Copyrights Policy
By the provisions of the Berne Convention (which is Interntional Law), and the US Copyright Laws, anything a person writes is automatically copyrighted from the moment of creation. This means that a person's written words belong to him or her, and may not be used without that person's permission.
Whether you are using (re-posting) something for profit or not does not matter--it's illegal to reproduce/re-post without specific permission!
I mention this only because I know quite a few people think that if something is posted on the Internet, that means that it's in the public domain, and anyone can use it anywhere else on the Web. This is NOT true.
With reference to the excerpts that I occasionally post here--with limited exceptions (the publisher's web page, for instance, or brief excerpts for amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com), I don't post excerpts anywhere else on the Web, save for this page. I don't want excerpts posted anywhere else, please.
I do occasionally post brief excerpts in the Compuserve Writers Forum, in the course of discussing various points of writing. These are not, and are not intended to be, permanent postings, as messages in the Writers Forum scroll off and disappear within a week or so. Sometimes, I ask Rosana to repost one of these temporary excerpts in a more permanent form here; other times, the excerpt in question is incomplete or still in progress, or comes too close to revealing plot spoilers, and we don't want to make it generally available.
So I do apprecaite everyone's respecting the copyright on these pieces--and if you should happen to see or hear about anyone reposting any of my excerpts elsewhere, I'd appreciate hearing about it. Thank you!