not. Just because someone has problems in their personal life doesn’t give them the right to abuse others whether it’s online or in real life. We just noticed the correlation between online bullies and their personal lives.
We saw where she talked about her gofundme campaign and then removed it. We know of another troll who tried to get a charity to pay his rent for him and got angry when they told him no.
Wow I never knew that. It’s shocking the lengths trolls go to.
And I agree about not having the right to accuse people. If this were the Salem witch trials, accusing someone of being a witch without proof usually led to death. Obviously this isn’t the case, it wasn’t that serious, but still did Shelby not dare to think of the consequences if she was wrong? And she ended up being wrong, threw a hissy fit and deleted her BookLikes without admitting her mistake. Is she that self obsessed she didn’t even think of what consequences Gavin had to face? She pisses me off, those kind of immature vindictive adults should not be allowed to roam the internet free. Somebody has to stop her!!!
Agreed!
Good on him. Cut those ties brother, you can do better!
It didn’t take long for Grimlock to start a review for Gavin’s book. And wouldn’t you know it? There’s a grammar mistake right from the second sentence! Why do these morons insist on criticizing other people’s spelling and grammar when they can’t write a simple sentence without messing it up? It’s like chickens giving medical advice.
I just checked on part 2 of Once Upon a Time in the Land of Booklikes (it’s so hard to actually read the comments posted towards Gavin on part 3, just shocking and awful how they all ganged up on him, don’t know what I would have done if that was me, I’d still be broken) and the whole grammar and spelling must be the go-to insult to abuse authors. Troll Edward L. was the first person to comment on Shelby’s post by insulting Gavin’s writing straight away.
http://i60.tinypic.com/33tkuwn.png
It speaks a lot more about the person who is insulting the author by just saying their work is filled with errors. It’s actually not too far off what is happening to Anna. I think in some cases they just haven’t actually read the book, but instead just pull out the “spelling and grammar” card. Edward Lorn and Jenny Trout are basically the same kind of people. Jealous authors who want to pick on writers (Gavin and Anna) who are just starting out, so they’re vulnerable and easy targets. Well done Edward and Jenny, you both completely shame authors worldwide. I’m sure your writing idols will not be proud of your behavior and would be ashamed to call you their fans. I know I would.
It’s funny that she’s so honest about what she thinks of Gavin’s book, but she didn’t have the guts to finish reading that other book she started, the one by her ex-bestie who kicked her out of her group. I don’t blame her though. Can you imagine what would have happened if she’d revenge-reviewed Horny’s book? Picture the headlines:
‘Barnes&Noble Clerk Goes Missing’
‘Human Remains Found in Woods- Pagan Sacrifice?’
‘Godzilla-like Beast Spotted Where Bookstore Clerk Remains Found.’