Borrowing without Permission

As I mentioned in an earlier entry, I’ve found a couple of my stories floating around in the internet. Usually they appear on websites devoted to something called “creepypastas,” which are, succinctly, horror themed flash fictions.

For the most part, creepypastas are treated like orphaned children. They have no credited writers and thus are up for grabs. They move from forum to forum, from website to website. God only knows the original writers for all of these stories.

But here’s the deal; someone did write them. And while I’m not speaking for the dozens of stories that are floating around out there, I would like to point out that I wrote “The Blue Man” and “The Song and Dance Man“.

You did not get my permission to post them. Only one person got that permission and that’s a Mr. Kris Straub of Ichor Falls. If you see those stories on any other site, they’re not supposed to be there.

It’s one thing if I see the story with my name attached to it. That’s, to be honest, still pretty bad. If you like a story, link back to where it was published. Or, even better, buy my book. It has those stories as well as a bunch of others! If you liked “The Song and Dance Man,” maybe you’d like those! And the book is less than a dollar. For less than a dollar, you can support a writer whose story you enjoyed. Bam, you have my thanks and everyone is happy.

But when you take my story, post it on your website and then don’t even put my name on it; that’s pretty fucking rude.

And here’s the thing, if some of these places had just asked, I would have been totally cool with it, especially if they had provided a link back to my site or put a little “By Dylan Charles” somewhere. Yay! Free advertising!

Instead, I keep bumping into my own work on the internet, with people commenting the poster on the great job they did. And that is just…infuriating.

Dylan Charles

Addendum: I am aware that there is some slight irony in posting this right after my post about the evils of SOPA/PIPA. Not a lot, just a smidge.