Okay, now I have to vent.

While I was researching romances on the Internet today, I came across one of my previous essays, Write Something Good, on another Internet blog site and posted there as if it was the original writing of someone else.

Shame on you!

Of course I am flattered that the thief liked my essay so much that he/she swiped it and put it on another site. But it was wrong to do it. This is original copyrighted material, folks. Don’t mess with it without permission.

And I suppose I should be flattered that people then responded on that site about how much they liked the essay. But I’m kind of disappointed, instead. If you like my writing so much, why not tell me? Somebody went to all the trouble of cutting and pasting my essay and posting it on another blog, yet couldn’t be bothered to write and say, “Gee, nice essay. I’d like to put it up on another site.”

Here’s the kicker. When the site host was notified of the plagiarism, MyRomanceStory.com was accused of manipulating the post date on the original blog essay, in other words, lying about what had happened.

Double shame on you!

Am I going to mention the name of the blog on which this blatant thievery took place?

No.

But it does bring up an issue I’ve been thinking about for a while. Blogging is public talk. We all know that. And you are freely invited to read these words; no site pass or login is required, no cookies are involved. But these still are my words, people, not yours. Not unless you belly up to the bar and post your comments. Then, as your words accumulate and mine become merely the lead-off to a topic, it will become your blog. This blog could also be different in a bad way. You could post lots of snarky comments, get into arguments with us and with each other, degenerate into name-calling, and so on. But that is not happening. Thank you. But think about commenting.

Meanwhile, I’m going to continue treating my blog entries as my own personal op-ed column. I’ll continue to write essays about topics that interest me as a reader, writer, and editor of romance. I hope you’ll like them. I ask you not to steal them from me or our other contributors.