The Story of My Imposters

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I started out as a writer in the early 1990s, before the internet was important. I existed for a long while without a social-media profile, let alone a website to promote my brand. Then—it was about 2009 or so—I was strongly encouraged by my publicist to join the 21st century. I had an opportunity to expose my work to new generations of readers! I thought, Why yes, I would like to do that.

I was teaching at Oberlin College, and I hired a student who was double majoring in creative writing and computer science to make me a website. The student showed me how to purchase the URL of danchaon.com, and suddenly I had a domain, a web presence, a frontier settlement named after me. My student helped me paste my accomplishments and accolades into a kind of virtual scrapbook, and he showed me how I could blog my musings to the public.

I was determined to create a likable persona and become