# Have you ever had your writing stolen?



## ecdavis (May 13, 2013)

Today I found someone took the first chapter of my first book, including some original artwork (that wasn't very good, by the way) and put it on a website called 'uwroteit.com'.   The thief that stole it was named 'Gaurav Bharadwaj' and took out my name, my copyright notice, and added 'The End' at the end of chapter one, to make it into a really poor short story.   I was completely surprised that someone could be so desperate that they'd steal a chapter and put it on a website, apparently to try to win a monthly contest.

I was miffed, so when I got home from work I e-mailed the site and threatened them with legal action unless they take the stolen stuff off of their site.   So far the 'short story' hasn't come down yet.

My work is all on-line on Booksie; I haven't 'paper published' any of my books, as I know they are probably too poor for that, and so I knew on-line 'publishing' was a danger, as it is extremely easy to steal and then edit on-line stories, then put them some place else as their own.

It still is rather frustrating.   I even signed up at uwroteit using a fake e-mail address so that I could comment on the thief's 'work'.   It was rather funny giving my own first chapter 1 out of 5 stars.   Then I let everyone know that the story was stolen and that the owner was going after the thief.   

What a wonderful experience to go through; you're a nobody fantasy writer, thrilled to get your stuff on-line and then have 2,500 people actually read the first book, only to have someone steal some of it, including your own, very amateur artwork, and post it at another website as their own.   

I'll bet that the site leaves the thief and my stuff on-line too.   Even though it is in their 'terms and conditions' that they will remove stolen stuff from their site.   

Anyone else have a similar experience?   I'm really surprised that a thief would use my stuff to try to win some prize.   He must have been really desperate.

ecdavis


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## Steerpike (May 13, 2013)

I haven't had it happen, but I know a couple of people who have. It's one reason I don't generally post anything I am actively working on in internet forums or elsewhere online. Chances of it happening are slim, but it's easy to avoid too.


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## Xaysai (May 13, 2013)

One day my work will be good enough to steal.

_One day._


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## ecdavis (May 13, 2013)

Xaysai, believe me, if mine is worthy of being stolen, ANYONE'S is worthy of being stolen.




Xaysai said:


> One day my work will be good enough to steal.
> 
> _One day._


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## Alexandra (May 13, 2013)

ecdavis said:


> Today I found someone took the first chapter of my first book, including some original artwork (that wasn't very good, by the way) and put it on a website called 'uwroteit.com'.



I think the theft of intellectual property is appalling but look at it this way: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.


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## Steerpike (May 13, 2013)

Stealing something and putting a direct copy of what you stole online, and representing it as your own, is not imitation.


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## Feo Takahari (May 13, 2013)

I post on Literotica, which is such a high-profile target some people write computer programs to automatically steal and repost stories from it. I've been robbed at least once, but I don't make much fuss about it--the only partial protection is a paywall, and I don't want to charge for my stories at this time.


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## ecdavis (May 14, 2013)

I've done some snooping, and I've found who the thief is; Here is his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/groovy.gaurav.in The thief's wife was one of his fans on Uwroteit.com and simply by checking her page, I found him.   It's no big surprise that he's from New Delhi, India.   He's either really brave or extremely stupid, putting his stuff on-line like that and then blatantly stealing my stuff.   He has no idea who I am or how I could really screw his life up by simply using the Internet.   It's quite a risk just to try  to use some amateur's writing at an extreme long shot to win some money.   I'm so tempted to use what I know against him.   

Instead I'll probably just wait and see if Uwroteit.com removes him, though I'm very sure they won't.   

ecdavis


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## A. E. Lowan (May 14, 2013)

This has never happened to me that I am aware of, but my mother, who is a writer as well and who is the one who first taught me the business, once told me that as a teenager she sent a teleplay to Rod Serling for his opinion.  She says he never responded, but one night she was watching The Twilight Zone, and there was her story, changed here and there but essentially the same.  I can't remember which episode it was off the top of my head, and it's too late my time to call her and ask.  She wasn't telling me this to prove how good she was - she was giving me a lecture about copyright and protecting my intellectual property.

How does one find out their work has been stolen, anyway?  I occasionally post snippets from my WIP on my FB author page, just to show all 14 of my fans how the work is progressing, but it's rarely more than a couple hundred words of a particularly exciting scene or two.


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## Snowpoint (May 14, 2013)

I wouldn't recommend communicating with this person or "screw his life up". 

