'You stole my story...'

[Steve]

While on the comedown from the best writing class I've ever done (and, so help me, the last one I'll ever attend as a pupil), I had a bit of a moment when I came across a review of a book that appears to have helped itself to large chunks of my idea.

After a few hours' brooding, and pondering how to make the author disappear before her star rises any further, I remembered my Jedi Master's first rule- stop caring so much!- and found a solution by changing a few names. This gives me scope to look at the plot from a different angle. It also fits in very well with the killer's MO. Right, sorted, good.

That said, I will have no hesitation in tearing the bitch a new orifice if I ever meet her on a panel or something. Welcome to my shit list, lady .

[Cducharme]

Here's the thing, did you trademark/copyright any aspects of the idea by releasing first? If not, it's coincidence, move on and quit worrying. If you write quality, and you do, people will pay attention regardless.

One of my grand ideas was an overarching world where Jesus of Nazareth was the original skin-eating re-animated undead. I still write stories in this world on occasion despite the superficial similarities between that and the "Zombie Jesus" comic book that came out like 10 years after I started working. Because despite there being similarities, since I had a vision all my own, there's is nothing like it in reality.

My stories are set during varying time periods, some that are modern day in a world that never got to progress, since humans have been hunted since Jesus' time. Jesus in those stories is like now, he's an origin story only for the undead instead of the living, why? He'd have decomposed too much and been only skeletal remains, the dunderheads that made that comic decided he's be magically preserved. Completely unrealistic, and without any merit in my eyes.

So there it is, if the idea is quality, others might have similar ideas, but it's in the execution and actual elements that compose the overarching story that make our ideas unique and different from the common drivel.