The previous post is below and the newest information about the trolling group we are calling the IAK or Indy Author Killer Guild and their activity is listed in many of the comments below. Several fans have been reporting in the worst of the abuses of new Indy Authors releasing their books only to be slammed with nasty reviews. While many of the names are the same, others are not. After being called out or having their nasty reviews pulled, many of the group now seems to be using secondary accounts.

Honestly, I never knew about this until I started writing. I enjoyed going to the facebook LitRPG & GameLIT groups to look for new and interesting titles to check out and read. I didn't realize that there was a group that was trying to get you to only read their stuff and to block everyone else. Now though, I realize that this, unfortunately, is a thing.

Looking at the profile of the people bashing these new writers usually show you either a history of trolling one or two stars review with only a handful of good reviews for their friends or their secondary accounts with only one to three reviews. Due to my calling out these trolls on my own books and pointing them to this blog posting, many of them have started making their profiles private so no one can see their previous trolling activities. 

On my own novels, the accusations of plagiarize that they initially used to attack me has now been replaced by accusations of the misogyny treatment of women, rape, harem relationships, uninteresting story lines, unrealistic characters/relationships and a douche MC that reflects a douche author. It doesn't matter if the posts are accurate to the story or not, what's important is the reduction of the book's rating and their hope to find something that will stop new readers from enjoying the stories. Yeah, that's the funny thing about trolling. Nothing you say has to be true in any way. 

I'm probably making myself more of a target since I encourage fans to point out the trolling group and their activities whenever they can. I also encourage people to talk about it to their friends in the LitRPG community. I also do my best to inform the authors being slammed that these are not fans, but a group of authors, editors and friends who purposely target Indy Authors. Not to mention, I call out the GameLit and LitRPG facebook groups that defend trolling activities. While Aleron Kong had the cajones to remove the questionable negative videos from his LitRPG channel https://www.reddit.com/r/GameLit/comments/a1zpoo/author_and_reviewer_ramon_mejia_banned_from/ many of the other LitRPG and GameLIT groups have not and openly support the negative activities on their channels.

Also, don't be a fan that supports one of the authors they bash. If you say anything, your jumped on by a group of jackals and your post removed. The funny thing, in these channels you are told that activities such as that are not allowed, but they are if your friends with the right moderators and admins. I tend to tell my own fans to not say anything in the social media groups and just voice their preference by leaving reviews on Amazon for the authors they love. 

When you take the groups activities in total, I honest don't understand how anyone could spend their days trolling to the extent that they do. Maybe it's because I'm not a huge social media person. Except for my minor blog and facebook postings, I don't do much in the way of social media for the most part. It something that I have to actually push myself to do since it takes time away from doing creative things like writing and time from my family.

If I were a conspiracy theorist, I would think that these guys are being sponsored to do this as a job for some hidden group. Maybe, there isn't some shadowy organization behind them and they just do this, because trolling others makes them feel powerful. Still, I'd argue in favor of a hidden group being behind this. Otherwise, the amount of time it takes to do what they do on a daily basis doesn't make any sense to me on any other level. 

The only way to fight these people are to make sure you leave reviews for your favorite authors. You taking the time to voice your opinion on Amazon reviews combats their trolling activities and keeps the stories you like coming out in new books. I also hope that at some time the community in general will stop these people's nefarious trolling activities and they'll be called out whenever they start. Maybe that is like wishing on a shooting star, but one can hope people will stand up to this kind of crappy behavior.

Too bad Amazon didn't go after these trolls as they do with any friends or family member of an author that wants to leave an Indy Author a good review. Amazon blocks anything like that nearly 100% but the trolling groups are not even looked at even though such activities are supposed to be against Amazon Communities terms of service.

__________________________the previous post____________________
(These previous reviews were either successfully blocked or were pulled and then were put back reworded with the same stars)
____________________________________________________________

Hey, looks like that small group of LitRPG writers and friends are still going after me with the hate. Check these guys out:
Plagiarized on book 1:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1U5GH5Q98U740/ref=cm_cr_othr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07NBX4ZBS

Plagiarized, same guy on book 4:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R336L0NXTS18NR/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07H35XRLZ

​Plagiarized on book 1:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RK7E863LX9HEB/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07H35XRLZ

Rape, same guy on book 4 but at least he mixed it up somewhat:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R1BKR3OQ01ZG92/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07NBX4ZBS

If you want to make an official complaint to Amazon, you can do that here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us/features-and-services.html​  They take readers' reports better than authors' reports.

Oh, or this one https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/RJMRKQQ7N4SRR/ref=cm_cr_srp_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07NBX4ZBS where Startum is now an emasculate soyboy. What's funny, if you read the rest of the review it contradicts itself.

Who would have thought that they'd pull this against book 1 and book 4? There are a few others doing the hate. Book 1 got a few taps of troll luv too. 

I guess an Indy Writer can't be successful without getting trolling attacks by other authors. It would be helpful to report these people in as the haters they are with that click of a button if you have a moment. The 'Report Abuse' is right under the review ;)

Some, like this one for book one 'Doesn't understand mmorpg's' https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R17XN80MZ1QUDE/ref=cm_cr_getr_d_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B07H35XRLZ are almost funny. At least it would be if it wasn't being used to bash me. 