The time you spend fretting about this is time not spent writing. If you made money at this, you (or the publishing company) could hire lawyers to defend your copyright for you. 

He can't stop you from writing. And you will always have a better copyright claim on that work than he does. Nothing to worry about. However, I can only imagine how it feels to experience this.


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## advait98 (May 14, 2013)

...

Gaurav Bharadwaj stole your work. An Indian dude. Damn. I thought we had more pride than that. 
I saw the entry. Seriously? Your name's right there on the first page, and he proclaimed himself as the author of the work? That is the height of carelessness. He is not a very good thief, I have to say. 

But still, it's just the first chapter, right? Unedited, unrefined? Shouldn't be too much of a problem, though I can't account for what you feel. Snowpoint says it true. It shouldn't stop you from writing.

Uwroteit or whatever should respond to your demands, otherwise a certain feline overlord might bend their wrists...


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## Chilari (May 14, 2013)

advait98 said:


> Gaurav Bharadwaj stole your work. An Indian dude. Damn. I thought we had more pride than that.



People all over the world steal and do evil; the fact that you share the thief's nationality shouldn't make you ashamed.

To the OP: stealing is not on, and legal fees are expensive. But the internet is powerful. Even without acting immorally or illegally, we can do something about it. There are times when sheer force of pressure, of people bringing it up, blogging about it, tweeting and retweeting etc has forced a company that's used stolen photos or artwork etc on their t-shirts and bags to back down, take down the products and pay the real artist. If several of us sign up for the website and comment that it is stolen, perhaps they will decide it's more trouble than it's worth. I have signed up and posted a comment, along with a 1 star rating. If more of us do the same, they'll have to do something.

Having said that, uwroteit.com doesn't look that great a website. There's some very bad grammar there - spaces before exclamation marks, capitalisation of words that don't need it and all sorts of other errors. If they don't do anything, it might not really be worth it.

Alternatively, we could all try submitting real stories to the contest - thus giving some serious competition to Gaurev whateverhisnamewas and reducing the chance he'll win that surprisingly large figure with a stolen story.

Edit: actually, scratch that last one. The website relies on subscriptions for prize money, it says there is no current contest dispite what the front page says, and the forum contains three posts about Lorum Ipsum that was probably taken from Wikipedia.


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## advait98 (May 14, 2013)

Oh no, I meant that in jest. A major portion of today's cyberthieves would be from India, if the stereotypes are true.

I suppose that's a good idea, although the stupid website (Mail Have Been Sucessfully Sent) has not sent the registration e-mail. *slap face* I realised they all got sent to the spam folder. Seriously!

The alternative one, I am not such a fan of. It would be wasteful promoting the image of such a website with good entries, and plus, I don't see anyone gearing up for it. On a totally unrelated topic, what's the prize? 

Let's see who's up for it, then. Gaurav has uploaded 2 of your stories, which is seriously stupid, considering the circumstances. Comment on both of them, I say. Heck, the first one is on their home page. The second one, in the link ecdavis provided.

ecdavis, don't be too hot about it. It's a poor site. There's another stolen work on the home page, for god's sakes! Another Indian guy, Parveen Bhasin, who apparently stole a short story from a certain Suprina Frazier. This is amazing.

Good luck.


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## Butterfly (May 14, 2013)

Sorry to say, but it seems he has two stories up...

Aurei of Westmark

and

Ambush at Orc Pass (This one has your name on it)

Are they both yours?


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## ecdavis (May 14, 2013)

Yes, they both are mine, both stolen.  The thief's wife, I learned through detective work, is the web manager for e-visualize.com, which is the company that hosts the site.   I suspect uwroteit.com is a scan site, probably set up by the husband and wife team to get e-mail addresses or stuff like that.   e-visualize.com is a New Delhi, India company and both of them work for it.   The site promises a contest for money as well as supporting charities, but none are listed at the site.   It is a scam and they are using my stuff to fuel it.   But I'm not going to just let my stuff get stolen, I'm going to fight back.

ecdavis



Butterfly said:


> Sorry to say, but it seems he has two stories up...
> 
> Aurei of Westmark
> 
> ...


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## KRHolbrook (May 14, 2013)

I haven't had my work stolen yet, as far as I know. I make it a point now days to only post my writing that I want to get published on a specific site for critiques. I used to join tons of writing communities and toss my work around for critiques all over, though.


