Celebration!!

BIG DAY

This is my 100^th post on this blog. Should be something special to mark that, I think. I didn’t get no telegram from the Queen. (apparently you have to apply for these now and they ain’t telegrams no more). No bouquet of flowers from my nearest and dearest. No cards from mother or aunts or workmates.

But it is sort of special.

Followers will know that I am not a natural blogger. I don’t always know what I am doing here. I set this up because writer friends said I should. It would help get me known, they said. I am not sure that I like this medium for the knowing of a person.

I am a teacher and one of the things we have to deal with these days is cyber bullying and all the nastiness that goes with that. Behind the anonymity of a screen, children can be very nasty to each other without seeing first hand the effect of what they do on the victim. This means they do not have any of the natural inhibitors which might prevent them from going too far… and so they go too far not always aware of the deep harm that they do. If we add to that the fact that a person can be ‘anonymous’ then all restraint and accountability goes out of the window.

I did expect that adults would be better than children. Naiively, I expected honesty and intelligence and goodness. In some cases adults are no different from the children they were… just as nasty and just as prone to the patterns of behaviour I deal with every day in my work.

At least the lies of Doug Cheadle and Jane Smith begin to unravel.

So why do I bother? Why not at 100 bow out of the blogosphere? Why keep going?

It could be a good medium for discussion, blogdom. I can see that and I believe that. It could be a good place for a writer to exhibit his work without the hoop-jump of competitions or submission editors. It could be an exciting place for honest expression and the exchange of ideas. I will stay as long as Port Brokeferry runs… because I am so enjoying this project. After the conclusion of that I will review where we all are with this blogging thing.

So, with an expected 100 posts ahead of me, what should I do to mark this one? Eat cake? Drink wine? Dance in the snow that is falling outside? (I might do all of these anyway!)

A cheery piece of news to share: I have been approached to do a couple of children’s workshops. A museum has approached me and we have discussed the details of what they want. It will be a good wee thing to help promote my children’s novel published last September. But once we had discussed the format and dates and times, the nice lady at the museum (drinking lots of pink liquid because she was about to go for a pregnancy scan) then talked about a fee. I was to be paid for doing this! I am afraid I laughed. It seemed bizarre. Not the being paid for teaching kids bit (that is, after all, how I earn my daily crust!) But the being paid for having the opportunity to promote my book. So I laughed, and instead I negotiated for the fee (almost £200) to be given to the charity that half of the royalties of the book goes to support: The Vine Trust, which rescues abandoned young children from the streets of Peru. The damage done to these children is enormous and this charity tries to minimise this and to give the children a lifeline. You don’t need to buy my book to donate to the charity.

The next post will be number 101... I hope that this site will move forward and I can get back to the thing I do best: writing.

Now, where's that cake and wine? And turn up the music and avert your eyes... I am in the mood for dancing.

What this blog is really for

(The lies fantastical about what I have done, or more precisely what I have not done, grow legs and run all over the internet. I give up trying to fight 'em all. They's like Triffids: topple one and there's always another one spitting poison and rattling its sticks. I have made my defence here and there and everywhere... and those that lie, even when it is proved beyond any reasonable doubt that they lie, just stay silent about the lies, as if they have never been, and proceed with another line of attack. I have been so wrapped up in my defence that I have been in danger of forgetting what this blog is really for... so here's another Port Brokeferry piece. We are nearing the end of Tuesday in Port Brokeferry.)

DOCTOR KERR AND THE SILLINESS OF AGE

It is warm in the room. Doctor Kerr is asleep in his chair again. His hands lie curled together in his lap and a clean page of paper is in front of him on the desk. He has left his fountain pen uncapped, ready to write. Marjory replaces the lid, the small click of it sounding sharper in the silence of the surgery.

On the other side of the door, the waiting room is empty. She saw to the last patient herself. A small splinter in the thumb. Had been there for several days so that it was swollen and angry. Marjory was once a nurse. She knew what to do. No need for the doctor, she thought. No need to wake him for that.

He looks like a child when he sleeps. That what she thinks. It makes her smile seeing Doctor Kerr there. She listens to the slow rise and fall of his breath. Counts the seconds between. It is somehow reassuring.

She quietly puts the desk into some sort of order. Makes sure everything is filed away as it should be. She creeps around the room, not wanting to wake him just yet. It is a quarter to five. Fifteen minutes more and the clock will chime and he will say he wasn’t asleep really. Then she will bring him a cup of tea and a plate of digestive biscuits.

They will sit together at the close of business, Marjory like a patient on the other side of the desk. Only, Marjory will be asking him how he is and how his day has been. She will not tell Doctor Kerr about the boy Finlay and the splinter in his thumb. She has written it up in his record and that is enough.