Anyway, this was their most recent attack has knocked book 1 back down to 4.2 from 4.3 and book 4 from 4.7 to 4.4 I guess people are liking both books just a little too much and they had to try to find a way to stop people from enjoying my series. This is why I'm always asking people to leave a good review whenever you can.

So yes, the outline for book five has been completed. What does that mean, it means I have everything generally laid out that’s going on in the story and can now start writing out the story. I’m not sure how everyone else does it. I’ve been asked what writing method or template I use to sketch out my story line and I’m always like, “What are you talking about?” I don’t use any templates or writing method nor have I ever researched them. Honestly I’m not interested in anything like that.
 
My perspective for the story comes from two places. First, I picture how the scenes would look from the perspective of watching a movie. If the action or scenes aren’t interesting to me if I were watching it as a film, then I need to change it around. Second, I’m playing a video game. No really, I’m mentally playing the best video game I’ve ever played. Sometimes I’m just as surprised about what happens as the reader. While a non-gamer wouldn’t understand that, you gamers do. The whole thing with Fylreh was a complete surprise. How things fell together once Helgath became my soulmate, all a freaking surprise. I was stunned and amazed at how that brought the entire story together. Cough … cough … kissing Fylreh and having a centaur girlfriend … Yeah that was a total surprise. When I wrote it, I just pictured what my friends would say to me the next day if they saw the stream and that’s how the whole chat came out. Would Hefe had really sent a pink shot? Yes, yes he would have and everyone else’s reaction would have been the same. Domenic and I laugh about our friends antics as we discuss the story. I just remembered that’s one I have to share with him since he hasn’t made it to book four yet.
 
Anyway, my outline is what keeps me focused and on track for the story. I had a little bit more of an issue this time getting into my mental ‘outline mode’ and kept trying to write the story. Finally, at midnight last night, I just said to myself. “Stop writing the story and write the god forsaken outline.” I got a good ways through and stopped at 2 AM and then woke up and finished this morning. Yeah, now that I have the outline finished, I’ll be going back to a 5 to 6 AM schedule to start writing and probably stop somewhere in-between midnight and 2 AM. I have no idea how long the story itself will be until the characters and scenes start building. Then, I’ll misjudge everything like usual. I like how the outline looks and think it’s going to be an excellent story. Not as creative in some ways as book four and it will be ugly in a different way than the last story.
 
While it might be somewhat upsetting to people, it’s a part of the story. PKers are not nice to real people which means they are even uglier to people they think of as ‘cardboard cutouts’ for their enjoyment. I’ve noticed and have heard that several writers in our genre have been treating NPCs in the game that have full thought process and feelings as nothing but tools to be used and thrown away. I find that quite unsettling to be honest. It’s not just a reflection of an ugly soul, it’s the same perspective a serial killer when they’re looking at their victims. The good thing, it shows just how ugly people can be and fits into the brutality of my world perfectly.
 
From my abusive childhood, my time in the service in various third world countries and even my trips now, I’ve seen a lot of the horror regular people can do to one another. I’ve also seen a lot of the beauty caring people bring into the world and how simple kindness can change someone’s life. Gaming tends to be a microcosm of the world. You see the good, the bad and the ugly sides of people in the micro-virtual universes we call MMORPGs. The whole Syndicate story is directly taken from my own in-game experiences in the past. Most of my situations are taken directly from our game play. So, to you griefing asshats and writers who uncaringly treat their NPCs like slaves and cardboard cutouts, thanks for making my world that much real and a reflection of reality.
 
Ugh, I meant to put Eric’s plug in before the NPC story. I had no idea how much editing cost and have never looked into purchasing professional editing for my series. I knew I simply didn’t have any money for the cost of paying for a professional editor. While getting attacked by jealous writers was somewhat unsurprising, what did surprise me was how many editors got nasty and basically gave me bad reviews as a way of promoting their services. Eric looked it up and found a good article: https://mirandamarquit.com/how-should-you-charge-for-freelance-editing/ 
 
Basically, just checking for misspelled words is a minimum of $7 per page. If you want grammar correction or straightening out the story you’re talking a starting price of $11 to $20 per page. Seriously, what Indy Writer could possibly afford that? That professional writers charging $16.99 for their books slam Indy Writers for grammar and spelling when they are selling their books for only $2.99 is pretty ridiculous. We all do the best we can and if not for the fans of The World series, the books wouldn’t be in the good shape they are in now. That’s because, no matter how hard I try, I suck at finding spelling errors. Luckily, I get visits from editors who like to point out glaring errors on levels or points which I gladly apply immediately. I’ll take a bad review to make the correction any day of the week. Anyway, Eric is quite affordable and he’s open to helping people if your story is interesting for an affordable price. Here is his email: totenliste@yahoo.com if you’re interested. While he’s not an expert, your get more for your money working with him, trust me on that. It’s the least I can do for all the volunteer work he’s done on my series.
 
