IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ
A/N: It has come to my attention that the origional Author who wrote both of these stories: Elemental Bella & The Demonic Princess (Ben Furgison) old penname Whitlock Girl has actually stolen a lot of the details from the story from Speklez's 'The Demon's Mate' and WhiteWolfLegend's 'Human Elemental'. Yes, the plots may be different for the most part if you remember reading the full story that she posted on her page before she pulled down all of her stories (both of these), but there were too many other similarities that couldn't be ignored.
She had come to me about a month ago and asked if I would collaborate with her to help her spruce up her chapters and after quickly skimming over some of the dialogue, I agreed thinking that it would be fun since I do collaborations all the time. I quickly ran the spell check through the chapters that I have posted on my page of these two stories and quickly threw them up and left an author's note at the bottom saying that it was written by this person...ya di ya, but a few days later before we could do anything, I went to pull up one of the stories to post a new chapter so that I could catch up to where she was and I noticed that the stories were down and she changed her penname. Confused, I emailed her and asked her about it since we were meant to be partners and was told that she just didn't have time for them anymore because of school work and that was it. She didn't even have a copy of the rest of the story for me so that I could continue on my own from where she left off which should have sent up red flags right away but I ended up shrugging it off. Since these two were not a priority to me, I just left them as they were and decided that I would look for someone to help me write and finish them at a later date only to find out that she made a fool out of me by doing all of that, making me learn a hard lesson.
I do not condone stealing other people's hard work without first getting their permission and then giving them credit. I have noticed a few people have done it with my stories and it's not a good feeling. So always remember to GIVE CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE!
Here is a few tips when you agree to do a collaboration with someone, because do remember that it's your name on the line as well:
- Always read over each chapter and look out for plagiarism/the stealing of other's work and labeling it your/their own.
- Make sure you clarify who wrote what in the chapter so that their mistakes don't fall on you
- Upon spotting any plagiarism, make sure you point it out to the person who wrote it and regardless of what they do, give the author responsible for the plagiarised work credit where it is due.
I have left the previous chapters as they were written for the time being so that you can see for yourself what I meant that just because the story isn't exactly like the other doesn't mean that there weren't things stolen.
Lastly, as for the stories and what I plan to do with them, I have decided to do either one of two things.
1. Look for a new author to collaborate with so that we can go over the story and either a) get the author's permission to use it and give them their credit b) revise it all together.
2. Put it up for adoption with the condition that the person either revise it so that there is no longer any plagiarism or to get the author's permission and give them their credit.
3. If one of the two options above does not happen within the month of November, I will be removing them from my page for I do not have time to do all of that myself when I have higher priority stories to be written that are 100% mine.
I apologize profusely to both of the author's who had parts of their story stollen from Ben Furgison/Whitlock Girl. I should have looked over the chapters a lot closer than I did and I just wanted to tell you both that I am sorry for not catching it sooner.
Thank you!
Bella'Xo
Xo BellaItalia oX