Doctor Kerr lives on his own. Has several rooms at the back of the house where his surgery is. Marjory stays on three nights of the week and cooks for him, makes sure that he is eating properly. She does a bit of cleaning, too, though that is not something they have agreed upon. On Saturday afternoons she picks him up in her morris traveller and they drive to someplace different for lunch and a walk. The walks are easier each year and shorter too. He does not use his stick on these walks, even though Marjory keeps one in the back of her car. Instead he leans on her arm, pretends he is supporting her.

They talk sometimes, on their walks. Marjory doesn’t mention retirement anymore. It only makes him cross and silent and he lets go of her arm then. Instead they talk about the weather and Marjory’s grandchildren and things that are in the news. Though his interest in things beyond where they are is less and less these days.

There was a time, years past, when on one such walk Doctor Kerr stopped and kissed Marjory on the lips. It was a silly moment. He was already old and it was the silliness of his age. That’s what she thought. They have never talked about it and Marjory is glad that they haven’t.

More on Jane Smith and Doug Cheadle

Jane Smith lies. I have said this already and been accused of libel. Now, it seems, there is proof.

I have always admitted that as far as technology is concerned I am a bit dim. That I have a blog is something of an accomplishment. Doing anything other than the basics on my blog requires that I get help.

Last year a catastrophic computer hardrive meltdown saw me lose a lot of my work. I recall that Jane Smith from ‘How Publishing Really Works’ publicly suggested that I do this or that to save my work – but it was too late… so much was irrevocably lost. I have seen Jane Smith give others technical advice of this kind, so she is someone who is at least familiar with technology.

So, when the same Jane Smith recently claimed that someone called William Shears and myself shared an IP address, not only did I not know what an IP address was, but I bet many people were equally in the dark and believed that she was right and believed that William Shears was my alter ego. That’s what Jane Smith claimed: William is Douglas Bruton and Douglas Bruton is William. She then jumped from this to a public sympathetic concern for my mental health. Jane Smith sounds like she is a genuinely a nice woman. She thinks I am a gifted writer and says so in several public places; she professes to be wanting to help me; she says she wishes me all the best as a writer. But Jane Smith lies. And the lies are huge. And I don’t know what you do with someone who lies so publicly, so aggressively and so maliciously.

If you visit William Shears' blog (I have put the address at the tail end of this post) you will find someone talking more knowledgeably about IP addresses and proving that both Doug Cheadle and Jane Smith have lied about William and me and IP addresses. Why would they do that when they seem so nice and helpful and trustworthy? Doug Cheadle actually says he is trying to help me on the blog he has set up – sound familiar? They lie because they are not what they seem. They want others to think of them as honest – tell a few truths and then tell a few lies and no one will know the difference. They lie because that is what they think they can get away with. They lie out of malice. They lie to hurt me. At least in this matter they do. They maybe also lie to harm others too.

Doug Cheadle steals my stories and hangs them up on a site that is designed to harm me and my reputation. He says he does it to be fair and to give people the chance to make their own judgements, but then he seeks to discredit anyone who comments in my favour; now he even blocks those people and engineers a whole series of anonymous comments on the blog to stack things against me. And he lies. Jane Smith works closely with Doug Cheadle, both support each other’s statements. They have both manufactured this IP address lie. They both visit other blogs, supposedly to protect other writers from ‘evil’ me, but in reality they do all of this to do me the maximum harm. There are lies threaded through everything that they say and do. They are keeping this whole thing going. They both want me to publicly admit what I have done and to apologise and then move on. They would both like that; that would vindicate their position and give the semblance of truth to their lies.

Doug Cheadle yesterday gave me the opportunity to explain what I think would constitute plagiarism. I have added a relevent comment to his blog, but he has chosen not to publish it. Even though it speaks some sense on the matter. He said he was giving me an opportunity. And that he was again trying to help me. I will publish my comment here if he does not publish my comment by the weekend.

Doug Cheadle and Jane Smith lie and now there is proof positive that they lie. This is something I have said for some time. It is the tip of the iceberg. Their whole reason for blogging about me is not to protect others, or to help me… it is to harm me. I have already blogged about why Jane Smith would want to harm me; Doug Cheadle, because he is an anonymous creation, I cannot with any certainty say why he wants to harm me – either Doug Cheadle is Jane Smith, or one of her friends, or someone I have harmed in this debate, or the writer who feels aggrieved at my story having been inspired by hers. Whoever this Doug Cheadle is, what is clear is that he has a very big reason for expending so much energy in attacking me and for telling lies about me and a reason for being cruel and malicious towards me, and a vested interest in seeing me harmed. Doug Cheadle is not an interested bystander. Doug Cheadle is a part of all this and he is also a coward in continuing to hide behind this anonymous name.