Also, I picked up the Discord chat client. I’m suggest emailing me ahead of time if you want to drop me a line at jasonacheek@gmail.com because I’m somewhat careful about my contacts. For those of you who know my job, you also understand the reason. I’m pretty easy to talk with albeit not that I have a lot of time if I want to have any hope to get book five out in a decent time. Anyway, with that said, here is my Discord chat contact information: JasonACheek#7422
 
Lastly, thank you for all of the support. The last few days is the first time I’ve kept my 4.3 star rating on book one without it being pulled back down to 4.1 or 4.2 stars from trolls. I can’t thank everyone enough for the support and know that book four, five and six which are mostly already planned out would have never seen the light of day without your support.

​Finally I got Book Four out. What a great feeling to finally have it available for everyone to read. This was the first time I’d ever made a deadline for my writing and then completely blew it on making the date. Eric, who was beta reading and helping me with corrections, just laughed every time I told him I was nearly finished, since he knew where my story was ending at and didn’t see how I’d possibly make it in just a few weeks and then days. Every few days I’d send him thirty document-sized pages for him to correct and give me feedback on the story. Seriously, it was the first time I’d ever gotten regular feedback like that while writing. Steven, another fan, gave me a lot of help too on the beta reading and kept me cheered up whenever the jealous writers would decide to knock my book down whenever the ratings reached 4.3.
 
It’s almost like clockwork. This time it took a day and a half before it showed up, but whenever my book one reaches 4.3 stars, I get a few writers and/or editors that smack me with two or three one or two star reviews with some outlandish blah of hate. One of the last ones made a comment that was “If Mr. Cheek could stop jerking himself off long enough to learn how to write an interesting character” or my other favorite “Doesn't understand mmorpg's.” You’d think blatant nasty comments would go against Amazon’s guidelines (which it does) but unfortunately they’re not usually enforced? It’s also one of the reasons I usually ask people to leave some love for book one. I think they choose 4.3 as the magic number because that’s when the star’s pictures goes from looking like 4 stars to 4 ½ stars.
 
!!!POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT FOR BOOK 4!!!
 
Some of the feedback I’ve received in reviews from book four have been somewhat different than what I expected for a few of the scenes. It’s almost like people think that Tavon and Star’s companions slept together or that Star and Fylreh slept together in the story but that never happened. The joke with Tavon getting drunk and horny and the women being shocked but in a funny way goes back to some of the old LAN party stuff that has happened to my friends and me. Where someone would pull up some porn and people would be like wtf or we’d be in the country at a farm of one of our friends when one of the farm animals start to go to town on their mate or at a party where someone’s dog start to get horny or hump each and the jokes and slight embarrassment sometimes that come up from such raw nature. I wanted to capture that reaction where people laugh it off as being just normal. I think some people’s imagination took a few of the scenes to the next level and one that wasn’t there by some of the comments.
 
The situation with Startum and Fylreh is another story altogether. Their drunken make-out session goes back to any party where you and the girl you were interested in were making out hot and heavy and then shocked the next morning when you’re faced with the reality of what you did. Or, in Star’s case, where he was trying to help Fylreh and she was blitzed out of her mind and getting all handsy with Startum. There was no one ‘taken advantage of’, although sometimes it seems like two people can’t make innocent mistakes in today’s day and age without one of them now getting in trouble. If your both young, your both innocent and you both get a little tipsy. Who’s at fault the next morning when you realize you were sucking face with someone you didn’t expect to? Now don’t make this innocent comment into a bigger issue than it was. We’re not discussing some of the bad stuff that can and do happen. This is really about that simple mistake that can sometimes occur between two people that respect and like each other. That was Fylreh’s and Startum’s first kiss.
 
Interesting enough, they both end up deciding to explore a relationship together from mutual respect. At the end of the book, a stupid fight pops up and they’re both left heartbroken. Another common thing that we’ve all been through. Some people think it’s because he’s naked with Helgath, but that is not the case. In the story, everyone was naked for the majority of the end part of the story that the nudity at that point is inconsequential due to the general horror of the situation. Besides, Fylreh doesn’t have an issue with nudity in general, specifically with Helgath or that they’re bathing together. Her issue with Helgath is that she has some Orc blood in her veins. This is because, in my story, the Centaur’s ‘Racial Enemies’ are Orcs. In Dungeons and Dragons, races sometimes simply hate other race that is their designated ‘racial enemy’ to the point where they blindly hate them and will even attack whether the person themselves are good or bad.   
 
For Fylreh and Startum to continue having a relationship, Fylreh is going to have to learn to look at Helgath as an individual and not as an Orc. I brought this up to reflect some of what I see happening in our society today. It seems like more and more people are choosing to hate other people just because of their color, culture, age or race. Instead of using their own mind to judge the individual actions as just or unjust, they are simply hated due to no fault of a person’s birth. For me, this is something that is an atrocious concept and one I wanted to address in the story.
 
