lbdarling

I came into the stats on the site this morning to see my small number which is no surprise. What was a bit surprising was no one…at all…read my post yesterday. Like…no one. That is very weird.

No matter.

I went to my stats. I looked down the page and my eye caught on ‘downloaded files’ where it read “Dark Illusions”.

And I went…WTF? Not again.

This weird thing happens from time to time. I don’t understand. Every now and again, from out of no where, the Downloaded Files thing shows these stories.

I felt today as I’ve felt every time this happens, well, like someone had stolen something from me. Understand, there has not been any link to that story or its sister story “Every New Beginning” on this or any other site in years.

Decade. Maybe.

So yeah…WTF? Where did you even come from?

I went to my media files deleted both .pdfs but NOT in time for whoever that was to download “Every New Beginning”.

For the life of me I cannot find out where they came from. It’s like they just popped in from the ether then popped out again.

When I mentioned wanting to rewrite these two stories just a short time ago, I did go look for them online. I stated that here and I looked hard. When I left the Stargate SG-1 fandom I needed it to be a totally clean break so I took it down or asked for every single story that was archived anywhere that I knew of (hahaha) to be removed. Every story in the “Daughter of the Gods” series was supposed to…poof…vanish….buh-bye.

Here and there I have put those two novels and a good bit of the short stories in the series up for free on my site to celebrate the 10th and…and I think it’s 15th but I don’t think I celebrated the 20th which would have been last year. They were limited time offers. When the offer is done I remove the pages.

Not always the stories obviously.

I went to Google.

I cringed. I wanted to cry. For one second I felt like Captain America;

“They said what we won. Didn’t say what we lost.”

Not going any further with that one right now. Just let it ruminate up there in the Memory Warehouse.

I took it’s advice. I typed in “Moon Mistress” “Daughter of the Gods”. (Been a long time since I used “s in a search, I admit. I forgot about it.)

My work is archived, without my permission, on at least on SG1 archive site and it’s been there since 2004…when it was first fucking written….without my goddamn permission because it’s one of those sites where I asked for it to be removed. Back in The Day there were sites where you could UPLOAD your stories but the Admin had to REMOVE them for you and you had to request it.

I guess they didn’t get the email.

Oh, yeah, and it references the second GeoCities site that got shut down by those wankers all those years ago. They archived it just before that site went down and I bought my first domain name to spite those shitheads.

Anyway, I went back to Google and typed in many more things and I could not find a reference to these stories on my site. So where did this person (and the others) come from?

How did they know how to find this link?

Where it is out there somewhere in the Great Abyss of Cyberspace that it Can Only Be Found by Thems Who Knows Where it Is?

Seriously, given the above graphic, and all of things a bunch of these AIs have to relay about well…freaking everything, it’s getting to the point where I don’t even want to be around a computer anymore. I’ve taken all social media, including Messenger, off my phone and limit my desktop time to just a few minutes in the morning unless I have some site work to do.

I don’t even like updating the Terms of Service on my TV. Which I don’t understand, BTW. It’s MY TV. I bought it. Go away now. Our business is concluded.

Hate that. Track my ‘viewing habits’ so it can pass the information along to their ‘partners’ and I can have better ads? I pay NOT to have ads! So, what is this crap? Why do they think they can watch me after I’ve paid and left the store? Why do I let them?

Sounding a little paranoid there, sweetheart.

Well, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get’cha.

Any-hoo, here’s a hard truth…I I dealt with several new…and one old…scammers this week. I got them in email, on FB, and on Instagram. One of them was running that Candle Scam and I admit I don’t really understand it but if you saw a post here yesterday that was a “private payment link” it was for her. Take a look.

Shock and Awe.

Got more of those buy amazon reviews scams. They’re coming directly to me on FB and through Instagram now and my little hanger on, Chris, has contacted me again. Don’t take this the wrong way but, he’s a Nigerian Prince because….his hits actually come from…Nigeria. Others from Myanmar or Pakistan.

They have changed their tactics, finding out what doesn’t work, and casting a better net. The overly flowery Praise & Prey thing has died off. None of them are mentioning a book title. They certainly are not claiming to have READ one of my books. The price has come down. Especially on Instagram where this type of thing seems have been popular/acceptable on some level for quite a while.

I’m sorry what were you saying about being paranoid?

Hmmmm….

I can’t imagine why that would be.