Category: GR Bully


Below is a guest post that we promised one of our blog readers we would publish.  It is a warning about one of the nastier bullies we’ve seen online, Mahala R. Burlingame.

Edit: For our story on Mahala getting banned from Goodreads, click here.

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We’ve often wondered why bullies do what they do. And as many have commented over the years, most believe it is done as a form of sadistic pleasure. Yet it isn’t often that those who engage in this behavior will actually to it.

What separates Mahala from the other bullies we’ve covered is how open she is about the sincere joy she gets from bullying authors. Miss Burlingame is a woman who, much like a yellow jacket, attacks without provocation, sometimes seemingly at random. She is a woman who will attack authors simply for posting an opinion she disagrees with or writing a Tweet she did not like.

And why? Well, much like the name of her blog, Spare Ammo, which claims in its title that it “targets the self-published author,” Mahala enjoys what she does. Whereas other bullies create nonsense lies to cover their actions, Mahala relishes in it, creating articles about authors telling them to “kiss their wish goodbye” (of becoming a successful author).

The message Mahala sends out is very simple: if you disagree with me, your dreams, your hopes, and your careers are done for.

Recently, an author had her life shattered after sharing a half-page essay regarding her own personal views on reviewing and books. This article was posted to her blog. It was impersonal, named no one, and spoke merely on the general subject of reviewing.

Post after post, the author was bullied until she was forced to take down her entire blog and write an apology to Mahala on behalf of sharing an opposing viewpoint that Mahala did not like. Mahala then refused to accept the apology (which she was not even entitled to in the first place).

Yes, you are reading this correctly. After bullying an author into deleting her entire blog and apologizing for her having an opinion, Mahala still had not had enough, finding that the apology she did not deserve was not good enough for her.

Eventually the bullying became so cruel that even her cohorts became weary of it.

But still she did not stop. After a month-long campaign to carpet bomb this young author’s books, insult her, and defame her for pure amusement, the author had to be hospitalized from the mental anguish that had been inflicted on her. Did Mahala stop then? No. She enjoyed this young woman’s suffering, bragging about it and even going so far as to ridicule the fact that she had fallen ill.

When an author tried to intervene and help his fellow indie writer, Mahala launched an attack on him, as well, threatening to give out the phone number to the author’s family.

Sadly, this is a recurring pattern for Miss Burlingame, who will attack…pretty much any author for any reason, such as another author who wrote a humorous Twitter post:

Or an entirely different author for writing a book she doesn’t like:

Or yet another author for wanting the bullying to stop:

We ask that you avoid Mahala at all costs, as her bullying is not limited just to destroying your careers, but your character as well. Please be careful and vigilant.

Well, we can’t say we’re surprised, but the notorious bully who’s been trolling the internet for over a decade, Ginmar, was finally banned from Goodreads.  If you click on her profile link, she is no longer there:

Why?  Well, you all remember Ginmar’s Bully Review of a book by an author she has been attacking lately, right?  Just recently, she did the same thing with another book (same series) by this author:

GinmarsSecondBullyReview

When this was reported to GR for violating TOS, management contacted her about the review and what did she do?  She wrote another review:

GinmarsThirdBullyReview

This review of course was reported again, so she decided it wasn’t worth it, but hoping no one would notice, left her author-bashing shelves as they were:

GinmarsFourthBullyReview

When this was reported again, GR said, “Bye, bye, Ginmar!”

CantFindProfile

So, let this be a lesson to all the trolls.  You cannot do whatever you want, because if you do, you will end up getting banned.

We here at STGRB are just glad to see Goodreads and Amazon enforcing their TOS and finally taking action against the bullies.

We are happy to announce that Goodreads has recently gotten a little bit safer for it’s authors and readers.  Notorious bully, Jennifer:

Is no longer there.  Why?  Because GR removed the “not interested” button on sponsored books (Dammit!) *sarcasm*

JenniferBLPost

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Hmm… *scratches chin*

Well, perhaps for Jennifer that was just the last straw in a whole list of policy changes that GR has made this past year, many of which appear to be taking more and more power away from the bullies.

Well, well, well.  Wouldn’t you just know it.  The Godmother of the bullies, well-known for being much too free with her tongue and libeling authors and publishers alike on her blog, in fact libeling them to the point of pushing them into lawsuits against her, Jane Litte, or in real life known as Jennifer Gerrish-Lampe:

Jennifer

has yet another pen name, as she reveals in her latest DA post, A Letter to the DA Readership:

Jane1

Jane2

We know that many of you, as you read the words above, will hear, “Bullshit, bullshit,” going through your mind and you are exactly right to think it.  Jane’s explanation is in a word, hogwash.  First, the reason she is revealing this information is because Jaid Black, whom Jane doxxed on her blog:

Dox

was going to go public with this information anyway, so Jane had to have the first jump and give everyone a bullshit explanation for her despicable actions.  Second, Jane wrote under a pen name for one obvious reason, because she feared retaliation from enemies: enemies she’s made from libeling people and enemies she made during #RomFail (See Why Jane Little Was Banned From RWA, in fact, just read our whole collection on Jane here.  You can read about how she defended violent readers and then attacked Nathan Bransford on Twitter and a lot more!)  Finally, Jane has been using her blog to deceitfully promote her own work WITHOUT telling readers that she was the author or one of the authors.  Notice where she says:

I wanted any success I had with the fiction to be built on the merits of the work, not on the blogging platform. I had a couple of awkward moments where I had to keep one of my books from being reviewed on Dear Author, but somehow I managed to keep them completely separate.