What now?

My name is mud - at least on the internet it is. Jane Smith and ‘friends’ have been busy writing to publishers and competition organisers and judges, to tell them that I am bad news. What can a good person do against the malice and lies of these bloggers? I would welcome suggestions.

http://william-shears.blogspot.com/2010/02/i-have-just-done-some-research-on-ip.html

(I don't want to create another blog post on this matter so I am adding a postscript to this one. Today I let it be known on another blog that I was going to report Doug Cheadle's blog for copyright infringement. Someone had kindly and anonymously pointed out how I could do that. So I did. Then, within a few hours, Doug Cheadle's site had had my name removed from it and was only accessible by invitation only. In effect it was closed down. Whether Doug Cheadle did this (running scared) or whether it was officially shut down, I do not know. What I do know is that it is down and that is just the start. Now I know all about this abuse button, I will look into what else I can do. So to the anonymous person who helped me: thank you.)

So Far This Year

Unlike last year, I have not set myself a target for the number of words I will write in 12 months. No 365 flashes and three stories a month. I am not trying anymore to complete high numbers of small pieces to show I can do it. Instead, I have several biggish projects on the go and getting them to some sort of completion is the primary aim.

However, so far this year I have written 5 new short stories, so I am quite pleased with that and not a little surprised. One of them is a flash fiction piece that has grown into something quite neat and something quite a bit stronger than the flash.

I have also almost drawn to a conclusion my children's novel... should be done and dusted over the Easter school break. And Port Brokeferry rattles on (almost 20,000 words of the project has been posted on this site already and there's still plenty more to go!). This summer I want to get the adult novel started. Of course, all of this has to be juggled around the full-time job, which is why the holidays are so valuable to me.

Yes, I am feeling quite positive about the writing and how it is going. It helps that I have just had a short story accepted by a good publication, too - more on this when it is printed. This was also a flashed piece which had to have more room to do it full justice.

And feeling so positive, I wish EVERYONE coming here the very best with your writing.

How Many People Does it Take to Make it True?

I was reading something in the Guardian Newspaper this weekend. I was prompted to go there having read something about this on another blog and I got quite excited when I did. There was something about writers' top ten rules in the paper. You can find them now on the webpage for The Guardian. A gaggle of established and respected writers were asked to identify their top ten rules for writing and this one belongs to Michael Moorcock - it is his second rule:

2 Find an author you admire (mine was Conrad) and copy their plots and characters in order to tell your own story, just as people learn to draw and paint by copying the masters.

I draw attention to this because this is precisely what Jane Smith and Doug Cheadle and Nik Perring and Vanessa Gebbie have objected to in two short stories I have written. Vanessa has even done this herself with her Raymond Carver inspired story as I have shown on this blog already. It is everything I have been saying in my defence.

So I shout it loud now: what have I done wrong that Jane Smith considers herself authority enough on to pronounce me a criminal? And Doug Cheadle the same and Nik Perring? Can they not at least acknowledge that I may not be as bad as they say that I am? I am not a plagiarist. That is true and it is official. And Jane Smith is not kind or clever... at least not clever enough to be right in this. And the others that still comment against me are no better.

AN AWARD! FOR THIS SITE!

A big thank you to Karen Jones Gowen for an award she has given me on her blog. (I am such a techno-dunce that I cannot even copy the picture that goes with the award to hang here, so I have just pasted in this thumbs up pic) I would have liked this award to have been given to me for the creative work I have posted on my blog; however, I have instead earned this accolade because of the 'helpful' stuff I have put up here on plagiarism and copyright and in particular for the arguments I have offered up against Jane Smith of 'How Publishing really Works'.

I see that Karen's blog has already been visited by the 'anonymous' Blog Troll. More of its lies - though actually the same lies that Doug Cheadle and Jane smith have been throwing out there for the past few months.

Is it just me, or has Jane smith started on her blog site another malicious fight with someone who has been writing private e-mails to her? What is interesting (and rather sad) is how quickly Jane's online friends stomp all over this as yet unnamed writer and malign her character and that they do so having only one side of the story: Jane's.

So, thank you Karen for honouring me with an award. I am sorry that the ugly stuff has again spilled over into your blog. I hope that anyone coming here from Karen's blog will exercise due caution if compelled to comment. You can do so through my e-mail address (as others are now doing) if you fear this Jane Smith (and she is to be feared).

My address is douglasrdbruton@hotmail.com

WHO OWNS YOUR IDEAS?

IDEAS - YOURS, MINE OR EVERYBODY'S?

