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On my own novels, the accusations of plagiarize that they initially used to attack me has now been replaced by accusations of the misogyny treatment of women, rape, harem relationships, uninteresting story lines, unrealistic characters/relationships and a douche MC that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: [email protected] 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 [email protected] 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.