Lastly, Startum only actually has sexual relations once in the story and that is with Keela. It doesn’t quite work for either one of them and they part as friends and companions. Companions being a term used for NPCs that have attached themselves to a player in the game. That doesn’t mean Fylreh and he doesn’t get hot and heavy here and there but there is no other sex going on with our intrepid adventures in book four. From some people’s comments, they think the bathing scene where Fylreh and Startum fight over Helgath is about him messing around for easy sex. That was not the scene and is something that he even says that’s not even an option for him at this time. He’d never disrespect Fylreh like that even if Helgath would be more than willing. Even the end of the book where they all fall asleep together isn’t about sex or nudity. It is about commiserating the emotional pain that they’re sharing from Startum due to their soulbound connection and his heartbreak over Fylreh.
 
Another two characters that came out better than I’d initially thought they would were Hollysharp and Helgath. Both immediately took on a life of their own. Hollysharp, I got the motivation for her character when I saw this picture http://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1512248027780.jpg , just is so powerful of a personality that she literally took over parts of the story. Being in the Information Technology field and being a tech’s tech, I fit her character around many people I work with and a touch of my own personality. I’m usually the guy that focuses on getting the mission done and speaks directly about the issue without putting fault on people. Albeit, Hollysharp has no issues laughing at people who don’t know what she knows. Another thing that is common in the tech field and something that I’ve suffered through with my coworkers. Sometimes in the story, I wanted to punch her for being such a hard ass when I put myself into Startum’s shoes as I told the story but after a while you can’t help but love the feisty engineer.
 
Helgath was another surprising character. She really took on a life of her own and I loved the mating rune that I came up with for connecting her with Startum. It made so many parts of the story just work on so many levels. Also, there is this sweet innocence and cold blooded killer about her that is so endearing. Yeah, I know. It's a strange combination but one that really seems to work. I got some motivation for her character from here https://www.pinterest.de/pin/449093394088082015/ There is no sexual relations between them at this time but they have a solid connection after everything they went through together so far. Her painful life and what she finds with Startum also speaks to me from the things I have suffered through, so altogether she really speaks to me. More so then I thought she would when I created her.

UPDATE: Book 4 is here: https://www.amazon.com/Helping-Friend-World-Book-4-ebook/dp/B07NBX4ZBS/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1549095027&sr=8-12&keywords=jason+cheek 
Amazon for some reason didn't attach it to my author's page. I've sent an email in but will contact them as soon as they are open. This is the usual Amazon fun whenever I publish. 

So, the ebook has been uploaded for book four, but Amazon says anywhere between now and 72 hours and it will be available for download.

The paper book is a whole nother story that I'm working to get uploaded now. I'm having a slight issue with the cover that I have to work through to get everything uploaded. Basically it is too big and the template is freaking out.

So last night I was going through all of the corrections Eric sent me and dozed off a few times in the process since it was after midnight. I think I fell asleep around 2 AM and then said, "Alrighty then, I guess I really need to just call it and hit the sack." I started off bright and early at 6 AM and got ended up having to go through about a 120 pages of corrections because I found a mistake where I dozed off and just pasted over a paragraph. Yeah, that sucked. I didn't see anything that stood out on my second look at those last 120 pages so hopefully it's alright.

It comes out to 769 pages on the paper book template, albeit 20 of those are Character sheets, Startum's gear, character lists for everyone in the story (there are a lot of people) and the glossary. Otherwise the story itself is about 749 (minus the map and authors note). I did go ahead an address some questions that have come up about AI fair treatment, Armor and Startum's perchance for looking at beautiful women. 

Please understand, Startum is a guy in his early twenties. He likes women, he finds them beautiful and he enjoys seeing that beauty. There is nothing wrong with finding someone desirable, pretty or sexy. In my experience, women do this the same as men. Enjoying beauty is not judging the worth of a person or their capability. How you treat those people though is important. In Startum’s case, you have a first row seat to his every thought. 

The one great thing about video games is that there are no differences between the sexes, age or races. Men and woman are absolutely equal on all levels. It is your choice of starts, your choice of class, how you distribute your stats and how you treat others in the game that is important.

Anyway, so while there are thank yous to those that have put in time helping to send me corrections in the 'A note from the author.' There are a couple thoughts on issues that have been brought up in some reviews that I wanted to address. 

Anyway, I couldn't be more thrilled to have gotten the book out. I've been pushing myself to get the book out as quickly as I could while doing my best to keep the story something that I can be proud of and hopefully everyone likes. The World is a violent place with some pretty terrifying monsters. 

A couple other thoughts is that anyone who has a Nightmare start will be dogged continuously by the game. The game will continually give Nightmare players harder monsters and situations then other players will face. Startum though is used to being hammered inside games and through a means of strategy, tactics and treating the NPCs he meets right, he finds innovate ways to get thought the many challenges he faces. 

Anyway, while there is a lot of stuff I'd like to talk about in the story, I know I'm starting to ramble since it's once again past 2 AM and I'm still trying to get this paper back book uploaded. So, I'm going to call the rambling for now. Looking forward to hearing from everyone.

