Who's Zooming Who?

It's flattering to receive an interview request, isn't it?  Say from a man claiming to be a well credentialed writer named George LaCroix or David Byron or Sean Killian.  He's got a hot project.  You can be in it.

Let's say it includes a spiel like this:

The book will be an in depth look into their lives and careers, as well as an insight into their profession as an individual genre, and how much the genre has changed over the course of time. I think you would make a wonderful addition to the book, and would be honored if you would agree to let me send you some interview questions via email. I'd simply send you the questions via email attachment, you'd fill in your answers, send it back via email. 

Sounds safe enough, doesn't it?  Kind of flattering in a suck-up sort of way.

You get a few short email questions- which you answer at length and give permission for the interviewer to use what you've written so he can make money.  Where's the harm?  Maybe it will get your name out in public just a little more.

What if the man interviewing you turned out to be the David Boyer- the sleaziest plagiarist in the history of copyright infringement?  How would you like your name to be associated with him?  

He didn't tell you who he really was when he contacted you (because he's cyberstalked and misunderstood).  And sometimes he signs the contract with his pseudonym.  Is it a valid contract?  Sometime he signs his real name because it's too late for you, the writer- you write most of the content, you make nothing, he owns the interview and your named is smeared with his reputation.

So, really- who's zooming who?

Isn't it important to know who is interviewing you?

Boyergate Flash- Aliens Arrive in Vincennes, Indiana to Sign InterGalactic Treaty with Notorious Plagiarist!

Looking Around

for

"The Great One"

The town of Vincennes, Indiana became instantly famous today with the confidential admission of a city official that an entepreneurial mission of Aliens from the Snicker's galaxy has arrived to sign a contract with the city's most notorious and prolific plagiarist.

This reporter was priveleged to interview the lead alien negotiator.

In response to my first question, "Hello, what is your name?" he responded "$@&***(^"

A thirteen year old boy with strawberry blond hair was called in to run the alien's answer through Google Voice and Language Translator, which rendered it as "I'm a good boy."

Further calibration of the Google translator gave us this version, "Where is the Great Plagiarist of Vincennes, Indiana?"

"He's running late," I told him. "It's hard work creating fake identities to hide behind when you're selling stolen work. And it's time consuming when you have to lie to the authors, claim a mob of cyberstalkers is after you, tell people your computer was hacked, and even pretend it's not your fault if you inadvertantly used their stories. He'll explain it to you when he gets here."

"$$-^^^^_+!!!," said the alien.

The teenager translated, "Maybe he said goody goody?"

"Why do you want to be trained in the art of plagiarism and copyright infringement?" I asked.

The alien ambassador grew excited and waved his arms up and down while making a hooting noise. His entourage did the same. It was like they were having an extraterrestrial orgasm and quite embarassing for an earthling to watch.

"Wow," said the kid. "They're saying that there's been no theft on their world. They never thought of stealing until the Great Plagiarist contacted them with a potato powered radio transmitter and offered to scan all of earth's books and give it to them for a percentage of the proceeds when they sell them throughout the universe."

"How much do the authors get?" I asked the kid, who duly ran my request through the Google Voice and Language translator.

After my question was translated, the aliens responded with a raucus chorus of owl sounds punctuated by all of them pointing at what I think were their crotches.

"What?" I asked.

"I think they're busting a gut," said the kid.

Suddenly, I realized why it was worth it for them to travel all the way across the galaxy to consult with the Great One of Plagiarism and it made me mad.  With any luck, they would take the great plagiarist back to their own planet to study.

An Open Letter to Amazon

They're big, they've got money and clout and we all need their help to protect our works from plagiary for profit, a.k.a. Consumer Fraud.  NEW: Here's their FAX number in case you want to send a letter of support

206-266-7010 FAX

Amazon Legal Dept. Fax

(Send Them a FAX Saying We Need Them to Contact Tom Irons, Indiana Deputy Attorney General, Consumer Fraud Division and Tell Him Boyer Publishing & Selling Books with Stolen Content is Consumer Fraud!)

