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?

Do we know it was a 'he'?

We don't, and you're right. I was just falling into the default-to-"he" trap.

August.

.

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.

Understood, but I just want it clear that neither Gus nor his family requested a donation. It was brought up by Buffistas, an historically generous bunch. While I find a lot of the story fishy, I don't want any misconceptions that Gus and/or his family was out for money.

I'd like to read it (again), Allyson.

Allyson, insent incoming in two minutes.

The non-googleable thing is unusual, and maybe troubling, but not, I think, totally implausible.

The complete lack of Googlability for a PhD state university professor (even if he were emeritus, completely retired, or just quit) is a big red flag to me. If it wasn't his real name, then fine, but then why did kimi make that elegaic and insistent post about his name?

I can't speak for anyone else, but I personally am having trouble letting it go because I don't know what to do with those emotions that got stirred up on NYE. Person or persona, I loved Gus. If he has truly passed, I want to memorialize him, light a candle for him, give a ten-spot to his charity of choice, and hold my tears that night and the time I spent crooning to Matilda and told her everything I remembered about him in a place of pride in my heart.

If he hasn't truly passed, then I will feel, frankly, jerked around and pissed off. Even with (or partly because of) the joy of Matilda, it's been a stressful year chez Zmayhem, and NYE was the first time in a while that Hec and I had an evening at home with a relatively mellow baby, a bit of money in the bank, a bottle of prosecco in the fridge. I've spent a lot of time and emotional energy this year feeling sad and anxious for various Buffistas with job woes, unjust firings, struggles with family and friends and marriages, illnesses, and, in one case, the devastation of having to bury one's child. And I'm glad to know these people, glad to be emotionally open enough to have worried and vibed and sorrowed with them, and Paypal'd a bit to help them when I could. But those emotions ain't cheap, and the thought that I lost -- that many of us lost -- a night of comparatively peaceful remembrance and connection to a storm of grief, after a year of so many genuine sorrows, over something that may have been an outright lie pisses me off beyond measure.

True or not, the past details of his life don't matter to me as much as his wit and flirtiness and love of various rich fictional universes and their creators. But the red flags those past details raise make me totally unable to just believe and mourn and let go. I want to know. It may be a nasty mental place; I can't help it. I want to know, one way or the other.