when they battle in a puddle, it's a Peter Beagle puddle battle

[calimac]

What do we know about Peter Beagle? Well ...

After years of being fairly obscure and off the public stage, and fairly indigent too from what I understand, the once-prominent fantasy writer whose older work was still remembered had a late blossoming. He'd gotten a personal manager, Connor Cochran (known in fandom for decades, usually under his artistic pen name Freff), who was devoting himself to the energetic promotion of Peter S. Beagle and his works.

Most notably, he'd gotten the movie adaptation of Beagle's novel The Last Unicorn out of rights limbo. He organized a slow-scale nation-wide tour of screenings of the movie with Beagle in attendance. I went to the first of these, in San Francisco, three years ago and was stunned at the enthusiastic crowds and pleased at seeing Peter feted. It had become a cult movie while I wasn't paying attention. (It was the only time I'd seen the film since its first release, and not only had the suck fairy not withered it, it had if anything improved with age.)

With the same enthusiastic bounce, new Beagle books - new material, new collections of older material not previously reissued, new editions of old books - began blossoming from various presses, and I picked some of these up. There was an email newsletter which I got regularly for a while, though either it ceased some time ago or I fell off the mailing list.

So I was stunned to read this in the new Ansible: "PETER BEAGLE is suing his publisher Conlan Press and its proprietor Connor Freff Cochran; the long list of complaints filed in November begins with 'elder abuse' in various categories, fraud, defamation, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of contract ... Cochran claims the suit is frivolous." Followed by a comment to the effect that the publisher has become infamous for "delayed delivery and non-delivery" - I wouldn't know about that; I've never ordered anything directly from them by mail.

Yikes! At Conlan's website you may read: "Peter is facing a whole new kind of problem: his health. Those of you who have been following the Tour already know we had to suspend our shows last June because Peter was having major issues with his memory. Business and personal matters that he and I had worked on for years had completely vanished from his head, and he was also confabulating — recalling only fragments of events, then filling in the blanks with things that never happened. I certainly wasn’t going to ask him to continue on the road in that condition, so I pulled the plug. Due to continuing problems and Peter’s wish for privacy, his screening appearances are suspended indefinitely. A new version of the tour will launch in 2016 ... But Peter will be unable to attend or sign merchandise." (This is, by the way, considerably revised and somewhat expanded, though the essence is unchanged, from what it said yesterday.)

So what is going on? Whatever it is, it's very sad. Whatever else may be true, Beagle is a great author and - from my experiences with him - a really nice guy; and Freff really has done a tremendous amount of hard work to promote him. Ansible has a link, apparently to the text of the suit, but it's gone dead. I know no more than that, so I'm just passing on what's been written in public.

Comments

[kevin-standlee.livejournal.com]

All I know is that Freff has never been remembered fondly in the circles in which I traveled during my days working in the comics industry as a store employee and low-end business manager for an artist friend. The short version amounted to "don't work with him, don't depend upon him, don't trust him."

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

At one point Freff made a brief statement (maybe on Facebook; I disremember) that said he wouldn't be discussing the specifics of the case but implying that Peter had fallen afoul of someone who was taking advantage of his increasing mental lapses to try to turn him into a meal ticket. I can't vouch for any of that, obviously, but it certainly is a story that has unfolded for others, especially with older people who are sinking into dementia. The whole thing does seem very deeply sad, yes.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

I have the full text of the lawsuit if you want it.

For various reasons, I remain completely convinced that Peter is in the right and that Connor (who has not chosen to be called Freff for decades) is a lying sack of shit. Even lying sacks of shit can have good aspects, but in my opinion, not enough to matter.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

Of course Cochran would say that the suit is frivolous. However he has convinced a few prominent people of his point of view (see also the "character references" on his site). Whether any of those people know Beagle too is a seperate question, unanswered.

Note that Cochran still controls all of the social media outlets for Beagle, including Facebook and Twitter.

So far I have seen one site (http://supportpeterbeagle.com/wordpress2/ - "Support Peter S. Beagle" -- that adds only a little info. No idea if the money donated there actually gets to Beagle. (I don't know any of the people posting on the site, which isn't surprising: fandom's a huge place.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

This site actually adds a lot of info, since it has a working link to a PDF of the suit (although a number of pages are missing). It does read very damagingly to Cochran, but then it is one side's legal filing, and it would read that way even if nothing in it were true. There are also some holes and puzzling places in its argument that I would need explained before I passed judgment on Cochran from this.

