Hat tip: Lewis
I had given up watching Daggy’s “I’m Back!” announcement on the TTA forum. I wasn’t expecting Larry to reply at all, after Jim Steel’s comment. Indeed, he thought about it for three days before adding a reply. C’mon — you know Daggy was watching that thread, hoping for more than two replies. Nobody starts a thread like that, then doesn’t watch for replies. A couple of things really stand out to me.
There was no such thread on any other forum apologizing to North American writers and/or editors. Nada on Shocklines, for instance. I can’t help wondering whether he really thinks those in North America don’t count, or it’s just a last ditch effort to save his reputation overseas, since he knows it’s mud over here.
The other thing I noticed is that he claims to have emailed double-digit publications to offer refunds for his fraudulent sales. First off, offering refunds to that many publications would seem to be at odds with this statement:
I sold a handful of reprints to amateur markets on occasion.
Next, if “a handful” of fraudulent sales progressed to at least 10 publications that he claims to have emailed so far, how many more are there? I don’t think we’ve heard the last of this nonsense.
Pro tip, Larry: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
Personally, I don’t think Larry has any intention of repaying anyone. If he bothered emailing all those editors/publishers at all, which is debatable, I’d bet he’s expecting them to feel sorry for him and give him a pass. While publishers might give him a pass, and let it go, you can bet he wouldn’t get off so easily if he were caught shoplifting.
It would be nice to see if anyone asks him for details as to whom he’s offered “refunds” to…
It would be nice to see if any of the defrauded publishers actually received an email offering to refund them.
Or indeed actually stumped up the cash, but any offer he makes is about as sincere as any apology he offered.
I’ve emailed two of the publishers asking if they received an email from Dagstine offering to refund their money
Keep us posted, Cuss.
Even if he did give out refunds, doesn’t change the fact that he deceived editors and publishers.
That won’t be forgotten, which I’m sure is what he really hopes.
They will never trust him again. Nor will anyone else with half a brain.
Absolutely. He wants this whole thing to go away and be forgotten by everyone. I’m afraid that’s not going to happen.
Has anyone stopped to think that the reason he said 10 was to make it all seem much less than it was?
Yes, but he defeated the purpose by adding “so far.”
I suppose he put that in so that the other editors would keep their yaps shut in hopes of getting their money back.
They would all be kept in the dark as to who might or might not have gotten a refund and be waiting for theirs like good little boys and girls.
snerk.
I don’t think anybody’s going to get their money back, but you never know. It’d be nice if Daggy were to prove me wrong for once.
So far he has never proven any of us wrong. But statistically speaking, if he considers 10 a very small number, then I would estimate that the total is closer to 50 or more.
All the research I have done so far has not turned up over 10 stories by Dagswine.
What are the odds that his 400 stories and at least 50% reprints and 75% lies.
Had a better thought on that and compared his ranking to that of a new book that Daverana has brought out.
Web of Lies: My life with a Narcissist by Sarah Tate.
The book has only been out for a week on Kindle and is already close to overtaking his sales rank.
Visitation Rights came out a year ago or so, judging by the Tomoview of it, so . . .
SQ hit kindle in February.
Web hit kindle a week ago.
Cuss hits it on the head.
Oh dear. Note that Larry didn’t show up to his own party, even after he supposedly got out of the hospital? I thought Sam’s Dot was friendly turf for him.
It is clearly not as friendly as it once was.
There is no way to know what his sales for them was like. The strongest means of guessing is to find his amazon rankings and compare them to another small press title.
So I compared it to one of my own. The majority of my sales have been at smashwords so this is probably not a good test.
Kindle stats
Dagstine’s sales rank for Visitation Rights is #64,794
Mine for Serpent’s Quest is #197,899
So he’s outselling me currently on Kindle.
I can confirm that Larry did send out offers to refund the money to various zines.
However, the consensus so far is that the editors he has made these offers to are refusing to reply to the offers out of a desire to not engage Dagstine in a dialogue.
I’m not sure whether that’s good or bad. On one hand, I can understand them not wanting anything further to do with Larry. But, it also means that Larry can now claim he offered to refund their money, and they refused, so now he gets to keep it . . . which is what he was hoping for, anyway.
