I thought you clowns "supported Battletech artists"...???

 So I keep hearing from the chuds like Mage Leader and the other Battletech fascists that we need to "support Battletech artists". So I find it funny that people are attacking the....*checks notes* ORIGINAL artwork that I commissioned from Tan Ho Sim, a published Battletech author with over 50 images to his credit. And I'm not talking AI images like the chuds use on their "creations". Unlike the Battletech fascist brigade, I *pay* for my artwork.

The Cat is Out of the Bag

     Well, the cat is out of the bag, it seems. Jon Del Arroz has posted a review of my book over on his blog, and the review bombing has started. I don't get the hate. I understand honest criticism, even invite it, but the hate that is coming out in this review bombing campaign, it just eludes me. Have these people even read my book, or do they just hate me and are leaving bad reviews based on that? What is the world coming to that hate-reviews are a thing? Thank you to anyone that has or will leave an honest criticism/review of my work over at Amazon. It is much appreciated!

For the record...

     For the record, here is the truth of what happened. I've never hidden any of this, but I'd like to get it put together in one place so that people can read it and understand what happened and who I am.

    To tell this story, you have to go back all the way to 2015. It was at this time that I first adopted the persona of "Faith McClosky" I did so in online forums because it felt natural, it was a way for me to interact outside of my struggles with social anxiety. I have dealt with this anxiety my entire life and did not seek treatment because I was ashamed and felt broken. To understand what it was like, I would ask you to think of a time when you've ever written or roleplayed a character. You try to get into that character's head. Now dial that up by about ten times the intensity and you will begin to understand what it was like for me to live as "Faith McClosky". 

    I struggle with a form of dissociative identity disorder, to the point that when I went online or picked up a phone or anything of that nature, I became Faith. Faith was real to me, very real. I would take on her mannerisms when I was in this state of living as Faith. This was not a scam or a catfishing attempt or anything of the sort, it was a flaw in my mental health that I had not yet come to grips with.

    I lived my online life as Faith for years, and then one day my path crossed with Mr. Blaine Lee Pardoe. I was reading some BattleTech and found him inserting his references to the Confederacy into his work to be disturbing, and so I asked him about it, seeking to understand why he was doing what he was doing. His response was to brush me off, label me as a "Shitty Fanfic writer" and block me on social media.

    Things progressed to the point where the quality of his writing began to slip as he fell deeper into the pitfalls of right-wing ideology. He was a prominent writer in the Battletech universe and a figure that loomed large, and as his viewpoint and interaction with the fans became more deranged, I became a prominent voice in the chorus calling for corrective action to be taken, lest we see our franchise flounder under the hands of an unhinged insurrectionist. 

    It was also about this time that I began to take my writing more seriously than fanfiction. I was writing stories and trying to get published, all of this under the online life of Faith. I began to interact with many writers and people behind the scenes in the Battletech community, and it was invigorating to be embraced by them. One of these people was author Craig Reed. We met on the Battletech forums and began a relationship that became one of student and mentor, with Craig helping me along in my writing.

    Then one night, while I had a little too much to drink, I made some offhand comments to Craig over the internet. Little did I know that he would take these comments and go behind my back, taking them to Blaine and igniting Blaine's campaign of harassment against me. A judge found one of these comments actionable enough to grant Blaine a Protective Order in the State of Virginia. The bar is pretty low if you ask me, but your mileage may vary. Regardless, this was the beginning of my spiral into losing the online identity of Faith. When Blaine went Nuclear, it wrecked my world and I was terrified. He sent private investigators to search through all of my life online in an attempt to bring me down, all because I was standing up to him publicly. 

    I will say this for Blaine, he got his public relations ducks in a row, and he has been milking it ever since. His private detectives uncovered a misdemeanor conviction for terroristic threats in my past, and he ran hog wild with that, not bothering to look into the facts of the case itself.