Of the names in the comments field, I recognize two: one famous author (Charles de Lint) and one old fannish acquaintance I haven't seen in years. Both write as outside supporters, with no particular knowledge, as do most of the rest.

[debg.livejournal.com]

Yes, the money gets to Peter. Unlike "Hi, I'm too much of a chickenshit to sign my name so I'm posting anonymously" a few posts down from this one, my name is Deb Grabien. I've been covering Peter's back and watching Connor spread his snake oil and slime for way too long.

I met Connor for the first time - at his request - around 2008 or so, after I had interviewed Peter for Cat Eldridge at Green Man Review. He called me, having got my number from Peter, and asked to meet for coffee, which, rather unsurprisingly considering what I've come to know of him, he didn't actually provide. It turned out that what he really wanted was to inform me that he, and he alone, was responsible for keeping Peter's nose to the grindstone, and, what was most important, that he was entirely in charge of Peter's money and not to lend him any. Power tripping came off him like skunk spray.

This was basically the first time in thirty years when I had shaken someone's hand and nearly wiped my own hand on my trouser leg instinctively. I'm allergic to that kind of BS. Everything about this man rang as false and as discordant as a counterfeit twenty. I began quietly asking around; after all, I had (at that time) about ten published novels. The feedback I got contained not one word to say in the man's favour. But the call was Peter's, and if anything about this relationship was working for him, more power to him.

As time went on, it became more and more apparent that something was way off. Peter was kept on a ridiculously short set of purse strings; when your apartment has a bedbug infestation, less than $150 for two nights at the local Motel 6 while the apartment was being fumigated should not be enough to cause an overdraft. And yet it was.

Right now, Connor is selling as much as he can in the way of ebooks and used books to raise money for one purpose only: so that he can use it to sue Peter with. It's ridiculous. He has a screaming ugly naked hate for Peter's longtime partner Peggy - they've been together 17 or so years. He's dragged Peter for eighteen hour days driving from one state to another, sleeping on sofas in fans' houses rather than in an actual hotel. This is the very definition of "elder abuse" - and as the lawsuit just brought against Connor by Sandbox LLC shows, Connor had taken money from Sandbox ostensibly to finance the same movie tour during which he spent virtually no money on Peter's comfort. The full text of Sandbox's complaint can be read at the website below.

I'd suggest checking the following website, if you're interested in a long, ugly history during which Connor has consistently defrauded people, lied about it, and generally shown all the characteristics of an advanced example of Narcissistic Personality Disorder, in which he is always right, no one has more power than he does, and he must always win because he is somehow smarter or better than everyone else. I'm not sure how he's planning on countersuing Sandbox, but I'm sure his out of control narcissism will find him something he thinks he can use.

http://fansagainstfraud.com/last-unicorn-tour-investors-sue/

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

debg, I'm so glad to know you're doing this.

[debg.livejournal.com]

I've been in this pretty much 24/7 since the end of June 2015. I drove Peter to Los Angeles for a vital meeting with a major media company from whom Connor was trying to get over $100M to make a live action "Last Unicorn" film. I took minutes of that meeting, including notes where he outright lied about the status of one of the companies now being sued by Sandbox LLC. If you read the Sandbox complaint, you'll see that Avicenna, the company Connor was representing, was legally suspended from doing business in the state of California from 2011. When asked about that in the meeting, Connor claimed that they'd "got a little behind on their paperwork, but that it was just a matter of writing a cheque and some paperwork and handing it in over the counter, problem solved." Um no. Complete BS.

Connor has beglamoured Peter's kids, destroyed his relationship with them, and is using them as a weapon all over the internet. We began the www.supportpeterbeagle.com webite to combat the poison Connor is posting all over the internet. The conversation on Reddit - which has been copied and saved by quite a lot of us - shows everyone what the man is capable of.

Peter's lawyer has demanded that Connor turn over the password and login information for Peter's Facebook and Twitter page. So far, he has done neither. One more thing the court will be asked to enforce.