It’s a physic victory at best. Given what these markets could have paid out (zilch to maybe three cents per word), many of these markets may just be willing to swallow the loss of say $60 on average for a 4k word short. Yeah, Larry can say he offered, but it doesn’t negate the fact that he did this more than he’s willing to admit.
In the long term, the damage is done. Larry got caught defrauding editors and double-dipping, and now he’ll be hard pressed to find a market that will want to deal with him. Even if they do, they’ll probably offer to buy reprint rights (or the monetary equivalent thereof) just as a precaution.
And with this sort of black spot on his record, combined with the fake suicide attempt that he did to get attention away a from his bullshit, Dagswine’s chances of making it in the pro markets are less than nil. Even if he goes under a new pen name (or multiple names, which I’ve seen with another, more local Nitwit), he’s still going to crow about his so-called achievements in that oh so familiar Daggy style, and savvy editors in the pro markets will connect the dots and drop him.
Sorry Dagstine, but this little half-ass suicide/ear cancer/psych therapy bullshit, just further locked you out of the pro markets. Of course, as I said, your lack of writing skills was a guarantee of that in the first place…
And the stupid autocorrect on my iPad turned “phyrric” into psychic…
Ah. You meant pyrrhic. Makes more sense now.
Yeah… apparently I lost some spelling ability over the past 24 hours. I blame that GI Joe movie I watched last night for dropping my IQ.
its… its like a drama turducken.
I am sure he also sold reprints to Samsdot as originals.
Another reason for them to turn their backs on him.
Deadstine Facebook update:
“Author’s Note: all repro-ed (or secondthird serial right pubs will be refunded). Emphasis on refund. Thank you.”
And in other news, he also posted about 10:30pm last night that he was packing up his kid, getting on the bus, and going for Chinese because they ‘both’ were starving. Later, he posted that the poor kid was asleep in the booth, but he was loving his beef fried rice.
Hmm. On the TTA forum, he claimed he was offering refunds to 10 publications via email. Now, he’s claiming that all publications involved will actually receive those refunds? Sort of a step up from what he said on TTA, but then again, his promises are as empty as the space between his ears.
As for dragging out a sleeping three year old at 10:30 at night, it’s better than leaving the kid in the apartment alone, but maybe Daggy should have considered the food situation before he took the kid for the weekend. At the very least, he could have found a place that delivered, and added an entree to his fried rice — assuming he had to order $10 worth of food to qualify for delivery, as is often the case in NYC. So, you tip the delivery guy, but it’s still no more than bus fare, plus you have the leftovers for the next day.
Apparently, there was no interruption in his visitation rights. He has unsupervised access to his kid, yet supposedly he just got out from being suicidally depressed.
What gives?
I don’t think his ex or the judge in the case know about his little stunt…
Because, obviously, he was never hospitalized.
Didn’t he claim this week that he was cut off from the internet and phone while in the care of that hospital? He asked certain people to go to Shocklines and Keene’s site to ask them to pass messages on, but the dumbshit still had to get online to do that. I believe he was making offers via facebook that if someone passed his messages on he’d add them as a friend.
Al, he was dropping people from his friends list and telling them that he would add them back if they carried his messages to Shocklines, Keene, Rusty, and myself.
To put things further in perspective, one of our books just passed Daggy’s in the rankings with ten books sold over the course of its first two weeks.
Sort of. He did say something about re-friending someone he removed from his f-list if that person posted a message for him on Keene and The Rusty Nail. Dutifully, the guy did just that.
Don’t recall whether Shocklines was part of the deal, but I doubt it. He’s avoided that place like the plague ever since Ramsey Campbell found and cited his article about how to make $5k by selling stories 3+ times apiece. I thought Daggy restricted his message to blogs, where his dutiful messenger didn’t actually have to register to post for him.
Rusty, I think there were more than one of them.
