In April of 2018, I published a flash fiction piece on Daily Science Fiction, an awesome site that posts quick stories for Sci-Fi fans every single day. They also pay the writers who submit, which is hard to find for flash fiction these days, and I was incredibly proud to have my story accepted by their editors.

So, you can imagine how it sucks to see it copied. A dear friend of mine gave me a heads up, and I reviewed both stories just in case it might have been a mistake of familiarity, and not actual plagiarism. But, yeah, it is. The writer added more words in, but the sequence of events, some turns of phrase, and the twist at the end (even the final quote) is pirated. No, it’s not word-for-word, but plagiarism takes different forms, the main crux being “to steal and pass off ideas or words of another as one’s own”.

If you’d like to have a look for yourself:

My story “The Farewell” can be found HERE 

Today’s story “Departure” can be found HERE

The saddest part of the whole thing is that in the time it took this person to regurgitate my story, they could’ve written their own. Was it a lack of confidence in their own work that led to this? Did they not feel confident an original piece would get accepted, so they went with something that already had been accepted? We all go through those fits of self-doubt, but the worst thing you can do is trade in your integrity for the quick win. It only leads to a loss for everyone involved.