Okay, there is some work that needs to be done but the rough draft is finished. I have a day's worth of corrections to make that Eric has been sending me but I've left alone until I got to this point. I just sent him the final draft for him to correct and to let me now if I kept the ending good or not. Eric and Steven both get to let me know if I goofed up the enjoyment of the story too. So far I've been hitting it they both say, but there is so much that I have to bring together at the end between the fighting, crafting and world building that it's a lot. Once the book is out, I can start talking about some of the fun stuff coming down the line.

Honestly, I can't wait to get everyone's feed back on the story. My wife's friend has been telling me the last few times she's seen me that I look run down and tired. I have to truthfully say that doing a nine to five job forty hours a week and then writing until one or two o'clock in the morning and getting up at five thirty in the morning to get some more writing in takes its toll on you. But then, once I see the finished result of all that hard work and hear how much everyone loves the story, it makes all the work worth it.

Basically book four is almost two and a half books long. I'm just shy of that 210,000 word mark. So there is a LOT of story. I just added the first character sheet and equipment spam at the end which increased the word count by another three and a half thousand words. I'm so happy I didn't put that in throughout the story. I only added it to the end for those who were interested. It would have been annoying as hell otherwise. I think in the future I'll put one in at the beginning and one in at the end.

Tomorrow is one of my seventeen hour work days for my real IT job. So figure Wednesday I'll get the corrections in. I might or might not get the cover finished. I have to hunt down the area where I forgot to add three levels to every zombie I raised. That's going to be annoying as hell, but doable. I'm sure people will point out the mistake if they see any. 

Once that is done, I should be able to upload it to Amazon and get it published. That can take anywhere from four to seventy-two hours.  

Seriously, I apologize about completely blowing my guestimate for when the book would be out. I'd such high hopes on getting it out before Christmas, but now I realized that was never going to happen. Even today, I probably wrote out another thirty thousand words to make my own personal deadline for today. Every time I'd write something I discover there was a whole depth of the character interaction and story that just added to everything. I couldn't skip forward, I had to tell the story as it was. I hope everyone enjoys it.

I've been a little nervous about posting too much on my blog or facebook due to the group of writers who've been hounding me and trying to block my stories on Amazon and Audible. The one thing that has stopped them are the fans who have enjoyed the story and saw through their lives. Thank you. I'll start posting new updates online now.   

It looks like I'm not going to make my before Christmas deadline for book four. I'm currently on the last dungeon on the last day but the holidays are kicking my butt on getting the story finished up and out. The good news is that a fan named Eric is correcting the story along with his beta reading and so far he's been an excellent editor. Also the cover is finished. All that I need to do is finish up the story and the book will be released a day or two after. A nice bonus, is that instead of being 88k to 90k words, the story is much longer and will probably be closer to two books instead of one. 

I'm still working hard to get the story out as soon as possible. While Christmas looks to be out, I'm hoping to get the story about before the end of the year. From the feedback I've been getting, the story is excellent and carries on the same fun theme and camaraderie as the first three books. 

Being an American living in Germany during the holiday season means that I've been busy baking and cooking up a storm for the family. For some reason, I'm the only one that can bake American cookies for the holidays as per my wife and daughter. Two weeks ago, I spent the weekend baking cookies and writing. A surprisingly good combination. For the day after Xmas, I've been asked to cook a traditional Turkey dinner with sweet potato casserole, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, butternut squash and homemade gravy. That'll be another day lost to the holidays instead of writing ;)  

Xmas markets are also a big thing in Germany, so I keep getting dragged out for Apple punch and gluhwein. While the fair food is delicious, I'm the frozen Florida boy shivering in the cold while everyone else is talking and eating happily. 

Several emergencies at work reared it's ugly head and I had nearly two back-to-back nineteen hour workdays of tracking down computer issues. My job means that everything is either working correctly or completely fubar. There's not really much in-between. Those days usually means I need another two to fully recover to start writing again. Not that I take a full two days, but no matter how hard I try, they do slow down my output if you know what I mean. 

Lastly, I was also doing the final checks needed to get book one's audiobook released. I've just gave the final approval for the completed work so in the next few days the audiobook for First Login should be showing up. Jason Hill did an excellent job and he's starting on book two. While that's awesome, it also stole more time from me that was needed to complete book four. 

Anyway, I'm doing my best to get the final part written so I can publish the story. Sorry for making everyone wait, but hopefully it won't be too long. In-between, I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas with their families and loved ones. 

I finally got around to finally doing a map for The World. This is currently where everyone has first logged in, but as the weeks go by new areas will be being opened up until the entire world is released.

For now, I thought this was a good visual for the storyline and gives everyone an idea of where everyone is currently playing at. I'll be uploading the map in all of the books.

I just updated it to reflect the newest changes released in The World.