This is a blatant lie and it’s easily provable.  For example, here, on a blog post written by her, she promotes her book, Unspoken:

Unspoken

And here, her blog is promoting her book, Last Hit:

LastHit

And again, here, her blog is promoting another one of her books, The Charlotte Chronicles:

CharlotteChronicles

We’d say we’re surprised, but for someone like Jane, we’re really not.  She’s vicious and capable of resorting to anything to put forward her own interests.

Okay, so, for all the bullies out there who are celebrating Jane’s big reveal, you are probably unaware of the implications of it.  Please, read on.  We’ll enlighten you.  In fact, one of our blog readers will enlighten you.  In recent emails, this blog reader said:

I find this shocking and not surprising.  I wonder how many of the Amazon Bullies are in fact authors… who basically use their bully persona to pile on other authors. There we have malicious gossips essentially hiding the fact that they are authors as they pile on other authors from behind their pseudonyms, pretending to be “readers” protecting “readers” from authors. Can you imagine if a major author took a job reviewing books and lecturing authors for the New York Times under a pseudonym? And suddenly you discovered that Columnist X who reviewed books all the time snidely and nastily was in fact a major author hiding behind that pseudonym? When professional book reviewers write books, the books are non fiction generally and are under their real names, the names they use as “critics.” But imagine discovering that a major author was behind constant criticism of authors… The point is…. this is major. A major bully entity who is in fact an author! And the question is how many others are authors? I think STGRB has already outed some on Goodreads. But I hope the significance is played up. These bullies have, in my estimation, put themselves forward as “readers” and “non professionals” and bragged that “authors are paid but we’re not!” as they justify their malice and pettiness and dirty tricks and constant high toned attacks. And now we find out they are actually authors selling a competing product!!!! Authors pretending to be high toned amateur critics trying to protect the public from authors’ bad behavior. How bad can some one’s behavior get? It makes the entire bully bible a lie —- the entire “argument” that this is a war of readers against authors. It calls into question everything. It should be enough to discredit the bully culture and the bully cliques forever. So now we see what is really happening: a clique of lying, cheating authors has been behind this war against honest authors all along. Now we see the desperation to maintain pseudonyms on Amazon! They can’t keep peddling their lies without those pseudonyms! I say it’s time to ask outright: which of you is an author!!! Come clean now!! Enough of the lies and the dirty tricks.

AND NOW WE KNOW this is all a lie. They were authors all along, many of them. Willing to malign “authors” as they hide behind pseudonyms. That this woman would continue with her blog, given that she is an author and a successful one and promote her own work… makes her despicable. After all it is “promotion” by authors that so angers this “reader bully” population. And she has done it for her own book!!!! I think the question has to be asked now of everyone of these people: What is your real name and are you an author?

I think these people must be exposed for  what they’ve done:

1) Essentially try to convince the public that they are vigilant readers, generous with their time and love of books, who are trying to save other readers from “badly behaved authors.”

2)Try to convince the public that authors are irresponsible and childish and need to be policed by “readers.”

3) That there is war on between these “readers” and bad authors.

The headline here is “The bullies have been lying for years. They are actually authors punching down from behind pseudonyms against fellow authors! The whole idea of the vigilant reader asserting her rights is a sham!”

So all the foolishness about “big bad authors” who might hurt reviewers is a lie. They’re authors!!!!!! All the foolishness about reviewers needing pseudonyms to protect them from authors is a lie. They’re authors! In ruthlessly policing what they call “badly behaved authors,” accusing them of fake five star reviews and self promotion, they have lied, lied, lied, about the fact that they themselves are authors! And this Jane person has actually discussed her own work! The entire bully credo is a lie!

Thank you for your words.  We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

We’d like to report that Jenny Trout and her band of miscreants were successful in their attempt to get Fionna Free Man’s book (a fictional story about Thomas Jefferson’s Mistress) pulled from Amazon:

For proof, here’s a comment from Jenny’s blog:

Lies

If you go back and read why Jenny started this take-down campaign against this author’s book, you’ll see it was because she was just appalled at the “rape” in it and how “racist” the book was that it demeaned a WoC (woman of color.)

