Writer Problems: When Published Works Steal Your Ideas.

Two years ago for NaNoWriMo, I wrote a novel that I tentatively titled Seasons. It centred around four teenagers - Ryan, Bianca, Jarek, and Aspen - who were the hidden heirs to four kingdoms that I based around the four seasons. These kingdoms were hidden from our world, but their discord was the cause for our crazy weather.

I was super excited when I wrote Seasons, because I felt it was an original idea. While I had seen a few novels with Summer and Winter kingdoms or courts, I'd never seen one that used all four seasons. Even now, two years later, I'm constantly adding to my old idea and trying to prepare for the re-write. It was one of the stories that I planned to post on Mibba once it really get going.

Fast forward to today, when I'm scrolling through Facebook, and I come across a link to a quiz with this as the first line of its description:

In Sara Raasch’s Snow Like Ashes, four of the kingdoms of Primoria are divided according to season––if your personality was matched to a season, which would you be?

My heart sank. Because now my idea wasn't original. Now if I posted my two-year-old novel, there would be at least one person to call me a copycat or accuse me of stealing my kingdoms right out of Raasch's novel, I'm sure. And the thought of that hurts - because I wrote my novel two years ago, and this book was published three days ago. I only heard about it five minutes ago, but I feel like it's just ruined something great for me.

I'm sure I'm not the only one this has happened to. Has it happened to you, or someone you know? If so, what did you do about it?

My plan is to keep writing my story, regardless of this published novel. I've already put so much work into Seasons (and its potential sequel) that it would be wrong to just disregard it. But a part of me also wants to read Snow Like Ashes, or at least read the summary of it, to see just how similar the works are. Not because I want to accuse Raasch of plagiarism, but because I want to know that at least some of my idea is still original and worth putting out there.

Anybody out there who can tell me more about it?