As she slithered out of the sea, she felt her the cold air against her twelve nipples. They stood erect and perky, like dried pinto beans. On further inspection, the sea-beast noticed her boobs had swollen after a prolonged visit to the bottom of the ocean. She felt sexual today. She flicked her head back sending the droplets of water tumbling down her scale-covered boobs. It was that moment she realised the horror of her situation.
“Ah, fuck it,” she grumbled. “I’m being written by a man…”
I jest, I jest!
Did you see the Facebook drama last week about men and women writing from the opposite gender’s point of view? No, neither did I, I frickin’ hate Facebook. But I did see it when it spilt across Twitter and the blogosphere.
In my opinion, you should be allowed to write whatever you want and it’s a stupid debate.
Although, I would always say if you’re going to write something gender-specific, go ask a member of the opposite sex to read your text. Or you may find your work being mocked mercilessly (and usually, quite rightly) on Men Write Women over on Twatter. (Linky: twitter.com/men_write_women )
Brace yourselves, #PitMad is coming. I mentioned this a few months back right before the last #PitMad pitch-event. I got an overwhelming barrage of “I wish I knew about this sooner,” tweets.
So, here we are. A month before the next #PitMad pitch-war, I’m giving y’all a heads up. The next one’s on the 8th of September.
For them that-wot-haven’t heard of #PitMad, it’s a quarterly event on Twitter where you get to pitch your completed, polished, unpublished manuscripts to agents and editors.
There are regular events like this from other groups on Twitter. But #PitMad is where it’s at. It’s well run and focussed so editors and agents can be a part of this event, instead of being spam-bombed by well-meaning folks trying to emulate #PitMad.
I’m not saying you should ignore other pitch parties, but man, #PitMad is, well, mad.
The awesome thing about #PitMad is you don’t need to be established at all on Twitter to join in. A complete profile helps, but it’s bad etiquette to like and retweet pitches using the hashtag as it clutters the tweet responses. That makes it harder for editors and agents to navigate what they’re looking at and what they’ve already responded too. So yeah, a complete profile helps, but having a following of 0 makes no difference during #PitMad.
So, do you have a work you want to pitch? Go and read the entire #PitMad page on Pitch Wars (link: pitchwars.org/pitmad ). There are rules, guidelines and additional hashtags you’ll need on genres. If you’re going to join in, make your pitch the best-darned pitch you can. If you don’t prepare your tweets, your wasting your time, their time and an opportunity to get published.
I’ve seen and spoken to a lot of people closing their WordPress sites over this. It sucks. It’s also a wake-up call for a lot of folks. If you put anything online, the odds are, at some point it’s going to get copied.
There’s a lot of short term solutions. DMCAs, messaging hosts, having the content removed from search engines and so on. But long term, this all leads to a neverending, soul-sapping, demoralizing and unwinnable game of whack-a-mole.
It doesn’t matter where you put your content either. If text can be copy-pasted then a bot can scrape it. It doesn’t matter if you’re on Tumblr, Medium or Live Journal. Are you a photographer or an artist? Well, you know what I mean. You’ve likely been dealing with your images being copied for years.
The only way to stop your content being ripped-off is to stop putting it online. For me, that’s not an option. I’m still paying my bills off of freelance work mostly picked up from the Fears.
You can try to prevent your writing, art and photography being stolen. But none of us thinks about that when starting an online project, do we? I moved onto fixed panels for social media a while ago. The only reason I haven’t done that on my home page is because of the theme and the way WordPress.com shows image posts where my main following is.
Also, in the current copy-bot mess, it’s three websites in India. I can’t see them having a huge impact on what we do on WordPress. They’re not going to rank on search engines. Your readers and social media followers know who and where you are. New followers are probably never going to see the duplicate websites. So in this case, the way I see it is the only negative impact is on your own mental state. Can you live with the idea a website almost nobody is going to see is duplicating your content in India?
I know to a lot of folks, that’s not a straight forward question. It sure as heck pisses me off. But I ain’t going to let it stop me. Heck, it makes me want to fart out more content for them to copy. Let the buggers pay for hosting all that content nobody is going to see.
OK, so, only you can decide whether or not you want to pull your content from being online. It’s an entirely personal choice. If you don’t want to publish online anymore, we’re going to miss you. Take care of yourself.
If you do want to keep publishing your works to the internet, here, take a hammer. Welcome to whack-a-mole, internet edition.
Please do drop into Ashley’s site and say hello and thanks for post.
Edited to add: Very first comment from Joanne asks “how do you find out contents been copied?” Go to one of the offending websites, Tygpress.com, and copy paste a snippet from your website into their search bar. They’re mirroring websites wholesale. In Europe at least, this is illegal. They’re allowed to post a snippet of your website and link back to your own website with a Read More style link. Not duplicate everything like Tygpress are.
