Thomas Wictor

When I hired Mike Albee, Lura Dold, and later Becca Pilkington, I was still stuck in 2003, Internet-wise. It was July of 2013; I had no clue about social media. After my parents died, and I discovered that Mike, Lura, and Becca were con artists, I sent my story to every book section of every newspaper, every literary blog, and every radio talk show in the country. Not one media outlet or blog responded. Neither did the Healdsburg Police Department, the FBI, the Better Business Bureau, or the Attorney General of California. Nobody cared. So at the age of fifty-one, I began to learn about the things Mike Albee told me. And now, the student has surpassed the teacher.

Recently somebody close to Mike Albee contacted me and said that Mike had gotten out of the book-publicity business. He had two fake agencies, Sandpiper Publicity and Magnus Publicity. Here’s what happens when you type in the URL for Sandpiper.

And here’s what happens when you type in the URL for Magnus Publicity.

When you do a Google search on Sandpiper Publicity, here are the results.

Look at that! The fourth hit is little old Thomas Wictor, failed author. When you do a Google search on Magnus Publicity, here are the results.

First in line is Thomas Wictor, failed author. When you do a Google Search on Mike Albee, here are the results.

The second hit is Thomas Wictor, failed author.

How do I do it? Well, I owe it all to Yoast. Since they have a plugin that made my Website so successful, I refuse to reveal their secrets. Buy the plugin and learn. As you can see for yourself, my search-engine optimization (SEO) is pretty damn good.

As much as Yoast helped, I also did tons of research on my own and taught myself how to convince the search-engine Web crawlers—or spiders—that my Website is consequential. And it is consequential, if in only one way: It exposed Mike Albee, Lura Dold, and Becca Pilkington for the criminals they are.

A whole bunch of people promised that they’d tell the world about how Mike Albee ruined my writing career. Not one of them followed through. They were all exactly like Mike. I fully understand the policy of making promises that you have no intention of keeping. It’s based on perception. Here’s the promise breakers’ view of me.

VOLUME WARNING. I got carried away.

That’s fine. I care about Tim and Eric’s opinions, followed in no particular order by those of the Father Who Dances, Tim and Ashley, Mat, Mark, Tony, Bruce, Jason, David, and a handful of others. While people made empty promises and then moved on to other projects, I went to work. Now, whenever anybody looks up Mike Albee, they’ll see immediately that he’s a fraud. I did that.

During the process of making my Website consequential in the minds of spiders, I came across much evidence of Mike Albee’s incompetence. Here he spammed a heavy-metal guitar-tablature forum with a description of Magnus Publicity.

That’s so moronic that it defies belief. Next is a Magnus Publicity spam on a weightlifting forum.

It’s so pro forma that it’s worthless squared. He repeats the same blurb twice, and under occupation he writes “Business.” Mike Albee is like these cretins in Pennsylvania who lied to me that they had a giant World War One postcard collection for sale. I drove all the way across the country to see this magnificent collection, and when I got there, they said it wasn’t for sale. But now that I was here, why not look at their other merchandise?

I refused to even set foot inside the store.

“But you drove all the way from California!” they wailed.

Exactly. I’d put so much time, effort, and money into this venture that I refused on principle to let them benefit in any way from their dishonesty.

Fuckers.

I learned that I need social media to improve my SEO. Therefore I opened a Facebook business page. The page itself is a waste of time because Facebook allows about 1 percent of the “likers” to see each post. Facebook bosses think they’re really clever by forcing you to pay for various services, but none of them work. Since business owners aren’t stupid, they stop paying and create other stratagems, the way I have. Facebook won’t exist in five years.

In the meantime here’s Sandpiper Publicity’s Facebook page.

That’s after over a year. Here’s Magnus Publicity’s Facebook page.

Yup. After almost a year, one like. Here’s my Facebook business page, which has existed about three and a half months.

I’m very well positioned for the next phase of my writing career. My novel will be about a monstrous suspicion and the quest to prove or disprove it. Though it’s total fiction—completely made up—you’ll see the load that a person can carry. Despite unrelenting assaults, truly inconceivable horror, mind-warping pain, estrangement from nearly the entire planet, loss of everything, and despair that seems to have no end, it’s possible to not only survive but even flourish.

While I continue my ascent, Mike Albee scuttles off into the darkness. I sent him there, with help from Yoast, a man named Antal, and another named Jason.

Mike Albee lacks the skills to create the life he thinks will make him happy. Being a sociopath he’ll get into a line of work that allows him to victimize with impunity. He’s registered names of a refinancing company, a baby-product company, and a guitar school, among others. Aided and abetted by our indifferent culture, he’ll exploit and mangle in total freedom.

I, on the other hand, will write a book that will leave readers speechless. And having learned how to market, I’ll do so successfully. The key is what Tim and I spoke about yesterday, when we learned a truly awful new tidbit about our late father.

Most people refuse to experience the process of suffering required in order to overcome really ghastly circumstances. One of my favorite short stories is “Leiningen Versus the Ants,” by Carl Stephenson. Leiningen is a plantation owner in Brazil who refuses to give in to an invasion of army ants. He’s described thusly.

With his bristling grey hair, bulky nose, and lucid eyes, he had the look of an aging and shabby eagle.

Read the story. Leiningen will become your hero.

Now, for the first time, he realized he was coated from head to foot with a layer of ants. In spite of the petrol, his clothes were full of them. Several had got to his body or were clinging to his face. Now that he had completed his task, he felt the smart raging over his flesh from the bites of sawing and piercing insects.

Frantic with pain, he almost plunged into the river. To be ripped and slashed to shreds by piranhas? Already he was running the return journey, knocking ants from his gloves and jacket, brushing them from his bloodied face, squashing them to death under his clothes.

One of the creatures bit him just below the rim of his goggles; he managed to tear it away, but the agony of the bite and its etching acid drilled into the eye nerves; he saw now through circles of fire into a milky mist, then he ran for a time almost blinded, knowing that if he once tripped and fell…. The old Indian’s brew didn’t seem much good; it weakened the poison a bit, but didn’t get rid of it. His heart pounded as if it would burst; blood roared in his ears; a giant’s fist battered his lungs.

Then he could see again, but the burning girdle of petrol appeared infinitely far away; he could not last half that distance. Swift-changing pictures flashed through his head, episodes in his life, while in another part of his brain a cool and impartial onlooker informed this ant-blurred, gasping, exhausted bundle named Leiningen that such a rushing panorama of scenes from one’s past is seen only in the moment before death.

I’ve been there, and I came back. If I can do it, so can you.

Aut viam inveniam aut faciam.