And just last night, I received an email containing "The Raven", Conlan Press's online sales brochure and newsletter. This man is desperate for money and he's selling Peter's titles at a discount. One guess what he'll use those proceeds for.

Lest anyone try claiming that I'm spilling beans or talking about confidential stuff, go read the Sandbox complaint. It says openly that Connor used Peter as a front, pocketed money he borrowed from them that was supposed to be used for the Last Unicorn movie tour, and was generally dishonest, edge to edge.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

So are the mysteriously unnamed "individuals [exerting] undue influence ... who did not have Peter's interests at heart, but instead sought an immediate windfall for themselves" and who "have induced Peter to file a [adjective, adjective] lawsuit" in the unsigned "Joint Statement" supposed to be you?

[debg.livejournal.com]

I'm probably one of them, but since pretty much the last he wants if he has any common sense left is me on a witness stand smiling as I lick my lips and answer questions at glorious length, he hasn't named me in any of his shrill little slimefest complaints. That may change as he spirals ever further down into denial and vindictiveness.

The major recipient of his bile and loathing is Peter's partner of 17 years, and his secondary target is Peter's lawyer. Those two cross-complaints are genuinely nauseating.

[(Anonymous)]

http://conlanpress.com/2016-01-06-statement/

http://conlanpress.com/joint-statement-regarding-frivolous-lawsuit/

The original lawsuit is false in almost every particular (it did get Peter's name and current location right) and is best understood as an attempted coup by unscrupulous people who are unduly influencing Peter. With big film and musical deals in play, these people sought to get rid of the person who stood between them and grabbing everything for themselves.

There really are only two possibilities here: either Peter S. Beagle's own children and Connor Cochran are evil people preying on him, or they are good people trying to rescue him. The facts make plain that option #2 is correct.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Comment: I'm letting the above through to be published, although it's entirely anonymous and offers none of the facts that it claims establish its case. The IP address is Bellingham, Washington, which Beagle's complaint states is the current location of Conlan Press, but that's not one of the facts that the above allows to be correct in the complaint, so who the hell knows.

[debg.livejournal.com]

I just got an email copy of "The Raven" (Conlan Press's e-letter) about two hours ago. At the bottom of the "hi, I'm selling Peter's work to raise money to fight Peter with, here, have some irony" list-athon was this:

"Copyright © 2016 Conlan Press, Inc.
1050 Larrabee Avenue, Suite 104-811 | Bellingham | WA 98225 | 650-267-9651"

So, yes, there's a little confirmation.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

For what it's worth, I got an email from Connor yesterday quoting my comment above, which may help identify the anonymous poster.

[debg.livejournal.com]

If he had any human sense of self-preservation left in him, he would disappear without a trace. But he won't. This is as intense an example of narcissism run wild as I've ever seen in sixty one years on the planet.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I think it's pretty well established that he's in Bellingham. But if he's going to say "The original lawsuit is false in almost every particular" and then itemize the few particulars it got right, and his location, which is given as Bellingham in the lawsuit, is not among them, well then, he deserves to be needled for claiming that the lawsuit lied by saying he's in Bellingham.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Notice:

I've just received another anonymous comment, this one decrying the previous comment for being anonymous. Good grief. I'm not unscreening any more anonymous comments: I am not turning this blog post into a forum for drive-by shootings. From now on, anybody who has anything to say will say it openly.

[debg.livejournal.com]

In email this morning: an email from Connor, with the incredibly insulting subject line "Refreshing Your Memory." He cc'd [Unknown site tag]wild_irises on it, and I cc'd her on my response. It contained a long point by point list of rubbish. Unlike Connor, I don't need or want a peanut gallery, and I have this odd little notion that privacy is supposed to be respected, something he ignored when he insisted on cc'ing Peter's kids and someone else I'm unacquainted with on every bloody private email during the trip Peter and I made to LA for that movie meeting. So I won't share it.

I did, however, tell him that he might be better served by figuring out what he's going to do about the Sandbox lawsuit than by sitting down trying to impose his rather selective memory of small things on every single person who is calling him out. But, of course, absolutely his call.

And since he's undoubtedly reading this, I'll just smile and wave.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

That's enough.