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## saellys (May 14, 2013)

Good luck fighting back, but I agree with Snowpoint that your time would be better spent writing, not to mention marketing your work so it's more likely to be recognized and reported when someone inevitably steals it again. Sorry if that sounds defeatist, but that's the nature of the Internet--it's a nebulous place with no real governing body, which means there are very few options for meaningful recourse if someone abuses Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.


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## ecdavis (May 14, 2013)

I think that something has to be done.   I am not going to do anything illegal or immoral, but I do want to black flag this website.   I'm very sure, the more I consider it, that the whole site is a scam.   I suspect they picked my stuff because it looks like what some poor idiot who can't write worth a lick would submit to such a site.   I suspect they aren't really using my work to win something with it (because they'll surely not win if they try), but to try to make anyone who stumbles upon the site to think that there are a lot of jokers like me who are putting work there.   'Filler" I guess you would call it, to make the site look more popular than what it really is.    

But even if that is the only reason, that is still not acceptable.   You know, I am not stupid; I realize my writing is not worthy of serious consideration among 'real' writers.   That is one reason I haven't posted any of my stuff in whole or in part, to this forum, because I am certainly not of the caliber of those who write professionally or who are highly talented amateurs.   So I posted my poor stuff to Booksie, which allows anyone to put their stuff there, no matter how poorly it is written.   I put it there because I accept that my stuff is not professional.   But that was the idea -- just enjoy writing and put the story out there in hopes that simple-minded persons such as myself might enjoy some of it.   I was pleased with it, but then I have my stuff stolen and then put on a website supposedly to compete for a writing prize.   I never wrote my stories to try to win something and putting them in a setting like that is like entering an old mule in the Kentucky Derby.   

In other words, I think what upsets me so is not only did they steal it, but they supposedly tried to enter it into a contest to win.   Even if they were just using it as 'filler' others reading it might think, "Man, why'd this guy put this garbage out to try to win something?'.   

So I do indeed want it off that site.   Leave the mules alone out there, thieves; we don't think our stuff is that wonderful, but we do not want it misrepresented.    

As for posting stories on-line, I am working out a few ideas to make stealing somewhat more difficult.   One idea is to post a story with part of the text of the chapter as an image.   That way if they do the old cut and paste routine, they'll either have to embed the first part of the chapter as an image, or else will have to manually type in the text in the image file.

The image would include my copyright and name in it and so if they use the image along with the rest of the text, they'll either have to photoshop the copyright and name out of it, or type up the part that appears as an image.

ecdavis


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## Jamber (May 14, 2013)

If anyone is curious about whether their work has been pinched:
Plagiarism Checker
However be careful... It may be more pain than it's worth to find out.
cheers
Jennie


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## Nihal (May 14, 2013)

I would be pissed off if such thing happened to me, but I wouldn't try to ruin his life or anything unless he "officially" published my work somewhere; it's simply not worthy the headache.

Do you want a quick solution? Use whois to find out which registrar he's using and fill a copyright claim (it's like 90% of chances of it being godaddy). You'll have the stolen material taken down in no time. I also advise to keep a file with url you found it, names, since you know, and hotkeys this site have, so in one-six month(s) after the takedown you can to google it to check if he didn't create a new domain to post your work again.

It sounds paranoid, but once I've made a company stop selling my work only to find out that some months later they picked _another_ work of mine to sell illegally, haha!


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## ecdavis (May 14, 2013)

Thanks for the advice, but I've already found the domain address and filed a complaint (and you are right about Godaddy).  I've also asked Facebook to take down the website's address due to fraud.   I don't want to ruin his life, I do want to make him never so something like this ever again.   Next time it could be someone else, and I don't want that.  

ecdavis



Nihal said:


> I would be pissed off if such thing happened to me, but I wouldn't try to ruin his life or anything unless he "officially" published my work somewhere; it's simply not worthy the headache.
> 
> Do you want a quick solution? Use whois to find out which registrar he's using and fill a copyright claim (it's like 90% of chances of it being godaddy). You'll have the stolen material taken down in no time. I also advise to keep a file with url you found it, names, since you know, and hotkeys this site have, so in one-six month(s) after the takedown you can to google it to check if he didn't create a new domain to post your work again.
> 
> It sounds paranoid, but once I've made a company stop selling my work only to find out that some months later they picked _another_ work of mine to sell illegally, haha!


