Ebook Piracy and A Pink Umbrella

European butter is king

It’s been a busy time. The last week of November I had three deadlines. One was with the graphic novel I’m working on with another author; the second was completing illustrations for another author; and the third, was getting my own manuscript to an editor for a developmental edit.

In the midst of this I found out that the ebook of Spy Girls had been pirated. There is not an angry-enough emoji to depict how I felt. So how do you combat piracy of books? Not alone.

A huge shoutout to Sisters in Crime (SinC) international, who brought to the attention of its members, oceanofpdf.com pirating books. Oceanofpdf.com has stolen authors’ ebooks before. The site is still live. I’m hoping they will be taken down, and I’ll monitor the situation.

What steps were involved? Should you find your book on a pirating site, you need to get the information about the website’s domain. This can be done by typing the site’s URL in a “Whois” search engine, such as Godaddy’s search. VSYS (hosting service) is the provider for Oceanofpdf. You then email the hosting service and give them this information:

· the URL of the pirating site

· tell them what they’re doing

· include the link to your pirated book,

· and acknowledge that you did not give this site permission to sell your book and they are infringing on your copyright.

You then email the site doing the pirating (oceanofpdf) and include the link to your pirated book and tell them that you did not give them permission to sell your book and to remove your book from their site now (the now was my emphasis). I emailed oceanofpdf.com twice. I emailed the company that hosted their site. I also notified Access Copyright (Canada) of the situation. If you would like to read the article from The Authors Guild about steps to be taken when your book has been pirated, I’ve included the link here. The Authors Guild

In other news The Painted Lady, my time travel, has been emailed to an editor for a developmental edit. That book was hard to write, and I even plotted. I went back and forth with point-of-view. I wanted to try third person, and write a different story, but I feel much more comfortable in first person. With the next set of rewrites, I’ll be shifting back to first person.

In the meantime, I’ve been working on my Netherlands story, which has new characters. I subscribe to the DarlingAxe.com blog, https://darlingaxe.com/blogs/news and I downloaded a character questionnaire which has been a tremendous help. Dialogue has sprung from my pages, as I’ve been answering questions regarding my characters. With the Netherlands book, I’m back in my wheelhouse, and I’m loving my characters. I’m calling it my romantic suspense.

The SinC-Canada West anthology Crime Wave: Dangerous Games is now out. My story Death at the Boulangerie is in that anthology, and it’s inspired from my days working at a local bakery. European butter is king. I had three podcast episodes in which I read excerpts from various stories, ranging from a very smart seal, the fixing of soccer games, and an internet scammer.

The second anthology is Farm to Foul Play published by Capitol Crimes. The stories needed to be in Sacramento and involve the Farm to Folk Festival. I did a lot of research. I’ve driven through Sacramento, but I’ve never stayed there. My story, The Lady in Pink involves a missing Senator’s son, and it was inspired by a dream of my mother, standing at the end of my driveway, holding a pink umbrella and dressed in pink.

Stay safe everyone. Stay healthy. Happy holidays. I’ll chat with you again in 2025.