Intro by Jae
I’ve recently blogged about the importance of not lying to readers & fellow authors. One author who definitely didn’t follow that advice is Adam Gaffen, who deceived the sapphic fiction community by pretending to be a young lesbian writer named AC Adams when he’s in fact a 50-something straight cis man. I have blogged about Adam’s deception over on my blog for readers.
One of the authors Adam harmed by befriending her as his fake persona is Nat Paga. Since Nat doesn’t have a blog of her own, she’s guest-blogging on the Sapphic Quill today so that everyone can understand the full extent of Adam’s betrayal.
As the title of Nat’s blog post says, this is not about an author using a pen name for marketing purposes. Please read the details in Nat’s guest post below.
It Wasn’t a Pen Name – Guest post by Nat Paga
For someone who calls themself a writer, I’ve struggled to find the words for this situation. It’s embarrassing, frustrating, and far too personal for comfort. I worried that if I shared my experience, people would think I was being dramatic or vindictive. I’m a relative nobody, with little experience and few contacts. Who would care what I had to say? Even so, I’d like to tell you about my friendship with AC Adams (aka Amelia, as she told me during one heartfelt exchange) and my begrudging relationship with Adam Gaffen through her. By now, many are aware that they are the same person. Adam has attempted to brush this aside since being forced to come clean, maintaining that his AC persona was a simple pen name.
I can attest that it was not.
AC Adams was a fictional identity made to more easily market Adam Gaffen’s own books that gradually morphed into something worse.
At first, it was normal.
AC and I started chatting on Facebook in spring 2022. KindleVella was and still is a small community, so we were in several of the same niche groups (AC moderated for at least one and had her own 300+ “krew”). She released what she claimed was her debut novel with more prepared marketing than your average “toss it on the pile” Vella-er, and her story quickly became one of the top-rated sapphic reads on the platform. From a self-proclaimed super-lesbian, go-getting young associate professor, it seemed possible. And, as another debut author with their own struggling sapphic story, I wanted to figure out what she was doing that I was not.
I also knew of Adam Gaffen after encountering one of his stories in an early KindleVellaMadness tournament. I did not care for his framing device—himself, a cishet, white, older male, biographing the adventures of space-adventuring lesbians (sometimes even authoring under his character’s female name). Still, sci-fi is all about people writing outside their own experiences, and he seemed to have been in the self-publishing business for a while. AC’s rabidly vocal adoration of him and his novels confused me. However, she was enthusiastic about most things, so it wasn’t too out of the ordinary yet. Below is one of the many times Adam used AC to push his books.
In late June 2022, AC gave away free ebooks of her then-ongoing KindleVella series. I messaged her about getting a copy. That was when she asked me to participate in an anthology she was putting together, and I was thrilled to be included.
She invited me to the private group, which Adam was also a part of as “her editor and mentor.” There, they interacted like completely separate people as they commented on each other’s posts and spoke with group members to coordinate the project. AC even posted a donation link for Adam, soliciting help to fund his trip to an upcoming convention, which I thought was sweet of her. In one particularly concerning exchange, AC and Adam discussed purchasing author copies. It was easy, she said, encouraging other group members to give Adam their credit card information and addresses. While I am not insinuating our info was stolen, how it was obtained is suspect at best.
Over the rest of the summer, AC and I talked sporadically about bookly topics, our upcoming anthology, and life. She was bubbly and complimentative, so I followed suit. It was fun; I thought I was making a new peer-friend, someone of a similar age and life experience who was also figuring out how to navigate the scary self-publishing world. She often gushed about her new teaching position, her enviably supportive parents, and her happy life with her loving wife, Leila. Overly personal things, including some wild sexual stories I now realize were meant to disarm me. It worked. I opened up about the difficulties I’d been having with deaths in my family, my sick cat (RIP Kitten), my sexuality, and impostor syndrome. We bonded over shared sapphic experiences, mundane things like workout gear, and menstruation. I shared aspects of me that I’m not ashamed of, but would not have said without prodding from a trusted source.
Conversely, with Adam, I had fewer and more professional interactions. I made my lack of interest, and later active distrust, apparent. Still, he continued to go deeper with me via AC.
Throughout the fall, winter, and spring, my messages with her escalated to the point where we spoke almost daily. I gave frequent beta reading feedback (had I known AC was a person nearly twice my age with loads more experience, I would have been far less gentle), and she gave me promotional (and personal) advice.
There were many instances