InsaneJournal

honesty has a price tag
As the situation with Joel gets hotter and hotter, i have begun simply forwarding his emails to Dwerenat and choosing not to reply to them myself.

I had intended to not tell Joel that I was starting a company until I was ready to launch. However, I did tell the following people about my decision: Phil, Tabi, Niwi, Nat, and Steven.

Then I got an IM about it from Daniel who had been informed by Niwi. Niwi, Joel, and Daniel are my core regulars at my chatroom. I naturally assumed that if Niwi had told Daniel, then he had probably told Joel. Niwi had not told Joel. He had told Daniel and a few close friends at Kingdom of Loathing. So I inadvertantly let the cat out of the bag to Joel. I had been planning from the start to give the position to Tabi once matters were far enough progressed.

I just went through my IM logs of my conversations with Joel. He jumped upon it with all four feet so to speak. He asked to be artdirector because he wanted the cred and started making propositions. He wanted to jump ship from Jean and wanted me to pay him $150 a month, which is $50 more than Jean is currently paying him.

I don't know where he thought I would be getting the money to do that as he is well aware that I have to do things on a quarterly basis because of my royalty periods. I told him to keep working for Jean.

He asked if he could do a post about it at DAZ |Studio community forums. I asked him if he thought Jean would see it. Jean has cycles and she was in one of her cycles that troubled me. I have known her since 1979 and I used to be married to her.

I thought it best to keep quiet until I could handle Jean and the project at my own pace. I had discussed it with a friend at sfreader, and I knew that it was not something that could be kept underwraps. I wanted to try and get some of my books reverted before telling jean about it.

After Joel asked for permission to make a small post, I also extended permission to Steven and Nat. I gave all three of them the same talk. It's early, it takes time, and so forth.

Of the three of them, the only one that failed to understand what I was asking for was Joel.

Had I not mistakenly assumed that Niwi had shared the news with Joel, as he had with Daniel, I would never have told Joel. Three times in the past I tried to include Joel in my projects and once I let him talk me into a project, a MUD, that I had no idea how to handle and he assured me that he was perfectly capable of doing it all. In the end, I spent several hundred dollars on the MUD and have nothing to show for it. I ended up doing 90% of the work which was a huge learning curve for me and took a lot of time from projects I had going that would and did make money.

The terms relating to the mud included giving Joel 25% of my royalties.

I am not going to go into the rest of the failed projects.

Joel always had his hand out asking for money, asking me to buy him DAZ add-ons for artwork that he never produced. Before it was over with I had spent over a grand on Joel and his projects and had nothing to show for it. This is a matter of public record. I have the receipts on the projects.

Joel's post at DAZ created a lot of unrealistic expectations as to how fast things could happen.

I had not wanted Joel in the first place; I had wanted Tabi. But at that time, Tabi was getting ready to leave for England.

I got Joel the gig with Renebooks. I persuaded Jean to buy his novella.

It turns out that Joel treats Jean as shabbily as he has always treated me.

I intend to hang this skeleton from the yardarm, as i do everything else. Sometimes airing it out helps to gain clarity.