Just to note for the record that Cameron is a small, rural town - if one were hospitalized, it\'s very likely that it would be outside of the county, or even the state, given the proximity to Minnesota.

Isn\'t it also likely that folks in the town might know if one of their own had passed? Hopefully, the funeral director will know something.

To follow up on that last post, something I've been stewing about a bit. [ETA - my last post. The rest is all x-posty goodness.]

There's some weirdness here, no doubt. And the "too good to be true" elements of Gus's story certainly add to that.

But I think - and especially thought last night when suddenly it looked like we were on the verge of hiring a PI, practically - that we're going just a little bit crazy here.

The non-googleable thing is unusual, and maybe troubling, but not, I think, totally implausible. The lack of a death announcement in a currently internet available souce - not really all that odd. The wiki editing - odd, sure, but I can speculate up a half dozen explanations all across the spectrum from "driven snow" to "plot for world domination". In fact, I'd say practically everything we've come up with is similar; you can take it in dozens of ways from dark plotting to social miscues.

Beyond that we have - what, exactly? We all have questions, certainly. But so far, for all the speculation and suspicion and feelings of betrayal - I don't see a lot of there there.

I'm not arguing one way or the other - I'm just saying that we're taking a lot of very flimsy info and working ourselves into a kind of nasty mental place with it. And besides the innate irresistability of the pile-on, I'm really not sure why.

As an outside observer (not that it hasn't been said before but) I think it's the pain of not knowing that is driving the quest.

working ourselves into a kind of nasty mental place with it.

I\'m not seeing that. I\'m seeing a bunch of curious people wanting to know if their friend has died.

.

Someone has been posting in his name, and when called on it, says, "I'm not the guy who doesn't tell the truth."

Right; he said "I've been posting under his name just because Gus really wanted to keep the TV tropes thing going." The implication being that, without his name attached to it, all interest in the wiki would fade, I guess.

But that's a flimsy and lame excuse for posting in someone's name, and, frankly, sounds like a load of crap to me.

I'm really not sure why.

For my part, it's because there's enough reasonable doubt about everything else, I find myself doubting the veracity of the death claim.

I've had several very close friends IRL die on me, and I take it seriously. If this Gus person has in fact died, despite the fact that he's fabricated some elements of his life*, I want to know so I can mourn.

If he's not dead, I have a bajillion better things to do with that emotional energy.

None of that is to mention the fact that there was some talk of a donation, which, while still generous, if done under false pretenses would make me very upset, and wanting my money back.

(*Gus almost certainly was not a PhD. Nilly shows up on Google Scholar. Papers my dad, who is a PhD, published long before the Internet was commonplace, show up on Google. If Gus was a PhD, he had to publish. He would show up somewhere on the Internet.)

I don't know if it would be at all helpful, but I can post a link to the Penlind story. Unsure if my publisher would have a fit, but I think it's a small enough group that it wouldn't be much more than my beta-reader list.

Right; he said "I've been posting under his name just because Gus really wanted to keep the TV tropes thing going."

Do we know it was a 'he'? I was assuming it was ostensibly Gus's GF.

When does your book hit the shelves, Allyson?