Here's the letter I just FAXED them:

*****

October 19, 2011

Amazon.com
Legal Dept.
P.O. Box 81226
Seattle, WA 98108-1226

Reference File No. 10-CP-62157, Consumer Fraud Filing, Office of the Indiana Attorney General, Consumer Fraud Division. Filed with Deputy Attorney General Tom Irons, 302 W. Washington St., 5th Floor, Indianapolis, IN 46204

Dear Amazon Legal Department:

I want you to write a letter.

My name is Ferrel D. Moore and I’ve filed the Consumer Fraud Complaint cited above against the plagiarizing publisher David Boyer of Vincennes, IN. Mr. Boyer has plagiarized over 60 writers and is currently producing extensively plagiarized books using your publishing services and selling these products to unsuspecting consumers using Amazon’s storefront.

Two examples of this are his books “Shadow Dolls” and “Mystery Indiana.” In them, he has plagiarized Richard Matheson, Mr. Matheson’s son, George R.R. Martin and many others. To see the extent of his documented plagiaries, you may visit the site we prepared for Mr. Irons, the Deputy Attorney General of the state of Indiana, Consumer Fraud Division. The website address is https://sites.google.com/site/bthoughtful/

The National Writers Union, Local 1981 UAW, the SFWA and the HWA have all written Mr. Irons in support of my filing, as well as hundreds of writers across the country.

I and many other authors have filed consumer fraud charges against Mr. Boyer. We are filing consumer fraud because the laws apply. He is selling stolen works, re-packaging them under false label as his own works and then selling them to consumers across the country using Amazon’s publishing services and storefront to profit even though this leads to the “…leads to sales wherein the consumers either do not receive the good or service or the good or service is materially different than what the seller initially represented it to be.” Which is, in a word, consumer fraud.

To the best of all of our knowledge, Amazon is unknowingly participating in this enterprise. Amazon’s reputation for dealing swiftly and efficiently with such instances of fraud is impeccable.

It is for this reason that I’m asking you to send a letter of support for our efforts to treat this as consumer fraud. We, both the writers and cited organizations supporting our efforts, understand that copyright violations are involved. These avenues are, however, too expensive for the average writer to pursue, especially when the matter crosses state lines. For example, I spent over $7,000 having my works removed from his books that you and others published.

Consumer fraud is a different matter. There is no cost for a writer to file a consumer fraud complaint with the appropriate state Attorney General’s Office.

But we need your help to stop this plagiarizing publisher and others like him. He changes his name, changes his book titles, and then publishing the same stolen works all over again. But you have his social security number, which he uses to publish these works. It doesn’t mean that every word he publishes is plagiarized. It takes time to dig into that.

In cases such as those documented on the website I directed you to, the evidence is clear.

Would you please consider sending a letter to the Deputy Attorney General of the State of Indiana supporting the principal of my Consumer Fraud filing? You are not the police force for the book world, but you are the single strongest, most respected presence in the world for the written word and we very much need your help.

Google David Boyer, plagiarist. See what you come up with.

Then write a letter, if you think the cause is just, to:

Deputy Attorney General Tom Irons
Office of the Indiana State Attorney General
Consumer Fraud Division
302 W. W. Washington St., 5th Floor,
Indianapolis, IN 46204

I’m posting this as an open letter to you on my writers blog http://thewriterandthewhitecat.blogspot.com so that the other hundreds of other writers sending letters to Mr. Irons and organizations who have done the same can see what I’m asking. There are too many of them involved to contact them separately.

Ferrel D. Moore
White Cat Publications, LLC.
33080 Industrial Road
Livonia, MI 48150
editor@whitecatpublications.com

FrankenBoyer

Let me introduce you to everyone's new favorite Halloween toy.  A combination of Frankenstein and Gumby.  It's a  futile creature doll modeled after the plagiarizing publisher David Boyer of Vincennes, IN.

The idea came to a toy manufacturer after reading how Boyer tried to stitch together past plagiarisms from real authors into a new, nauseatingly bad  book.   He calls it "Shadow Dolls."  Why is ithis patchwork plagiarism so bad? One six year old expert think it's  "the bad man" stitched them together like a blind seamstress suffering from palsey.  I tend to agree.  But whatever the cause of his ineptness the result is stomach pain bad.

