Reaper's Creek

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Reaper's Creek cover

Reaper's Creek is Greg's 3rd book. Greg released the book by chapters as an exclusive for his $2+ monthly supporters on Patreon. When he completed the book, he released it on Amazon.

About

On January 28, 2018, Greg announced on twitter he released the first chapter to his new book to Patreon. He said the book will be complete and available for anyone to read in 4 or 5 months, but his Patreons would "get a head start". He thanked his Patreons for funding his dreams. (Source) On Patreon, he said he will write about events from his life, similarly to his previous two books. He said every chapter will have a version of events from his life. (Source) It does not seem like Greg stuck to this structure as the chapter toward the end of the book contain no stories from his life.

Greg named the main character of Reaper's Creek Daniel, which was Greg's last name before marrying Kai. This is similar to his first book where he named the main character after his middle name, James.

After the release of the first chapter, Greg periodically released more chapters on Patreon. He also uploaded audio of himself reading some of the chapters. The story was complete in December of that year and on December 18, 2018, Greg released Reaper's Creek on Amazon. (Source)

Amazon Description

A young boy named Daniel encounters creatures from another world. They take him night after night, into the black void of their reality till he begins asking questions. Why was he chosen? What do they want from him? Does he have to be a victim?
Daniel decides to fight and as he wages war on all those who try to harm him, he finds his own adventure. Love, loss & chaos, this is the life of Daniel.

Controversies

Editing Criticisms

The early chapter releases on Patreon were received with a lot of criticism, particularly in what seemed to be a lack of editing. For example, in the first chapter (as well as others), the main characters' name inexplicably changes from Daniel to Greg. Some of Greg's fans offered to edit his book for free. One comment from his Patreon Beck offering free editing caused a heated discussion in his Patreon comments. (Source, original comment to the right)

On February 12, 2018, Greg responded by rejecting the idea of an editor on twitter, ending the tweet with "I don't play by your rules & if that is a problem: dont fukin reed muh book, thx". He also retweeted a tweet from 2015 saying something similar, originally in response to criticism of his book Stones To Abbigale. (Source) He also retweeted a tweet from 2012 that said "Grammar Nazis should be sent to death camps." (Source)

Later that day, Greg wrote a post to his Patreon that included a video under the title "I Want You To Be Happy". In the post, he explains people are not happy with his book. He wants to make his Patreon supporters happy, but he also wants to continue creating something that represents him and his imperfections. He says if you are concerned with grammar, you can read other books. (Source)

The comment that got to Greg's core

In the video, Greg announces sometimes he is "real" with his Patreons and doesn't hold back even though it comes off as rude. He says he doesn't mean to be rude because he appreciates them, but he read a comment that "got to my core". He says ever since he started writing books people have been going after him about grammar. He says he doesn't write books for it to be bought by the masses, he writes them for the small audience that would appreciate it. He says he writes books how he would write anything else, like an email. He does not worry about grammar because to him writing is an art and we shouldn't be serious about it. He says his books are about the story and not how the story is presented. He said a lot of people said his books are awesome and did not comment on the grammar. He said the person that made the comment he is making the video about said they were trying to be helpful, yet they called his work was "sloppy". (He stops speaking to make a confused face.) He said his tweets were his "restraintful" response to this comment, trying not to offend anybody. He says he does not need people to read his book. He would rather have almost no one read his book than hand it over to an editor to modify his book. He asks his audience not to buy his books if they care about grammar. He says his current book is about his childhood. This video was later uploaded to Youtube under the name "Don't Buy My Books", but has since been re-uploaded to Archive under them name "Don't Read Onision's Books". ($ource)

Beck, the writer of the comment, defended herself in the Youtube comments of Greg's video saying she was not trying to be malicious and only wanted to help with his book. She said she felt like Greg's "grammar Nazis should be sent to death camps" tweet was fucked up because she told Greg she was a grammar Nazi two weeks prior. (Source)

Underage Relationship

Early Reaper's Creek cover

Since Greg's fanbase significantly decreased since his last book release, Reaper's Creek's Amazon release did not receive as much attention as his previous two books. This is also due to the fact most of Greg's remaining fans already read the book through Patreon. This changed in late spring 2019 when it became a trend for smaller Youtubers to negatively review Greg's books. As reviewers approached his last book, word began to spread about the sexual relationship 11 year old Daniel has in the book with his 15 year old girlfriend Julia (sometimes mistakenly referred to as "Julie" in the book).

Greg responded to the controversy in the video "Onision Virgin? (Virginity Explained)", uploaded June 1, 2019. In the video, he explains people are trying to make it look like he wrote a creepy story, but they don't understand he wrote stories from his actual life. Julia was the actual name of the 15 year old girl he had his first kiss with when he was 11. In the video, he goes into painstaking detail about the sexual experiences he and the real Julia had. He defends himself for writing about it by pointing out he was told there are underage sex scenes in the books "It" and "Game of Thrones". He says if anyone should be called creepy, it would be Julia because she was 4 years older than him. He says he should be considered the victim in the situation by the age perspective, but he doesn't consider himself a victim because it was cool to experience being with somebody more developed than him. ($ource)