Around November 14th, 2018 I first heard of LitRPGPodcast and his review on my book and accusations of plagiarism from one of the Podcasters ex-fans. He’d read my book after hearing all of the controversy and then discovered that it didn’t match up to the review. The podcaster in question is a LitRPG author that runs a podcast where he gives his thoughts on the worth of new LitRPG titles entering the market. No conflicts of interests there, I’m sure he keeps a very fair perspective for his audience whenever he reviews new titles whether or not he allows any negative comments to stay on his videos. Anyway, I found out later that week that there was an actual breakdown of all of the types of ways my book was a copy of Ascend Online. While the podcaster makes it sound very dastardly, if you sit back and reflect on any other books within the LitRPG genre and how those same comments could be used almost across the board it makes you question his story. I will say he does bring up one point that did make me think. The term was Military Conditioning and the brief description of the racial skill is the same as in Ascend Online.
 
At first, I honestly couldn’t think of how that could be in any way similar. When I go back and look at when the book was written, it was October. When I look to see when I read Ascend Online, it was November. Both are documented in my blog from that time and now from a screenshot of my download history of Ascend Online. But, if that’s the case, then where could the term have come from? As soon as I heard the accusation, I changed the racial trait to something else. I didn’t want to have anything that could be misconstrued as taking someone else’s terminology.
 
Gaming terminology, it’s a funny thing. Character Sheets, Intelligence, Strength, Wisdom, Agility, Spirit, Luck, Leeching Weapons, Fire balls, Frost blasts, Goblins, Raiders, Orcs, Gnolls, Elves, the list goes on and on of what we are allowed to use. These terminology that we’ve taken from MMORPGs, from Dungeons and Dragons and other writers we use without a second thought. I sometimes wonder what the creators of D&D would say about that? I wonder what The Lord of the Rings author would say to the casual use of his fantasy creations? I wonder what Play to Win author, the Father of LitRPG, would say about his terms being used without his consent? Yes, I would have to say every LitRPG author has borrowed multiple terms from the Play to Win series whether they admit it or not. What would the numerous game developers say as we borrow their quest and mission formats? I’m sure it’s all okay. We twist those terms for our own use, right? Nothing wrong there. Also, they’ve been used so much, it’s hard to point the finger as to where they come from and each game has them.
 
I expect I had Physical Conditioning as the skill previously. A Military term you hear from soldiers in the morning chow hall line and is common in the Military. Coming back to my series to finish book three and do the corrections for the whole series two years later, I’m sure I saw the term Physical Conditioning and decided to change the trait to Military Conditioning. How could I come up with such a terminology? Good question, I mean I’ve only worked overseas for the Department of Defense for nearly a decade. I’m also an ex-soldier. Terms like Physical Conditioning, Military Standards, Military Regulations, Military Code of Conduct, Training Standards and yes Military Conditioning are not unknown to me. These are all common military jargon that I hear inside and outside of work on a regular basis.
 
Could it be possible that I’d read the term in Ascend Online and had used it two years later when I was going through making my corrections and tweaks? It’s quite possible. If so, there was no conscious intent to ‘borrow’ the term. More likely it comes from the normal day-to-day military jargon and I just was like, ‘hmm that sounds better’ and made the change without thinking it was a gaming term used in another person’s novel I’d read nearly two years earlier. Some might say the text is the same as the skill in Ascend Online, but having a low percent increase of defensive and hit points for a military culture is not uncommon in gaming. Similar to having an increase in intelligence and spell power/magic affinity is for a wizard culture or having bonuses in agility and concealment/stealth for a thieving society. Seriously there are so many across the board I could go on for quite a while. Not a new trope in any way.
 
My social media attackers would have you think that because I use the term, my entire book must be plagiarized from Ascend Online. It’s obvious, right? Not really. There is a difference between using a gaming term and plagiarizing another person’s book, world or characters. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a LitRPG genre nor would there be so many people leaving reviews that the accusation of plagiarism are wrong or so greatly exaggerated as to hold no merit. Many of these readers have clearly stated that they have read both series. They say this because they do not have an agenda unlike the small group writers in the same genre attacking me. Theses reviewers say that the stories are quite different and are no more similar than any other LitRPG story is to one another. The use of a racial term is just that, a gaming / military term. A fopa of a new writer? Possibly. The witch hunt this has been turned into? Hardly.
 
Even my attackers will say it’s probably a new writer’s fopa. For a group that is supposed to be accepting of new writers and one I was invited into to post my first LitRPG novel, it seems like their reaction wasn’t one of acceptance and helping a new writer traverse the rapids of being an indie writer. There was ‘no, hey you need to do such and such or this will be an issues.’ There was no path available for a simple, ‘Wow I didn’t notice that, sorry. I’ll change that to not cause any problems and thanks for the heads up.’ It was simply, you used this term with some additional fluff added and said I plagiarized someone else’s entire story which was then spammed out onto every possible media channel available to them. 
 
I am not a social media expert. I rarely go on Facebook unless I get a message that someone is trying to contact me. I don’t have my own podcast. I do write my blog off and on and it gets uploaded to Facebook, but it’s mainly as a way to document my own experiences as an Indie Writer that will hopefully help others. Also, it’s a way now that I hear from new fans. That’s a new experience for me that has only truly began with the release of my new series.
 