Let's try to understand this new failure of the puerile plagiarist.  Imagine if you will a plagiarist- a man with no creative skills of his own, and so low a character that he steals writings from teenagers and senior citizens alike- trying to blend a potpourri of plagiarism into a novel.  The idea can barely be contained within the human skull.

Perhaps we can gain insight by reaching back into the world of fiction.  In the novel Frankenstein, for example, Dr. Victor Frankenstein is brilliant but misguided in his attempts to create life.  Unfortunately, it was his bad judgement to include a defective brain in his newly created creature.  The results were dubious at best and should be intuitively obvious to the discerning student of human nature.

Likewise, when the pitiful plariazing publisher David Boyer of Vincennes, Indiana attempted to create a book that would be his own from multiple writer's work and not get caught, he started out with a brain issue.

Which is why, to this day, Gumby doesn't write.  You see, if you write using the mind of Gumby, for sure you're going to get Pokied.

Writer Activists

Activism among writers has a long and proud history.  We're good at fighting for others rights.  Non-fiction writers are most frequently given credit for prodding our social consciences, but fiction writers, too, have a proud history of doing the same in ways that are equally if not more forceful.  Victor Hugo, Harriet Beecher Stowe, John Steinbeck and James Baldwin are good examples of this.

But what about our own rights?   How well do we stack up on this front?

A.C. Crispin, Victoria Strauss and Richard C. White of Writer Beware® are personal heroes of mine for their work in keeping us informed about those who would pirate or infringe upon our rights.  The SFWA, MWA and Horror Writers have shone marvelous backbone in the fight, too, as organizations that actively stand up for their members.  The National Writers Union, UAW Local 1981/ AFL-CIO not only has helped me spearhead the effort to get pirating publishers to be investigated and convicted under state Consumer Fraud laws, but they also provide grievance redress. 

I also want to thank all of you out there who have respectfully written to Mr. Tom Irons of the Indiana Attorney General's Office, Consumer Fraud Division to prosecute David Boyer for his theft of so many of our works, putting his own name on them and then selling them for his personal profit.  You are truly friends of every honest writer out there.

But for those of you who haven't written Mr. Irons yet, why not?

If this method of using Consumer Fraud legislation against plagiarizing publishers is again successful in Indiana, then when you need a method to go after a publisher who has plagiarized you, it will be there for you, too.  You will be able to file a complaint against the crooked publishing company in the state where they stole your work.

We've all got to help each other stand up to these plagiarizing publishers.

We're so good at sticking up for the rights of others, now it's time to stand up for our own rights.

Bigfoot Still Angry at David Boyer- Revisiting a Little Known Story

Bigfoot Needed a Ride to Vincennes, Indiana

But Developed Engine Trouble Along the Way

I was hot on the trail of another David Boyer exclusive by getting the scoop on why Bigfoot was traveling across the country to see the famous plagiarist in his home town of Vincennes, Indiana.  We were half-way through the wilds of Ohio and the hairy hominid was hurrying to reach the border before sundown. I had to run to keep up with him. Being ten foot tall, his stride was enormous.

The seismic simian had just astonished me by stating he wanted to be a writer.

"Had you thought of basketball instead?" I said as we crested another of Ohio's annoying hills. "There's lots of money in basketball for a guy your size."

"Bigfoot no punk yeti! Bigfoot aim big. Be famous writer like Stephen King."

His words rumbled across the open land like thunder and his eyes were red-yellow and fierce. I resisted the urge to look down and see if he really did have big feet.

"Why are going to see David Boyer?" I asked and added, "Could we sit down on a stump or something?  I'm out of breath."

The gentle giant stopped and looked at me apologetically. "Sorry," he said. "Bigfoot no fit in car. And cheap foreign flying saucer crap out over Toledo."

We found a stump large enough in diameter to support his behind and a log for me to sit on. He sat down rather quietly for a creature weighing over twelve hundred pounds. And in the afternoon sun, he actually looked dignified except for his face being completely covered with fur and those huge teeth. Perhaps by email I'll suggest he consider cologne as a wardrobe accessory as well.

