Hello everyone. First off, let me start by acknowledging that this took me far too long to bring to everyone's attention. So for that, I apologize. Second, proof of what I'm claiming will be shown in the video below. Now, on to the meat of this blog post... In March/April of this year, a man going under the name Michael Nemeth started selling a collection of short stories on Amazon (self published through Createspace) called Death at Dawn. The stories in this book (there are about 100) are all plagiarized from various websites, and several of these stories are hosted here. He also took liberally from Booksie.com and from the personal blogs of authors. Michael Nemeth made no attempt to credit any of the real writers, and took all of the credit for himself. He also had plans to make these stories into short films, and actually had a production company lined up. The first film was going to be based on Charlie. I, and a handful of other writers, caught wind of what he was doing, and together, we were able to get his book pulled from Createspace. We also got his wattpad account suspended, as he was placing his stolen stories there as well. His movie deal fell apart when we contacted the production company. The people he was working with were incensed, to say the least.
Upon additional research, we found out that he'd done this before. In 2015 he self-published a novel called Internal Damages. However, other than changing the names of the characters, this was a word-for-word copy of a novel that was published in 1995 by author Scott Heim. The really sick thing about this is that Michael gave an interview to Gaybuzzer.com in which he claimed that the story, and the rape of its protagonist, was autobiographical. You can see a side-by-side comparison of the two books in the video below. We contacted Scott Heim's representation, and though it took some time, this too has been removed from Createspace/Amazon.
I considered doing a blog post like this earlier this year, but once Michael's lies started getting exposure, I thought he would stop and I lost some of the momentum I had built up. In October, Michael apparently thought it was safe to try it again. Not only did he come out with Death at Dawn - Volume 2, but he put the original Death at Dawn back up for sale again. They have since been removed, but he currently has another novel for sale which is rip-off of this story here. It's up to the original author to get this story removed. We contacted him but have not heard anything back, so for now, it appears this one will stay up on Amazon.
Also in October, Michael had a kickstarter campaign set up to fund a new film he was trying to make. He had approximately $7,000 pledged toward the project. If you read the description of the project, it quickly becomes clear that he stole the story Black Easter, which was written by James Blish. If you look through the promotional material, at no point does he credit Mr. Blish for any of the work, yet there's no doubt the proposed movie is based on this story. This kickstarter has since been cancelled, purportedly after John Lepper threatened to expose Michael on his popular blog.
I won't be surprised if Michael tries any of this again. He's shown a pattern of lying low for a few months and then resurfacing. Please keep your eyes open for him. If you google him you can find other examples of his plagiarism. I don't want to weigh this blog post down with too many examples, but they're out there if you look. He also has a large presence on various social media platforms, such as twitter and facebook, where each of his projects gets its own page.
Again, sorry this took so long to get posted. There was a point in the past when I intended to let all of the affected authors know what had happened. Many of them do know, but even more don't. The scope of his thievery is too large, and I simply didn't/don't have enough time to contact everyone personally. It's easiest to lay it all out here.
And since I know you're all curious about what stories were ripped off, the lists can be downloaded here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/u9v01y58q2yyy2l/Death+at+Dawn+vol.+1.doc and here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/sqxfamw584eyjsj/Death+at+Dawn+vol.+2.doc Sorry, I don't know how to make these lists into tables that can be posted here. If anyone else knows how to do it, feel free.
Finally, here's the proof: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwIuP6m1kEs&feature=youtu.be
EDIT: For those of you who are having trouble downloading the lists, here they are on pastebin. Note that the downloadable files are in table-form and therefore much easier to read, but this will be quicker for some of you. Vol 1: http://pastebin.com/kqRYg2uK Vol 2: http://pastebin.com/Kt46iana