**What is written below is my experience with Freydis Moon and what has gone down since last February. Obviously, all of this is from my perspective, and I have not used other people’s names for privacy reasons. I want to use this post to vent everything that has happened this past year**

If you follow me on social media, over the past year or so, you may have seen me posting about how I was getting weird messages/replies on Twitter along with ghost quote rts (where someone who has seemingly privated or blocked you shares you work) on posts that wouldn’t normally get quoted/shared. This freaked me out so badly that my hair fell out over the summer/early fall of 2023 due to the stress of what was going on and the fact that I couldn’t say anything because the person who was behind it was another author within my orbit: Freydis Moon.

Freydis Moon has been unmasked Scooby Doo style as another terrible author named Taylor Barton or Brooklyn Ray. You can take a look at the evidence here if you want more background. The main m.o. with this person was that they would bully people, and when they would say something or try to, Freydis would rile up their readers/followers/friends to take them down. This was often done publicly, but it was often done on Discords and back channels only.

My issues with Freydis go back to February of 2023. I made a post on Twitter complaining about trope marketing since I don’t write or read fanfic, basically riffing off what a friend said. Freydis came into both of our posts and stirred up shit. I got off lighter with insinuations that I was being classist for saying if you have a BA in English, you look at book structure/writing differently (not better, differently). But they went after my friend, even though they backed down and unnecessarily apologized for their marketing opinion. Freydis and another queer author made a whole thread making fun of them and then seemingly booted my friend off a queer author Discord we were part of with the words “bad vibes be gone.” I was pissed. I left the Discord nearly immediately and muted Freydis everywhere. Part of me hoped they might apologize, but that never came.

After that happened, I started comparing notes with another neurodivergent author who had also had run-ins with Freydis and realized there were more and more of us who had this experience of “misunderstandings” that felt ableist. What I mean by that is tone policing, reading into things that aren’t there and then attacking you for it, and ganging up on them with another author/supporter among other things. Between February and summer, I watched another neurodivergent author get into a spat with them after calling them out for bullying. It’s also key to note here that Freydis also masqueraded as another author, Saint Harlow, who often acted as their attack dog. Saint Harlow went after this author, then Freydis got them into emails/DMs and then twisted around what they said. Once again, shitty behavior, but when you throw in that this author was autistic, it takes on a far more obvious ableist edge in that we are often not as socially adept and it’s far easier to trip us up, especially since clarifying leads to over-explaining, which gives the bully more to work with.

By this point, the pattern of ableist behavior was solidifying, especially after going through older spats between them and traditionally published authors, several of whom were known to be neurodivergent. Another autistic author became more vocal about Freydis’s behavior toward autistic and neurodivergent author, and so did I. Neither of us ever named names, and I don’t think I even mentioned that I was talking about a specific person when I talked about ableism being a pattern of behavior rather than a discreet action. That was seemingly enough. When a friend was called out by them, I told them to ignore Freydis (basically doing the opposite of what happened with the other author and because grey rocking is a common tactic against abusive behavior). Someone leaked those chats to Freydis, who then leaked them to their friends. I lost like 10-15 mutuals in like two days and couldn’t figure out why. I later found out it was because they told people I had been “racially harassing” them despite the fact that I hadn’t spoken to/about them in months and never had been racist toward/about them.

By that point, I had had them blocked everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads, Tiktok, in my email, even Etsy. Their presence was triggering to me by that point. I went out of my way to avoid them, so there was no way in hell I was going to harass them. On top of that, I hadn’t said anything about any of this on any of my public social media accounts, only within close friend groups. Around this time in the summer is when what I can only describe as cyberstalking started. I would post something and a friend who come tell me Freydis is subtweeting me, even though I had them and their other alias’s account (whom I thought was a separate person) both blocked. I started getting ghost quote retweets on posts about my health or neurodivergence, which was strange since those aren’t topics people would comment on. I would have replies/qrts pop up, then disappear, and I started to think I was losing my mind. More people I thought were my friends unfollowed me, and I stayed silent publicly. I didn’t know how to possibly prove something I hadn’t done, but what saddened me most was that people who I thought knew me, knew my character and behavior over the months/years we had been acquaintances believed I was harassing someone and being racist. I’m not perfect, but I do my best to be anti-racist and continue to unlearn damaging behaviors and thought patterns. If I had done something, I would have apologized and taken responsibility for my behavior, but I hadn’t, especially since I hadn’t spoken to/about them since February.

