Below is a list of what we consider to be the biggest offenders when it comes to author bullying and cyber stalking. We’ve listed their names, a link to their STGRB post, and what they have done to earn the title, Biggest Offender.
Update 9/26/2013: Jane Litte is now GONE from GR due to the Great Purging.
Jane Litte is the founder of Dear Author and is considered by the majority of our site visitors to be the biggest bully on the block. According to one, she is “one of the biggest bullies of all time, one who instigates and sets up scenes for bullies on purpose so she can sit back and eat popcorn.” Jane and her followers are notorious for baiting authors into responding to their nasty reviews just so they can tear them down and label them BBA (for more information on BBA, see The Bully MO.) You can see examples of Jane’s crew baiting authors here. To read about Jane harassing Nathan Bransford for publishing an anti-bullying post on his blog, go to Twitter Attack on Nathan Bransford.
Jane and her ilk are famous for reading books they know they’ll hate just so they can trash them:
You can read more about Jane on our posts: Why Jane Litte Was Banned From RWA, Beautiful Blunder: Dear Author Strikes Again and J.S. Cooper vs. Jane Litte.
Kat Kennedy
Kat is well known for her book blog Cuddlebuggery where she posts regularly about authors. In order to do this, she stalks authors’ Twitter, GR, Facebook, and author website pages so she can post their content on her site and send the bully mob after them. Examples of this are her post and every subsequent Buzz Worthy News post under Scandalous Scandals (now called Controversy), where she smears authors’ reputations by , thus libeling them (for the truth on this particular author she smeared, click ). Kat is infamous for being one of the bully ringleaders who often leads attacks on authors such as this one on Rebecca Hamilton.
Watch out for this one on GR and by all means, steer clear of her blog.
Stephanie is the co-owner of Cuddlebuggery and Kat’s favorite partner in bully crime. Like Kat, she is also well-known for stalking, libeling, and bullying authors. Stephanie earned her spot on our Biggest Offender list not for bullying an author, however, but for bullying and humiliating another REVIEWER and then wrongfully blaming an author for something this reviewer did. For more information on this story, please read Stephanie Humiliates Reviewer. An investigation into Stephanie’s claims is underway and a lawsuit is pending. More updates to come.
Update 9/25/2013: It was proved that Melody is a real person (see Melody’s Story) and NOT the author. Kat and Steph removed the offending post where Stephanie wrongfully blamed the author. However, they refused to give a public apology and instead said they wanted to “stay out of the drama” even after they had originally started it and had caused severe damage to said author and her reputation.
Wendy Darling (real name Mimi Geuthe) is most well known for starting a hate campaign against author Kiera Cass which you can read about here. To make a long story short, Kiera Cass’s agent caused a dust up on GR over Wendy’s review of Kiera’s book, so Wendy stalked Kiera’s Twitter and took screenshots of a conversation Kiera had with her agent over the whole ordeal. Kiera’s agent called Wendy an unflattering name and Wendy showed the screenshots to her friends. Kiera tried to reach out to Wendy and all the injured parties involved, apologizing and trying to make amends. Did Wendy accept her apology? Did she respond at all? No. Instead, she sent the bully mob after Kiera and began a hate campaign against her by contacting her friends at Publisher’s Weekly and having them publish an article vilifying her. Not cool.
Don’t let the name fool you. She is no darling. This one is a snake. Beware.
The Holy Terror (real name Shannon D.) is known for conspiring with biggest offender, Ridley, in destroying the career of indie author, James Austen. The Holy Terror is also known for being a stalker and information fetcher for the bully group. She is tenacious and cruel, considered to be one of the most nasty and vicious vipers in the book community. Beware of this one, too.
Lucy, (whole name Lucy Davis) is most famous for cyber stalking an author and threatening to publish her personal identifiable information online with malicious intent. She was joined by Foz M. and the two women put the author in such personal danger that she had to contact the police and warn her neighbors. A police report was made about the incident which included all the electronic evidence STGRB sent to the author. So far, no harm has come to her. To read about the whole affair, see our More Bully Reviews post.
Ridley (real name Brandy Grondine) is known for conspiring with The Holy Terror in ruining the career of indie author, James Austen, but she is probably most well known for her Twitter post telling authors that she will destroy them:
Ridley is listed under the Scary Run Fast category of our right sidebar. There is a very good reason we have her listed there. If you see this one, run the other direction.
Archer Adam Pring & Lissa Bilyk
Update 9/26/2013: Archer is now GONE from GR due to the Great Purging. Lissa is gone from Goodreaads as well. Although her account is still up, it remains inactive.
