A Scammer offered me a spot on a radio show and sent me the interview questions
And they were really good questions. So good, I decided to use them in my blog and share my answers with you!
Scammers Contact Me Daily
I have three email addresses: an author’s email, which I’m happy to share. It’s dianne@diannelhaganauthor.com. I have an old author’s gmail that I don’t use anymore, but I still get email on it once in a while, so I keep it. And I have my personal email account, which is on gmail. I use it for emailing friends and retailers and for any other personal reasons. In the last few years, scammers have been bombarding both my author’s email and my personal email with offers to promote my books, provide editing services, get me an agent, publish my books, give reviews, etc. Some pose as famous authors, both alive and dead ones. Others pose as agents. A few weeks ago, I got over thirty of these emails in one day. I average around 8-10 a day. Some are a single line, others go into detailed plans of how they will market one of my books.
They have one thing in common
They have one thing in common. They are all written using AI. They draw from reviews of my books, particularly critic reviews. And from things I’ve said in author interviews and here on my website and in blog posts. Most have the same syntax and structure, and even the opening and closing paragraphs.
But there’s one good thing about them
There is one good thing about them, besides the good feeling they can give an author with the detailed praise they lay out. They give a few good suggestions. And that’s just what one did. He invited me on one of these suspicious radio shows. One no one’s ever heard of. They make a ton of promises about exposure. And end the email by saying that it’s all free up until you give the okay, and they press go. Then, you have to pay.
He sent seven questions. I decided I shouldn’t let them go to waste. I’m flipping the script, and answering them here in my blog (two in this post, and more to come in the future). And it didn’t cost you or me a cent. Enjoy the read!
2 Questions about Creature of Secret Sorrows
1. What inspired you to explore the intersection of supernatural horror, mystery, folklore, and racial history in Creature of Secret Sorrows?
When I think of the history of Black Americans and the horrific treatment they endured and still endure, I am in awe of their resilience. Not that they don’t carry the weight of those physical and emotional traumas. But think about it. This country has NEVER treated them fully as citizens, who are granted all the freedoms white Americans enjoy, particularly white male Americans. On paper and in the law, they are equal. But the systems, and the people administering those systems and laws, continue to place obstacles in the way of true equality. I look at my husband, and he is nothing short of inspirational. No matter what obstacle they put in front of him, he has climbed it, side-stepped it, or knocked it down. Yes, I know the battle scars he carries and how deep they are, and that makes his success even more incredible. In school, he was repeatedly told he’d never go to college (we met freshman year of college at SU in January 1976). At the fire department, he was repeatedly told he’d taken a good job away from a deserving white man and that they were going to wash him out (and they never stopped trying for 25 years, though he rose through the ranks to become just the third Black lieutenant, and only retired because I told him I had had enough– not him, me). That level of perseverance and triumph against all odds feels almost magical. In Creature of Secret Sorrows, after some research into folklore, I gave that magical quality of protection and perseverance a story and a creature.
2. What drew you to the idea of using the supernatural to explore historical trauma, secrets, and the possibility of redemption?
The piece that is always missing in the stories about equality in this country is redemption, or what I’ve come to call reparative justice. The enslaved people were freed, but the plantation owners were not held accountable. In fact, President Johnson gave them back their plantations instead of giving 40 acres and a mule to the freed enslaved individuals. Not only were reparations NEVER paid, there were no efforts to formally allow Black Americans to fully participate as citizens. In fact, when Jim Crow laws were passed under the guise of a “separate but equal” way of life in the South, the federal government turned a blind eye. The laws were used to contain, control, incarcerate, and oppress Black citizens. The laws prevented them from living their lives by issuing harsh sundown laws. And they denied them the right to vote, so that they couldn’t even hope to change the draconian and deadly laws. Men, women, and children were lynched. Homes and businesses were firebombed. And police and judges, who should have been responsible for arresting the perpetrators and dispensing justice, were as likely to be members of the KKK as the perpetrators were. And any white people who spoke out against the social order were themselves victims of social ostracism, losing their jobs and unable to shop at the local businesses, etc. Even after the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act were passed, there was no effort to remove biased institutions and systems at the federal level or state and local levels. The status quo remained the same. The obstacles were still in place. Affirmative Action was immediately demonized and made to seem like a quota and sometimes implemented as such instead of the spirit of the law that said to hire qualified candidates. The federal consent decree ordering the Syracuse Fire Department to hire Black firefighters became a battle cry for the white firefighters who wanted their brothers, sons, or nephews to get on the department. They claimed the Black men took a different test. A lie. But it didn’t matter. They chose to believe it. As much as I worried about his life and safety on the job, the thing that hurt me the most about my husband’s career was his lament, “They never let me enjoy being a firefighter.” No redemption.
And even worse, several years after his retirement, a group of white men sued the Syracuse Fire Department for “reverse discrimination,” claiming they had been passed over for Black hires who were less qualified. What they didn’t explain is that they scored higher on the entrance exam due to extra points given for being vets, or for time spent as a volunteer firefighter. Second, the departments can take anyone who scores within a certain range, based on other variables, such as the physical test and the interview. The test score was never singularly used for a hire. Yet they were awarded sums of money. In a world that tips in favor of white heterosexual men, they once again got exactly what they felt was owed them. And that’s just my husband’s story. How many hundreds of thousands of other stories are similar or worse? No reparative justice. No justice at all. In the fictional world of Cadence, there is redemption and healing. The spirits make sure of it. And by that, I don’t mean retribution or vengeance. I mean true reparative justice for all.
More Questions Will be Answered in Another Post
In the meantime, let us not forget 9/11
I’ll answer more questions in another post or two. Two are enough for today. Before I sign off, I’d like to give pause and remember the tragedy of 9/11. Since I’m able to get back into my old blog, I’m adding a link to an old blog post. It’s even more timely today as we struggle to find our sense of decency and what true democracy means. Today we were driving home from a vacation at the beach, and I saw a banner hanging on the side of an old wood building. It was a Confederate flag and underneath it, it said, “this is my pride flag.” 9/11 may have brought us together in the weeks after it happened, but instead of healing in the years since, it brought hate and internal division. What the right is blind to is that they let the terrorists win. The plot behind 9/11 was to destabilize the country economically by hitting the financial powerhouses and by engendering fear. The GOP helped their cause by feeding the fear and hate the tragedy caused, instead of encouraging unity and healing. Never forget.
Do you have questions you’d like me to answer? Put them in the comments, and I will answer them in a future blog!
Unti next time,
Dianne
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