Or kerfuffle. Or whatever you want to call it.

If you don’t know — and I understand this even made the national TV news — debut “romantasy” author Cait Corrain, had (natch) a book forthcoming in spring 2024 with good reviews and a solid marketing push including a subscription box deal, and a bright future ahead of it.

But, instead of counting her blessings, Ms. Corrain decided to make a lot of sock-puppet accounts and review-bomb competing debut books from other authors with one-star reviews. A LOT. And mostly authors of color, just to add that ick factor.

But this is the Internet, ma’am, where there are plenty of intense nerds willing to spend scores of man-hours tracking down your wrong-doing. So she was found out.

The wronged authors tried to settle it privately, but Corrain wasn’t open to that. So they went public with a thirty-page Google doc tracking her sock puppets and their reviews.

By the end of that business day, Corrain had lost her book deal, lost the merchandising deal, and lost her agent. Basically burned down her entire career before it even began. No one in legacy publishing is going to want to work with her ever again.

When called out, she tried to lie about it, blaming an imaginary friend “Lilly” for doing it on her behalf. She also mocked up a bunch of poorly photoshopped phony text messages to “prove” it. Then when she finally “came clean,” it was with a whiny, bullshit non-apology, a genre I particularly despise, blaming mental health and substance abuse.

As we all know, substances don’t make you racist, but they can reveal your racism.

So that’s it, that’s the story. Not as bad as faking your own death, but not good.

I don’t find the apology very credible, because this took work, forethought. Planning. Passwords. A lot of effort.

Which leads me to my takeaway from this affair:

Cait Corrain could have spent all that effort lifting other authors up, instead of running them down. She could have been a leader in her cohort of new authors, but instead she is a pariah. She could have given those authors glowing reviews, and they would have done so in turn, and made friends and colleagues instead of enemies.

I keep telling and telling people this, and they don’t listen: It’s not a zero-sum game. 

 Craig Martelle told us at 20Books Vegas that there are a BILLION natural readers of English in the world. We aren’t going to run out of readers. At Bouchercon a few years ago, no less a name than Harlan Coben told us, “No one in this room has to fail for you to succeed.” I really took it to heart. Myself, I read 57 books this year, and I’m not done yet. I don’t think even Isaac Asimov could write 57 books in a year. No one author can satisfy any one reader. The only real competition is with yourself.

When I was younger, I would have been angry over this flagrant bitchery. Now it just makes me sad. What a wasted opportunity. This woman was given the things other people fight all their lives for, and she just burned them all down from jealousy and neediness. Tragic. Don’t be like Cait.