Back in 2013 author MCA Hogarth self-published a book called ‘Spots the Space Marine’. Soon thereafter, Amazon took it down.

Understandably surprised, Maggie made enquiries and was somewhat startled to learn that Games Workshop — of the Warhammer 40k universe — had decided that they owned the copyright to the term ‘space marine’, and had filed a takedown notice, which Amazon had acquiesced to. And apparently hers wasn’t the first.

She took the bit in her teeth, and with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, got the takedown reversed.

A decade later, and I’m doing something at the Blanket Fort, when my Editor-in-Chief gets a bee in her bonnet, and tells me the story.

Being me, I get monumentally annoyed, and then Kortnee really dropped the gob-stopper: apparently after MCA Hogarth slapped Games Workshop down, several folks decided to take advantage of this and publish anthologies about space marines — and Maggie didn’t get an invite to any of them.

As an aside, it seems that when all of my mental squirrels stop their rave and focus their concentration on one person, it can be a little unnerving.

“Are you telling me that MCA Hogarth took on Games Workshop on her own, made them blink, thus becoming the founder of the feast — and no-one had the common courtesy to invite her to partake?”

Kortnee blinked at me, and told me I was correct.

“Fine. Bugger them. Contact Maggie Hogarth, find out how many space marine short stories she has, and WE’LL publish them.”

Today the results of that little moment of spite went live. Well, technically it went live yesterday, but today was the official day, so I’m celebrating today.

Go buy the first volume of Spite Marines Space Marines!

Since Maggie had two stories, Space Marines 2 will be out in mid-July.

Go and support starving authors! And also support the little guys with the courage to stand up and kick multi-million-dollar corporate cyber-bullies in the wedding tackle (metaphorically-speaking).

Direct link to book here.

LawDog