We’ve all heard the saying that there are no new stories. And I’d say most of us are familiar with the notion that two entirely different people in totally different places can come up with the same idea entirely independently. Look at Newton and Leibniz. I don’t think anybody ever settled which one of them invented calculus first.
So this morning I’m making my daily check of Barnes and Noble to see if they’ve posted Forsaken By Shadow (they haven’t), and I see the same three ebooks that I’ve been seeing for the last two weeks. Except today I actually happened to skim the summaries of those ebooks. And I see this:
Kidnapped and mind-wiped by the Shadow Walkers’ greatest nemesis…
Wait, what?
So I read the full description of the book, Forsaken Talisman by Ashleigh Raine, which was published in 2009 by Samhain.
Kidnapped and mind-wiped by the Shadow Walkers’ greatest nemesis, Skylar has no memories of her own, except for her name. All she knows is what memories she does possess belong to someone else—as does her face—and that she can’t trust anyone, including herself.
Shadow Walker Dusty Clements goes against direct orders to rescue Skylar and take her into hiding. It’s the only way to get to the truth, and keep her out of the hands of an enemy who could use her to wipe out the entire organization. The last complication Dusty needs is to fall for her.
As Dusty and Skylar work to uncover the secrets of her past, they discover a mystery more than twenty years in the making, and a love they can’t deny.
The enemy has one more trick up his sleeve though—a magical kiss capable of probing the deepest secrets of the mind. All he needs to bring the Shadow Walkers down is to get his lips on Skylar one more time…
So clearly not my story. And probably not even similar, though I felt compelled to at least download the sample to look. I also felt compelled to go Google Shadow Walkers (which I totally made up on my own, thank you very much). The top results were several sites about a movie of that name, a definition from Urban Dictionary, a World of Warcraft reference, and several references to some other RPG.
I don’t think anybody is going to think I randomly stole her idea (because I didn’t). I don’t think there are any similarities other than the name itself. But it freaked me out that another book mentioning Shadow Walkers comes up on the search for the title of MY book.
5 thoughts on “No New Stories?”
I hate when that happens. And by that I mean finding something even remotely close to an idea I totally (read: idiotically) thought would be unique to me. Even if said remote closeness is all in my head because I’m kind of a spazz that way.
I saw that too but as it wasn’t yours I didn’t check it out further.
It doesn’t sound like your story at all! Did you find out why she called them Shadow Walkers? Cos I loved your explanation of the feat/phenomenon/skill 🙂
This is why i try my darndest, when doing research, to stick to dull textbooks and non fiction – I’m afraid that if I start reading fiction set in my era, I’ll subconsciously pick up tone, dialogue, what have you. After I finish the novel though, and know it’s all mine – then I like reading the fiction, to see if I got anything wrong or to see if there’s more I could do, in the editing phase.
I’m pretty sure the notion of shadow walking goes back at least as far as Roger Zelazny’s “Chronicles of Amber” series.
There is a Wikipedia article at the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chronicles_of_Amber
-Steve
there really isn’t anything new under the sun, is there? Like Lily as a ghost’s name.