Fantasist's Scroll

Did someone take my idea?

Or is it just so, so lame that more than one person thought of it? Okay, let me explain. See, I’ve had this idea for a fantasy fiction setting that I called the Five Kingdoms for several years. In fact, I’ve been talking about it so long that I don’t even remember how far back it goes. But, the other day when I was looking through some stuff on CafePress, I found a book called The Sorean, which has, right on the cover, a reference to “Tales from the Five Kingdoms”. I laughed so hard I almost ruptured something. The whole thing just totally cracked me up.

I knew that, sooner or later, this kind of thing would happen when CafePress started selling books. Of course, I figured that there’d be plenty of folks selling books that they’d taken from Project Gutenberg, and there are, but some of the other stuff surprised me a bit. A pleasant surprise was the Ethereal Press Language series. As someone who’s “into” constructed languages, these books were really interesting to me. I’m not sure that I’d ever buy one, but I think it’s great that someone is making them.
I also found more “serious” books, like The Book Of AisthC*tikos, which advertises itself for the “serious student of the occult”. So, all you lame posers can piss off! This book isn’t for you!
The other thing that was fun to browse through was the CafePress music offerings. Now, to be fair, some of these are probably really, really good, but undiscovered bands. On the other hand, some of them are just funny. My favorite “WTF” music cd was Shut Up The Devil by King MC. The devil is totally whack, yo!

And, of course, there is my very own Ye Old Wizard’s Shoppe, now with more panties. It’s really almost a joke, but if anyone ever buys anything, and I mean anything, I might just pay for a “premium” shop and do more with it. Anyway, I guess I may just be forced to give up on the Five Kingdoms and move on. After all, I wouldn’t want to infringe on any market right that The Sorean might now have. (Yes, I’m kidding.)