I have been doing more reading on this whole Intellectual Property thing. If I am not to fall foul of plagiarism charges I have a duty to know more than I already do; we all have the same duty. First off, the ownership of ideas is a very difficult subject for anyone to lay down hard and fast definitions on; there are different kinds of ideas and maybe different rules to cover this... that's why there are laws governing copyright (the key is in the word 'copy')and patents and trademarks and other forms of ownership. But even with these, the limits of what is allowed and what is not allowed isn't clear - even to an educated reader. This is why individual cases are so hotly and sometimes confusingly debated in courts of law, and the results of legal decisions do not always illuminate the rights and wrongs for anyone else to follow. And yet some internet 'trolls' seem to think it all so easy, and set themselves up as supreme judges of even tricky cases.

However, I found this piece on wikipaedia, and then found it posted in other places, too. It was quoted by a Harvard Law Professor in a book that looked at intellectual property. I quoted a part of it earlier on my blog thinking I was quoting this Law professor. So, here, I give it in its full form and I give it its correct attribution: Thomas Jefferson. I'd be interested to know what you think. It speaks sense to me.

Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation.

—Thomas Jefferson , to Isaac McPherson 13 Aug. 1813 Writings

Blog Trolls and another Port Brokeferry piece

(A warning to anyone tempted to make a positive comment on what they read here on my blog: if you do you are likely to be visited by an anonymous Blog Troll who will either say some very bad things about me (and lies, too) or will attempt to rubbish you in an effort to undermine the positive thing you have said. I am sorry. I can do nothing about this... except to warn you and to say there is no need for you to comment at all... just visiting is enough... but if you do want to comment you can do so anonymously or by e-mailing me direct at douglasrdbruton@hotmail.com )

TOM TASTES BLOOD

There’s gravel or sharp stones in his breath. He can hear the grating of them in his throat and his chest. It hurts when he coughs and he can taste blood in his mouth. Tastes blood in the spat curses he makes against the pain.

He has not risen from his bed today. Has slipped in and out of sleep. It is better when he sleeps. He is in another place then and the pain is far from him there.

Beside his bed is a jug of water and a glass that is half full. A plate of sandwiches too, the sandwiches in a bag with ‘Callum’s Bakery’ printed on the paper. Tom has not opened the bag yet.

‘Cheese and pickle, just as you like them,’ Callum had said. He’d come from the shop. Left things just for a minute or two to check on how Tom was doing. Lillian said she would serve any customers there were until he got back. That’s what Callum said to Tom when the old man in his bed told him he should not stay too long.

Callum had opened the window a little to let in the air. He’d straightened the covers on Tom’s bed, too, and offered to fetch Doctor Kerr. ‘Just to check everything is ok.’

Tom had shook his head and put on a false cheeriness to reassure Callum.

‘I’ll drop in later then. At the end of the day and on my way home. Maybe bring you a strawberry tart or a doughnut ring?’ He winked when he said it.

‘Grand,’ said Tom.

Then Callum was gone again.

Tom looked at his watch. It was late afternoon. Outside he could hear the movement of heavy traffic on the street and Athol Stuart calling to Mad Martin to stand back from the road. A dog was barking too. And there was laughter. It sounded like Dodie Bredwell.

Tom wondered what day it was. All his days the same now. All running into one another. His nights, too. He could not sleep at night. Sat up in his chair in front of the television, watching shopping programmes and women in few clothes doing exercises on new machines. A cup of tea growing cold on the arm of his chair and a cigarette turning to ash in his fingers.

He should really stop the smoking. That’s what Marjory from the surgery had said. ‘There’s special plasters that can help these days,’ she’d told him. He laughed at the memory of it. Pictured himself wrapped like a mummy in plaster of Paris, his arms fixed to his sides so that he could not lift the lighted cigarette to the hole in the bandages where his mouth was. His laughing then set off the coughing again and the bloody curses rolled around in his mouth.

BY GRACE OF PORT BROKEFERRY

(I see that a writer who has been loud against me for a year has removed from her blog a particularly unpleasant post with my name on it. I don't presume to know why she has done this. I'd like to think it had something to do with goodness; I certainly do not think she has changed her view of me. But I thank her nevertheless. It would be good if I could move on from this... if everyone could.)

(I am adding this here, because I read something today that made me see what has happened to me recently and how other people have made me into something I am not and something I do not like. What I read was the kind of cereal box philosophy that you also sometimes see on pretty landscape photographs made into inspiring posters, or pictures of bears up to their knees in white water and swiping their paws at leaping salmon, or eagles soaring in a blue blue sky. Nevertheless, I read something there that made me see, and made me want to be what I was, which is better than I have been recently. From here on in I want to be me again - gentler and more forgiving and good.)

GRACE’S NEW DRESS

Grace stands naked in front of the bathroom mirror. She has done her hair the way he likes it. The way he said he liked it. She can still hear his voice in her memory. ‘I like your hair all loose and as though the wind has been at your back.’

