Authors say they were misled by Baltimore book festival as event organizers promise refunds
This past weekend, a book festival in downtown Baltimore promised to be the perfect event for book lovers, but instead, it's being described as one of the worst events people have seen.
Accounts describing the A Million Lives Book Festival have gone viral on social media, especially on TikTok.
Authors and vendors WJZ spoke to say they feel misled by event organizers, and they say the event didn't feel put together at all.
The event, put on by Archer Management, was held on May 2 and May 3.
Authors feel lied to
Stephanie Combs's weekend at the Baltimore Convention Center was supposed to be a big one. The Maryland-based romantic fantasy author has been independently publishing books since 2023.
The A Million Lives Book Festival was going to be her first one attending as an author.
"That is one of my dreams, bucket goal lists," Combs said. "I wanna be invited as an author to an event like this. Where I get to meet readers and get to connect with other authors."
Leading up to the festival, Combs said communication from organizers was sparse. She and other authors say there weren't clear directions on how to enter and bring their products into the center.
There was even some confusion about whether authors and vendors would have their own tables.
However, Combs said she remained optimistic because she was informed that between 500 to 600 tickets were sold for the event.
On the first day, Combs estimates, around 20 to 30 people showed up. On the second day, close to 100 showed up.
Panels for the festival also didn't have chairs or tables in their rooms, forcing people to sit on the floor.
The festival closed out with the Lavender Romance Ball, which some paid $250 to attend. The event looked more like a high school cafeteria.
"As an author, I felt bad for inviting my readers to this event because they were promised this amazing, wonderful, fantasy-themed ball, and I felt like they didn't really get what they paid for," Combs said.
Archer Management posted a statement on social media Monday apologizing for how the festival went.
"We are currently processing refunds as fast as we can. All refunds will be processed by May 31," the statement reads.
Archer Management hasn't responded to requests for comment.
Vendors take financial hit
Author Perci Jay flew in from Texas to attend. Her videos about A Million Lives have garnered more than five million views on TikTok.
She said authors, especially new ones, can take on a big financial burden because of these events.
"Some of us went into debt to come to this event. Some of us took on expenses -- mitigating the risk of what we were promised -- and had to spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, shipping unsold product back home," Jay said.
Jay said she spent time at the festival encouraging new authors to keep going to these events.
Combs said this hasn't deterred her completely, but she's going to be cautious with brand-new events like this one.
"I know there's gonna be things that go wrong, it happens at every event, and I can be completely forgiving of that," Combs said. "It felt like in this case there were just a lot of excuses."
It's unclear if Archer Management will help cover any other costs that authors and vendors had related to the festival.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Cosmopolitan
an hour ago
- Cosmopolitan
The Sabrina Carpenter Album Cover Controversy, Explained
It has come to my attention that Sabrina Carpenter has once again done something provocative that has, in turn, once again resulted in public shock and scandal, despite the fact that doing a satirical sex thing is pretty much the most Sabrina Carpenter thing Sabrina Carpenter could possibly do. Naturally, the initial outrage from the pearl-clutching set has subsequently generated a rousing round of internet discourse re: female sexuality under patriarchy—on which, as your resident Sabrina Carpenter Sex Things reporter, I feel it is my duty to weigh in. So let's discuss, shall we? On the heels of her latest single/immediate contender for song of the summer, 'Manchild,' (which, banger), Sabrina took to Instagram yesterday to announce her new album, Man's Best Friend, which is coming out August 29. The post featured an image (widely assumed to be the album's cover art) of Sabrina on her hands and knees while a man pulls her by her hair. In other words, it's a sexually submissive pose, one that invokes Dom/sub dynamics including ownership kinks and Master/pet play. (A second slide features an image of a dog collar with the album's title written on the tag, likely a nod to the sub collars often worn by submissive partners in these kinds of kink scenes.) Cue: immediate hand-wringing from the public claiming the (presumed) album art is 'regressive' and 'degrading' to women, with many critics arguing this supposed endorsement of subservience to men is particularly troubling amid a political climate that continues to threaten women's liberation. Instagram comments of note include one user who called the art 'insensitive' in light of the precarious state of women's bodily autonomy under the current administration, while another claimed it 'just set us back about five decades.' Meanwhile, a headline in the Telegraph proclaimed that Sabrina's 'over-sexed, degrading new album cover has gone too far,' while an Instagram post from Glasgow Women's Aid, a Scottish-based organization for women experiencing domestic violence, claimed the art evoked 'tired tropes that reduce women to pets, props, and possessions and promote an element of violence and control.' Woof. (Pun