I often find myself being disparaged as a has-been. It annoys me to have the accomplishments of a life time reduced like that. As if I had never done them.

I recovered from a fifteen year writer's block on fiction and found the world of publishing had changed. I also found that I no longer fit into it -- at least where the majors are concerned.

It is a given that things change.

It is also a given that we get old.

I will be 55 in October, ten days before Halloween (which is the day I prefer to celebrate my birthday). I still have all the drive that I had in my youth, but I no longer have the kind of energy I had then. Between the post polio syndrome and the fact that I have cataracts, it gets harder to push like I used to.

I've been told that what keeps me out of the majors is not the quality of my work, but my obsessions with relevance. I can't write simple tales of hidden princes and magic swords. I put all the nitty gritty of life into my stories. I consider that honesty.

I'm not hurt by those statements about my being a has-been at this point, but it annoys the hell out of me. It's rather like having a yapping chihuahua follow you down the street. At some point you just want to kick the holy hell out of the little beast.

My layout man for Daverana and Flashing Swords has been in and out of hospital for the past few months. Most of it is due to the need to repair the repairs they did on him following his wounding during Operation Desert Storm.

We have two books available from Daverana at this point, and will soon have more.

Like all of the books in the Lycan Blood series, Kynyr's War (book four) was a victim of the original publisher, Renebooks. I dropped entire threads that contributed to the conclusions of the last and second to last books in the series, because if they went beyond a certain length the publisher, Jean Marie Stine, would chop them up into components like she did the first three books in my Dark Brothers of the Light series.

I just finished revising and restoring over 40,000 words to Kynyr's War. The Doherty family is now back in the books as they were originally meant to be instead of appearing (almost) out of the blue in the final two novels.

I have pitched it back to the editor and now wait on his reactions to it. There were a few places where I did not make the changes he asked for, and instead requested that he clarify what he wanted a bit more. The final version will come when I have that clarification in hand and can work on it.

And of course, he has to approve all of the added material.

I, Andrew Bernstein, hereby unreservedly apologize to Ms. Janice "Janrae" Frank, to those of my company "Polymancer Studios", and to all others this matter has come to the attention of; for my over-zealous defense of the trademark owned by the company. No malice nor compensation was intended by my actions.

Sincerely,
Andrew Bernstein

--

Andrew Bernstein
Polymancer Studios, Inc.

_________________________________________________________________________

I would have added "misguided" but that's just being nitpicky.

So far I and my staff are concerned the matter is now ended.

Tim composed the first letters that I sent under my own name. He also made the first phone contact.

This bought me time to get focused enough to figure out how best to handle it. I had initially gone into an "I'll rip your throats out" anger mode.

Because I made my decision in the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning, I did not have an opportunity to alert Tim that he had just become good cop to my bad cop before I started work on the situation.

The biggest challenge initially was proving prior usage by a sufficient number of writers to demonstrate that the word individually and in all contexts of usage pre-dated their trademark and that the trademark was good only in the context for it was granted.

I phoned Tim to let him know that I had sufficent evidence and documentation to nail them to the wall if it went to court. Tim was not available, but his wife informed me that Andrew had been calling his home that day (Tuesday) and the day before (Monday) at all hours in an obsessive fashion.

So I said "I'll take care of it." And then I phoned Polymancer. I went in guns blazing, expecting it to be Andrew on the other end of the phone. The voice sounded young, which seemed to confirm my belief that it was Andrew.

He said, "Hello?"
I said, "I've got you fucking assholes by the balls."
He said, with a nervous giggle, "Pardon me? Who is this?"

It turned out that I had gotten, not Andrew, but Chris Lang, the owner. We ended up having a very nice conversation that included a discussion of Weird Tales and pulp magazines. And I was repeatedly assured that I would receive an apology from Andrew in email. I was also told to call Chris back if I had not received it by Friday.

I then went upstairs to Natalie's place. We ordered pizza and watched old Marx brothers movies. When we carried my share of the leftovers to my apartment, we arrived just as I received a call back from Chris, who again assured me that Polymancer's trademark applied only to the context of a magazine. He also told me that Andrew had been 'demoted' and I would receive that apology today.

Hopefully this is the end of it.

Okay, I am going to list (for the benefits of the eejits at polymancer) why they can't win.

While I would love to take everything they own from them in a lawsuit, I would rather that the silliness just ended.

1) The date of application is not the go by date in a lawsuit. The date that the trademark is granted is. And that date is August of 05. My first novel with polymancers in it was published in March of 04. The magic system shown on my website is based upon those novels. The short fiction in which I mentioned polymancers goes back to 1980.

2) The precedence that would be set if they won would create a dangerous situation for the publishing industry at large. Therefore I would easily have every writers organization and publisher behind me in going up against them and could easily get the ACLU involved. Language belongs to the people. Even the Supreme Court agrees with that. If a trademark can retroactively remove a writer's use of a term that writer (or previous writers) coined then most works of speculative fiction could be destroyed by anyone who cared to acquire the author's word for their trademark.

3) Neither a trademark nor a copyright removes a word from the language. A trademark applies only to the object it is applied to and the statement in their application is that they are trademarking it as the title of a magazine. Title of a magazine. Nothing more.


4) No one over at EN World has ever heard of them.

5) Copyrights do not remove a word from the language either. Witness how many authors have battlemages, orcs, and dragons in their work? Or how many times you see Greek and Latin used to create new hybrid words? It's commonplace and fails to take the word out of the language. A copyright relates not to the words in the text individually, but to the entire aggregate of those words.