She is wearing make-up, too. A little colour to her face and some blue to her eyes and her lips all painted. She smiles at herself, uncertainly. Feels something she cannot name in the heart of her. Like something is missing. Like she feels when she has not eaten and the hours have used up her energy.

She says her own name, then. Whispers it. Says it like he said it in the dark of her room, a year back, quiet so no one would hear him saying it. She cups her right hand over her left breast. Closes her eyes and tries to imagine it is his hand there, as it was once. Says her name again, in his voice. Bends her neck as though he is behind her, kissing her there.

She wonders if there is a difference in her. Wonders if he will notice it.

‘Oh she is changed,’ said her mother to Athol Stuart. Grace was at the open door to the police station and she heard her mother talking. ‘She is quieter, of course. Still a little in shock, I think. But she is not a girl any more. She is a mother and that changes you.’ But Grace’s mother did not then go on to say how it was that Grace was altered.

In her bedroom the baby is sleeping. Just for a moment Grace can believe that she is not changed. That she is back before the birth. Back to the summer when she was still a girl and everything was new and bright and easy. Too easy, perhaps.

‘I love this part of you,’ he’d said. He’d stroked her hips then and ran the flat of his hand over her stomach. ‘It’s called the pelvic cradle.’ He’d laid his head there, looking up at her. ‘I could lie here forever,’ he’d said.

It is the sort of thing boys think girls want to hear. And the truth is she did want to hear it back then. Maybe in the moment he even meant what he said. She doesn’t now believe in forever. She is not the girl she was then. Maybe that is what is different. She wonders if he has changed, too.

She drops her hand from her breast and opens her eyes. In the mirror she looks the same. Thinks she does. A little thinner in the face perhaps, but the same girl looking back at her.

She stretches on her toes, leaning in close to the mirror, trying to see the pelvic cradle, the jut of her hips. She can’t. She drops down to the flat of her feet again.

‘It’s Grace,’ she says. Not in whisper now, not in his voice.

She puts her make-up away and dresses quickly. It is a new dress she wears. Not one he has seen before. But it is a colour she knows he likes.

HPRW

(How Persecution Really Works... This is a further comment on my trial by internet. I am posting it here because Doug Cheadle, who has set up a site to denounce me as a plagiarist, is no longer posting my comments or anyone else's who has the temerity to sing a different tune from the one he wants his site to be singing. I say Doug Cheadle, but I might just as well call him Mrs Jones, I think or John Smith.)

TRIAL BY INTERNET (which we should all regard with suspicion because it does not have the fairness of even a court of law. It operates at the level of vigilante justice!)

In a court of law there is a presumption of innocence until a case is proven and proven beyond a reasonable doubt. In trial by internetthe starting point of bloggers, very often, is that a person is guilty. That is certainly the case here, with many back in July 2009 calling me thief without even being able to see the evidence. (Jane Smith has the audacity to call it 'The Whole Story'! My side is not there.)

In a court of law the jury has no vested interested in the outcome of proceedings. In trial by internet the judge, jury and prosecution are sometimes all one, and sometimes have personal reasons for seeing the defendant damaged. I have blogged below about Jane Smith and her reasons for wanting to 'slap' me and her pretence of 'wishing me well' when all she does is harm me.

In a court of law witnesses are sworn in under oath and any statement they make is scrutinised and pared back to the truth and relevance. In trial by internet people can be anonymous and malicious without fear of discovery. They can even pretend to be having a conversation with themselves, offering support for each other against the one being 'charged' and making it appear that many are against the one.

In a court of law when something false has been said, it is revealed and discounted. In trial by internet falsehoods are passed from blog to blog, growing fatter on the journey, and even when the defending council questions the truth of what has been said on one blog it is always too late to prevent it having been spread beyond its original source.

Even where a defendant provides a true and incontrovertible statement that contradicts something else that is being said, the bloggers ignore it - often they do, seeing only what they want to see and what they started with: that the defendant is guilty, plain and simple.

In a court of law what is said is recorded so that it can be referred back to and can be read back to the court. In trial by internet people can 'say' something on their blog and then quietly amend it at a later date without anyone really seeing the sleight of hand. And this can be used slyly and maliciously against the accused and no one sees what has been done. Jane Smith has done this with her post on copyright (see my post below this one).

In a court of law there is an attempt to obtain a complete picture and a complete understanding before judgement is made. In trial by internet people make judgements on the flimsiest of evidence and even on the mere say so of others. If Jane Smith on her HPRW site says someone is a criminal, then others go onto her site and believe she must be right and join in the condemnation of the 'guilty' person.