intended.) In response, others defended the imagery as satirical, interpreting the art as a tongue in cheek nod to the exact kind of criticism it did, in fact, generate and to which Sabrina is regularly subjected, which insists on missing the irony and painting her cheeky aesthetic as problematically male-gaze appeasing. While I can't say I'm the world's foremost Sabrina scholar, I think that—based on Sabrina's music, which frequently calls out and subverts the gendered power imbalances women face at the hands of men in heterosexual relationships—this reading of the art as an ironic response to the exact slut-shaming it received is a pretty solid bet! That said, irony or no irony, I think it's worth noting that being submissive in bed—including engaging in forms of consensual kink play involving degradation, ownership, humiliation, subservience, etc.—is not inherently 'degrading' for women (or for anyone of any gender, to be clear). What we do and like in bed—especially in kink—is not necessarily reflective of who really are as people. In fact, sometimes our sexual proclivities represent a subversion of and/or escape from who we are in our day to day lives. Which is to say, women can be sexually submissive without being (or wanting to be) subservient to men in real life. (Yes, we exist!) Moreover, even within a kink scene itself, being submissive isn't about having no autonomy, but rather willingly relinquishing control to a Dominant partner. As certified sex and relationship psychotherapist Gigi Engle, resident intimacy expert at dating app, 3Fun, previously told Cosmo, 'In kink, the sub is not actually powerless. The Dom and sub are both in control because the scene has been negotiated and boundaries have been established. Therefore, you can let go and be a submissive, but ultimately you know you are not, in fact, powerless.' In other words, submission is part of a dynamic exchange of power, not the lack of it. Meanwhile, as others have argued re: the recent discourse, claims that Sabrina's open displays of sexuality are 'regressive' are, in fact, rather regressive themselves. As one Twitter user put it, 'I fear we may have 'stop doing things for the male gaze'd ourselves back into expecting women to be modest and shaming them otherwise.' Quick Feminism 101 refresher: One of the core tenets of patriarchy is the policing and control of female sexuality. Patriarchy does this by shaming and censuring women for engaging with their sexuality outside the societally sanctioned bounds of heterosexual, monogamous relationships, therefore ensuring it remains under male control. When we are shaming Sabrina's sex-forward aesthetic—even on the supposedly 'progressive' grounds that it panders to the male gaze—what are we really doing other than reinforcing male systems of power that encourage women to be modest, chaste, and—dare I say—submissive to men? All of which is to say, whatever it is Sabrina was trying to do with her new album announcement, I think we can all simply agree that she looks fabulous doing it and get on with our day.
Fast Company
an hour ago
- Fast Company
What is a fridge cigarette? The viral Diet Coke trend explained
It hits at a certain time in the afternoon, when a familiar craving strikes. You walk to the kitchen. The satisfying sound of a can cracking, the hiss of bubbles. It's time for a 'fridge cigarette'—or as you might know it, a can of Diet Coke. Earlier this week, TikTok user @reallyrachelreno posted: 'Overheard someone call Diet Coke a 'fridge cigarette' and nothing's been more true to me since.' The video, which has since been viewed 3.5 million times, shows her cracking open a cold one in the sun. The caption: 'Time for a crispy ciggy in the summer.' (ICYMI: The term 'crispy' is used to describe a Diet Coke chilled to perfection—bonus points if served with pebbled ice and a lemon wedge.) For many, the comparison is spot-on. 'Wow, that's so real. It just takes the edge off,' one person commented. 'I gauge how hard my day is to determine if I get a little fridge cigarette,' another added. In a follow-up video, @reallyrachelreno cleared up a few things based on the comments. According to her analysis: Diet Coke equals Parliaments, regular Coke equals Marlboro Reds, and Coke Zero equals American Spirits. Any other diet soda equals menthol (disparaging). Full-fat Coke in a glass bottle? That's a cigar. In recent years, Diet Coke has made a noticeable comeback. Gen Z's version of the smoke break is the ' Diet Coke break.' On TikTok, Diet Coke ' recipes ' go viral. 'Gen Z is obsessed with Diet Coke,' Snaxshot writer Andrea Hernández noted in a recent newsletter. 'What is now being dubbed as 'fridge cigarettes' has earned a cultural cachet without Coca-Cola having to do anything . . . but focus on delivering on taste and product.' According to Hernández, Coca-Cola has held onto its position as the number one soda in the U.S. by tapping into nostalgia. After all, what captures the sweet nostalgia of summer better than a crisp can of Diet Coke in the sun? Alongside the rise of the 'fridge cigarette,' actual cigarettes have also crept back into pop culture, as The New York Times reported. In her hit single ' Headphones On,' Addison Rae sings: 'Guess I gotta accept the pain / Need a cigarette to make me feel better.' In 'What Was That,' Lorde recalls: 'I remember saying then, 'This is the best cigarette of my life' / Well, I want you just like that.' It's a sign of the times. Clean Girl is out. Cigarettes are cool again. And in a world full of prebiotic soda and protein water, sometimes all you really want is a crispy 'fridge cigarette' to take the edge off.
