I Owe my Fans and Readers an Apology (UPDATES!)

Hey everyone. Hope you have all had a good new year so far. I'm sorry for not posting any updates lately as I've had so much going on with Christmas, settling into a new job, family illnesses and having to deal with someone who has pretty much made my Christmas holidays clouded with so much unnecessary negativity. It didn't help that I had a number of people approaching me about this and pointed out that the artist had actually written a post about me on his Facebook account.

As a lot of people have already been made aware of, I've had to remove my book from sales due to accusations that I have "stolen artwork" from Nikola Lockertson. I wish to express that I did not remove my book for any form of legal reasons. I had removed the book in an attempt to stop receiving abusive messages and even the odd death threats that I had actually received regarding this incident. I still stand by my statement that as far as I was aware, the artwork used for the cover was public domain as I had done some research on the artwork and could not find any copyrights, watermarks or anything which suggested that it was "owned" by anyone. The person in question, Nikolai Lockertson had indeed approached me regarding the artwork which he does mention to his fans on social media. What he failed to tell his fans however, was that I had asked him if he could provide me with proof of copyrights or anything that would prove he was indeed the artist. He had just sent me a link leading to an artwork sharing site in which his post was four years old at the time. I had come across another post regarding the exact same artwork (from a woman who also claimed to be the owner of the artwork) which was seven years old. With this in mind, I had decided that the best I could do was to offer Nikolai to be listed as the illustrator as I was only a start up writer with practically no money at all. I would have happily shared his links and artwork on my website (with permission of course) just to give him a tiny boost on his fan base. Instead, I had pretty much received a demand of $800. Since I couldn't tell who the "owner" actually was and I though Nikolai's demand was unreasonable, I felt that I had to cut off all communications.

If Nikolai Lockertson was indeed the owner of the artwork in question, he had every right to take legal action against me (as a lot of his fans on his post had suggested) and then I would have happily accepted the consequences and learned from the mistake that he thought I had made. But this "professional and highly established" artist had instead became petty (not my word) and decided to get hundreds of his fans involved and get them to send me (and my fans on my Facebook page) nothing but negative comments. They had also sent me emails, messages on social media and submitted forms on this very website. To make matters even worse, Nikolai's fans decided to belittle my book by giving it one star reviews. I even had someone trying to pose as a lawyer (his name was Colin Doncaster) threatening me with "legal action in 24 hours if I do not remove the book" which I thought was really unprofessional and quite frankly sad considering this was another "established" artist. There were even mentions of my family in the post by Nikolai which had deeply upset me as I'm dealing with multiple family illnesses. I attempted to contact Nikolai directly and request that he stops his "army" from making my life difficult. However, he either didn't receive the message or he simply ignored it. After a while, I had decided to remove the book from sales in the hopes that Nikolai and his fans would leave me alone because I couldn't deal with all of this especially with everything else going on in my life and the fact it was Christmas. I had even been forced to close down my Facebook page which I had actually put money towards which I am not happy about to say the least. Unfortunately though, even after I had took the book down, I was still reading negative comments being made me on Nikolai's post and I was still receiving messages. All of this was a classic case of people jumping onto a bandwagon without even listening to both sides of the story. It was a case of bullying someone smaller because you can't get your own way as Nikolai knew full well that I was tiny in terms of reputation compared to him, yet he decided to bully me (let's face it, it was him who got his fans onto me and therefore it was effectively him bullying me). I know a lot of Nikolai's fans are keeping an eye on pretty much every movement I make (seriously though, get a life). So I ask them and anyone else who reads this:

Why did Nikolai, a so called established, professional and highly renowned artist decide to bully a person who had only just started up as a writer and had no chance of paying loads of money or matching the size of his fan base anytime soon, instead of simply taking legal action?

His actions against me seriously questions whether or not this artist was indeed the true owner or not as he never once took legal action. But of course, as I mentioned before, Nikolai's fans were just jumping onto a bandwagon as they clearly didn't have enough brain power to actually think about how their actions could affect me. Speaking of legal action, I have made sure that every message I had received (especially death threats), the artist's post and all of the comments (which is public before he wants to be petty again and get his "army" onto me again) had all been screenshotted and I am currently in the process of considering if I should take my own legal action as death threats have become involved in this. This is not to say that I will be taking action however because quite frankly, I have enough to deal with right now. I have taken the book down from sales and deleted the artwork (even though I do not think for a single second that I had done anything wrong). I hope Nikolai can stop being petty and unprofessional now and I hope his fans will leave me alone from this point forward.

UPDATE:

With all of that off my chest, I also have great news! I have been in contact with a number of artists about designing my new cover and I'm currently awaiting an artist from Liverpool to send me a number of her designs. This is something I am actually very excited about (mainly because it means Nikolai will hopefully leave me alone now and stop being so arrogant). I am also happy to let you all know that I am currently making preparations to begin my second book. All I am willing to reveal about my next book at this point in time is the title which is "The Man Out of Time". Finally, I will be making a new Facebook page at some point in the future for fans to be kept in the loop. Here's hoping certain people don't belittle it like they did last time.

Take care everyone!