This is crazy on so many levels.
A 28-year-old British writer and TV game personality, actually tracked down a Scottish teenager girl who’d written a negative review of his self-published novel and shattered a bottle of wine over the back of her head. The author pleaded guilty to the 2014 assault, according to The Mirror.
Craig Brittain, the now infamous writer, had posted an unfinished version of his book, The World Rose, on an app where amateur writers post their stuff and others review it.
Brittain claimed the early reception for the book was strong — but he also bemoaned the bad reviews from “idiots” and “teenagers.”
One of those teenagers was Paige Rolland, Brittain’s victim, and here’s her review.
As a reader, I’m bored out of my skull and severely disappointed in what I might have paid for. As a writer (albeit an amateur one) I’m appalled that anyone would think this was worthy of money.
Not only does it begin with “once upon a time” which you could argue is perfect as this is a fairytale (and it doesn’t work, it’s incredibly pretentious), but it’s filled with many writing no-nos. Way too much telling, pretentious prose, and a main character that I already hate. Ella is the perfect princess (true to fairytales, so we can at least give him a little credit despite how painfully annoying this is coupled with a complete lack of real personality shining through).
Rolland — in a bit of irony — was aware that Brittain had a reputation on Wattpad for threatening users who don’t praise him.
Brittain, angry about her scathing review, tracked down Rolland’s Facebook page, discovering where she lived and worked (the dangers of social media) and allegedly traveled 500 miles from London — found her working, and snuck her with the wine bottle,leaving her unconscious and with a gash on her head.
According to reports, this isn’t even the first time Brittain has been accused of stalking a woman online. The perfect princess of his novel, Ella Tundra, was apparently based on a woman he stalked.