Man Attacks Literary Agent, Allegedly Because She Rejected His Query
UPDATE: There's some chatter that the writer accused of the attack on van Hylckama is innocent, and this was a random incident. Still scary, but with a slightly less convenient narrative. So, grains of salt all around.
Literary Agent Pam van Hylckama was attacked in her car yesterday, and though she originally thought it was a random incident, police believe the perp was a writer she rejected.
Details from the attack are up at Book Goggles:
The guy came up and knocked a side mirror off, then when Pam unrolled the window to talk to him, he began slamming her head against the steering wheel. Luckily Pam's dog was there to help protect her, biting the man and causing him to flee.
Though van Hylckama had gotten threatening e-mails, she brushed them off, figuring the scorn of jilted writers came with the territory. Police used those e-mails to get the sender's home address--criminal mastermind, this guy--and found the man with a fresh bite from van Hylckama's dog. He's now in custody. Hopefully the cops smacked him around a bit before taking him to central booking.
For more information you can click over to van Hylckama's Twitter account, where she appears to be in good spirits.
News by Rob W. Hart
Rob W. Hart is the class director at LitReactor, as well as the associate publisher for MysteriousPress.com. He's the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, and his short stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Thuglit, Crime Factory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir. He lives in New York City, and you can find his website at www.robwhart.com.
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You know, Rob, out of all the columns and articles we've read and written on dealing with agents and handling rejection, I never saw "don't attack the agent" in any of them.
Saw this on Twitter last night just after it happened and feel so bad for her. A lesson to women out there with a public social media profile to be careful about posting your whereabouts. Creeps are out there!
What a bastard. Hope he never gets published.
Hopefully this douche-bag is now flagged by every agent in the country.
I doubt she was the only agent who rejected him. Did that good dog prevent a spree? Man, what a nightmare.
You know Ivan, if Q.R Markham got a book deal out of plagiarism, this guy might get one too!
He decided that self-publishing an ebook was just too easy.
"You know Ivan, if Q.R Markham got a book deal out of plagiarism, this guy might get one too!"
Actually, you've got a very valid point.
The more of a trainwreck this industry becomes, the closer it gets to having those dysfunctional reality TV-ish characters, the more you're going to see the Q.R. Markhams and the like rewarded for their particular brand of crazy.
I always wonder, is this a evil frustration or a horrible evil plan?
I heard about this yesterday night. Poor Pam! I follow her on twitter and she is just amazing. People are insane. It shocked me that people had the nerve to send rude e-mails in response to a rejection too. Never once have I considered sending a mean response to an agent or physically harming him or her. Mostly I just cry and do the whole "I suck at everything" [drinks vodka] "Why do I bother?" [drinks more].
This jerk off deserves much worse than a dog bite for what he did to her. Like, you know, a hard kick to the junk... or face. Says passive aggressive me :-)
Good dog.