His name is Richard Ridyard but apparently moonlights under the name Valentine. Whatever it really is, remember those names and loathe them.

Across the genres this character has been cutting, pasting and submitting others’ work. Apparently he’s been working at it for some time but it almost simultaneously came to the attention of Angel Zapata who recognised his own work published under another name, and the publication Shock Totem after a piece was submitted by the same Mr Ridyard bearing an uncanny resemblance to Stephen King’s, The Boogeyman. Ok, not so much a resemblance, no – a downright doppelganger.

There’s a lot that is creepy about someone else taking credit for your work; it renders an artist naked, outraged, robbed, to put it mildly. As a writer I think it would be worse than having a handbag snatched or as just as aweful as my home burgled. A close cousin to identitiy theft. Plagiarists ought to be punished in the same way as thieves, because plainly and simply that is what they are. However, I wouldn’t even know where to begin to defend my claim that my imagination had been debrided for another’s profit. The plagiarist’s mind has to be snakey to begin with; this guy has probably dropped off the radar by now, changed his alias, due to the tide of writerly vociferousness against this – as a forum commentator eloquently put it – “ass-hat.”

The HA! part in this case (pardon the pun) is that apparently this fellow is a lawyer.

Is there a circle of hell reserved for plagiarist lawyers?

Oh yes.

That would be the tight circle of the writing community hoving in for phalangeal dismemberment.