A Snap Plagiarism

Hint Fiction is, I guess, my baby, and like all babies, you’re supposed to look out for and take care of them, right? So whenever Hint Fiction is mentioned around the Webosphere, I’m usually aware of it. Oftentimes people mention the anthology or might even quote a story from the anthology, but when they do they almost always give proper citation for the author in question. Other times writers post their own Hint Fiction in various places. But never before have I run into a situation like this one, where I came across this tweet last night:

The story looked very familiar, and at first I thought, No way, and then I thought, Maybe? and then I double checked and I thought, Son of a bitch. You see, one of the honorable mentions from the very first Hint Fiction contest (and a story reprinted in the anthology) was a story called “A Snap Decision” by Jamie Felton and it went a little something like this:

Her finger tapped against her teeth. “I don’t think it’s going to work.” He sank slowly underneath the surface. She could still see his eyelashes.

A little different, yes, but not by much. In fact, it’s the line of dialogue that really pushed it over the edge for me. So I sent this tweet:

I knew a blog post about this was coming but wanted to hold off until I got a response. Well, that response came earlier today:

Not really sure why this guy is thanking me, but I responded with this:

No reply yet, and who knows, maybe it was just coincidental or an innocent mistake, but then there came this tweet:

Classy, @tjpitre. Real classy.

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Submissions keep pouring in for the new Hint Fiction contest. A rough estimate shows about 90 stories submitted so far, the majority of which are being sent via the alternative submission form. That’s a lot of submissions considering the contest has only been open for three days! Remember, people, you have until the end of the month to submit, so don’t rush yourselves.