Plagiarism & other rage-inducing things.

Last night, a reader who’d been searching for something at Amazon emailed us. She’d been looking for more Last Call books after having read the first two (kind of– getting to that in a minute). When she found them in the Kindle store, she realized they had a different name attached than the one with which she was familiar.

That’s right. Someone named Angela Priest has been posting “The Supernatural Bar of Last Calls Series” and other books on various sites like Smashwords, Scribd and Bookrix, (edit: Wattpad as well, who took down our books but left her account) places meant for people to share their own work with others.

Let’s observe some similarities between the title Hurricane that she’s posted and our book that was released from Changeling Press in 2008.

The blurb she posted:

Artist and witch Flora Logger hasn’t had an orgasm since a bitter ex cursed her five years ago. Whenever she gets aroused, bad things happen. Now, she’s come to Last Call in hopes of gaining an audience with — and help from — its owner, a powerful wizard named Bernard Delacruz. If anyone can break the curse, it’s him. And if he won’t come downstairs to meet with her, she’ll bump and grind until his bar caves in from the backlash. Hurricane: Contents under magical pressure. Experience required. Bernard doesn’t get involved with patrons… not even the hot, sexually frustrated ones. But when a lush-looking reddish-blonde threatens to wreck his bar with her curse and her need, he decides it’s time to take matters — and her — into his own hands. After all, even if he can’t break the curse, he can certainly ease her frustration. And what powerful wizard doesn’t love a challenge?

The blurb from Hurricane:

Artist and witch Fiona Logan hasn’t had an orgasm since a bitter ex cursed her five years ago. Whenever she gets aroused, bad things happen. Now, she’s come to Last Call in hopes of gaining an audience with — and help from — its owner, a powerful wizard named Benito D’Cruze. If anyone can break the curse, it’s him. And if he won’t come downstairs to meet with her, she’ll bump and grind until his bar caves in from the backlash.

 

Hurricane: Contents under magical pressure. Experience required.

 

Ben doesn’t get involved with patrons… not even the hot, sexually frustrated ones. But when a lush looking blonde threatens to wreck his bar with her curse and her need, he decides it’s time to take matters — and her — into his own hands. After all, even if he can’t break the curse, he can certainly ease her frustration. And what powerful wizard doesn’t love a challenge?

Hmm. Like…really? Changing Fiona Logan to Flora Logger?! Not only is it lazy and wrong, it’s terrible theft. What a horrible name. It sounds like a medical condition.

This woman isn’t selling our work as her own for money, but she’s certainly doing it for feedback. On several sites, as people told her they loved the books and encouraged her to write more, she beamed and gushed and told them she would, as time permitted. I guess Search/Replace takes a while.

A screenshot paragraph from her literary offering:

(It’s a screenshot because I couldn’t copy/paste the text she’d posted. Ironic, yes?)

The corresponding opener of Hurricane:

Fiona took one last look at the printed menu in her hand and grimaced at her friend. “I don’t need a drink. I need help.”

 

“Honey, this place is chock full of hot wizards.” Jenn snatched the menu out of Fiona’s hands and studied the back of it. “And this menu’s the key. We just have to decode it. Maybe they have a drink for ‘My castrated jackass of an ex cursed me to a life free of orgasms, contents under pressure.’ Like… oh shit, you can get in on a vampire/werewolf threesome? Hot.”

Wow, literal Search/Replace. What won’t people do?

Anyway, we emailed all the sites. Mark from Smashwords was particularly awesome, investigating immediately and removing the offender’s profile, citing their zero-tolerance policy for such things. Kudos to them.

But y’all should check this woman out. Late-night Twitter peeps have indicated that some of her other offerings look like they’ve been ripped off from Shiloh Walker and even Nora Roberts. (Let’s take a moment at that. La Nora? LA NORA? Is there a sane person on this planet who thinks cribbing her work is a good idea? WTF.)

So put out the word. Take a good look at this lady. This is the face of someone who thinks it’s okay to steal what others have written, put her own name on it, and take the credit.

This is a plagiarist.

UPDATE, 6/29 @ 6:21 pm

It seems that someone doesn’t like the takedown notices. In case anyone was wondering if this slimeball was suffering from a terminal case of stupid, the answer is yes and no.  Observe her comment to another user today on Booksie: