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LORD OF THE SCHEMES
By Archive
from Salem Monthly, Section News
Posted on Sun Aug 14, 2005 at 01:15:00 PM PDT

Take a bunch of Lord of the Rings fans, a couple of star-obsessed narcissists, and a fake charity. Now add several inconvenienced celebrities, a few poorly planned cultural events, and an e-mail trail of lies.
Let’s not forget several thousand dollars unaccounted for, fake suicides, and a fun round of “do we prosecute or don’t we.” Mix well. Organize. Publish. Use a cool title like “When a Fan Hits the Shit.”

Dr. Jeanine Renne was one of many unfortunate Tolkien fans to be drawn in by Amy Player (aka, Jordan Wood) and Abbey Stone. These two set up a fake charity and several poorly organized, doomed-to-failure Lord of the Rings events in order to gain access to some of the celebrities that they idolized. The bizarre chain of events spiraling toward implosion is chronicled by Dr. Renne in this interesting (and just a bit catty) expose.

Amy Player is an intriguing antihero. She combines intelligence, charisma, and gall with narcissism, pathology, and bumbling incompetence. To help the reader keep track: her alter-identities are Jordan Wood (male), Victoria Bitter (female), and Mr. Frodo (from her “hobbit channeling” days). The book, while fascinating, could have been stronger, had Dr. Renne allowed the literary potential of this real-life character to take off a bit more. As is, the book jumps around a bit, and is sometimes hard to follow.

Still, the primary purpose of the book, admitted openly, is revenge. This is the reason the book was written, and the book
itself is really the finishing touch in a successful campaign of revenge. It has some of the same appeal as a soap opera, but with better writing. The reader is notably a voyeur, watching a tale of small-scale depravity and its resulting fall.
Visit www.turondo.com to read excerpts from a few chapters. The book can be purchased locally at the Book Bin on Court St. in downtown Salem.

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