This Bonnie & Clyde engaged pair are not only guilty of reviewer hypocrisy, but also of leaving nasty, premeditated one-star reviews on other authors’ books, provoking them into fights, and then reporting them to GR in order to get them kicked off the site.
Lissa is most well known for her reviewer hypocrisy and attacking other authors. Adam is most well known for cursing out a fourteen year old girl with Blythe H. on Goodreads. Both Adam and Blythe used inappropriate language with a minor, a violation of GR TOS. Here is a screenshot of Adam’s words to the girl.
To read about the incident, see our Bully Reviews post.
Anna Karenina (real name Janis Hinkle) is a notorious cyber bully spotted on Amazon under the name of , on Goodreads under the name of , and on Facebook as . Dougie Brimson, a notable author and screenwriter, was the first to notice Anna’s behavior and her “multiple social media identities that enable the execution of malicious acts”, when he published his famous post on Amazon, Dougie was also the first person to catch Anna in a lie. Since then, Anna’s behavior online has gotten to be so bad that an anti-cyber bullying group investigated her and contacted her employers. For more information on Anna, please read The Many Faces of Anna Karenina.
Angela Horn
Update 8/7/2013: Angela was banned from Goodreads. Please read: Angela Booted Off Goodreads for more information.
Angela has earned a spot on our Biggest Offenders list for several reasons. We first learned of Angela from her vicious attack on Sharon Desruisseax after Sharon tried to befriend her, then her name began to crop up again and again when we heard of her onslaught against Eve Thomas and then against one of her own bully friends, Ederyn. Her antics didn’t stop there. She was one of the creators of the Anti-Asshat group whose mission was to “create a positive image for indie writers by not behaving like asshats while also helping non-asshat authors succeed.” Ironically, instead of creating a positive image, Angela has become known as one of the most savage and unstable bullies on GR and has been known to create several sock-puppets (i.e. , which has already been deleted from GR) in order to launch one-star bombs on her enemies’ books. However, what has really earned her a spot on our list was when we learned that she was responsible for the deletion several accounts belonging to people who crossed her. For more information on that please read:
Something Rotten at the Core of GR
Something Rotten at the Core of GR, Part 2
To give you an idea of what this woman is like, you will want to take a look at where she hypocritically tries to teach others what a BBA is:
You will also want to take a look at this post called , where she tells off her GR friends with whom she had a falling out:
Angela is a failed writer who appears to want to take her anger and vengeance out on other people. So watch out for this one while browsing the GR fora. Whatever you do, avoid her at all costs!
Is Anna’s name really Janis Hinkle?
Yep, that’s her.
Sad thing is, she’s an elementary school teacher. Anyone that mentally unstable and filled with that much hatred shouldn’t be around children.
I feel somewhat petty about the utter glee with which I read “Dear Author” on your list of biggest offenders, but I’m going to enjoy it anyway. It’s personal for me because that site absolutely shredded my first published book. I assumed it was just those commenting on the review (which I accepted since it was my first effort), but when I complained to admin about the increasingly vicious attacks, I learned that the admins were the ones leading the pack baying for blood.
It’s a sad fact that there will always be trolls on the Internet because the relative distance and anonymity of posting online gives these cowards the illusion of invulnerability. They think they can rip into whomever catches their eye with impunity. I guess there are a lot of envious, mean people out there who have to tear someone else down to make themselves feel less small.
Well, the day has come when these bullies are being dragged out into the light where their bad behavior is seen for what it is. Just plain meanness. Bullies bully because they enjoy it and they’ll do it until someone stands up to them.
Thank you, STGRB, for being that someone.
And to make this post a little longer… I absolutely love the last scene of “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” where they use their new-found wealth to track down the people who’ve cyber-bullied them.
You’re welcome, Anon!
Jay and Silent Bob — yep! Lol! You’re talking about this one (note: we DO NOT recommend our readers do something like this, but this video is pretty damn funny!):
Funny video and relevant because people who cyber bully actually never know when something like this could happen to them. I’d rather NOT BULLY than take a chance on being surprised by Jay and SilentBob…lol
I recently tried to get my books removed from the toxic GR site by emailing Patrick Brown. He did not respond. I own the copyright and they do not have my consent to list them. I am unable to logon under my original author account (they have made this impossible) so cannot cancel my account or delete my books myself. How do I get them removed before they do any more damage to my reputation? I totally agree with an earlier post in that the best solution is to take GR down forever. With so much corruption and poisonous ill will towards authors it doesn’t deserve to exist. I would like to make it perfectly clear to everyone that the bullying comes from the GR admin team, and not from readers or authors who have been caught up in the crossfire. This whole situation needs to be exposed via a major news network so that users will not only shun the site, but warn off others. Sue them, yes, by all means but if people stop visiting the site it will soon go under.