Angela Ackerman details her encounter with copyright infringement on Writers Helping Writers. This is serious stuff.

I’ve had other writerly friends who’ve noticed their books have been pirated and if you’ve been following Angela on FB, you probably know that she’s encountered that too.

There’s a mode of thought on the interwebz that says pirating is not your enemy. If people like your book so much they steal it, then it will likely convert to more readers.

I think that argument is fundamentally flawed. Chuck Wendig spoke to this quite eloquently a few months ago, here, here, and here.

What if people are stealing your work and trying to make money off it illegally by selling it and pocketing the profits? For a self-published author, the book is her livelihood. Even for the traditionally published, what money he might have seen from a legitimate sale, disappears. It’s wrong.

And the readers who buy these pirated copies may not even know that their money is not going to the author. That’s doubly wrong. Theft, deceit, and fraud? That’s jail time people.

But as Chuck said, it’s not just about the money. An author (or authors) slaved over that book for months, if not years. It’s their intellectual property (IP). It’s their blood, sweat, and tears.

Don’t pirate books. Don’t do it.

<end rant>

Onward, to more light-hearted material.

M.M. Finck posts on Women Writers, Women’s Books about the querying process and why it’s not just about the query. Thanks to Jamie Raintree (see below) for bringing this to my attention.

Anthony Metivier guest-blogged about how to mine your dreams for story gold on Writers Helping Writers.

Bringing a strong vision to your fiction, by Laura K. Cowan, for Writer Unboxed.

Jamie Raintree asks, how far do we follow our dreams? Since we’ve become acquainted, Jamie’s acquired an agent and is now working on a second novel. I love watching her journey unfold.

Here’s Janice Hardy’s guest post for Anne R. Allen’s blog about how not to start a novel.

Veronica Sicoe follows up last week’s post on how she structures her novels with this one on how she brainstorms an idea into a working concept.

K.M. Weiland continues her negative character arc series with part 2: The negative character arc in the second act.

Whether you’re considering hiring a ghost writer, or becoming one, this post by Roz Morris will answer your questions.

Four reasons to use dramatic irony from Writers Write.

Chuck Wendig gets a mention again for sharing this i09 post about Snowpiercer and its fascinating influence. Yes, it’s a South Korean movie based on a French graphic novel, but it’s still great storytelling.

Xia Jia shares her thoughts on what makes Chinese science fiction, Chinese on Tor.com. Translated by Ken Liu. It’s interesting socio-political stuff.

And if your to-be-read (TBR) pile isn’t big enough yet, here is some recommended reading from TED.

Flavorwire presents the 35 writers who run the literary internet.

As a follow-up to my last week’s posting of the CanLit song, here’s every Canadian novel ever. It’s kind of true. And funny. The Toast.

And that’s it for this week, folks.

Thanks for following, sharing, and all the good stuff you do.