I need your help

Dear Friend: I’ve reached a particularly challenging stage on the Devil’s Playground with respect to my political situation. My psyche is still strong, but my body is tired. Almost five years ago to the day (December 12, 2020) that I made my second effort to personally disconnect from Sophie Gregoire Trudeau, things have intensified, particularly around individuals blocking access to the book that tells the story, In Trudeau's Kitchen. As it is, I cannot resolve all of this on my own. I have certainly tried. I am not particularly good at asking for help, but I am asking for yours.

The book technically launched last week, and quickly rose to #1 on Amazon Kindle (Canada) in the Memoir category for new releases.

Almost immediately thereafter, the Kindle almost doubled in price, and the paperback- which had been available for pre-order for some time- became entirely unorderable. Apparently, not everyone was happy with my initial success.

Around the same time, I noticed that the audiobook (deal signed with Blackstone Publishing) reverted back to old non-images without order links, also on Amazon Canada. This image is what Amazon Canada showed on November 25^th..

The following image is what it reverted to as of December 13th...

Note that even the proper new image has now been removed and neither can be ordered (nor can you pre-order the Audible on Amazon Canada).

The following is what the audio book shows on Amazon.com (proper new image, old image removed, options to pre-order CD’s and Audible). This is what you would normally see before and after an audio book comes out.

It is clear that someone is determined to get into these systems and sabotage the capacity for this particular book to reach the Canadian public. I have little doubt that this is being done to protect the current Liberal administration (and various exposed individuals and corporate entities) from the possible fallout from this story. If there was no potential fallout, why bother playing all these games?

When I asked my “publisher”, Kris Millegan at Trineday Press, why the paperback suddenly became unorderable in Canada right after skyrocketing to #1 on Kindle, he said this:

“Amazon is going to play games because the books arrived late. The Kindle is live. I was given completion date of 11/25, but the company dd not meet that. Sorry.” And “No, it is not nefarious. You wanted a release date of your dad’s birthday. Books didn’t get to Amazon, so they take the buy box down. Once they receive book and get them stocked it will return. They may take week or two to do that, to teach us a lesson about getting them books on time.”

In other words, he is blaming me, the printer, and allegedly reactive Amazon Canada. Not that someone out there wants to keep this book from Canadians. Not that someone out there wants to continue the attempts to silent and censor that I have endured for five years. And certainly not him, for failing to get the books in place in time.

What is interesting is that the books that I was contractually guaranteed from this publisher, actually arrived early this week from the printer in Missouri, but none had arrived at the distributor’s warehouse in Illinois as of Thursday. Hence, no books in bookstores or at Amazon.

As a result of all these games, the book’s momentum was momentarily lost in Canada. I do not believe that Amazon made the decision to exact revenge for a late initial shipment. I believe that someone with nefarious intentions (read: someone who does not want this book to reach Canadians and then the world) was somehow able to shut the book down in the Amazon system. And think of it this way. If Amazon is going to shut down pre-orders when books are not in stock, what would then compel them to ever order that book again? You need customer orders to compel orders from Amazon.

The confusing nature of these games is entirely consistent with things that have happened around this book deal for months. For example, some weeks ago I noticed that the new subtitle on the book cover was not showing up on Amazon or in the International bookstore system. In other words, there was a confusing visual conflict between the old subtitle (My Unexpected Journey with Sophie..) on the cover, and the new subtitle (My Unexpected Journey with Power...) in the book titling system. In the following image (Chapters Indigo), it was actually the opposite. Either way this is a real problem because anything that confuses purchasers can compel them to abandon the purchase…

I wrote the publisher and the distributor about it many times, over a few weeks. I had a few email interactions with the distributor (IPG) and, on December 4^th, IPG’s Rachel Jackson provided the following explanation:

“My apologies for the delay on a resolution to this matter. I do want to confirm we have re-pushed and updated the cover multiple times. Upon further investigation on the backend we found Amazon prioritizing a cover from a different source. We are unsure what source, but we have escalated to Amazon and awaiting a response and/or action from them.”

I then quickly responded with these words:

“I’ve never seen a cover change take more than a few days. My lawyer has asked that you cc me on your correspondence with Amazon on this issue. If there is some other source playing games with covers, then that confirms that this is a crime, and it needs to be brought to the attention of the FBI. I would ask you to contact them asap. You are the distributor. There can be no other source supplying a book cover, unless it is a crime being committed… Let’s prioritize finding the culprit Rachel! Please contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation. blessings, Jeff.”

Much to my surprise, only a few minutes after writing an email that referenced getting the FBI involved, the book cover was suddenly updated to the new cover. Not just on Amazon, but also in what I browsed of the worldwide system. I know that it was changed, because I had checked just before hearing from Rachel and it was still the old cover. Wonders never cease!

Somewhere in between the above two examples, there was an additional issue related to the e-book. It was up on Kindle and Barnes & Noble, but not other popular e-sites i.e. Kobo. Nobody seemed to notice until I pushed on it, and the problem appears to have been resolved.

Prior to that, a series of confounding experiences that all seemed to unite to cause a delay in both the release of the paperback, and in the production of the audiobook (release date now shifted from December 9^th to February).