Now that the other methods that have been tried to block my books have failed, I am being attacked by the same people on the LitRPG community sites. Why did those other methods fail? Because a gaming term is not plagiarizing someone else’s entire story no matter what my attackers would have you believe. Now though anything I say in the LitRPG groups is immediately laughed at and twisted around to change its meaning. Any defenders are immediately shouted down. Do I go hunting each different thread down to expound upon my innocents? Would it matter what I say to a group of people who are bullying me online or IRL even if what I say is true? Is there a chance to lose your temper and say something stupid that will just make the situation worse? I’m sure there is. I’ve already did it once and had to apologize to the man from Alternate Realities.
 
To be honest, I can’t stomach drama or flame wars. It’s not my thing. I just want to write, do my 9 to 5 job and take care of my family. For those of you who are on the outside of the drama, I only ask that you keep an open mind and make your own decision. Lastly, I’m not a fan of bullies which is a major focus of my series. I doubt that most of you are either. Judge for yourself at how this is being handle and ask yourself is this something that seems right to you? Is this how you want your LitRPG community to act towards new writers entering the genre? Or is this reminiscent of what you’d see in High School with a bunch of seniors bullying a skinny freshman entering High School for the first time who makes a social blunder that is then blown out of proportion?

This will my last blog on the topic. 

I want to thank all of the fans of my work for the positive reviews, Facebook comments and blog comments stating that they didn't see the plagiarism and that the similarities weren't anything other than writing in a specific genre.

I'm sure the hate coming from the LitRPGSociety and Luke Chmilenko won't stop, but by now that's par for the course. Simply reading book one will prove the accusations wrong. It still sucks that they can do something like that without evidence. Just a group of friends complaining against an new Indie Author that they want to shut down. I guess the opposite is true. 

Thank you for all of those who addressed the issue directly and spoke the simple truth with eyes unclouded by hate or greed. 

(My response to LitRPGPodcasts' critique is at end)

​​I honestly never been one to listen to Podcasts. I’m usually too busy reading or working. Maybe it’s just my age. I don’t mind catching a video here and there on YouTube but I’m not interested in listening to podcasters regularly. So it was interesting when I had a new fan contact me about something that was upsetting him with my book. He said he regularly listened to LitRPGPodcasts where he’d seen my book series lambasted for plagiarism. It’s here for those who are interested https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ4Pm2uySNk&feature=youtu.be  What upset this LitRPG fan was that after deciding to pick up my book to see what the hubbub was about, he discovered that what LitRPGPodcasts was saying were straight up lies. This was the second time I’d heard of LitRPGPodcasts.
 
The first time was five minutes of posting my new book, First Login, where was assaulted by Dave Willmarth and his buddies: LitRPGPodcast, Adam Shook and A Man of no Consequence. My back cover’s description looked like a similar plotline to Ascend Online and so they accused me of blatant plagiarism and fifteen minutes later I had nasty reviews left on Amazon and Goodreads. Funny how that is. LitRPGPodcast sounds almost legit if you read his post, but even with my amazing reading speed, I can’t read a three hundred and thirty-eight paged book within fifteen minutes. Two hours after that I was banned from LitRPG.
 
You’d think the story would be over there. These guys went to my freshly published book and dropped the ratings down to one star. Who would bother to take a second look at my story after that? Funny enough, the answer to that is quite simple. Since I’m an Indie Writer doing everything by myself, I’m slow. It took me a couple weeks to get everything lines up on Amazon, the blog, Goodreads, Facebook, the actual self-publishing process … you get what I mean. Well, during that time a number of readers found the series and started reading it from Goodreads. There were all kinds of four and five star ratings and these people also left their reviews on Amazon.
 
Surprisingly enough, there were a number of people coming from the LitRPGSociety site to check out the story and the controversy these guys made about my book. Before I knew it, readers where battling against these corporate lapdogs and telling them that their accusations were straight-up wrong. Before I knew it my stars were up to four on Amazon for book one and nearly five starts for the other two books in the series. There was a straight up battle between angry writers and editors against LitRPG fans. Guess who won out in the end? My stars were 4.1 and then Luke and his buddies came up with a new tactic. Get my book to be pulled by claiming the book was Luke’s creation and not mine. The only way for me to battle that with Amazon is to have a completed copyright application. So that’s where it’s at now. I am looking for other options on what I can do but everything takes time.
 
Let me retract this next part. I'd initially clicked on a LitRPG group that suddenly brought me into Alternative Realities Publishing (https://alternativerealitiespublishing.wordpress.com/) I don't have any screenshots. At the time, I thought there was a connection between Alternative Realities Publishing and GreatLitRPG, LitRPG, LitRGPsociety, LitRPG Group, LitRPG Podcast groups. I was wrong. Please accept my apology.

 At the same time, I began getting blog posts and messages about other Indy Writers who had the same experiences. That they were banned as soon as they posted their work on the Facebook groups. I even heard that the authors associated with LitRPG tried to ban anyone else from writing within the genre even though they hadn’t started the genre in the first place. It makes me wonder if the invite to these Facebook LitRPG groups is a way for existing authors to knock down any new works that are coming out that could challenge their own works’ success. 
 
