Zed and Kate

Zed Spector# was a diligent contributor to the sites FanFiction.net and archiveofourown.org. He wrote especially about some of the more outlandish and psychopathic side characters from the paranormal and panoramic book series Harry Potter and A Game of Thrones. It actually went very well with that. He had gradually produced dozens of short stories which attracted a small but faithful entourage of readers. With his growing experience, he was able to predict with quite good precision how many reactions a narrative would generate and whether the criticism would be laudatory or denunciatory. One day he came to the idea to send his stories to a number of publishers under a pseudonym, ie. under his legal name, Mark Sparrow. But he never got any response. In his despair, he called one day a publishing house and asked for a clarification. A young editor explained to him patiently that there were already lots of similar stories freely available on the web on the same topics, i.a. by a certain Zed Spector#, and that his short stories were devoid of any originality. Zed got really upset and decided to remove his contributions from the pages of Fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org He also changed the names of his fictional characters and deleted any trace that could link them to the originating stories. He also hired a writing coach online and started entirely from scratch, so to speak, to rewrite and edit his texts. A year later, he emerged as Kate Marlow ESQ., and the stories were now mostly about intimate if inanimate relationships between different genders of the same, opposite or other. He submitted once again his collected works to a number of publishers and this time he seemed to get his hook into something. Two small publishers sent replies and wanted to set up a meeting. Kate became all excited. He hurried to tell his mom about it. After all, he was only fifteen years old at the time, and it meant the world to him, to make her happy and proud. A few weeks later, he began hearing his stories trumpeted on television and radio. This was rather unexpected and almost too much of a good thing. He thought a lot about how this could have eventuated. At first he thought, his PC had been hacked. Later, he thought, a publisher had stolen his works. To this very day, he is not entirely sure. What he does know with great certainty, is, it's difficult to protect ones privacy in the modern world.