Elle
an hour ago
- Elle
Filipino Nurses and Health Care Workers Are Everywhere. Now, They're Finally on Screen Too.
When I was scrolling on TikTok last fall, I came across Mean Girls . The scene, clipped from an episode of the new NBC sitcom St. Denis Medical , went viral, making Filipinos in the comments laugh and feel seen. People of other backgrounds who work in health care nodded along, noting the accuracy. And I, a Filipina with a few family members working in medicine, even let out a chuckle. It was as if for the first time, a widely understood reality finally made its way into mainstream television: Filipinos dominate the health care industry. Filipinos make up the biggest group of immigrant workers in the American health care system, according to a 2019 census, per the ER ran for 15 seasons without focusing on a Filipino nurse (this oversight became the butt of a joke at the Grey's Anatomy reportedly featured a Filipino nurse for the first time significantly in 2021—its 17th season on air—when Aina Dumlao 'Being Filipino American and just having so many nurses in my family, and being pressured to be a nurse myself growing up, it's always been so odd to me that there hasn't been a ton of Filipino nurses on TV in the past on these medical shows,' says St. Denis Medical writer Emman Sadorra, who is Filipino and pitched the 'mafia' concept along with a fellow Asian American writer. '[Working on] a new medical show that I'm so lucky and proud to be a part of, I knew that that was something I wanted to try and bring to the table or shed some light on.' NBC Yssamei Panganiban as Sharice and Nico Santos as Rene, members of the 'Filipino mafia' in St. Denis Medical. Although the Filipino mafia was only the subject of one episode (so far) on St. Denis , other Filipinos in scrubs have recently appeared onscreen this year as medical TV dramas underwent a renaissance. HBO Max's The Pitt , arguably the buzziest new show of the year, features three Filipina characters working in an emergency room: two are nurses, who often chit-chat in Tagalog, the national language of the Philippines, and one is a doctor. And when Netflix debuted its own soapy medical romance Pulse this spring, the cast included a Filipino actor playing a surgery intern. 'It feels like the powers that be in the entertainment industry are at last starting to get it —finally noticing us, seeing us, and inviting us to tell our stories.' There have been other flashes of representation in recent years, like a brief scene of nurses speaking Tagalog in the locker room in New Amsterdam in 2023 , or a minor character, Nurse Villanueva, appearing on The Good Doctor from 2017 to 2024. This new wave of shows marks a long-awaited breakthrough in representation—and more accurately depicts the reality of working in a hospital. It feels like the powers that be in the entertainment industry are at last starting to get it —finally noticing us, seeing us, and inviting us to tell our stories. With immigrant communities under attack right now in the U.S., this kind of visibility and celebration, for any minority group, is more important than ever. 'It is crazy that it's taken this long for there to be such concrete representation, but it's so special to be a part of it and show it in so many different forms,' says Isa Briones, who stars in The Pitt as a prickly and ambitious med student named Dr. Trinity Santos. 'There's nurses, there's doctors, there's also a spectrum of what [being] Filipino is. There's so many different nuances within it.' Warrick Page Isa Briones as Dr. Trinity Santos on The Pitt. Many of these actors know the impact of Filipinos in health care firsthand. Briones says 'so many family members, extended family members and friends of friends are Filipinos who are medical professionals.' Pulse 's Chelsea Muirhead says her Filipino mother, a phlebotomist, encouraged her to be a doctor or nurse when she was going to school. 'Now I get to turn to my mom and be like, 'I did it,' the Filipino-Scottish actor jokes of her role in her Netflix series. 'I'm kind of a doctor and I'm living that dream, finally.'' The Pitt 's Amielynn Abellera, who is also Filipino and whose mom was an ICU nurse, even studied pre-med in college ('That was a pattern that I was going to follow,' she recalls) before pursuing her passion for acting. 'The medical world of The Pitt feels so familiar,' she says. The Pitt makes sure audiences know that Filipinos are in the ER staff right away. Kristin Villanueva, the actress who plays a chatty nurse named Princess Dela Cruz, points out her character's early introduction in the series, alongside Abellera's Perlah Alawi, a fellow Filipina. 'I've read some comments of people just having a huge sigh of relief and excitement when you see me and Amielynn in that second minute of episode 1 and already speaking Tagalog,' Villanueva says. 