rlfj: Blog

I remember when I was writing A Fresh Start and I made a comment about it being semi-autobiographical. As soon as I let that out, I began getting emails and responses about how awful my family must have been and how evil they all were. My response, of course, was that the emphasis was on the word semi, and it was fiction. I was reminded of all this over the weekend. We took a long weekend and went home to Maryland and visited my mother and brother and sister. We had a very nice time.

Let's finish this section with the last three chapters of Distilling A Romance. Hope you like it.

Time for a new section of the story. I plan to intersperse the various sections of the modified Influence of the House of Incest with the new stories involved in the backstory. This latest is going to take a couple of installments. Enjoy!

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, my idea behind this story was to explore the back story behind the strange hill that causes families to get so familiar with each other. I never really liked the back story in the original story, Curse of the House of Incest. This was my chance to redo it. My plan is to alternate sections, a back story and history section with modified sections from my story Influence of the House of Incest. This upload is the first of those modified sections.

Belinda Jacobs is now publishing on goodreads. Considering that Amazon owns goodreads, they don't have a big interest in killing off a source of income, no matter how illegal. Regardless, I have begun adding reviews on stories specifying "This author steals stories from StoriesOnLine.net and then sells them elsewhere. Do not buy this story!" At least it's something.

It took them several days, but Amazon killed off all the stories from 'Belinda Jacobs'. From what I and several other authors could figure out he/she had been mining SOL for all the stories posted. Now they are all gone, as is the author page. I am sure, however, that this individual will simply republish them with new titles and a new name. As the saying goes, stolen goods are never sold at a loss. We'll just have to see.

As for recompense from Amazon, I am not holding my breath. A week after the Belinda Jacobs page and stories were removed, I received the following message from Amazon: "We reviewed the additional information regarding your identity and could not verify the information you have provided." So, they couldn't verify who I was and couldn't verify the theft, but the page and stories are gone. Color me confused.

It's time to start uploading the new story. As always, I plan to publish Tuesdays and Fridays. It will probably take 4-5 weeks to put it all up. Sorry if that seems slow, but feel free to attempt to bribe me to send you a copy. As Carl Buckman once said, 'I can't be bought, but I can certainly be rented!' (There are some instructions in the end note. Email me for more.)

I mentioned in my last blog post that the 'writer' on Amazon, Belinda Jacobs, had stolen a story of mine. I reported it to Amazon. Afterwards, two other SOL writers reported to me that they had also been ripped off and I was able to verify that. I urge every writer on SOL to check this individual's Amazon page and check for your work. It is obvious he/she is mining SOL for stories to publish and sell. Let me know if you've been ripped off. I am taking what action I can. Thanks.