I have been accused of plagiarism. I have always maintained that I am not guilty of the things people say in this matter. One person in particular simply invents things against me, persuading all her blogger friends to vent their vitriol against me. I discover that several sites have snatched bits of the ‘debate’ out of context and put them on their sites. And yet others continue to perpetuate lies that I had several months ago e-mailed them about to correct.

And now someone masquerading under a pseudonym has violated the copyright of my work to post up the ‘evidence’ for the world to see, driving a horse and carriage through the law to have me ‘revealed’ (have they not read their Robert Bolt!) and thinking that they do some noble deed in what they have done. If it was so noble a deed, would they not be less sneaky about it and hang their name to what they have done? Further, not allowing the works of mine alone to incriminate me, they have also added a comment or ten of their own, full of untruths, just in case you are not persuaded of my guilt by my works. So far, there has not been the rush to say 'there, as we have been told, he is guilty of plagiarism'. And now, in a final desperate effort to make me guilty, Doug Cheadle has taken control of the comments posted on his site, the better to make sure that only one side of the case is fairly presented: his/her own.

Last week I had a long phone conversation with a writer I did not know and who had no reason to support me. He had read something of what is 'up there' on the internet and he said that he did not think I was guilty of plagiarism. He had no reason to be friendly or polite. He approached me on the matter. And he asked after my well-being, wanting to know how all of this had affected me... he could hear in my voice that it had affected me greatly. I am reminded of Henry Fonda's character in the film 'The Wrong Man'.

I still contend that I am innocent of the charges 'they' make. In many blog posts below I have laid out my side of the matter. I have argued against 'their' definition of what is plagiarism; I have argued using Jane Smith's own definition against her (before she amended it... now it is amended it makes no sense). She still says that ideas are 'fair game' and that only particular arrangements of words can be protected. She has changed this later on her blog in order to attack me. I have argued for the focus to not exclude an examination of the differences between similar works. I have argued that language is about the transmission of ideas and that art accepts that passing ideas from one artist to another is all part of the creative process. I have pointed to the imitative element in art. I have quoted eminent thinkers of today in support of what I have done, and argued against one of the high profile accusers in this matter, demonstrating that she has done precisely the same as she accuses me of. I have never taken another’s words and have always written my stories.

I have never tried to hide what I have done, not any part of it. Everything is very up front. (The same cannot be said for those who attack me from behind their anonymous posts) You just need to read what I have admitted to on this blog to know who I am and what I believe and what I have done. And if you do read what I have said, I think you will come to two related conclusions:

a) First, this whole plagiarism matter is a very complex one and not, as one writer has said, as easy as deciding ‘theft is theft’.

b) Second, with the 'evidence' out there, this is not really what you thought to find in work that has been lambasted as plagiarist.

Google my name and I am a plagiarist. That is what trial by internetcan do. More to do with spite than to do with goodness. But I am not a plagiarist. I hope that some of you, reading wider on the issue, and thinking with a modicum of sense, a huge dose of sensitivity, and an intellect to match, will come to the conclusion that what we have here is not plagiarism, but the seemier side of blogging and a reason for denouncing trial by internet.

HOW PUBLISHING REALLY WORKS

How Publishing Really Works:

I do not mean the industry really; I refer to Jane Smith and her site of the same name – a site that I had some respect for once.

Ironically, Jane has a post up just now on editing! Laughing at the idea that editing doesn’t happen these days. She could have provided evidence from her own blog for the fact that editing does happen today!

I recently quoted from Jane’s Blog on the matter of copyright, a subject she had posted information on. I took the liberty of copyin g what she had said for my own information and reproduce the comment in full here:

“The upshot is that you can't protect your idea unless you actually write it. Then your specific arrangement of words (the story you've written) will be protected, but the idea (the storyline) will not be, as ideas are fair game.”

This chimes pretty well with what the Copyright Licensing Agency’ says on its own web page.

Now Jane has edited her own post. Quietly. To make it trap me and what I have done. And her great pal, Doug Cheadle, who shares the same thoughts (!), has posted the new version on his blog. Now it reads:

"The upshot is that you can't protect your idea unless you actually write it. Then your specific arrangement of words and the various specific ways you've expressed your idea, such as your structure, detail and characterisation (which together constitute the story you've written) will be protected, but the idea (the storyline) will not be, as ideas are fair game."

This no longer chimes with what the Copyright Licensing Agency says. So why has she made the change? Because she can. Because she is waging a war against me. Because she is malicious. If that seems libellous then Jane should seek legal representation.

How Publishing Really Works (Jane): dishonestly.

WHAT DOES THE COPYRIGHT LICENSING AGENCY MEAN?

