The 'Trianon' Controversy Revisited

 In 1997 I wrote and self-published a paperback novel called Trianon: A Novel of Royal France. It quickly sold out. In the year 2000 it was republished by The Neumann Press in hardcover and for many years was their best seller. In 2010, wishing to have another paperback available for readers, I self-published Trianon again on Lulu.com, and later produced a Kindle edition. 

I began blogging in 2006. As many of my readers know, I have had quite a collection of crazies stalking me over the years. The worst and most persistent was a professor from a Catholic college. The professor was joined by another academic, who also enjoyed hounding me all over the internet. I wrote about the experience HERE. 

I would prefer not to resurrect their unpleasantness. But a friend has alerted me to the fact that one of the professors has a blog called Maggie's Place in which I am mentioned in a slanderous manner. Although at first glance, it seemed to be an interesting historical blog that I would want to follow. One blog post is a review of my novel Trianon, originally published twenty-five years ago. The woman reviewing it really hates it; she has been publishing the same review on and off on various sites for years. It seems a bit excessive to pay so much attention to a novel that was written so long ago. Yes, it was my first novel; there is much I would now do differently, although so many people have loved it the way it is. By their regard, I am flattered and humbled. 

I do want to address "Maggie's" calumnious statements. First of all, she calls me "enraged" and "saintly." I am certainly not saintly. And I was never enraged at their attacks. I only get enraged at people I care about. However, as the mother of a family, I was concerned because the male professor would not go away. I wrote to his Dean to inquire if he had a history of violence. If so, I planned to contact the FBI. But it seems that in spite of his eccentricities he was considered harmless.  Here is what Maggie's "postscript" says. To quote:

The enraged, saintly author of this saintly garbage attacked me personally for my review, as well as a review of a friend of mine. Then she tried to contact our employers to complain about what dreadful people we were. She indulged in several inflammatory screeds on her blog, Tea at Trianon, that were clearly beyond the pale, and it was here that she doxed both me and my friend.

I got her banned from Goodreads and all her reviewing privileges removed from both Amazon and Goodreads.

I also find it eminently fitting that she launched another blog in 2016, this one in support of all things Trump.

I never attacked "Maggie" personally. I do not know her at all. I never contacted her employer. I did not and do not know who her employer was or is. I do not care to know. I did not "dox" anyone. Both professors were quite eager to share their academic credentials with the world, which is the only reason I had any idea who they were at all. By the time I went public with my blog post the two had been revealing themselves with alacrity all over cyberspace. But notice that "Maggie" brags that she had me banned from Goodreads and Amazon. Who would brag about doing something so malicious? It has not hurt me but it has hurt many authors who have asked me to post reviews of their works on Amazon and Goodreads. As for a blog on Trump, I really have no idea what she is talking about. I do not have a blog on Trump. I did start a Paper.li page but it is not a blog since it is computer-generated. It tends to generate conservative and Catholic content since that is what my readers are generally interested in. If people do not like my books or my blogs or any of my sites, they do not have to read them. I do not care. But calumny is unacceptable.

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