I received an email today from a Scott and Beverly Kingsbury today. It reads:
quote:Please send me the story about gramps on your website? I am looking for good stories.
Anyone know these people? Any advice on what I should do? This is apparently in reference to a story I wrote quite a long time ago and posted the first thirteen here. Has anyone else been contacted by them?
What is this? Trolling for stories?
Posted by autumnmuse (Member # 2136) on :
I'd write to them and ask those questions. What do they mean by 'looking for good stories'? Aren't we all?
My guess is there was no intent to defraud, but I could be wrong.
Posted by Beth (Member # 2192) on :
Is that all they said?
I wonder if they are new users who are a little uncertain how things work here.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
Well, I would ask a couple of questions. Like, do you have a "story about gramps on your website?" I'll stress the words your website here.
If you don't, then this is probably a scam-spam of some kind.
I do have a website, and it has a couple of stories on it. If someone emailed me asking if I had written any more X-Com/Eleath/Jonathan stories (or poetry, eek), I'd know what was going on, and be able to write back and say "No."
Posted by Robert Nowall (Member # 2764) on :
I've always taken those to be some kind of Internet scam. In the days before I started deleting my e-mail on a regular basis, I think I saw that one a couple of times, with a different word than "gramps."
In other words: Don't write, don't send, don't communicate with these guys.
Posted by Christine (Member # 1646) on :
As it happens, something similiar happened to me once, back when I posted fragments on F&F. Someone (a lurker, I think) asked me to send a story they had seen on F&F. They asked via e-mail rather than through the forum and I had never heard of them before.
I simply ignored the e-mail. In this case it had been a while since the initial post had been made and I no longer needed help. Also, I was put off by the private message from a complete stranger. Granted, I don't exactly know the people who post here either, but at least through their pparticipation in conversations I feel a little more comfortable sending them a story.
This is my long winded means of suggesting that you ignore the e-mail.
Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :
Anyone with an iota of brains knows that if you are going to solicit something from a total stranger, you need to be pretty forthcoming with your request, ie: what your purpose is, where you got the contact info, what you plan to do with it.
If these people didn't explain at least that much, they aren't professionals and as such don't deserve a reply. If they honestly wanted to get hold of you for legitimate reasons, they'd be more open about things.
IMHO.
Posted by yanos (Member # 1831) on :
I agree. It hardly sounds a professiohal request. Either these people are so well known they assume you know who they are or they're scamming in some way. The fact you do have a story about gramps does make this seem a little more like someone targeting and even if they are for real they are unlikely to be from a professional market. Maybe a new zine (at best).