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25Nov

What went down in San Jose

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First morning in San Jose I was woken by conversation in the corridor. One side of a conversation, anyhow. Someone calling ‘Security!’ at the door of — thankfully — another room. Nothing for a while after that as they went inside, then as they came back I heard them say they’d put a call into 911. It was kinda creepy and weird, made more so because I couldn’t hear anyone else talking. Just this one deep-voiced security guy who seemed a little bored. Wildly, I assumed someone had died. Really, though, I’ve no idea what happened that night.

A couple of mornings later there was, unrelatedly (I assume), police tape in the lobby. And then stories of a woman being raped. ‘The hell kinda place is this?’ I wondered. Now it transpires she was part of a con. And a suspect in an armed robbery.

Today of all days I heard this, white ribbon day — a day to campaign to stop violence against women. Seriously, unknown-armed-robber-woman, taking advantage of victims of rape is lousy.

So, let’s all buy ribbons and cover our clothes and hair with a message against violence!

01Oct

The Disappearance of Richard Ridyard

Filed in weird | writing 2 Comments

I’ve been checking back in with Angel Zapata’s blog for more news of our plagiarist friend, Richard Ridyard, & by now I’ve learned:

* Richard Ridyard is the name of a deceased journalist, who — if he had any kind of professional integrity — must be rolling in his grave to see his reputation sullied by some petty thief.

* Editor after editor is coming forward to express their horror at being duped by a guy that would steal the words of STEPHEN KING, fer goodness sake (there’s some speculation this one was a cry for help — after all, someone will eventually twig to what you’re doing if you’re stealing from Stephen freaking King, kiddo).

* ‘Ridyard’ also approached Infinite Windows with his “The Tyburg Jig”, with my stolen paragraph in it. Infinite Windows has removed all his work.

* ‘Ridyard’ has also been publishing under the name RM Valentine — & “The Tyburg Jig” has been shopped under that name as well over at StoryWrite (who have now taken all RM’s stories down)

* I didn’t know this, but the Tyburg Jig is the dance of a hanged body. How … apt.

* The Facebook pages for Valentine Publications & co-founder Matthew Shackleton (who professed to knowing his buddy Ridyard ‘for ten years’) have both disappeared, and the website has also disappeared.

* Brimstone Press has a little something to say about ANOTHER theft.

I mention the names of the zines because I think they deserve kudos for reacting so quickly to the discovery of plagiarism. Thanks, guys! Ridyard appears to be disappearing into a vortex of his own making.

What baffles me, though, is how prolific this guy’s been with his stolen stories. Hell, he’s published “The Tyburg Jig” at least 3 times. I only sold that story once!

Clearly I have been slack.

But just think, if he’d poured all that effort into original work, instead of cutting & pasting & emailing that sucker out so many times (and all the other stolen stories, of course), he’d probably *be* Stephen King by now.

,

30Sep

I must be famous now

Filed in weird | writing 6 Comments

In today’s exciting news, apparently I’ve been plagiarised.

A man called Angel has alerted me to the theft by a man called Ridyard who apparently is a co-founder of a business called Valentine Publications.

Proving that reality can confer upon you the need to write sentences that are more bizarre than any fiction.

Angel Zapata emailed me about the plagiarism of my story, The First and Final Game (excerpt available online, which is obviously what made the theft possible) & the plagiarism of several other writers’ works, & directed me to his well-researched piece on his blog, A Rage of Angel.

Word for word, these lines were stolen from this, my first published story (& I’m repeating them here in a way of stealing them back, I think):

“Electricity is irregular here, and so are phones, but the privacy is absolute. You could kill every single person in every single house and hardly anyone would disturb you. It’s that kind of place.”

MicroHorror, the site where my own theft occurred, reacted instantly & removed the offending story & sent me an apology. Full kudos to MicroHorror for their committment & care, & to Mr Zapata for putting in the time to expose all this in the first place!

(I feel like I’ve fallen into some kinda odd film noir reality.)

So if you’re approached by someone claiming to be Richard Ridyard, look out! He seems to be a well-established plagiarist and editor of Valentine Publications: ‘Home of British Flash Fiction’, currently closed for ‘administrative reasons’. (If you google it, you’ll find a cached version.) You can also join Valentine Publications’ Facebook group, where you’ll find, oddly, no mention of Mr Ridyard, who is described over at Valentine Publications like this:

Undoubtedly a man of many talents, he has lived his short twenty-one years with a vivacity and boldness, which few could achieve in a lifetime.

A-ha.

I’m only mildly taken aback by the event itself, but I’m rather appalled by Ridyard/Shackleton/Whoever-it-is’ unethical abuse of other writers. Mostly I find this behaviour … odd. What exactly has the owner of the sock puppet gained? How much effort has been put into the plagiarism that COULD have been used to do real writing, real work that might have resulted in real gains?

So I won’t be deleting my online excerpts. But I won’t stop short of exposing plagiarists, either!

23Sep

“It looks like Mars out there.”

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Six o’clock in the morning, that’s what my roomie said. Didn’t understand what he meant.

Broadway, Sydney

He was right.

,

13Jul

Watch out for the elbow

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Now that editing is done I can return to the myriad open browser tabs I’ve been saving for future reading for months. Most recently, an article on the world’s only poisonous primate: the slow loris. (Who names these things?!)

Sez the Herald, Its venom is stored in an elbow patch. When it is feeling threatened, the slow loris will raise its arms above its head in a diamond shape, suck in the poison from its elbow patch, then mix it around in its mouth before delivering a toxic bite.

Sure is a cute little fella, though.

The slow loris also makes it onto James Gunn’s ‘Evolution Fucked Your Shit Up‘ list of the world’s most hideous or plain confusing animals (sourced via Twitter — jamesgunn, from memory). In Gunn’s list the slow loris is, in fact, confused for a tarsier (a slightly less cute and much less lethal animal — with much less ordinary elbows.

Which means the list actually has 51 weird creatures on it.

Why spend your time writing fiction when the world has it all over us for weirdness, eh?

,

14Jun

Drowned in red wine

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I love a good conspiracy theory, & here’s one I’ve never come across before: Jimi Hendrix killed by his manager, Michael Jeffrey.

Actually, it’s probably wrong to call this a ‘good’ conspiracy. Good conspiracies don’t end up with wildly talented musicians dead. Remember that whole Paul McCartney is dead conspiracy theory? Now, that’s a good theory. And nobody dies (except, according to the theory, Paul. Though it’s funnier when it’s just part of the theory …. er, unless you’re Paul, I guess). Plus you get to be part of the conspiracy yourself by playing The Beatles song ‘Revolution 9′ backwards & hearing that deep, creepy, clipped voice announce over & over, ‘Turn me on, Dead Man’.

Seriously. It’s creepy.

And then there’s this: The original cover of the album Yesterday and Today, the infamous “butcher cover,” showed the Beatles posing with decapitated dolls and slabs of raw meat.

Er…? An early influence for Mark Ryden‘s meat series, perhaps?

But I’m surprised, given the prevalence of celebrity conspiracies, that I haven’t come across one attached to a name as famous as Hendrix’s before.

“That son of a bitch was going to leave me,” [Hendrix's manager] Jeffrey is quoted as saying. “If I lost him, I’d lose everything.”

Ironically — or perhaps, fittingly — Jeffery was killed in a plane crash three years after Hendrix himself was found dead.

Jimi Hendrix, dead at 27 with — apparently — his lungs full of red wine. But no alcohol in his blood.

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