"So," I repeated, "why are you meeting with Mr. Boyer?"

"Bigfoot need help.  Have writer's block," he said, casting his eyes toward the ground. "Can't write worth beef jerky."

"Wait, David Boyer to help you?  He's a terrible writer. He told me so himself in an email."

"But he no have writer's block. He writer lots of books.  Bigfoot have writer's block."

I stood up and walked over to my new friend.

"You don't need to go see Boyer," I said. "I can tell you why Boyer doesn't have writer's block."

"You can?" he said, with a huge smile and a mouthful of blocky teeth. "You make Bigfoot very happy."

"Sure," I said. "His own fiction was so bad it was hard to get published, so he just started stealing other people's work and publishing that under his name or one of his aliases. Most of his work is stolen.  That way he didn't have to deal with writer's block. You see? He was a publisher. Writers submitted their work and he just stole their stories. That's in addition to stealing from writers on StoryMania."

Bigfoot said nothing for a few minutes, then he stood, beat his chest and howled.

"What? What?" I yelled in a panic.

"Bigfoot put story up on StoryMania."

Uh-oh, I thought

Call to Action for All Writers- Please Write the Indiana Attorney General

I'm asking for your help.

The Attorney General's Office of Indiana is looking at whether or not to shut down a crooked publisher named David Boyer of Vinncennes, Indiana by using Consumer Fraud regulations.  These can carry criminal penalties as in the case of David Caswell.  Boyer steals other writers works (take a look at the size of the partial list of victims on the left hand side of B-Thoughtful's blog - it's over double that now and she's still updating her database) and illegally sells them to consumers claiming he wrote them.  He steals our stuff and sells it illegally, claiming he is the author.

Remember, like all publishers and or writers, he is operating as a business.  A shoddy, tawdry business, but subject to business and Consumer Fraud regulations nonetheless.  Let's get them enforced.  If it works in Indiana, we can expect similar decisions by AG offices across the country.  If they're not on board, we take the campaign to them.

In the past, the only recourse a writer had was to file an expensive, time consuming and ultimately unproductive lawsuit against creeps like Boyer who them claim they're bankrupt.  Help me change that.  Tell the Attorney General's office for the State of Indiana how important it is for this plagiarist publisher to be subject to the same penalties as any other crooked business.  We want him pursued under Consumer Fraud regulations at their cost, not ours.  He's defrauding consumers by selling them our stuff with his name on it.

International emails of support to the Attorney General of Indiana are also very important.  Show him that writers of the world are you united in their common goal to protect writers.  The email is listed below.
Here's where to send your respectful but firm letters and or emails of support and be sure to include the File Number File No. 10-CP-62157:

Tom Irons



Consumer Protection Division,


Office of the Indiana Attorney General


302 W. Washington St., 5th Floor


Indianapolis, IN 46204

email: Tom.Irons@atg.in.gov
 
 
If we don't act together to convince the Attorney General to shut down the creep David Boyer of Vincennes, Indiana you might be next on the list.  And if he keeps getting away with it, how many more people can steal your work and get it away with it?  Send an email, send a letter or call and leave Tom Irons a respectful but firm message that we need his help.  If you're a member of a writer's group or writing organization, ask them to write, too. 
 
If we can get the Romance Writers of America behind this effort, this guy will go down.  If the SFWA gets behind us, this guy will go down.  That goes for the Myster Writers of America and the HWA, too.  Anyone who knows anyone in those organizations, please ask for their support in this letter writing campaign.  They know how to get out the troops.  I've already contacted the National Writers Union.
 
So now I'm asking you personally to help by contacting Mr. Irons.
 
Let's put a stop to writers having to spend a fortune defending their rights when it's really not only about copyright violation, it's about Consumer Fraud.

October Edition of White Cat Magazine

The October Edition of White Cat Magazine is now out.  I'd like to thank all of the many writers who contributed to it.  And for those that didn't make it into this issue- please submit again!