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## Butterfly (May 15, 2013)

I can't access the site. Looks like it's gone. Can anyone else get in?


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## advait98 (May 15, 2013)

No, looks like it's gone. Well, isn't that dandy?


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## Addison (May 15, 2013)

Here's a piece of literature for all who would even consider stealing someone's work; For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails...and when at last he goeth to his last punishment, let the flames of hell consume him fore ever. 

That is the Curse on Book Thieves from the monastery of Sand Pedro, Barcelona, Spain.


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## ecdavis (May 15, 2013)

Yes indeed, it is dandy, as long as they don't try the same thing somewhere else with other writer's stuff.  If they try again, using mine, I'll do the same thing.   Thanks, GoDaddy, for doing the proper thing.   The site went down about an hour ago, as I checked when I first got on-line and it was there.   




advait98 said:


> No, looks like it's gone. Well, isn't that dandy?


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## Butterfly (May 15, 2013)

It's back!!!

Sorry to burst everyone's bubble.


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## ecdavis (May 15, 2013)

Well, the battle continues, then.



Butterfly said:


> It's back!!!
> 
> Sorry to burst everyone's bubble.


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## ecdavis (May 17, 2013)

Here is an update on my on-going battle with Uwroteit.com.   I received a reply from GoDaddy yesterday that I had to submit a 'Statement of Good Faith' that I was the copyright holder of the work.   They told me I had to reply by today, and I only received the e-mail from them this morning.   Quickly I fired off what I hoped would pass for the statement.   This afternoon, after work, I received a reply from them saying that now they have contacted Uwroteit.com and have told them to contact me by May 24th and if they don't, then they may take the site down.  
 We'll see, but I can tell you that it sure is a big hassle trying to get your work taken off of a thief's site.   It really has screwed up my week; I have only written about 40 pages all week.   It doesn't really make you want to post anything more on-line ever again, but I'm going to anyway, as I don't want to have some scumbag mess up what I like.


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## Foah (May 18, 2013)

A good thing to do to keep your work more protected - or rather, more easily protected when you post bits and pieces of it online - is to launch your own website where you publish your work first of all. While doing this, it's easier to refer to your own website when making copyright claims of your own work, to help define the origin of texts and the dates of their upload. With all the companies that provide web hosting services today, it shouldn't be too big an investment either.

I used to dabble in web design a while back, and this was definitely my top priority. I dare say web design is an even more lucrative target for imitation and flat out theft. With my own website, I had little trouble making copyright claims the half a dozen times I found my artwork slightly modified elsewhere on the internet.


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## ecdavis (May 18, 2013)

That's a very good idea, Foah, and in fact I have been working all week using Wix, which is a very basic HTML editor to create a page for my stuff.   It's nothing fancy of course, and it is still a subdomain of Wix's servers, but it is better than nothing, and I really like the easy WYSIWYG format.   I haven't kept up to date on the newer web page platform formats and really don't want to spend more time learning the stuff, so I'll probably just stick to a basic page with Wix.





Foah said:


> A good thing to do to keep your work more protected - or rather, more easily protected when you post bits and pieces of it online - is to launch your own website where you publish your work first of all. While doing this, it's easier to refer to your own website when making copyright claims of your own work, to help define the origin of texts and the dates of their upload. With all the companies that provide web hosting services today, it shouldn't be too big an investment either.
> 
> I used to dabble in web design a while back, and this was definitely my top priority. I dare say web design is an even more lucrative target for imitation and flat out theft. With my own website, I had little trouble making copyright claims the half a dozen times I found my artwork slightly modified elsewhere on the internet.


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## The Dark One (May 20, 2013)

I know it goes against the spirit of sites like this, but I never post my work and am amazed that others do. Simply can't see the return being worth the risk...unless you're posting something you don't ever intend to publish for the sake of feedback on your craft. Even then?

I have, however, had ideas stolen, and there's even less protection there because there's no copyright in ideas. I used to wok with a children/YA writer who eventually became successful enough to leave his day-job. I'd had no qualms about talking to him about my ideas because we wrote for different genres/markets, but a couple of years after he left work, he published a book of 'adult' short stories and I was horrified to discover that one of them was predicated on a very original idea central to one of my novels (now published) which I had told him about one lunch time, by which he'd been quite fascinated.

Having said that, I don't believe he deliberately ripped me off. I do believe though that the idea lodged in his subconscious and was eventually published to his profit. Ideas are very hard to protect, which is why I am happy to talk about the craft, but very much a lone wolf when it comes to my work.