For example:

-the Publisher hired an editor who included in their first edit a variety of details about me that did not emanate from the manuscript or our few interactions. I found that curious and called it out. Soon thereafter, I was told that the editor had received a message from someone accusing them of being a “fraud.” They subsequently resigned from the edit. I was then told that I was responsible for sending the message. I repeatedly asked to see it, and it has still not been sent to me months later. Afterwards, I was told by my then agent that the publisher retreated to “process” these events, resulting in a delay;

-When the publisher re-surfaced, we spoke right at the beginning of September about getting to work together on the edit. After all, our December 9^th publishing date was coming soon. He indicated that he would connect in a week (he had a new ‘Epstein’ book that suddenly took precedence). I did not actually hear back from him to begin the process until around September 22^nd, thereby delaying the process further;

-In between, a drama related to the audio book. I had made an agreement in principle through my then agent months before, but the agent was then trying to get me to move the deal over from the agency she worked for/that I was signed with to her new agency. I pushed back and contacted the agency owner. This then led to a parting of the ways between myself and the agent, and a delay in the process around negotiating the audio deal because it wasn’t clear who I was now affiliated with (the old agency, or solo) with respect to the audio deal;

-On September 8, the agency owner unexpectedly wrote me to tell me that they had decided to review my publishing agreement with Trineday (not at my request) and that because audio rights weren’t explicitly noted, it would be important to get a sign off for audio from Kris. This move was quite shocking to me, given that Kris had verbally stated in the contractual negotiation that he wanted no part of audio rights, and based on that statement, my then agent put an agreement in principle in place with Blackstone months ago. Hence, Blackstone putting up an initial cover. Now, that deal was put in jeopardy because I didn’t have formal sign off. Very confusing. Imagine trying to negotiate contractual details with no certainty as to whether you are going to get a sign off from the publisher. And, because the publisher had yet to get back to me to work together on the manuscript, I couldn’t respond confidently when Blackstone endeavored to arrange a recording time. You need to know when a book is going to be done before you can schedule the recording dates. By the time Kris finally signed the sign off on September 29^th, and connected to actually work on the book edit two weeks after he said he would, it was too late to organize a recording schedule that would align with a December 9^th publishing date. So, the date was moved to February. (Side note: I severed from the literary agency itself soon thereafter.)

As a result of all these events (and more!), I did not feel confident that this book was ever going to get published and, if it was, that it would be consistently in stock. The publisher had told me he was going to initially order 500-800 books. This is a very low figure for a book of this nature. So, I retained my longstanding designer, and while working on the Trineday version, we worked on our own version of my material. I had no idea if it was ever going to be necessary to publish it, but it was a great comfort to me to work with someone who I could rely on to respond to emails, make requested changes to the documents, and ensure that the book was up to standard.

As it stands, the Trineday version has come out in Kindle/E book form. We are still waiting on paperbacks to enter the system, and as noted earlier, the preorder button for the paperback and the Audible does not exist on Amazon Canada. The latter was never there, and the former was taking down soon after the book began to reach Canadians on Amazon Canada. This is what I am up against. Bullies that never win clean.

I am trying to remain optimistic, but after five years of what I endured and wrote about in the book, it is difficult. I don’t even particularly care precisely who is beyond many of these shenanigans, but I do care about getting this book to the world. Not because I want to make a fortune- I would be happy to just make back all I have lost in the last five years- but because I strongly believe that this book holds the potential to wake up my fellow Canadians (and those in other democracies who are not realizing that their way of life is currently at threat) to what is happening in our beloved nation. Canadians were not conditioned to question our government like Americans were. We were conditioned to trust them. Hence, we are ripe for the picking by those who seek to exploit our naivete for their own political ends. I spent many years writing, and selling products in Canadian sub-divisions. I know Canadians well, and I believe that it will take something as shocking as this book to awaken them to the evil that is afoot.

My ask of you is simple. Please recommend this book to anyone who you feel might benefit. And, if the book resonates with you, please overcome any game played to block it on one site by seeking it out elsewhere. I totally get that most everyone is overwhelmed right now and has their own concerns. I do not for one moment believe that my situation is more pressing than anyone else’s, but I do believe that I lived to tell this tale because it is meant for humanity at this difficult time. If I survived this, we can survive anything. This book will give humanity hope and essential information at a critical moment.

My commitment is that I will continue to fight for our mutual right to the light until my body gives out. I will come back at these abusers of power with the same tenacity that I have since this began in 2020. I didn’t sign a book deal only to be held hostage to the same cycle of abuse I have endured for five years. And if they don’t stop blocking my Charter guaranteed right to freedom of expression, I will not only have everything released publicly that the flying monkeys want buried (isn’t it amazing how abusers-of-power persistently create the monsters they fear?), I will also release the book at no charge. I will stand on street corners and knock on doors to hand out free links. I will work through the night to find internet portals where I can post them. I will buy a cool old van and paint the links all over it. And I will ask anyone who supports me to help. Because I know what this book is, and I refuse to surrender to the darkness. My responsibility to humanity is far greater than my responsibility to myself. That’s what happens when you get older. You realize it was never about you anyway. It was always about all of us.

Love and gratitude (the real kind), Jeff