Ahamedd Saaddoodeen, Redux

Back on May 15, 2005, I offered a reward for the person who could untangle the mystery of Ahamedd Saaddoodeen, an alias which data indicates has been used by Dan Brown's wife, Blythe, since about 1979 and continuing up to the present day. Read those two previous blog posts for the specific details.

The "name" appears to be made up, a code for something.

Today, I received an email from an Arizona man who is tackling the puzzle and has come up with a number of intriguing possibilities:

• demons ado dead ahead
  

• a deed a shade and doom
  

• o so damned dead ahead
  

• a shade a deed and doom
  

• doom a deed and a shade
  

• shade a deed and a doom
  

• o ado ashamed dead end
  

• ado o ashamed dead end
  

• o ashamed and dead ode
  

• o does he add a dead man
  

• o he does add a dead man
  

• o a dead man he does add

In his email, the Arizona writer also added:

"I really know nothing about any of this. I just re-arranged the letters... all of them seem to share that sophomoric, quasi-poetic cheesiness which was the defining characteristic of the anagrams in 'The DaVinci Code' (& pretty much the whole book, which I read in about 6 hours - I thought it was stupid, but it was a page turner, that's for sure...)

"I haven't read your books, but it does seem as if you've gotten a bit of a raw deal & Dan Brown seems like a real jerk.

The reason I think Dan Brown is a jerk is because I am a composer, musician & keyboard player. I do not appreciate people who claim other people's creations as their own. The way he credits his "CDs" & his musical experiences makes it obvious to anyone in the business this is bogus. I know lots of people who self-publish their own music -- I don't know any of them who say their music was "released" unless it was picked up by an actual record label, meaning -- someone paid them to make it, rather than them paying for it themselves.

I am intimately familiar with this type of person - there are ALWAYS lurkers & wanna-be's in the halls of music schools or writing programs - people who really have absolutely no aptitude for the skill they are pretending to learn, but seem to have an uncanny ability to jump through hoops, kiss ass & figure out ways to get famous with other people's ideas.

With all the funny business going on in the publishing world today (Frey, JT what's-is-face, the Indian guy, etc.. etc..) I wouldn't be a bit surprised to learn that Dan Brown's wife is the real author of these books & his claim to have written them is a purposeful attempt at defeating the legal system which prosecutes these matters since the person who ACTUALLY wrote them does not ACTUALLY have to go on trial. that's not to mention the potential motivation of the publishers to stir up controversy/publicity any way they can.

Now that Mr. Brown has 70 million books worth of $ in his bank account & Random House has what could be an ongoing multi-million $ franchise I doubt anyone can afford to uncover his secret plagiaristic ways. Maybe someone should write a thriller about that!

"good luck to you... "

Any London Court Watchers Out There?

I'm not wealthy enough to be sitting in court in London, nor can I afford to have anyone there to gather the data and testimony.

Are there any courtwatchers there who might be able to fill in the many details that the newspapers do not have room for?

Appropriating Theme Points

I'm getting bits and pieces of what is going on over in London, but the following from the NY Daily News is of interest:

'Lawyer Jonathan James, arguing for Baigent and Leigh, charged that Brown "appropriated the architecture" of "Holy Blood" and used as many as 15 of its theme points.'

And that compares with close to 100 theme points that Code appropriated from my works and several hundred more significant, specific similarities as comprehensively presented in John Olsson's analysis.

London Trial

The Boston Globe has one of the more detailed articles on the London trial against Random House.

According to the Globe article, Random House lawyer John Baldwin, "said many important themes of "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" did not feature in "The Da Vinci Code," particularly the idea that a secretive order called the Priory of Sion exists and seeks to restore descendants of Jesus Christ to the thrones of Europe.

"Baldwin said this was a 'massive point' in the earlier book but was not stressed by Brown.

Interestingly enough, the Random House lawyers in my case are stressing similarities like this from HBHG in order to divert attention away from the similarities with my own works.

It seems clear that Random House intends to further misrepresent things from one court to another in hopes that no one is watching what's happening on the other side of the Atlantic.

Presenting Fiction as Fact

The James Frey (A Million Little Pieces) case shows how Random House/Doubleday benefits when fiction is misrepresented as fact. Not surprisingly, their lawyers have done the same thing in their lawsuit they brought against me.

One substantial reason I was denied a trial at the District Court level, is that Random House presented "faux history" as real history (something that is at issue in the London case as well.) History is not protectible, but fictional expression of history is. Many of the fictional "faux history" aspects of The Da Vinci Code first appeared in my works.

The judge in my case, however, mistook my fictional creations about history as real history and filtered those out those as not protected.

But the Random House lawyers persisted in their response to my appeals brief. On page 17 of their filing, they write,

"The Gnostics were early dissidents from the dominant branch of Christianity and their beliefs were excluded from the New Testament commissioned by Constantine, which bears close relation to the New Testament of today. (A-116,A-378)."

The lawyers are presenting that statement as FACT ... just as it was presented as FACT in The Da Vinci Code.

But either the lawyers don't know their history or they're deliberately presenting the court with fiction as fact -- because that is not history at all.

One of the best sources on just what is a fact is Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code : A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine by professor Bart D. Ehrman. In that work, Ehrman debunks that fictional fact.

Ehrman's discussion of this can be found in a number of places, primarily Chapter Four. One of those is page 81.

The point of this is to offer an example (there are many) of how presenting fiction -- especially stolen fiction -- as fact can be very profitable and (in my case) to make sure that justice is not done.

London Trial Against Random House, Brown Starts

In a testiment to the English judicial system, and whether or not the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail prevail, at least they got an opportunity to have the facts heard in court rather than being covered-up and stonewalled as has happened here.

Trial coverage here.

How Lawyer Manipulation of the Court Process Can Thwart Justice

At The Da Vinci Legacy website, I have just posted my reply, to the Random House Response,to my Appeals Brief.

As I was doing so, I ran across one of my attorneys' explanation as to why we were not able to reply to ALL of the issues in the Random House brief.

"By way of explanation, there is a 7,000 word limit." He explained.

Thus, here is a classic example of how lawyering can bias the process: Random House threw in every possible issue they could -- even when we had already responded to those issues in the trial briefs and even when out responses clearly showed that they had intentionally misrepresented the facts.

But because there is a limit on the size of our reply, we were unable to respond to every issue raised and were not allowed to address any issue to its appropriate extent.

So despite the fact that my affidavits and declarations are the only SWORN testimony in the entire proceeding, the manipulation of the process prevented us from making a full and complete reply. This is yet another way that justice can be thwarted by "good lawyering."

Sure, it's legal, but it's also sleazy and thwarts the even-handed administration of justice. But attorneys for Random House and Sony have been doing that all along, so it's not surprising.

As we have seen, they both realize that they cannot win on the facts. Thus they must do everything possible to prevent a trial.