If you listen to the LitRPGPodcasts it sounds like I’m a terrible guy. Stealing ideas, copying and pasting parts straight from another author’s series into my book. Hell, by LitRPGPodcasts’s own words the first half of the book is basically Luke’s story copied and pasted into another book. Only the tail end of the novel has any new content. Too bad my overall writing is so atrocious. Unoriginal and a blatantly plagiaristic. Wow, if I heard all of that I’d hate that person too. Sounds like a downright nasty individual. While LitRPGPodcasts makes up a good story, that’s what it is … a made-up story. It couldn’t be further from the truth which was what this ex-fan of LitRPGPodcasts was so angry about. That was the point he was trying to explain to me. He felt betrayed by someone he thought was on the up and up on giving reviews. It made me wonder how many other new writers felt the lash of LitRPGPodcasts’ forked tongue?   
 
It’s easy to say, the hero was protecting a group of NPCs in the wilds against Goblins Raiders, like it’s some great secret plot point. If that were simple plagiarizing a story, then Luke and so many other LitRPG authors would be at fault for plagiarizing Brent Roth’s Dragon Wrath, Aleron Kong’s The Land and D.Rus’ Play to Win series. Goblins Raiders, Goblins Scouts, Goblin Warriors, Goblins Shamans, there all there in those earlier works. The plot of Goblin Raiders, protecting a group of NPCS in the wilds, that’s the same situation in Dragon Wrath and The Land. If we go any broader, everything in LitRPG would be a copy of D.Rus’ work. Let’s not even discuss things like MMORPG, computer game titles, Dungeon & Dragons or the Lord of the Ring or none of us would be able to write. These have all come before and have every single one of these story concepts? It’s like saying you had a detective protecting his family from the bad gangsters or a crime fighter combating evil on the streets. These things are plot points to a storyline, they’re not plagiarism. Plagiarism is the stealing the exact world, the exact characters or copying and pasting text. How you use these familiar plot points to build a story is where being a good writer comes into play.

Don’t take my word for it. Here I’ll add in the many Amazon reviews, Facebook posts, Blog comments and even emails that I’ve received. These are just the ones that are disputing the plagiarism. Makes you wonder where LitRPGPodcasts is getting their information from? There are even more as times go by. I just won't continue updating here but you can see them for yourself on Amazon

An additional update: I was reading some of the LitRPGPodcast criticisms. It's funny, they sound good until you reverse them around:

1. Use of a female NPCs that the character meets in-game. On Luke's side it is a goddess that chooses the mc as a her golden children to fight a war against the goddess of death and destruction. On my story, Startum meets and NPC trainer that shows him how to use the controllers of the game as he goes through training sessions to be able to play, since his nightmare start gets no in game auto help.

2. Use of game messages. If we were using game messages, quests or damage meters as the line for plagiarism there would be no LitRPG other than D.Rus' Live to Play series, who happens to be the Father of All LitRPG. 

3. MC being sent into the wild to protect a group of NPCs. In First Login, it's a game element for every Nightmare chosen start. In Luke's it's a 'god touched my life and I am her champion.' Now interesting enough, this story element is in many LitRPG authors' books before Luke published his. We're not even talking about Dungeon & Dragons which that is a main focus of so many of their games and don't forget MMORPG. Like I said, sounds good until you truly look at the comment.

4. The use of Military Conditioning. If this equated to plagiarism of half my book by the use of two words, it's an easy fix. Boom gone. Simple change of word hurts nothing in my story and now it's 100% unique. Doesn't alter my story at all. Think about that though for just one moment. You used two similar words so you've copied my entire work. Is the world the same? No. Is the virtual world the same? No. Are the characters or their interactions the same? No. No turn this around, if using Goblin Raider, or quest updates and etc were put to Luke's works. That would be plagiarism huge. But no, LitRPGPodcasts only shines the light in one direction.

5. LitRPGPodcasts said that they contacted me asking me asking me to make changes. There was never any contact. No email. Just an accusation of plagiarism in a review on book one that said your whole use of having the mc protect a group of NPCs against Goblins Raiders is plagiarism. Remove it and I'll take away my negative review. My comments to the link were ignored after that. 

6. Lastly, several fans messaged me that they commented on this link. It was the only way I found out there was a link. Their arguments and questions against his broad brush of hate were removed quickly. No sense allowing people view any negative feedback on the video. Even funnier, after talking to several fans and double checking with them, they can see their negative review but no one else can. They're invisible to anyone else viewing the video. Five stars there on professionalism LitRPGPodcasts. Good job on being a bunch of douchebags.  

Here is what has been sent to me so far and more are coming. What I see:

What has been removed:

Another fan, Jeff D will be sending me his proof. Nice huh? Want to find the truth out yourself, simply view the link. Do you see Anja, John D or Vanessa? If not, ask yourself what other shenanigans are in LitRPGPodcasts' reviews?

Here is your ex-fan Jeff's review that you hide from everyone:

Unbelievably enough, you did leave one person's negative review up but that was after she called you out for hiding all of the reviews before her.