The stranger in my life

So here we go again.

A new tale of an author who wrote a "personal memoir", only later discovered to be fraud.

Margaret B. Jones' story of a young white/American Indian girl's life in foster care, complete with drugs, guns and gangs. Only problem, she's from a nice family and went to private school(sorry not the Bloods/Crips Academy for girls). See, apparently she knew people in this environment and wanted to speak for them. Ah, the old "giving a voice to the disenfranchised" excuse. Then how about writing about them and not making up a story? Novel concept.

I honestly don't know how people get away with this. In the internet age, nothing is private; any little thing about you will come out. Are these people delusional? Ever heard of www.smokinggun.com? Recently, a woman named Misha Defonseca, was found to have lied about her book, "Misha", a Holocaust memoir. How do you lie about being in a death camp? I know everyone wants to have their book published, but the Holocaust? How about I was a teen during the rise of the Nazis and was really unhappy? It's harder to prove it didn't happen; people can relate to your story and hey, if you do meet up with actual survivors there's none of that awkwardness, trying to relate to their story.

My personal fave was that doyenne of the book world, James Frey. His "Million Little Lies" was on the best seller lists and had that old Oprah stamp of approval. Until it turned out the story wasn't true--OOPS! Since I couldn't stand his whole smug approach to it all; his "yeah, I was an addict, I was in jail, I'm tough, I'll go to the dentist and not take any pain medication, I beat this thing on my own, go hard or go home" attitude. It was such a funny sight to see him on Oprah, turned into a stuttering mess. Schmuck.

Note to publishers: fact check. Note to authors: try calling it fiction.