"There is no need in the UK to register copyright. When an idea is committed to paper or another fixed form, it can be protected by copyright. It is the expression of the idea that is protected and not the idea itself. People cannot be stopped from borrowing an idea or producing something similar but can be stopped from copying." (From The Licensing Agency's webpage)

Doug Cheadle has threatened not to publish any more of my comments on his blog and so I must defend myself here - yet again.

And again Doug Cheadle tries to undermine what has been said. This time in response to my quotation from the Copyright Licensing Agency (see above). Now he says that the key is in that phrase 'expression', the expression of the idea is protected. Cheadle argues that this does not mean the precise words, but the treatment the idea is given by a writer. But the quotation actually says a writer can borrow another's ideas, can even produce something similar, but simply must not copy. Surely what is clear here is that a writer cannot use another's actual words but can do something the same. I accept that copying another's words is plagiarism.

Doug Cheadle quotes a lot of specialist cases on his blog to arrive at a definition of what plagiarism is. Unfortunately, most of these sites he links to refer to academic writing, where the idea in an academic paper is the whole thing. The taking of that is likely to be called plagiarism, but this has little bearing on creative works. Creative ideas in literature, or the arts more generally, are not protected so strongly precisely because it is not in the interest of art and literature to do so and precisely because it would be difficult or impossible to do so. Ideas of this kind run through every thought we have and everything we write owes something to some ideas that are not our own.

My story is different from Tania Hershman's. I have blogged about this already and so forgive me if I repeat myself here:

The list of characters differs.

The list of settings differs (aside from the opening hospital setting).

Our central characters are different, couldn't be more different (hers is a young and tentative man; mine is a middle aged married man who is not in the least tentative).

The key concepts of the two stories are different: Tania's is to do with holes in the brain/memory and young tentative love that is frustrated; mine has to do with Synaesthesia and perception and a failed marriage and an infidelity.

Key precoccupations of the two stories also differ: Tania's is almost solely concerned with memory loss and its impact; mine is to do with what's real, and perception and sensory short circuits (the stuff about the water being hot and cold depending on the warmth of the hand put into the water, and the fact that we do not have an awareness of the planet's swift movement through space, but we can be aware of the slightest movement of a car at the traffic lights.)

Our styles are completely different. Even Vanessa admitted to that.

But I concede that there are similarities: the reverse chronology leading to the lightning strike; the opening in a hospital; the name of the central character: Tania's is Henry and mine is Harry.

Reverse chronology is not of itself new or original. There was even an episode of the TV programme ER that employed this, rewinding back to a catastrophic event; it also opened in a hospital!

But there are big differences too between what Tania has written and what I have written: aside from the skeleton of the lightning and the reverse chronology, we tell very different stories.

Tania's character fails to get the girl he was plucking up the courage to talk to when the lightning struck. My character has a latent memory of the infidelity in his synaesthetic experience of Mondays smelling of burnt toast. He is, at the end of the story, stuck with a wife he had resolved to leave when the lightning struck him. My story is not a cursory rewrite, but a borrowing of an idea or two from Tania and the writing of my own story with my own characters and my own settings and my own preoccupations.

Look at what has been taken and what has been added by my own creativity, and you will see that I have done nothing that steps over the line of what is allowed. On the other hand, Tania's champion, Doug Cheadle, actually does step over the mark by taking my complete stories and doing what he likes with them, the actual words and everything!

Cheadle says that he/she believes I didn't know I was doing wrong in what I did and that I didn't understand about plagiarism, the fine details of what it could be. Maybe Cheadle did not know and still doesn't. You may not like that I borrowed from a fellow writer in this way, but there is nothing criminal here, and I would argue that this is a natural consequence of working closely with other writers: ideas will be shared and will enter each other's work.

But, and this is major now, what Jane Smith and Tania's champion have done on their respective blogs is... well, nasty. They have vented their spite against me in order to discredit me and to hurt me. They tell me that I should be more contrite and that I should apologise and admit to having done wrong. And because I haven't this is why they have continued with their 'persecution' of me.

I AM INNOCENT HERE. They have done wrong. And I should apologise? This doesn't make sense. I have actually apologised to Tania, for the hurt that my story caused to her. I did this before Jane Smith's Anti Plagiarism day last July. I will not apologise to Jane Smith or to Doug Cheadle - because it is them who owe me apology.

How Persecution Really Works

I have been doing some reading on copyright and intellectual property law. I have been called on to define what I think plagiarism is. Lawyers use up lots of court time and lots of public and private money debating this issue in individual cases, so to expect me to offer a hard and fast definition for us all to agree on seems to me to be unrealistic. However, I have been on The Copyright Licensing Agency's web page and I found this in their definition of what is copyright:

"There is no need in the UK to register copyright. When an idea is committed to paper or another fixed form, it can be protected by copyright. It is the expression of the idea that is protected and not the idea itself. People cannot be stopped from borrowing an idea or producing something similar but can be stopped from copying."

