Boyer a Stoker Nominee?
Have you been nominated for a Stoker Award lately? It's the supreme award for Dark Fiction issued yearly by the HWA. You probably think it's a lot of work to get nominated for a Stoker. First you have to be recommended (lots are recommended), then you have to make the cut to be nominated.
But wait, there's an easier way- The Boyer Way! All you have to do, according to David Boyer, the Vincennes, Indiana plagiarist, is write in the bio of one of your books that you were nominated. Just put it there, and that means you really were nominated for a Stoker award by the HWA. You don't really have to be nominated. Since you've claimed your imaginary nomination in black in white, it must be true. Name it and claim it.
People claiming they received awards or nominations for awards they either weren't nominated for or didn't get are the bane of our industry. And David Boyer, the Vincennes, IN plagiarist, is the most notorious of these. He claims he was nominated for a Stoker (for the story he stole from me), but he wasn't (it was only recommended). He just slaps the imaginary nomination in his bio and figures readers are too lazy to check it out. After all, someone would have stopped him if he was lying, wouldn't they?
Not really. Readers are loathe to think writers are that dishonest. But they're wrong. Writers like Boyer are that dishonest.
It's the oldest trick in a con man's book- claim you were nominated for something. No one checks unless you claim you won. There are lots of writers out there without scruples who claim in their bio that they were nominated. They figure we're too dumb to catch them at it.
Why would a writer risk their integrity when things like this are so easy to check? In Boyer's case, he has no integrity. He's a plagiarist.
What have we come to as writers when the award claims are more important than the quality of our stories?
12 comments:
That's my goal, to have one of my stories up for the Stroker Award.
Does he have just one project out that he actually wrote himself? You're doing a great job exposing him. What a predator!
You keep going and you will, Christina. You have what he doesn't- talent.
And I believe Boyer wrote a great deal, but that it was all bad. Then one day, either another plagiarist infected him with the idea of just stealing or he stepped over the line himself.
He uses the fake Stoker nomination to gain street creds. Writers who use fake nominations to gain credibility should be bounced out of the industry.
The grasping, grasping, grasping. It's insane.
Ha-Ha-Ha! She said "Stroker Award". Yup!
That about sums it up, Charles.
Maybe gum on the keys, Robin?
I have seen a lot of people, over the years, who either ignorantly or deliberately chose to claim that a recommendation was actually a nomination. Lawrence Dagstine (another nitwit) once claimed that his sf (which is terrible, unreadable stuff) he had gotten a Hugo nomination. What he had gotten was two recs from friends.
Having friends make recommendations which the writer then claims are nominations is really low, cussedness. What hole do these people slither out of?
SERIOUSLY...the following was the latest Bio I had used and published for that Feature Reading
Mark C Durfee is old enough to remember The Gong Show and regrets that he was never a contestant. Durfee has written more than three thousand pieces of poetry and published a few, including two chap books. Black White and Blue in Detroit and Stink: Prose and Poetry of Detroit 2005-2009. He is currently working on two more books and spends his free time being marinated by one of his two dogs and hounded by the other. He’s been with the same woman who has put up with him for almost thirty years even though he still doesn’t wash the dishes. A life long resident of Detroit he blames his love for poetry on his grandmother, Catherine, who read him Guest, Frost and Sandburg instead of fairy tales when he was a wee lad. His goal is to outlive everyone else on the planet and so far he is succeeding at it.
Do you think I should add I was nominated for a Nobel Prize for literature but that Obama guy got the peace prize which aced me out of mine for literary achievement? Maybe next year I will add that i was up for a Poetic Pulitzer.
That darned Obama cutting in on your prize, Mark!
rick, it's an insult to say that peabrain is a 'writer', especially when there are so many true writers out there! :(
otherwise, keep up the pressure on that asshole... the more who know of his tricks, the more wary they'll be!
Big news coming about who is after Boyer now, laughingwolf. You'll hear about it before long and really be surprised.
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