Rusty I remember Shocklines specifically. Someone tried to friend him, probably out of kindness to see if he was ok, and he said he’d add him if he said this and that on Shocklines. I remember most of the ‘this and that’ was anger aimed at Keene because even though Lawrence was trying to look pitiful (too pitiful to fess up to the resales) his temper like always got the best of him and he was letting Shocklines see he was more concerned about telling Brian off than anything else.
We suspected he faked it all because of the resale biz, and judging by this stuff Lewis and Rusty found, it was a big deal like we suspected. He has obviously done it to a LOT of people hence his panic…I mean contacting 10 publishers and that’s not all of them?!?!
Could well be that he asked several people to be the bearer of his message, but only one of them showed up — rather sheepishly, I might add — on this blog, and Keene’s, to do Larry’s bidding.
that was my take on it, rusty
Good reminder on the article on how to resell stories.
Shows it was no oversight, but his deliberate ploy.
And he’s added an update to the BFS forum as well, with an interesting comment about Shocklines:
http://www.britishfantasysociety.org/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=11c6232c3539aa9869da74756eeae7f5&topic=2414.45
As far as the whole “turning pro” thing goes – does he not understand that it’s not like turning on a light switch? You just don’t suddenly decide to “go pro”, as if the author is the one who dictates how much his work sells for and to whom (unless you’re working at King or Keene’s level and have earned that right). Being a pro is largely dependent on having a high enough level of talent to get pro markets to pay for your work, and I just don’t believe Dagstine has the writing chops to get professional rates (or the patience to take the time necessary to acquire them).
The bad element, of course, is all of those who refused to lie down and die or cower beneath their computer desks in terror of his awesomeness.
All of his victims are such a toxic crowd at Shocklines.
Pity his Android only works on European hosted sites, plus, of course, Facebook. *snerk*
Notice how Daggy mentioned “First North American” rights? M-Brane’s contract is for first worldwide (English language) rights, which Chris Fletcher made abundantly clear. Although, apparently, Chris used to at least consider reprints, Daggy’s story was not represented as such, at the time he contracted with M-Brane.
All of those publications that Dagstine sold to made it abundantly clear that they a) did not accept reprints or b) would consider them, but they wanted to be queried before subbing one to them.
Dagstine thinks that the process of selling to less than pro markets is the same thing as clicking his ruby slippers together and chanting, “I want to make pro.”
You’re absolutely right on both counts, Livia. Dagswine subscribes to the theory that if you just get enough credits anywhere, no matter how shoddy the market, turning pro is as easy making the decision. For him it has nothing to do with talent (which he doesn’t have) or the ability/willingness to learn (which his ego doesn’t allow).
He wants immediate gratification, and with all the adulation he thinks is due a writer, but he doesn’t want to do the work.
Sorry Dagstine, but “going pro” in the professional markets is not a grind quest out of World of Warcraft – or in your case World of WordCrap (no offense to WoW players). It takes talent, skill and patience to succeed, and of those three criteria you have zilch.
Meanwhile, for those missing Nicky: http://www.briankeene.com/?p=421
That one’s a classic.
I wonder if Dagstine’s idea of going pro consistsnof him trying to sell his previously sold drek as First Rights work.
That would not surprise me at all.
And those stories have all received an edit from the editors of the zines he first sold them to. So they would give a better impression of what he writes than the ones that were not edited by others who knew their business.
We know that his unedited stories are poor. The one that he has been running as a serial on his blog is very poor.
He has no idea on how kids would talk and the premise fails in many spots. There is also a exaggerated preciousness to all of it.
http://healthstip.com/fine/zo9101251935u21/m84188286
Now he’s posting announcements of his books on health care sites?
I think that site is a bot-crawler aggregator–it may be that one of the authors in the anth shares a name with a medical researcher, so the site picked it up.
Nicky’s TP series also shows up in an online bookstore associated with some women’s cancer support website. Obviously, these places drop ship, but the main question is whether anyone can post their own book listing, or whether some sort of approval process is required for whatever a bot picks up. Nicky could argue that one of his authors had cancer, but other than whining about his own
brushes with deathsniffles, there’s no connection to health issues in his stories.From his TTA thread:
[note: “Confused” was a smilie, not the word itself]
So the ones Cuss contacted who won’t dignify him with a reply just happen to be the ones unaccounted for in the above? Anyone know who actually accepted repayment?
