This morning, I received messages from two different people (or one person using multiple IDs) offering to adapt two of my stories into comics or graphic novels. It just seems weird that after all of these years, suddenly they both show up, on the same day, and almost the same time. I'm guessing if I agree, they will want me to pay for their "work". Anyone else getting these offers?
BTW,, one of the stories is that damned "Afterschool Encounter". I think it's haunting me.
My rule is simple: If the same message comes from two different account (very usual for spam email), it's a scam.
You should report both messages to Lazeez and he'll probably remove the accounts.
Had the same thing happen to me recently… These people invited me to contact them on Discord if I was interested (which I don't use)…
Gee, let me think… I gotta pay you to "adapt" my work, and you'll likely ask for a cut of the money… how about "NO!"
Blocked…
There are people who will go and adapt serial fictions into a graphic novel - it's usually for publishing serially on something like webtoon.com. I think it tends to happen more frequently for asian serial fiction just because the output tends to be targeted at people who are already regular readers of manga, manhwa, and manhua, but I know that RE: Trailer Trash, by Forty Sixty Four, was getting a webtoon adaptation for a bit.
Their experience with it was pretty lousy, from what I heard; 4064 had zero editorial control over the adapted story and so the adaption made some weird choices early on that obviously conflicted with major plot points later, and then asked 4064 for help resolving the conflicts? I think that adaptation is now on hiatus for the obvious reasons (and possibly some non-obvious reasons, I feel like I remember the owner of the adaptation shop being involved in drama but I might be making that up).
Anyways, all that is to say that it's not a totally completely radically unheard of idea, but if by some chance it's not a scam, it may well still be more trouble than you're interested in dealing with.
The fact that you got the same message twice from two ids is a red flag so it's probably a scam.
But I once got a message from someone who was starting an online comic site and wanted to hire me to convert a story of mine to a comic book (for me to write the script). It was legit. I ended up learning how to write those scripts for the artists and got paid for each one I did. Unfortunately the venture capital fell through so they never went online. But they did pay me as promised for each script I wrote. So they are not all scams.
Unfortunately, venture capital can be as fickle as the conversions themselves are, and their pulling the plug midway through is hardly an uncommon practice. But sticking with the basics rather than hoping for an unanticipated miracle intervention. It's hard work and perseverance which makes the difference, not one-time assists from outsiders. You either put in the work to get ahead or you're entirely dependent on unreliable partners.
It'll take long playing the long game, yet the long game is usually the safest play, since you presumably have what it takes to carry it off. Trust yourself rather than someone with a decidedly vested interest. They won't stick by you long enough to make a real difference in the long-term.
I'm glad you did well with it, but you also played it safe, knowing what to watch for and what to focus on, and it paid off for you. You didn't count on the promised intervention, and you benefitted taking the route you did.