38 Scamanda

Kind of a departure this week. I listened to a whole long podcast series called Scamanda about a person who created a fictional situation for herself, lied about having cancer, and used that to bilk friends and family and strangers out of a lot of money. Thieves aren’t interesting, but this person wanted affection and caring and sympathy and a lot of help, and used her fake cancer diagnosis and treatment to get it.

The podcast is journalism about someone creating fiction about herself and using it for selfish ends, but it’s also about another journalist who became obsessed with the case and researched it exhaustively for years. That’s fascinating, too.

I’m so curious about the mindset of someone who can do this, who can lie and lie and lie, manufacture photos that represent medical treatments that never happened, set up fake scenarios to represent medications and chemotherapy that aren’t real. She even shaved off her hair, pretending she lost it to chemo. That’s not delusion. That’s deliberate fakery. It’s just a grift. Grifts are common. So why does this one capture our attention?

I highly recommend listening to Scamanda, even just for the brilliant actress who reads her blog posts. How does she create that amazing smarmy self-obsessed trite tone?

Once upon a time I considered writing a blog from a fake persona, as fiction, but it seemed really iffy to me. It would be fun, but I wasn’t interested in tricking anyone. But blogs in general tend to come from a sort of fictional persona or voice, no matter how much we try to be straight up truthful. There is no easy truth. Everything is filtered. There’s straight up lying, though. Let’s not do that. 

An oncology nurse details how the fakery could have been done here.

I finished proofing both Summerlands and The Nerve, hallelujah indeed, because wow, that was a hard job. I hate proofing. I’m not even sure why. Now they’re done and should be live on Amazon in another day or two. The Nerve is hung up because they think the title blends with the background too much. That’s AI talking, so shut up. It’s fine. I’m arguing with AI. I might end up redoing it a little. We’ll see. Don’t want to! Published it in December with this cover and it was fine! Got the proof copy and the cover looked great! Come on, AI, let's not fight, just because I hate you and you're wrong.

I’m now working on the Becca book and doing a lot of intensive story development, changing one character into another, adding people, changing arcs and complicating things, making it INFINITELY BETTER in every way. Now Becca’s from a troubling band of hippies who got arrested and left her and her best friend alone at this campsite until the authorities rescued them! Gaaaaaah! Thinking about things a whole lot improves them. Win!

You know “first thought” ideas? Where you wish they’d put some time in and come up with something cooler? We’re on about fifth thought now. How many do we need? Ten? Ten is a nice round number.

Sacred cheese of life!