'It was also jarring for me that all of a sudden, BAM! Dr. Robby—Noah Wyle—is going in and already being flanked by two Filipino nurses.' Courtesy HBO Max Kristin Villanueva, Noah Wyle, and Amielynn Abellera in The Pitt . Notably, The Pitt develops these characters fully, rather than making them one-dimensional stereotypes. Throughout the first season, Briones's character is shown butting heads with a white male counterpart (her performance is so convincing that her character has become Briones, for example, asked if her character 'could have a last name that represented my background.' The team obliged and dubbed her Santos (Filipino surnames are often of Spanish origin due to centuries of colonization). Villanueva, who was born in the Philippines and speaks fluent Tagalog, weighed in on some of the translated dialogue and ad-libs. 'There's one scene where I call Dr. Langdon an asshole. In Tagalog we have—I don't know—20 words for asshole. It's like varying degrees of intensity,' Villanueva explains. 'So, then I would go back to the writer and ask, 'Is Princess joking? Is she teasing? Does she really mean it? Is she irritated?' Then we have leeway in interpreting that to arrive at the same vibe or gist or objective of that character.' Related Story Even the inclusion of gossip (or tsismis ) is, inexplicably, an accurate homage to Filipino culture. But the Tagalog dialogue isn't only used to talk about someone else behind their back (or in front of their faces). 'To me, when I speak in Tagalog, it's not always necessarily so other people can't understand us,' Villanueva says, in Princess's defense. 'It's easier to express in your mother tongue and your native language.' 'It doesn't matter if there's a Filipino on screen for like half a second, we will proudly claim and watch the program just to see that one glimpse of our people. So I was really just like, 'We just have to get this right.'' Nico Santos (you know him from Superstore and Crazy Rich Asians ), who plays nurse Rene on St. Denis , the leader of the Filipino mafia, was also able to use his personal experience to inform the show. Some parts of the script would be translated by a service, but the phrasing was too formal or unnatural. 'The translation was super-lalim talaga [really super-deep],' Santos remembers. 'We just don't use those words.' So he sought to make the dialogue 'more conversational' and accurate because there was a lot at stake. 'You know how our people are,' he says. 'It doesn't matter if there's a Filipino on screen for like half a second, we will proudly claim and watch the program just to see that one glimpse of our people. So I was really just like, 'We just have to get this right.'' NBC 'We just have to get this right,' Nico Santos said of Filipino representation on St. Denis. That also meant paying attention to the details. In one scene where Rene gives a colleague a bag of canned goods and groceries, St. Denis writer Emman Sadorra recalls 'specifically telling the props people it should be corned beef. That's such a Filipino thing.' (It's not visible in the final cut, but it's the thought that counts.) When you're part of a community that's rarely in the spotlight, the pressure is high. Santos understands that struggle. 'I have sort of a love-hate relationship with the position that I'm in because at the very core of it, this is just what I want to do for a living. …. But when you start working at a certain level, there is that layer of, you are the face of the community . I feel that not only with being Filipino, but being queer as well,' he says. He later jokes, 'If I fuck up, please don't hold it against me. I am just a person, and I will make mistakes. And someday I hope that it gets to a point where we can play all types of characters, and those characters not be seen like, 'Oh my God, all Filipinos are like that.'' NBC Santos says, 'When you start working at a certain level, there is that layer of, you are the face of the community .' Briones was glad to be on the set of The Pitt with two other Filipina actors who came from different backgrounds as a way of showing this long-overlooked community is not monolithic. Briones, the daughter of trailblazing TV and Broadway star Jon Jon Briones, is mixed race, Filipino and Caucasian; Villanueva, a seasoned theater actor, was born in the Philippines and immigrated when she was a teenager. Abellera, who hails from California, plays a Muslim Filipina nurse who wears a hijab. (Though the Philippines is a predominantly Catholic country, about These shows have been healing not only for viewers, but also for the Filipino actors who star in them. Muirhead, who is queer, says it 'felt so serendipitous' to play her character, Sophie, who was written as queer in the script. Portraying a Filipina exploring her sexuality helped her answer her own questions in real life. 