I Am A Fraud

It is finally out in the open. The truth. The freezing, solid veracity. I am a faker, an imposter, a montebank! And if you are reading this now, I must apologize, for I am swindling you this very instant. You see, you are reading these words, and I have written them, but lo, I am not, in fact, a writer.

I am actually, Dear Reader, a sham. No, lesser than that, for I never succeeded in the swindle. Barely a pretender, am I, and I did not even have you fooled! Of course not. How could I be so arrogant as to think you were doing more than just playing along this whole time!

But finally I have been revealed, the curtain drawn back, and I am under Aletheia’s spotlight. You see, Dear Reader, I used “your” where I should have used “you’re” on my page about Vacancy. It has been there for oh, so long, and there it shall remain as a testament to my failure.

And I never would have known, since I am a complete and utter charlatan even in my own mind for I had convinced myself, until my rosy glasses were shattered by one insightful truth-seeker.

Dear, dear giannis. First, I must apologize. I have hurt you, and for that, I am sorry. And second, I must say “thank you.” You have opened my eyes to my own tomfoolery. I am indeed not a writer. So much for that, as they say. “They” being writers, of which I am not.

As you should expect, I will be deleting this blog, which will include removing Vacancy as it is the offending piece of “work,” leaving only this post as witness to my foolishness. Also, to atone, I will be taking that piece of drivel The Korinniad off of Amazon as I am sure it is absolutely riddled with errors since it is not backed and edited by a professional publishing house (which have never published a single book in the history of the printed word with a single error). And I will be scrapping any projects going forward including the June release of She’s All Thaumaturgy, the October release of The Association, and three as of yet unnamed series in various stages of, well, what to call it? Madness? Jokery? Tricksterism?

Further, I will cease all written communication, for that is writing as well, and as we have proven, I am definitively not a doer of that thing. Please be prepared to receive emoji-only texts and emails from future Ashley. I am also considering an end to all vocal communication, though there are, I assume, at least some people who communicate vocally that do not call themselves writers, so I may not need to schedule that tonguectomy once elective surgeries are allowed again after all.

And so, Dear Reader, this is it. My final farewell. So many times I have signed off the internet, but never thought it would be forever, and yet here we are, on the brink of eternity. I know what you are thinking: “Thank fuck we can finally drop this charade!” But I must thank you one last time for wearing the mask of my audience. It was fun while it lasted, and I think I even bamboozled myself for a moment there, but alas: the truth is setting us all free.

This is, of course, all bullshit; I’ll forever be writing and releasing books, and there will forever be typos in them because when you produce literally 100s of thousands of words every year their* inevitable, but I definitely DID make that really dumb typo, and I think it’s pretty funny, so I had to blog about it.

*they’re