Remember Stuart?  He wrote us all to warn everyone what a thief David Byron a.k.a. Iron Dave of Indiana was. 

“I submitted my book to another publisher, they accepted it. Then, I heard some news. My book was on Amazon. But it wasn´t by me…WHAT? I checked it out…the SOB had put MY book onto amazon, but not under my name – under his! One of his many pseudonyms. But my name was on the cover! The idiot hadn’t even changed that, nor the copyright page. My name, still emblazoned on the inside…What a moron he is. I had to get in touch with amazon to block all this, had to prove who I was, that I was the author, etc, etc. fortunately, I had all the documentation. I had to sign an affadavit that I would face prosecution if I had committed purgury. Well, I did all that and eventually the book was withdrawn. I had to change the title of my new book to The Well of CONSTANT Despair. This man is a total shark, a predator. I told P and E all about him, and they have posted a Not Recommended flag against NVH and all of its off-shoots. I’ve never seen my 500 dollars, I never will. So beware. Why the guy hasn’t been shopped to the FBI is beyond me. Maybe some of you guys over in the USA should get him investigated. FBI are good at hunting down scams, con artists and the like. Iron Dave is all of those things and more.”

Stuart did it right.  Hats off to you, friend.

We’re doing it right, too.  Here’s what’s happened so far:

The editor of “Something Wicked” magazine, a true professional (unlike David Boyer a.k.a. David Byron, a.k.a. Leo Wolfe, a.k.a Iron Dave, a.k.a. etc, etc) straightened Dave out.  He put the story under my name and kicked Dave out.

Tyree Campbell, the lion of Sam’s Dot Publishing, posted on his magazine’s forum decrying David’s actions.  I’ve spoken to Tyree Campbell.  He’s a straight up, strongly principled guy who has no use for plagiarism or plagiarists like David Boyer (I’d insert a few more of his aliases, but more on that in another posting- this man has some identity problems).

Ralan, the workhorse magazine listing on the web for writers of dark fiction, has booted rusted Iron Dave off their site.  The people at Ralan were wonderfully professional about the whole thing.
My legal team is drawing up the first round of papers against this creep.  And by the way, it’s all of you that made this possible.  So many people have written us exposing his shyster activities that we have all the ammunition we need.

Booksie has been whacking him down.  More to come there.Piker Press busted him.  More to come there, too.

The mighty Duotrope has taken down his “Darkened Doorways” listing from its site.

And Amazon is in the works.  Serious trouble coming the plagiarist’s way over there.  Publish America and iUniverse are on Monday’s list.  Lulu is studying the case before they get into action. Too big a list to to type out, so more to come!

Thanks so much to all of you in the blogosphere for all of your help with this.  When writers come together, we can really take out the trash.
By the way, I gave David til last Friday to provide me with a list off his various aliases so that all of you could use them to see how many of your own stories he’d stolen.  He wouldn’t do it.  Too bad, Iron Dave.  I would have stopped if you’d confessed all your aliases and jumped in with a list of plagiaries so everyone else could get their stories back.  He sent me a confession and apology,  but wouldn’t give me a complete list of his aliases. 

Bad move, Dave.

So what’s happened to Stuart?  How has he moved beyond David Boyer toward success as a writer?  He deserves a full posting middle of this week and I’m going to give it to him.

This week, I’ll fill you in on how easy it is for real writers to get ahead by shaking off leeches like David and working with honest publishers. 

Stuart will always be a better man than you, David.  He’s a real writer.