'I'm learning a lot about myself, to be honest,' Muirhead says. 'I'm finding much more confidence in myself by digging through, potentially, what might a character like Sophie feel?' Courtesy of Netflix Daniela Nieves as Camila Perez and Chelsea Muirhead as Sophie Chan in Pulse . Briones also had an emotional realization while filming a scene in episode 11 of The Pitt when Princess and Perlah are in the midst of gossiping about Trinity in Tagalog, and Trinity chimes in, stunning the pair with her understanding of the language. In her disbelief, Princess says Trinity is ' so mestiza! '—meaning she's so white-passing she couldn't believe she was Filipina. Villanueva asked Briones for permission to use that line when the director of the episode, Quyen Tran, encouraged her to improvise. 'Kristen was kind of like, 'Is it okay if I say that?' to me,' Briones says, noting that the term could be read as an insult to people who are mixed. 'Even though those types of words have hurt me [in the past], it felt so powerful to represent it and show it. It didn't feel painful to do that scene. I would've watched this and would've teared up and been like, 'Oh my God, I've had that exact interaction before.'' Sadorra sums it up well: 'The things that make me different used to be things that I was afraid of writing about, but now I fully embrace it and it's only yielded great results.' Warrick Page Abellera studied pre-med before pivoting to acting. But even as more Filipinos appear on screen, I can't help but wonder if casting them as doctors and nurses will become just another pigeonhole—like the delivery man, the IT guy, and the exotic sex symbol tropes that Asians have long been typecast as. Knowing this, Villanueva made sure to be selective about which roles she takes on. 'If it's a Filipino nurse and there's more to 'yes, doctor,' you get to see more of the personality, or have more of a backstory, then of course, I absolutely would audition for that,' she says. When she was auditioning for The Pitt and saw the character's name was Princess—an 'if you know you know' nod to the over-the-top names Filipinos give their kids—she knew the writers were 'going deep in their research.' 'The hope for the future is just more . Not only in front of the screen but also behind it.' '[Working in] medicine is also a little bit of a [stereotypical career] in the community,' Muirhead says. 'It's like a dream, kind of our golden mountain to chase, especially for older generations. But what a beautiful beacon [it is].' Santos agrees: 'It's the easiest entry into our culture, and then you let them know: We're not all nurses.' Abellera says we're in the midst of a cultural shift 'where Filipino and Filipino American stories are really making their way into not only art, but different spaces like cuisine, sports, music, design, and literature in a way that I never experienced growing up.' And as a parent of a 4-year-old, she's excited to be able to show her child Filipinos on TV, from Josh, the new host of Blue's Clues , to herself. ANNA KOORIS // Netflix Filipino actors hope for more opportunities onscreen, behind the camera, and beyond.. Indeed it is an exciting time, as Hollywood has embraced more stories from people of color in recent years. But it's also a fraught one, as DEI initiatives are increasingly under threat. The hope for the future is just more . Not only in front of the screen but also behind it. While The Pitt , St. Denis Medical , and Pulse spotlight Filipino actors and storylines, all three shows are led by white male showrunners or co-showrunners. ( Pulse has a female co-showrunner.) There's always more room for improvement, whether it's in the writers' room, the director's chair, or the C-suite. 'To the executives: People want these real stories. The Pitt is an example of that,' Briones says. 'So seek out new writers, new directors, seek out the people who are going to tell their unique stories about their cultural background, and also stories that don't have to be about their Asian-ness, their Filipino-ness, or whatever—it's just ingrained.' The success of The Pitt and St. Denis demonstrate that there's an appetite for more Filipinos onscreen. 'I think what networks were afraid of was, if you get too specific, the show is not going to translate to a wider audience,' Sadorra says. 'But it's almost like the opposite of that has been true—the more specific you get, the more universal it becomes.' He adds later, 'The response of that [nurse mafia] clip that went viral, and people really loving that episode in particular, has shown us that this is really resonating with people, and it would be smart of us to keep exploring stories in that area. So I hope we get to do that for a second season.' My fingers, for one, are crossed to see more Rene and the Filipino mafia on screen in the future. I can't wait to gossip about it. Related Story
