C. C. To other interested parties.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Without Prejudice:
Dear Dick Francis,
I have just posted this open correspondence for you on the internet; it is
disgraceful that you have not apologized to me for your actions. I have tried
my best to come up with a reason as to why you did this to me as I actually
didn’t want to think badly of you.
You cannot do what you did to us and expect to get away with it without as much
as a simple apology. The facts speak for themselves and I have the proof to
back them up, if I hadn’t do you really think I would have plastered the details
of what you did on the internet for all to see or anything else I have done? Of
course I wouldn’t, there would have been no reason to!
The fact is that ‘Come to grief’ is based on my life and that of my family; you
know it as I do.
Don’t you think it is time you came clean about it? Even if it was down to your
late wife you are still responsible and sooner or later everyone will know the
truth, a lot already do.
If you believe that ignoring the situation will make it vanish you couldn’t be
more wrong. I will not have my daughter Natasha’s life and our memories (facts
of our lives) be thought of as fiction by anyone.
People are not stupid; they know that you cannot manipulate/copy a fiction novel
into a factual true life autobiography, whereas everyone knows you can make part
of a true life autobiography into a fiction novel. So if you think for an
instant that people won’t buy my autobiography and put two and two together you
are living in’ cloud cuckoo land’ they already are. If you are wondering if I
have named you in the book for what you have done, the answer is yes I have, and
I have every right to tell the truth, the truth cannot be considered defamation
and is not libelous.
Well it is up to you what you now do
Justice happens when your wants and needs come into balance.
I am a person with
moral sensitivity a strong sense of compassion/fairness. I feel empathy for
other human beings, who always try to be fair-minded treatment of other beings.
Because of the above mentioned I find myself looking for reasons as to why Dick
Francis used part of my life and that of my family as the basis for his novel
‘Come to Grief’, at the end of the day it is Dick Francis’s name as author of
this novel, consequently as such it is legally his responsibility that my
copyright has been infringed upon within its pages.
Having said the above I have a but, my but is the fact that it is openly
reported in the tabloids that it may well have been his late wife Mary Francis
that might have been responsible for the contents in ‘Come to Grief’ , for she
was his researcher and draft copy editor for his books at the time.
Now I know my but is not an excuse for what Dick Francis did, and the fact is
that his correspondence to me was signed by him and not his late wife. However,
how many times do people sign correspondence without even looking at it when
they get thousands of people corresponding with them, when others they trust
sort these things out for them; they have been known to sign without even
looking at what they sign?
All I asked Dick Francis for when I found out what he (As the acknowledged
author of ‘Come to grief’) had done was a simple apology, nothing more nothing
less. I did not and do not feel this was unreasonable under the circumstances.
I hadn’t even considered the fact that I could sue for copyright infringement or
anything along those lines, I was still in terrible pain/grief from losing my
daughter Natasha, and to find a huge part of her life/our lives fictionalized in
‘Come to grief’ was so horrendously painful and such a shock to me that I am
still traumatize from it to this day!
There was/is no disclaimer in the book I purchased of ‘Come to Grief’ by Dick
Francis as to it not being based on any person living or dead.
Our characters nor the real events that occurred in our lives are not fictional
creations, the word coincidental equals accidental or by chance not the 150
supposed coincidences that are used in the first 50 pages of ‘Come to Grief’
that directly relate to our characters and events that occurred in reality in
our lives. The basis of the story-line in ‘Come to Grief’ blatantly fictionalize
the facts of what we actually went through, and are so thinly veiled that it is
utterly preposterous.
I have the proof for everything I say. Birth/death certificates, Police records,
newspaper articles, TV. appearances, whatever, all pre the publication of ‘Come
to grief’. Dick Francis or his late wife? Even used my first name as the mother
of a child with cancer the fact is my daughter did have cancer, this mother
Linda (me) also had another baby at the same time, fact I did, and it just goes
on and on to the point of being completely outrageous!