Now, why are we telling you this?  Because Jenny completely got it wrong about both the author and the book.  Not only is the author a WoC and a black rights activist, her book has NO rape in it!  None!

Really, there is so much stupid in this Jenny Trout story, we’re not sure where to begin.  I guess we’ll start with Jenny’s tweets on the subject.  Here, she asks how she was supposed to know the author was a PoC (Person of Color):

HowWasIToKnow

Well, Jenny, if you’d taken the time to do your research on the author and her book, just like our blog reader did, you’d have known.  It isn’t rocket science.

Furthermore, in this tweet, Jenny tells someone that she is known for taking down authors whom she judges to be unworthy (and we all know how good her judgement and efforts to inform herself are):

NotBookPolice

Now, because of all this nonsense, we have idiots like this re-blogging a post that is misinformed and that gets the facts wrong on all levels:

Idiot

First of all, Jenny was wrong about the author and her book because she didn’t do her research.  Secondly, Anne Rice didn’t tell any of her fans to complain to Jenny’s publisher.  All our post, Jenny Trout Sabotages Another Author’s Book, Encourages Fans to Pirate it.

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So, Anne had nothing to do with Jenny’s publisher deciding to dump her.  The problem started when one of the authors on the project was uncomfortable having her story published alongside Jenny’s, which she clearly states on her blog:

Explanation

Now, at the very end of Idiot’s re-blog, it says:

This is a really hostile environment for WoC …

And we’d have to agree with that, but not on the part of the “racist fuckheads”.  It is on the part of Jenny and her band of bullies.  Unwittingly, while trying to exercise her self-granted power of author take-downs and punish a “racist” and her book, she did irreparable damage to a WoC and made herself look like a fool in the process.

Good job, Jenny.

Good news, everyone!  Notorious bully, Mahala (aka Spare Ammo and 38 Calibre Reviews), has gotten booted off GR!  If you click the link below, you will see she’s completely gone:

We’ve published several posts that included news of her bullying.  Here, we will show you what she’s done recently to someone in the Amazon fora, doxxing his mother’s phone number (we left the first number to prove she actually posted it):

Mahala2

And here she threatens to call her:

Mahala

 

Oh also, she admits to targeting self-published authors in particular as you can see in the title of her blog:

TargetingSelfPublishedAuthors

So, now all Goodreads members can now breathe a sigh of relief knowing this bully is gone.

Just when we thought Jenny had turned over a new leaf.  Sigh.  Alas, she has not.  She’s on another rampage.  We feel as though we really don’t have to sum up what Jenny’s done this time.  The title of our post says it all.

We found out about this from a link to an FB article sent to us from a blog reader:

FBPost1

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Stunned, we went to Jenny’s blog to find out for ourselves.  We won’t link to it here, but we will show you the shots we took.

It starts with:

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And ends with:

Pirate

We would say we’re shocked, but everything coming from the bullies these days seems to get worse and worse. When the author on FB brought it to people’s attention, do you think Jenny was ashamed of her behavior and apologized for it?

Uh… no.

She sent this to the FB author:

JennyAdmits

Way to go, Jenny!  You’ve shown your true colors once again!

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An Addendum

The author (who we know is definitely NOT racist or a rapist) who originally called Jenny out for her bullying was recently attacked on Twitter by her and her fans/friends.  We wanted to show you what these bullies do when you stand up against them (we’ve whited out the author’s identifying information to protect him):

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This just in.  Another bully was banned from Goodreads.

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Each time we hear of a bully being banned, we will report it to let our readers know that GR is slowly getting safer.  It hasn’t yet met our standards for author-friendliness, but it’s getting closer.

 

Poor, poor Linda.  She’s really been going through a rough time lately, hasn’t she?  Not only was she kicked out of Goodreads for her bullying behavior, she just recently had carpet-bombed to oblivion:

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If you want to see firsthand the damage, just take a look at :

StarlightSeduction

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Now, we don’t know who did this, but we do know exactly why they did it:

OneStarPunishment

The carpet-bombers apparently took offense at this and showed her exactly what it’s like to be “punished”.

Ironic, isn’t it?

As for Linda, all we have to say is:

Careful what you wish for!

This just in from Anon:

Another bully got the boot. Linda Hilton was deleted from Goodreads. Congrats, STGRB, you do a good job to make the world a better place. One bully down, more to go.

Linda has been one of the more aggressive bullies, attacking other authors online, condemning them for five-starring their own books, while at the same time doing the same to hers.  She’s part of the Dear Author crowd and has been involved in multiple online attacks of authors, if not leading them herself.  Her absence from GR is a huge relief.

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We just received this link from a reader.  It’s from Linda’s BookLikes page.  Here’s a screenshot:

TheBanHammer

Be careful reading the comments below her post.  They may cause you to hurl violently.  Typical bully whining and rationalizing as to why they keep getting banned.

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