6) Now, they wish to claim libel and slander in my posts here and elsewhere. I freely claim my right to refer to them as 'polyfuckers' but that falls under a different rule. This is the US and we are free to express our opinions, especially of public figures. Owning a trademark and attempting to enforce it inappropriately is subject to ridicule in many places. And it's legal. Not even the President of the US can stop people from ridiculing him if they so desire to.

I could go on, but I'll stop here for an editorial.

Mr. Bernstein, if you are smart, you will now walk away quietly and we will both forget this ever happened. If you really want to give me all of your worldly goods, then please continue and make good on your threats. I would not mind owning all of your stuff. (Except, of course, your dirty underwear. Please wash it first.)

Dear Mr. Bernstein,

I will no longer respond to you in private.

I await your registered letter to turn it over to my attorneys.

As a former MPAA Accredited Journalist (retired), I did my homework and launched an investigation of your company.

I also hired an attorney and spoke to various experts on the situation.

So the ball is in your park now. Send me that letter.

Janrae Frank

WITHOUT PREJUDICE


Dear Ms. Frank (and others),

I will begin by saying that this e-mail is being sent to you in the strictest confidence as legal correspondence. Its contents and allusions thereto are not to be posted to any public forum, mailing list, blog, LiveJournal, or other social networking web site, web app, or web service on the Internet.

We were encouraged by the e-mail quoted below, which was sent to us by Mr. Tim Willard on the evening of Sunday May 3 2009. We were encouraged by your clear intention to resolve this dispute amicably, as well as by your understanding of the issues at hand. Through all of this, it was our understanding that Mr. Willard is legally authorized to represent you and Daverana enterprises and to negotiate on your behalf. This is why we were shocked and flabbergasted when the following blog and Twitter posts had come to our attention, most of which were dated after the time of our correspondence with Mr. Willard:
( continued )

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dear Ms. Frank,

You replied to our notice regarding your infringement upon our trademark of the word "Polymancer". It needs to be re-iterated: the word "Polymancer" is not an ordinary word but one that was created by Polymancer Studios, Inc. for the purpose of doing business under that mark. While consisting of two root words from the Ancient Greek language, their placement together as a single compound is by no means a common use. For example, the word "Polymancer" is not currently in any dictionaries.

The purposes of trademark law include the protection of members of the public from any possibility of mistakenly attributing the origin or endorsement of a product or service. Your use of the word "Polymancer" as a type of character does have the potential to so confuse members of the public for the following reasons:
( continued )

WITHOUT PREJUDICE



Polymancer Studios, Inc.
Sent by: Andrew Bernstein
20 Weredale Park
Westmount, QC, H3Z 1Y6, Canada
514 667 1585

Janrae Frank
973 Main St., Apt 10
Fitchburg, Massachusetts 01420
United States
978 345 7239

Re: TRADEMARK
Dear Janrae Frank:

We are the owners of the trademark "Polymancer" (registered in the US under the serial number 78287975) and we are writing to you about your infringement on our trademark; the use of "Polymancer" and the plural thereof as originally publicized on the web page http://www.janraefrank.com/noteook/magic.html (" Polymancers, also called pan-elementalists") and contained within the larger work(s) that said web page refers to.

A registered letter will follow this e-mail. You have 30 calendar days to remove all references to and uses of the word "Polymancer" from any and all works in which it is used or reference is made to it.

We hereby notify you that Polymancer Studios, Inc. will take all necessary and appropriate action to protect its valuable trademarks and request that you immediately cease and desist the use of the word "Polymancer". Please respond to this correspondence, confirming our request by May 5, 2009.

Do conduct yourself accordingly.

Sincerely,
Polymancer Studios, Inc.

--
Polymancer Studios, Inc.


//cc Legal

More and more this thing with Polymancer Studios is shaping up to look like a clumsy attempt at a shakedown.

1) the person who contacted me turns out to be the 'editor' Andrew Bernstein.

Now, if they really had a legal department, why is it that the editor contacts me and not someone more in line with this type of adventure?

2) they claim to be monthly, yet they have produced only 15 issues since December 2004

3) most of their website is devoted to vanity action.

4) they pay in royalties only when they actually bother to pay someone.

5) they altered the dates on their site according to a long time gamer, and pushed back some of them so that it looks like they happened first. That smells of entrapment.

6) "According to the home page for Polymancer Studios Inc, http://www.polymancerstudios.com/ the page is copyrighted from 2003-2008 and Polymancer is a registered trademark.

"BUT according to their website here: http://www.polymancerstudios.com/polymancer/content/view/16/32/ the page is copyrighted 2002-2009 and Polymancer is a registered trademark. Apparently their first site got hacked and they had to re-do it. But the whole pushing back the copyright is suspicious." from an anonymous tipster and verified by me.

7) FourthRight and Polygraff do not appear to exist and never have.

8) In 2007, they announced that they were expanding due to acquisition of a distribution company, Distant Horizons, and a gaming/software firm, Rubicon Development Inc. However, Distant Horizons' website is a placeholder. No sign of Rubicon Development Inc. can be found in Canada. The on in the UK has nothing to do with Polymancer.

9) It appears they are full of grandoise ambitions and nothing accomplished.

__________

However, I have a referral to an attorney specializing in the creative arts and am in the process of getting an appointment to speak to him.