end of the road

Some of you might already be aware of this, but today I took Diamonds & Dust and The Ghost Stone off of FictionPress. Obviously this decision was not lightly made, since it took me about four months to make it. But today I took the final screen shots of publishing and review dates, story IDs, and various other little things (to help me prove my ownership and identity, should the need ever arise), took a deep breath, and deleted both stories.

For the most part, I feel very good about this. This gives both stories a fighting chance for real, New York house publishing in the future, which is the ultimate goal. It'll stop me from worrying about the safety of the stories, and help me feel like I've done all I can to prevent them from being taken. So far I've still found no records of either being plagiarized, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it stays that way.

But I know that people have saved my stories for their own personal benefit, to read at their own leisure and so forth. I'm flattered you loved the story enough to want to keep it. I can only hope that those of you who have done this will respect my intellectual property--don't post it. Don't share it. Don't tell anyone else you even have it. I'd prefer it if you actually deleted it, but since I'll never know, I guess that's up to you.

My biggest sorrow in this is that I've had to disappoint so many people who have been nothing but supportive of me and my work. The Ghost Stone, especially, stayed on FP as long as it did because of that. So to you guys I want to say thank you for all the reviews, the PMs, the nominations and votes at SKoW and elsewhere, and the love and attention that you've shown the story while it was up. Corny as it sounds, I will never forget that--you've given me more confidence in my ability than I thought I would ever get out of the internet, and that's pretty much priceless. I'm doing this for you guys, more than anybody else--so that one day you'll have your very own copy of GS to read and thumb through wherever and whenever you want.

I will definitely keep you posted as I finish, rewrite, and send out both stories. Hopefully this story will get its own happy ending, but either way, thanks for making the journey an awesome one.

(The Harris Family probably isn't going anywhere--the only reason I'd take that stuff down is if I, on a whim, send it to a journal for fun and they tell me to oust it. Which probably won't happen, since they aren't very serious in the first place.)


OX, Meg