Leos, it is, apparently, your month. Your time to shine. Your time to be the commanding, warm-hearted and loving grumpy cat we all know you are around your birthday.
So to alleviate some grumpiness, I have put up my Fear Cats tee on Threadless for sale (usually $20, currently $17). That’ll go nicely with the free-shipping code, FREESHIP7197cca8e.
Have you ever created a character you were really happy with, but had no idea what to do with them? Well, that’s me and Bunneh. I used her once in a #Colour_Collective portrait then never again.
I gave her away this week on Patreon as PNG. She has a transparent background so can be plonked into any project. She’s free for Patrons to download and use in any project (including commercial), no credit required.
Want to use Bunneh for something yourself? Hit me up on Patreon for as little as $1 a month. Linky: patreon.com/littlefears
Thank you, everyone, for your continued comments, support, cups of tea and patronage. You’re all awesome.
It’s Deerhound! She’s featured a few times in the Fears stories. I love the idea of a giant Scottish-deerhound with antlers walking across the landscape.
I’m adamant once I’m earning enough money we’re getting a Scottish deerhound. They’re lovely dogs. Gentle giants with pokey faces.
This, of course, has my missus in tears of laughter. I’ve spent the last 15 years of my life being kicked out of bed by Jack Russell Terriers. But that’s unfair. Anyone who’s owned a terrier can attest, the little sods can stretch in bed to in-human sizes. Well, in-dog sizes? Whatever. They can take up more space in bed than a horse when they want too.
As I finish typing this, Lily, a Jack Russell cross, just shoved me off my chair. OK, maybe the missus has a point…
Bonus dog-pictures.
LilySally
Shout out to Kathy of Kathy of London for new patronage this morning. You’ll find photography, poetry and pecking birds on her blog, so if you fancy any of the above, give her a visit. Cheers, Kat!
Seeking Hydra is my fourth Little Fears series, first posted online in 2017. Although Capricorn, my second series, had some background recurring characters, Seeking Hydra was the first to have an underlying plot. Amongst all of the usual daftness and random unrelated daily tales, Hydra sets off to find his place in the world and figure out who he is.
Part one of Three
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Part Two of Three
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Part Three of Three
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If you enjoy Seeking Hydra and want to inflict my puns on others, this complete series was carefully curated in a book, available on Amazon.
Available as an Ebook and paperback. It’s the perfect gift for someone you want to torture with terrible puns!
I think my extended family are in-fact multi-eyed harpy monsters. Well, I think they are. It’s been nearly 30 years since I’ve seen any of them. I’m not sure how accurate my memory is. I’m positive this is how my auntie looked, though!
Spiders is the Little Fears third series of stories, originally posted in 2017. Much like January, it’s a series of random silly tales with frightful doodles. No plots or development. Just a whole lot of puns.
Although there’s a book available which is complete, I lost parts of this series on the website during the WordPress 5.0 upgrade that wreaked havoc on the Fears.
What’s left is most of the third series, which I hope you enjoy.
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If you enjoy Spiders and want to inflict my puns on others, this complete series was carefully curated in a book, available on Amazon.
Available as an Ebook and paperback. It’s the perfect gift for someone you want to torture with terrible puns!
I regularly get asked where my inspiration comes from. I attribute it to a childhood spent watching the Twilight Zone and British comedies. But it does help to give the grey matter a nudge every so often. I’ll often check out prompt-challenges.
Most of the time, I don’t try to stick through a month of prompts. I’ll take what I want then bugger off to the next thing. This weekend, I’ve noticed a few month-long prompts in my feed for June and figured I’d share them with the class.
Kaijune: Illustrate a Kaiju a day for the month of June. You all know Kaijus right? Big-arse monsters like Godzilla, King Kong or them mean buggers from Pacific Rim.
JuNoWriMo: NaNoWriMo comes to June. I don’t think it’s the actual NaNoWriMo team, but there’s a few of them. I’ve come across them on WordPress.com a few times.
NaNoMangO: I’ve no idea if this one’s even going this year, but the idea’s good enough to mention. Create a 30-page comic over 30 days. It’s traditionally taken place in June. Quite literally, nobody is talking about it this year though. That’s not to say you can’t take that idea and just create a comic over 30 days, aye?
Solo Photo Book Month: One for photographers. Create a photobook across the month. Another one, I’m unsure if it’s still going. It ran every year from 2008 to 2018. It’s been quiet since. Not sure if it’s a dead project. Again, there’s nothing stopping you doing the challenge yourself.
If you know of any other June prompt-challenge let me know. I’ll add it to my post and give you a credit link for mentioning, of course.
Little Fears 