Harmed and Dangerous: Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?

Is This the Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy? | Jasper Bark| Crystal Lake Publishing |

Writing is a risky business. You build a world, name a killer, invent a town, and then someone insists it was all real. That is what happened with Harmed and Dangerous, Jasper Bark’s novel from Crystal Lake Publishing, when a blogger named Jade Austen swore that his fictional murders had actually taken place. QR codes appeared. A Killer Sleuth blog documented the invented history. A woman read his book aloud as though she had lived it. What he took for a glitch in reality was an alternate reality game, a horror marketing hoax so good it left even a seasoned hoaxer doubting what was real.

IS THIS THE REAL LIFE? IS THIS JUST FANTASY?

Sometimes, writing can be a risky business. 

Readers can respond to your work in ways you never imagined. At worst, you could be publicly shamed, at the least you get a review that leaves you scratching your head.

 My latest novel, Harmed and Dangerous, from Crystal Lake Publishing recently received the kind of attention that left many people bamboozled.

It started a few months ago, when a woman called Jade Austen posted on social media that the fictional killings in Harmed and Dangerous were all true. She was convinced the serial killer, Billy-Ray Johnson, who I thought I’d created, really existed and so did his hometown – Yeuxville.

It seems Jade had a blog called Killer Sleuth and she not only posted a history of Yeuxville on it, she also wrote a short bio of Billy-Ray Johnson, complete with photos and maps. All of it identical to the world I thought I’d invented. It’s still online, you can go check it out.

In Harmed and Dangerous the main character, Kyra becomes obsessed with Billy-Ray Johnson after reading a true crime paperback called Eyes for the Killer written by Becky Eve Hirst. I borrowed the name for the author from a social media account a friend of mine started so she could post anonymously.

 Or so I thought.

In the same week my novel was released, Jade Austen and a handful of other people began posting QR codes online. The codes took you to a YouTube account where there were recordings of a woman claiming to be Becky Eve Hirst reading excerpts from Eyes for the Killer, some of which actually appeared in my book!

Here’s one of those  codes

But it gets wilder.

Jade decided to review of HARMED AND DANGEROUS on her blog. In the review she pointed out that her blog covered the same ground as my novel and wondered why I thought I’d invented the murders when she had proof they were real.

This was, without doubt, the strangest review I’d ever received. But when I shared it online, Jade had a meltdown.

She took to social media in a series of increasingly bizarre rants. She raved about the whole thing being a conspiracy to discredit her. Behind this conspiracy sat a shady character known as the Grand Cyclops. Jade wasn’t going to be pushed around, discredited or silenced any longer. She was going to fight back and expose the Grand Cyclops bringing down his whole corrupt empire in the process!

Then she revealed his identity.

It was me.

No, seriously, Jade asserted that I was the Grand Cyclops!

I wish someone had told me. I could certainly have used an army of conspiratorial minions. If only to help clean my gutters and take my library books back on time.

Then, as mysteriously as she’d appeared, Jade Austen disappeared from social media.

Many people messaged me privately to ask what was going on. Had I made up the murders or were they real? Why did this woman seem to think they actually happened and who was she?

Now I’m finally able to reveal the truth and let you in on a zealously guarded secret!

– the real identity of Jade Austen. The woman who’d made so many outlandish claims about Harmed and Dangerous:

Step forward Naching T. Kassa. 

Naching is Director of Talent Relations for my publisher Crystal Lake Publishing. She handles the marketing and publicity for all their books. She’s also a very talented author in her own right.

Inspired by campaigns for films like Long Legs and The Blair Witch Project, Naching invented Jade Austen and set up the Killer Sleuth blog.

She created the QR codes and recorded the excerpts from Eyes for the Killer, and did an amazing job of pretending to be Becky Eve Hirst. With a dedicated team of helpers Naching spread the links all over the internet. She even talked the CEO of Crystal Lake, Joe Mynhardt into announcing the imminent release of Eyes for the Killer. What’s more, Crystal Lake were inundated with requests for review copies.

But she didn’t stop there. In a moment of inspired lunacy Naching decided Jade should have a public breakdown then disappear down a rabbit hole of conspiratorial psychosis! To be honest she did such an incredible job constructing this hoax that, at times, even I was beginning to doubt what was real and what was imaginary.

I’ve written quite extensively about the ways in which fiction often spills over into reality. I’ve also pulled more than a few literary hoaxes in my time. So, when you’re able to leave a seasoned hoaxer wondering just what’s real, you know you’ve got some skills. Naching, I doff my deerstalker to you in humble respect!

FURTHER READING

Harmed and Dangerous by Jasper Bark

A Paranormal Thriller for readers of Stephen Graham Jones, Tananarive Due and Grady Hendrix

Put yourself in Kyra’s place.

You’re seventeen years old, lost and alone in a remote town in Louisiana. You’re searching for the birth parents you never knew. The heat is crippling. The river often floods, washing houses away and lifting corpses from the ground.

The locals treat you with suspicion. You don’t belong here. They’re hiding something. All over town, in nooks and hidden alcoves, there’s evidence of a forbidden faith. They keep the old ways here, but no one will tell you what they are.

There’s an intangible presence following you. Hiding in your peripheral vision. You can’t see, hear or touch it, but you know it’s there, waiting for its chance to claim you.
Then the episodes start.

Your vision goes and when it returns you’re seeing the world as it was fifteen years ago. Physically you’re in the present, but everything you see happened a decade and a half ago.
Suddenly you realize.

You’re seeing through the eyes of the serial killer who murdered your birth mother. He takes control of you, forcing you to watch as he stalks and brutally murders her.

And there’s nothing you can do to stop him. Because he died by lethal injection more than a decade ago.

Proudly represented by Crystal Lake Publishing—Where Stories Come Alive!