Hi.

I... can't believe I'm having to see this day, actually. I'd never expected it, to be honest.

I have a lot of much more popular, much more widely-read author friends from this forum and LJ. And they've faced this trouble a few times. And everytime they told me about it, I'd quietly hoped that I'd never have to go through this myself.

But it's happened and it was frankly out of my control and foresight. I suppose I was too humble and complacent for my own good, and I just had it coming.

Someone has copied out large chunks of I Don't care, Do You?, My Sun has been translated into Spanish without my permission (even though they claim before their blog entry that they have in fact spoken to me, but I have no memory of such a conversation) and I'm Not Moving was just... , OK? 

Someone stole the entire plot of To Die, To Sleep, changing only the character names.

I had a good friend text me about it, and I checked out the links. And... OK, it's really heartbreaking, alright? Initially when I was reading the message, I thought it'll be something of a flattery, a compliment, even. I thought I'd feel glad that my work is worthy of being "borrowed"

But it's not like that. It's the farthest thing. This is not borrowing, because I didn't condone it. These people are using their own names on something I spent sleepless nights creating.

I know I always say that popularity is immaterial for me, and I don't really care if people read me. I know I say that I just do it because I love doing it-- and I stand by that. I put my heart into these stories. They're like... these pieces of fanfiction are like babies to us authors. We don't want them being snatched away from us like that.

I can't really do anything about it except report to the concerned admins, but this will keep happening. And putting our work on private or setting it to "text selection disabled" isn't going to get us anywhere. Because these instance will still happen.

So it's my humblest request to everyone out there who reads my stuff, or anyone's stuff for that matter, and is sometimes tempted to "borrow" it in a similar fashion-- please stop. Please, please, please stop. I know that everything becomes "fair game" once it's on the internet, and that there are no rules or laws that apply to us. I know that you people don't see written work as art or authors as artists, and so you think you can disregard the usual rules in this matter, but it's not like that. Please keep that in mind next time you steal our work.

Please, have some morals.