I was recently nominated for a Golden Waste Basket Award - Catagory: Mouth Piece/ Puppet by some not so nice people in the indie book community.

Category explanation: Speaking up about things that don't concern me or speaking on behalf of others...
Here is what happened: There is an anonymous group of bullies (trolls) who have taken it upon themselves to be the sheriffs, judge, and jury of the indie book world. They pick targets for varies reasons and cause trouble for them. One of them has been stalking an author friend of mine for over a year. It started online by reporting her accounts as fraudulent and getting them shut down repeatedly. Then it moved on to include her children's accounts.

Her daughter who is around 10 has a rear disorder that prevents her from being able to eat most foods. She goes through periodic food trials to try to find new foods she can add to her diet and gets the majority of her nutrition via a feeding tube. She has a page that follows her journey to raise awareness for the disorder. Her 7-year-old son is a super genius and says and does the craziest thing and there is a page chronicling the adventure that is Sam. Those are the pages that were targeted next.

Her supposed crime is sharing too much information about her children. Not only is this woman a masterfully talented writer and author of my favorite book of all time, but she is a superhero mom and her kids are her world. Like any mother, she brags about their accomplishments. These folks didn't like that she was doing this in her own reader group.

*Note I also worked with this author as a PR assistant on the relaunch of a number of her books. She then hired me as her PA/VA (Virtual Assistant) and I ended up traveling to her home and spending a couple of weeks with her and her family while working on her newest release. So I know first hand that they are wonderful folks with hearts of gold.

If the online stalking wasn't bad enough she then received mail from said stalker referencing her children. Then posts about her started popping up in an anonymous online group. I received an urgent message for another friend who brought these posts to my attention. I simply responded that if the poster didn't like what the author was posting in her own group to leave the group problem solved. Sure...

Then in that same group, the person I believe to be the stalker anonymously posted a vague threat. I did not see the post until after the fact. The next day I get another urgent msg from a friend who saw the msg and believed it was referring to my author. When I went to check not only did I find the Threat post but an update that the person had actually gone to the author's residence the night before and was able to watch the family from the street. And as proof, they left a soda bottle on the authors' mailbox.

I immediately had to reach out to the author and make her aware in case the claim was valid. Sadly it was and the police were called and the author left the book community closed all of her online accounts and stopped writing.

Some of the members of the group then proceeded to mock her and encourage the stalker in that group. That was my breaking point. I then as professionally as possible told them what horrible people they are. When they tried to attack me I told them to stop being cowards and hiding behind anonymous pages. My end goal was ultimately to get the stalker to make a mistake and come out of hiding.

Their response was to nominate me for some "bad" award.

What did I do? I owned it! It was one of my finest moments. I shared it asking for all my friends to vote for me. If someone wants to call me out for standing up for others against the ugliness in the community... I say thank you. It is an honor and I will continue to do so proudly. I'm sorry to say if they were trying to hurt my feelings they failed epically.