    Allow me to describe the facts of that conviction, as it is a matter of public record. In June of 2020, in the midst of the COVID pandemic, I was fired from my job as a manager at Walmart. I was fired for interfering with an investigation into one worker's claim of sexual harassment against another. I reached out to people to try to mend fences where I should have left Human Resources to do it's investigation, and ultimately HR deemed that my contacting the parties in this investigation was interference in their case, and I was summarily terminated. I was devastated. My mental health began to spiral out of control. All of my anxiety and mental health issues came to a head when I got blackout drunk and threatened to take a firearm into my former place of work and kill myself to show them how badly they had hurt me. This action was deemed a terroristic threat of performative violence by the DA, and I was in no condition to contest it. What I did was wrong, I owned up to it, and have paid my debt to society. I scared a lot of people with my actions, and I've worked to slowly earn their forgiveness.

    So now you all know my history as a "crazed criminal". It was this, and the comments made to Craig Reed in confidence that led Blaine to wage his war of destruction upon my reputation and mental health. Maybe he saw the quality of his work falling off as others did, as he spiraled into alt-right lunacy, but he found in me a convenient scapegoat for all of his shortcomings. All of his actions attacking fans, writing insurrectionist fetish porn and the like, were catching up to him, and he needed some way to spin the narrative to his favor. Me, in my state of mental chaos, provided the perfect opportunity to lay the blame for all of his failures onto someone other than himself.

    He has since waged a coordinated smear campaign against me, twisting the facts of my life and our interactions to create a boogeyman that allowed him to blame someone for his ultimate cancellation when it came. At no point did I lead a campaign to get him canceled or his books removed, as has been falsely spread throughout the community. All I did was point out his bad actions, actions for which he ultimately was held responsible with the decision by CGL to not work with him moving forward. A decision that was in no part based on any "campaign" by me or anyone else. Blaine canceled himself, let's be clear.

       This is who I am, a person struggling with mental health issues (And yes, thankfully I now have a great care team and support network) and gender identity questions while being attacked publicly and used as a scapegoat for other people's shortcomings. I am not a crazed online stalker. I did not send death threats to Blaine. All of these things are lies, exaggerations, and distortions.

    I would also like to point out that at one point, I had completely left Blaine behind for a period of over a year, had no thoughts about him, didn't mention him or bring him up in any way, I just was trying to avoid it. But it was Blaine who dragged me back into court to extend his Protective Order that dragged me all back into this chaos and mess. And it is Blaine and his supporters who continue to attack me for reasons I have yet to comprehend. Let me be clear: I am no threat to Blaine. I wish him no ill will. I'm a forty-something anxiety-ridden writer trying to find his place in the world and the community and come to grips with the state of my own mental health. 

    Make no mistake, Blaine knows all of this. He is not afraid of me, he is merely using this protective order as a means of grift to support his own writing career since his "cancellation" from Battletech, and his fans on the right wing of the community are lapping it up. Power to him for devising such a strategy and implementing it so well. 

    What do I want moving forward? I want to be left alone. I want to be able to continue my mental health recovery plan. I want to be able to write and tell my own stories and have people read and enjoy them. I wish Blaine the best of luck in his Land and Sea endeavors, and in his alt-right insurrectionist writing career. I want him to leave me alone and keep to his own side, keep his minions off of me, and allow me to live in peace.

    I realize this is a long ramble, but I felt it necessary to get the facts out there on the record for everyone genuinely interested to read and understand. I am, at this point, an open book. I encourage anyone with questions to contact me online through their favorite means of communication and if they have any questions, I will do my best to try to answer them. This is part of my Pride journey, to begin taking back the narrative and be proud of who I am, in spite of all of my flaws. I hope you all will take this to heart and that it will allow me to exist in a better state moving forward.  

A few thoughts as Pride month opens...

     Wow, things have really blown up again over the whole Pride Fanzine. I had thought that I was in a place of relative calm until the bad actors on the other side decided that my involvement in the Fanzine was enough of a reason to rake me over the coals again. 