I know who they all are, but I would rather not name names right now, because he’s baiting them. Especially the “moody” one.
I’m going to wait and see what happens there.
He also added two more comments on the BFS board:
and
Dude really doesn’t get it, does he?
The World SF convention usually spans five days. I checked the rates for that period, since Circus Circus has a rate calendar. I don’t see how he can afford to attend.
He’s said he was attending cons before and never showed.
Dagstine is the reason I will not attend a con without an entourage of large males and mean assed women.
I stayed at Circus Circus when I went to Vegas a few years ago…and yes the room was nice, but I wouldn’t stay there again personally.
I wonder if the one in Vegas is the same size and shape as the one in Reno?
He never does get it and never will. And he won’t be at that convention.
I agree he won’t be at that convention. His track record is to announce his attendance, then not show. He did that with Philcon and the one at Brighton, to name just two.
Reply from Theaker on BFS:
Makes me wonder whether Lorenzo will start making disparaging remarks about the “bad element” on the BFS board. Clearly, folks are annoyed with Daggy’s shenanigans, but I can’t tell for sure whether they’re taking what he says at face value, or merely being polite because of the venue.
Despite my low opinion of Theaker, he does manage to surprise me sometimes.
And even if Larry did use a new pseudonym, his writing style is a dead giveaway that it is him.
I was a little surprised by Theaker’s remark, too.
New orchidy goodness photos posted.
beautiful flowers.
He’s posting like crazy on FB, though most of it is just fluff. Guess the faux-hospitalization is definitely over. A few highlights/weirdnesses (is that a word?) [Note- all typos and misspellings are his]:
“Dear Pro and Semi-Pro Writers — I guess now is as good a time as any — please stay tuned to this spot in 2011, or my other FB page. THANK YOU.”
“FACT: I just found this out. Did you know that nowadays 78% of Small Press writers are published by LSI-type houses through people they know? So if my cousin and I open two LSI houses, and we publish each other at the same time, technically it’s POD but NOT self-publishing.”
“Every few years vampires make a comeback: Anne Rice’s Lestatsexual vampires, Buffy & Angel, True Blood & Stephenie Meyer. In another 8 to 10 yrs vampires will have already invaded steampunl and cyberpunk.”
“WORKING ON (but off to bed now): “The Waters of Europa” and “”edusa in Central Park.”
He’s also doing giveaways of ‘mint’ books. He asks a weirdass trivia question, and the winner gets a book of Deadstine’s choice. Guess they’d have to surrender their mailing address
“Congratulations to Arlene Rose who won the September 2010 Book Contest. The question was which writer has a southern mustache… the answer: FAULKNER.
~BTW- can someone tell me how (or link me to instructions) to format my replies so that the Deadstine quotes look like some of the others above? I’m not 100% sure how to do it, and don’t want to jack it up and look like a Nikita.~
Trivia question: what’s the difference between a writer with a Southern mustache, and a Southern writer with a mustache?
For blockquotes, just enclose the word blockquote in less than and greater than signs, and don’t forget the slash in the ending tag. Sort of like “blockquote”whatever text you want to quote”/blockquote” but replace the quotation marks with the greater than/less than signs.
Methinks Larry’s “facts” are highly distorted. More poison on the web again.
“In another 8 to 10 yrs vampires will have already invaded steampunl and cyberpunk.”
Done already, Dumbstine. Gail Carriger’s “Parasol Protectorate” series, beginning with “Soulless” where the heroine has to deal with vampires. Oh wait, you wouldn’t know about that one, because you probably don’t read anything written by them danged wimmin-folk…
As far as Larry’s trivia thing goes, I bet that’s fake as well. Southern mustache?
That idiot can’t even fabricate bullshit properly.
I know; “Southern mustache” had me ROFL.
The ‘southern mustache’ made me laugh also. Considering I grew up in Texas and California, I’m puzzled about just what constitutes a ‘southern mustache.’
I am a Southerner with a mustache, and have no idea what the hell he means by that.