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## ecdavis (May 21, 2013)

Here is another update on this story.  I was contacted by the owner of Uwroteit.com who claims that he had paid Evisualizers.com to create the webpage over a year ago, but they were dragging their feet and he couldn't even get e-mail from that site.   He claimed he would take my stuff off the page tonight, so we'll see.    I replied to him politely and told him that my investigation found that it was the husband of the web manager of Evisualizers.com that placed my work illegally on his site.   If he is indeed innocent in all of this (and I think that he is innocent), then he should know what people he has paid to do work for him are doing.     I suspect the whole situation went something like this:   This man wanted a webpage, something like a weak version of Booksie.   He didn't have a lot of money so he found Evisualizers.com, out of New Delhi, who probably promised web site creation at a really cheap rate.   

He may have even told the lady who is the web manager that he wanted to create a site "Like Booksie".   So she creates a basic site, and probably has her husband visit Booksie to see how they had their stuff set up.   At the time he visited Booksie, my first book was being featured on Booksie's front page, so he would have easily found my stuff.   He downloaded it, removed my name and copyright notice, adds "The End" at the end of Chapter 1 to change it over to a short story.   He then generates a PDF of another of my short stories (not bothering to take off my name or copyright notice from this one) and he posts both onto Uwroteit.com, possibly to test the site for his wife.   

Apparently they either ran into a problem and could not remove the 'test material' or else just didn't care what was there and left it, but didn't keep the website owner in the loop.   I wonder if the owner will be able to remove or change anything on the site?   I'll bet that will be the next hurdle; he won't be able to do anything to the site and he won't be able to get in touch with the web designer.   Hopefully that won't happen and it will be resolved,  because Godaddy has told me they will take the site down if the material is not removed.   I hate to cause problems for an innocent person, but if you are going to run a web site, you have to take responsibility for it and have control over it.


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## ecdavis (May 21, 2013)

I just checked Uwroteit.com, my stuff has been removed from the site, just as the website owner claimed he would do!


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## Jamber (May 22, 2013)

Yay, ecdavis -- I hope it stays that way.


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## Chilari (May 22, 2013)

Glad to hear you've got a happy ending with this one.

I started using Google alerts to keep a track of my story I published with Myths Inscribed - I picked a couple of phrases that are fairly unique to the story and have alerts on them if something comes up. Don't like the idea of someone claiming credit for something I did.

Thanks for keeping us updated on this.


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## Chessie (Jun 1, 2013)

The Dark One said:


> I know it goes against the spirit of sites like this, but I never post my work and am amazed that others do. Simply can't see the return being worth the risk...unless you're posting something you don't ever intend to publish for the sake of feedback on your craft. Even then?
> 
> I have, however, had ideas stolen, and there's even less protection there because there's no copyright in ideas. I used to wok with a children/YA writer who eventually became successful enough to leave his day-job. I'd had no qualms about talking to him about my ideas because we wrote for different genres/markets, but a couple of years after he left work, he published a book of 'adult' short stories and I was horrified to discover that one of them was predicated on a very original idea central to one of my novels (now published) which I had told him about one lunch time, by which he'd been quite fascinated.
> 
> Having said that, I don't believe he deliberately ripped me off. I do believe though that the idea lodged in his subconscious and was eventually published to his profit. Ideas are very hard to protect, which is why I am happy to talk about the craft, but very much a lone wolf when it comes to my work.



My sentiments exactly. The only work of mine I've put on forums was fanfic which technically isn't mine anyway. So steal away. I understand why ecdavis posts his on booksie but there's nutty people out there wanting a buck. I'm glad you pushed it to the end ec, that's your work and it was nice that the story was finally removed. By the way, I checked out your website and your storytelling/creativity is great. Don't bring yourself down, you've got plenty of potential. I liked book 2 of aurei (love the drow).


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## ecdavis (Jun 1, 2013)

Chesterama said:


> By the way, I checked out your website and your storytelling/creativity is great. Don't bring yourself down, you've got plenty of potential. I liked book 2 of aurei (love the drow).



Thank you Chesterama, I've been very reluctant to put any of my stuff in the Showcase forum of this site simply because I've read some of the other work there and really didn't want to embarrass myself, especially since I feel that I'm mainly just story-telling rather then writing books.   I greatly appreciate your comments.


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