    And as expected, Blaine Pardoe has even poured it on again, as he refuses to let go of a comment that was made over three years ago now. He continues to brandish it as a public relations weapon at me, knowing that I have no recourse due to the Protective Order. 

    But the smear campaign continues, trying to bring my past into it without knowing any of the facts of that case either. But that's how these people operate, damn the facts, go for whatever lies you can to dominate the narrative.

    I just wish these people, Blaine in particular, would leave me alone. He claims I am the Stalker, and yet he is the one who refuses to let go, continually dragging me into the public eye to further his grift of the people on that side of the fence and milk them for whatever money he can. Power to him, I guess, it's the American way. A lie is as good as the truth if you can get people to believe it, and that's just what has happened.

    I'd like to thank all of the people in the community who continue to support me throughout all of this terrible mess. Your support means the world to me as I weather this storm of attacks. It's not easy on my mental health, but that's what the other side wants, to tear us down because they hate our existence. 

    Well, I will continue to exist, and move forward as best I can. I'm working on writing material for my own unique universe and hope to have things published on that front soon. As always, don't let the Chuds win.

A little Short Story that I wrote in the universe that I'm setting my new Po Ding Novellas in. Fans of #pirates #scifi #Mecha and #Battletech should enjoy!

https://www.scribblehub.com/read/1059823-a-pirates-life-for-me/chapter/1059825/

Worldbuilding and Publishing

                     Worldbuilding is hard. It doesn't come naturally to me. It's part of why I was so devastated to not be allowed to write for the BattleTech universe, there was already a 40-year-old world built for me to tell stories in. Moving on from that in terms of writing was hard, but it had to be done.

                    I started with just writing basically Battletech with the serial numbers scratched off, and that made it a bit easier. Change names and places and you can write the same story. But the more I'm writing in the Po Ding universe, the more I'm getting away from Battletech in creative ways and finding creative freedom. It has been empowering and good for my mental health

                    I still hope to write for the Battletech Universe someday, but I know I can co-exist in more than one world. I can still have my BattleTech friends and play in that universe while telling stories in another, and I have many stories to tell.

                    Now I find myself struggling with determining what to do with these stories. There are several routes, from traditional to self-publishing, and each has its advantages and pitfalls. I am navigating This huge new world, and I'm leaning a lot on my friends to help me out in it. You know who you are.

                    I hope that those of you who have stuck around and read my stuff will continue with me on this journey to tell the stories I want to tell, and I hope that you will enjoy them along the way.

The Very Long Night of Po Ding...

                     I'm sitting here at my keyboard, desperately trying to come up with words to describe how I feel right now and failing. I feel empty, lost, alone. In Battletech, you always hear of how disorienting it is to make a K-F jump. I guess it feels a little like that. To have everything you wanted and hoped for ripped away in the blink of an eye.

                    I've played in this universe since I was 8 or 9 years old, and I'm now in my forties. I've never felt so rejected in this universe before. This is on par with losing a relationship or something of that sort. Or losing a dear friend. Is losing a dream any less valid? I sometimes wish I had never dreamed of it at all, so I could not feel this level of disappointment, sadness, and loss.

                    I know some would say "Just go write in another universe" But those other universes don't have the pull of Battletech for me. They don't have the experience of getting that first Ral Partha Phoenix Hawk mini from my older brother-in-law and guiding its adventures through the universe based on reading and re-reading the Grey Death Trilogy, making my own characters to flesh out the pages of the old Camo Specs book, or practicing math by homebrewing different variants from the dilapidated old copy of TRO 3050 that I still own to this day.

                    None of those universes have seen me through the struggles with my own gender identity or struggles with mental health issues. None of those other universes have been my escape when I felt alone and afraid in the world. And none of them can take the place in my heart or my imagination that Battletech can.

                    I don't know how to move forward and move on. I don't know what direction to go in. I just don't know. I just wish this night would end and there could be morning again. I just wish this night would end....