It’s okay, Otter, I don’t think Dagstine knows what he’s talking about. It’s how he usually tries to present himself as some worldy intellectual, but as always he ends up revealing himself as a dimwitted buffoon.
I have figured it all out. A southern mustache is worn south of the mouth instead of north.
Awesome! I will experiment by attempting to post a couple of Nicky’s latest FB posts:
He’s also got another ramble up on wordpress, very careful to not actually mention names though.
Soooo . . . he thinks his EG magazine is semi-pro? In what universe do his pay rates amount to that category, especially since he rarely bothers to pay people at all?
The other thing is that he’s going to post his relatives’ email addresses? Fucking brilliant, that, Nicky. Do they want you posting that information?
The email business sounds like a trap to me, but then again it’s Nicky, he might actually be that stupid.
http://npacione.wordpress.com/2010/09/08/its-updated/
So, he has an enemy in “Tornoto,” he thinks The Ethereal Gazette is semi-pro, and he wants artwork done in colored pencil. I can understand that, since he uses colored pencils for his own artwork; granny won’t let him have anything potentially more damaging than crayons.
I like how he mentions how some writers got started with Fan Fic but moved on and it’s not his normal frothing at the mouth over mentioning it. Does this mean he actually does approve of Fan Fic, in the right circumstances?
Nicky did overwhelmingly approve of a Buffy fanfic written by a friend of mine several yearss ago. Naturally, his gushing turned into plugging his own stories and technique.
My friend knows about Pacione, and he was more than a weirded out by this.
Daggy’s reply to Theaker on the BFS forum:
ROFLMFAO
Wow… He gets dumber by the day.
He changes the names on his “pseudos” every time he mentions them.
Just like he changes the number of publications affected by his multiple sales of “first rights” to his reprints? First, it was a handful, done accidentally, then it was 10+, and now it’s 30-something.
C’mon, Daggy — that ain’t no accident.
Do it once, it’s accidental.
Do it twice, it’s coincidental.
Do it any more than that, it’s intentional.
Very true, MIke, but in the actual quote, it’s happenstance not accidental. lol
Ian Fleming was awesome.
Oh, so that’s where that came from! I think I heard it once and it mint have been paraphrased on Schlock Mercenary. Thanks!
http://lawrencedagstine.com/2010/09/09/einsteins-pocket-watch-july-to-september-2010/
Anyone care to check and see if this is a reprint he’s just foisted off as an original?
I saw that entry earlier, but didn’t pay much attention to it. “Peafant,” aka Rob Crandall, is an old buddy of his from Silverthought, and possibly elsewhere. I doubt he cares whether it’s a reprint.
I’m sure you’re right then.
I still want to know if it’s a reprint. I’ll probably google it.
I thought he said he was going pro… that don’t look like pro to me…
Now, now, Mike. It’s not defunct like a bunch of other places to which Larry submitted, so using Dagswine logic, it must be pro. 😉
got one stuck in moderation, rusty
Of course that guy would publish Dagstine. They are friends.
Thinking about Dumbstimne, “Is science fiction dead?” blog post, I find that these are the sourgrapea of a wannabe hack that couldn’t sell his work to a professional market if he tried (and he won’t).
Dagstine, if SF were “dead” I strongly doubt Alastair Reynolds, a writer of hard SF who actually does research and knows what he’s talking about, would land a ten book deal. But then again I expect that sort of attitude from someone who is ignorant about current genre fiction.
Mike, according to publisher’s weekly, hard science and space opera are out-selling fantasy and horror.
Only a nitwit would wonder if they were dead.
And Dagswine is a Captian in the Legion of Nitwits.
Problem with Larry, Cuss, is that when he gets an idea in his head–no matter how stupid it may be—he insists it is true.
If Daggy thinks SF is dead, then no one can convince him otherwise.
Truly the mind of a man with mental problems.
He’s been proclaiming doom for genres and publishing since 2008.
It’s probably to make himself feel better about how quickly his own magazine, The Literary Bone(r) tanked.
Not to mention sour grapes because the bigger markets won’t recognize his “genius.”
>“Is science fiction dead?”
