Scandal of the Century

 I’m a big reader, but sometimes the drama between authors is more interesting than the books they write. When I heard we could write about people being canceled, I had to shed light on one of my favorite author scandals: Xiran Jay Zhao vs Cait Corrain. 

Cait Corrain, Xiran Jay Zhao, and some other debut authors were all getting ready to publish in 2024. However, there had been a lot of one-star bombing on many of the non-white debut authors, meanwhile the only person getting five-star rated by these many accounts was the white author Corrain. Zhao noticed this pattern and deduced that Corrain had been making these fake accounts. When the other authors were told to “let it go” after trying to solve their issues privately, Corrain tried to act like she was a victim of the whole fake-account situation as well on Twitter. That’s when Zhao posted on Twitter about the situation (without naming names) and threatened that if there was no resolution in sight, she would post evidence as to who it was.  

(To preface this next portion, it must be recognized that many debut authors these days started out writing fanfiction. In fact, one of Ali Hazelwood’s male love interests suspiciously has the same name and look of Adam Driver, who is a part of the Star Wars fandom that will later add to this beef.) 

One of Corrain’s alleged friends, Lilly, reached out to Zhao to explain that they knew each other through being Star Wars Reylo fans and sent screenshots of herself admitting she made fake accounts to try and help Corrain get more publicity for her book, and their friendship dramatically ending because of this. It was so obviously staged and photoshopped that the dates and times didn’t even add up. When Corrain later exposed herself in a debut author group chat as the subject of Zhao’s previous tweets about the scandal, she sent the same horribly photoshopped screenshots and explained that their friend just so happened to only have made an account for the two hours of that conversation and didn’t exist anywhere else on social media, which obviously revealed to everyone else that she made yet another fake account to try to prove herself innocent.  

To make matters worse, one of Corrain’s other friends (who happens to be albino) accused a black disabled author of being ableist for using the Southern saying “an albino snake in a henhouse” when discussing the scandal on social media. Let it be known that she said this phrase before it was revealed that Corrian and her albino friend were friends. It was so obviously said to distract from the main point of what Corrain had done that it was immediately discredited. But this being Zhao’s final straw, she posted the evidence she had been threatening to use before. A 41-page Google Doc of receipts against Corrain, including the photoshopped text messages. Even Corrain’s beloved Reylo fandom cross-referenced each others’ group chats (which is crazy to me) to see if this “Lilly” friend existed, and no trace. These people used Corrain’s old fanfiction as a reference to prove that she had used the pseudonym “Lilly” when writing, so this person did end up existing… it was her with a fake account, yet again. Her fellow fanfiction-writing debut author friends were shocked to see themselves also being one-star bombed by her since they actually used to be friends years before, and even wrote her good reviews and expected good reviews in return on their debut books. So the saviors of revealing who this nonexistent friend was happened to be a bunch of authors on the Star-Wars-to-Reylo-fanfic-to-published-author pipeline (which is too common). Who would’ve known. 

In the end, Corrain’s career ended before it even started. She probably would’ve been on top of all the Goodreads lists she nominated herself on if she hadn’t been exposed. But she would’ve never been held accountable unless the public saw how her actions and words affected fellow authors and old friends. It’s been a trend recently to allow new authors to publicize themselves instead of their publishers, but these people have no idea what to do, shown clearly by Corrain. Publishers know their way around social media, interviews, book signings, and more because they’ve been trained to know how to speak and how their words can impact the marketing environment. Authors know only how to dramatize everything, clear when Corrain's “friend” cries “I trusted you!!!!” in their texts. This situation truly represents how the way you speak and act can affect more than just trivial conversations; it can affect your life. 

The Doc