This is precisely what I have been arguing throughout all this plagiarism nonsense. It is what Jane Smith said in an early post on her own blog 'How Publishing Really Works'. If we accept the truth of this, then everything Jane has said and done against me, and all her compadre Doug Cheadle has done, and Vanessa and all the others, is malicious and cruel. And an argument against trial by internet.

This Port Brokeferry Thing Keeps Going

(One day this whole Port Brokeferry thing might be a book. I like to think it will be. Here is Izzy again and her mother's letters from Germany. I am not always a fan of flash fiction, so having it be part of something more like this and having threads picked up again at different points in the complete tapestry, makes it more than just an isolated flash. Like a whole series of short scenes from a complete film and each scene tries to be a perfect 'shot'.)

LIEBE MRS CAMPBELL

In the dark at the back of Mrs Campbell’s wardrobe there are shoeboxes, low down, stacked one on top of the other and in neat rows. In some there are empty cologne bottles. When Izzy unscrews the small lids and holds the bottles to her nose, she can smell again how her mother used to smell. It makes Izzy remember what it was to be a child following in her mother’s shadow.

In beside the empty bottles are letters, hundreds of letters with foreign stamps in the corners. They are all addressed to ‘Frau Audrey Campbell, The Post Office, Port Brokeferry’. It was Izzy’s mother’s job once to sort the mail in the waking mornings, packing them into Izzy’s father’s postbag ready for delivery. Mr Campbell never saw the letters that came from a boy called Johannes and later a man with the same name. Or if he did, he never let on that he knew. Izzy saw her mother sometimes slip the newly arrived letters into the pocket of her apron, noticed the flush of her mother’s cheeks on those rare-seeming days, heard her mother singing then, too.

The letters in the boxes are sorted into some sort of order, by postmark date wherever the date stamp can be read. Mrs Campbell later added a small number next to the stamp, pencilled so lightly that on dull days it is not bright enough in the room to see the numbers. More than four hundred letters before they stopped coming.

These days, when Mrs Audrey Campbell is well enough to be serving in ‘The Post office and General Store’, Izzy steals into her mother’s bedroom and takes out one of those shoeboxes. A different one each time. She dusts it off as if it is a new discovered treasure. She lifts the lid, slowly, as if what might be inside will be a surprise.

Some of the letters have been torn open. All of the earliest ones. Torn as if in a hurry to set free what was inside. They all start the same: Liebe Mrs Campbell. Even the final letter - for that is open too and is the briefest of them all - starts ‘Liebe Mrs Cambell’.

Izzy used to run her finger across the page, following the lines that had been written, as though she was reading what was there. If anyone had been witness to the small girl that was Izzy, sitting cross-legged on the floor in her mother’s bedroom, they’d have seen her lips moving too, giving an awkward shape to the words that someone called Johannes had sent to her mother.

Izzy had seen her mother doing the same. Years back. Her father was sick in his bed and the days left to him could be counted on Izzy’s two hands. And Izzy’s mother standing in the kitchen with a letter, her finger tracing the lines across the page and her lips moving through the words, whispering the sounds.

It was like reading poetry is what Izzy thought then. It is what she thinks now. The letters are written in German. Aside from ‘Liebe Mrs Campbell’ and Johannes’ name at the end, there’s no sense in what is written, none that Mrs Campbell ever found and none that Izzy found, too. Many of the later letters have not even been opened.

ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

('All you need is love. Love is all you need.' This is something that people should embrace. This is something that people need to take more to heart. Instead, the world is full of pettiness and harsh words and people who have forgotten love. It can be easy sometimes to forget. Here, I am remembering. All you need is love, and the world is then a better place.)

Two things to be pleased about:

Secondly, I have just received in the post my copy of The Momaya Review 2009. I think it came out at the end of 2009, but clearly I missed this. However, it is with me now, happily. A lovely glossy cover and a neat production that feels good in the hand. Some very good work in here and I am so pleased that I have a story in it, too: ‘Annie and Father Cuthbert’s Kisses’.

Thanks to everyone at Momaya for this. Look out for this year’s competition.

And finally, a young pupil at my school approached me this week to say he had read my children’s novel, ‘The Chess Piece Magician’. And he thought it was really good. I detected some surprise in how he said it and challenged him on this. ‘Did you expect it to be rubbish then?’ He said no but that the book had exceeded his expectations and he had enjoyed it. I thanked him for reading the book and for such positive feedback. His parting shot as he left the room, nodding his head, was that he thought I had talent. I loved that. So much that if I could find a way of putting iton the book’s cover, I would.