When Bluesky appeared, I was relieved as they hadn’t arrived and the weird ghosts posts stopped for a time. The moment Freydis got an account there, I blocked them. I literally searched their name every day just to block them. Then, one day I made a post that was meant to be a joke about asexuality and spice (I’m asexual). Suddenly, my post was circulating among Freydis’s people, despite having most of them blocked, and I only knew because a friend came to tell me people were upset with me. I realized they were creeping on my posts again and cyberstalking me with a sock puppet/alt account or by using a friend to evade the block.

During the Trans Rights Readathon this year, I was tagged in a trans author list and one of their followers popped on to call me a serial harasser. Their “evidence” was me complaining about Frey’s clique to the friend from February and the ace-spice joke post (that I later deleted and apologized for). Luckily, the person who saw it didn’t believe the “evidence,” but this confirmed to me that they were doing this somewhere privately and that I wasn’t wrong in believing that they were sowing discord on Discord. During the Trans Rights Readathon, this happened more than once, and someone left a one star review on one of my books calling me a racist harasser, which my friends reported and got taken down. Once again, I still hadn’t said a peep about them.

Two weeks or so before today, I cracked and made a thread on Bluesky about being cyberstalking and how if someone asks you to keep tabs on someone who blocked them, you are contributing to stalking and harassment. I was tired and overwrought emotionally by what was going on but still didn’t name names or use specifics. My friends were being supportive and agreeing when a sock puppet account came out of the woodwork to call me racist [again]. They told a person who was supporting me that doing so was not a “good look” for them. Fortunately, that person saw through the manipulation and told them off. The sock puppet deleted their account and disappeared.

That episode rattled me because of how overt it was. I spent the rest of the week freaked out, and as recently as Friday, I had been pouring out my feelings to my partner about how this bullying felt like it was never ending to the point that I had gone back through interactions to make sure I hadn’t actually done something. It made me question my sanity and memory. I struggle with OCD and have chronic inflammatory problems, and the prolonged nature of Freydis’s bullying took its toll on me. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, my hair fell out from stress.

When the news came out that there was hard evidence that Freydis Moon was Taylor Barton/Brooklyn Ray, I was relieved. Several friends who knew about the situation reached out to me, and I decided to finally post about what went on. Everyone who has interacted with my posts has been very supportive, which I greatly appreciate. At the same time, I have mixed feelings about everything. The non-anonymous whistleblower was part of the crowd that spread/believed lies about me and shut me and several others out of parts of the queer indie romance community. People who I saw joining in on Freydis’s bad behavior are claiming they had no idea, and suddenly, people who have had me blocked for months on Freydis’s orders or word are now unblocking and re-friending me.

While I’m relieved this person’s behavior and real identity have come to light, I have been embittered by what has happened. My character and conduct meant nothing in the face of Freydis’s word because if they said it with enough authority, it had to be true even if there was no evidence. Freydis also weaseled their way into authority positions on projects that centered autism after being ableist and awful to autistic authors. They were actively ableist on their Discords and even made fun of me specifically for being autistic, yet no one pushed back. I’m not ready to forgive anyone who moved in that circle because I think if a new leader for the cult of personality stepped up, they would follow them. I hope they examine their actions and strive to do better in the future.

My sympathy goes out to all the readers who saw themselves in Freydis’s work and the queer, Latinx indie authors who may be harmed in the future due to their careless actions. They all deserved better.