Nope. My Sci-Fi is selling in its thousands. More than anything else I’ve ever done. And I’ve been selling stories to new pro Sci-Fi markets this year which pay better than most of the horror ones.
In my eyes it’s more alive and kicking than the horror market.
But what do I know?
Reality is no excuse, Willie. SF is dead. *wink*
Ah but perhaps if we agree with him he’ll stop writing SF, then we can move on to other genres until the only one left for him is Seal Romance.
“I balanced the ball on my nose, an old trick, one I’d done a thousand times before for a fish but this time it was different: he was watching. Every clap of his flippers and appreciative “Arf, Arf” sent a tingle from the tip of my nose to the end of my tail, it had to be love.”
LOL @ Lewis.
Hahahahaha!
That sounds cute.
As I wrapped my flippers around her and passionately sniffed her mouth….
one of my whiskers got caught in her teeth . . .
Check out the latest irony-laced post from Deadstine’s FB page:
Another trip to the inpatient psych ward? It’s as if he was never there. Oh, wait . . .
“Stuck-up”? Who’s stuck up? All the people who don’t think he can write his way out of a ruptured condom?
Maybe the publishers who wanted their money back after he defrauded them are stuck-up?
Considering that all of Daggy’s life experience I’ve been able to tell from his blog posts and other retarded scrawlings consists of:
*Going to underage drinking parties as a man in his 20’s
*Defacing public property
*Lying every time his lips moved
*Arranging for other people to attack his enemies
*Failing at marriage and fatherhood
*Cheating publishers
*Pretending to be [fill in the blank] for sympathy
*Failing at life in general
He’s got all the life experience of a bloated manchild who went from Mommy’s basement to his wife’s house, like a woman of Regency England.
His lack of life experience, combined with his inability to basic research or understand realistic cause and effect, might be the reason his stories are so piss poor and he can’t understand how other writers can successfully write in genre that he can’t seem to get into.
Genres that he then claims are “dead” to appease a child-like ego that can’t allow his own personal shortcomings or failures to be the real reason he can’t accomplish anything with his life beyond what he’s accomplished so far.
Failure.
I read that, and for some reason I thought of this quote:
“Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind,
amazing things will happen.”
~Conan O’Brien
I think what I’m trying to say is that one shouldn’t mistake “life experience” and “letting loose” with lying, cheating, looking for shortcuts, and generally doing anything to sabotage other peoples’ honest efforts to succeed. Although, I don’t believe he’s mistaking anything – he’s simply trying to relabel his reprehensible behavior as some kind of pure, universal human experience out of which he can magically produce another “400” publication credits without suffering the deserved consequences of previous actions. But it won’t work, because even if he’s able to fool another batch of naive editors and publishers, he will never be the truly professional (in all aspects of the word) and respected writer he so desperately wishes to be. Amazing things will never happen to him. Which is rather sad, because it would have been so easy for him to achieve. All he had to do was to work hard, and be kind…
He has no concept of what professionalism or kindness really are.
But he has one hell of a way with words.
Seize the Mutton!
Ha! I’d forgotten about that line.
Carpe ovis!
More Deadstine FB stuph:
Someone should create a page called “Faking your own death to distract people from your unethical behavior” and suggest he “Like” it.
He’s making that up about them sending him the drug stuff. IT’s a reference to him harassing me about my drug use when I was young. I’ve been clean since 1988, yet he will not leave me alone about it.
Daggy is on FB trying to sell his yu gi oh cards for cash. Below book price and free shipping even! Break out the checkbooks everyone!
Here’s the latest Deadstine FB musing:
Riiiiight, Larry… because you’ve paid your dues and are a successful professional author. Suuuure…
Translation: it’s a sad state of affairs when any ol’ jackhole, just like me, can proclaim himself an author, dammit!
He seems to think paying dues is like paying subway fare. Come to think of it, I wonder how many times he’s jumped the turnstile.
Here’s a little sprinkle of Deadstine unintentional FB irony:
Ummm… Larry, considering the revelations about you just a short while ago, should you be posting anything that includes “living a life that is a monstrous lie”?
He is a figment of his own imagination.