This is the first of many sadly.

Today we will be discussing Melissa Blincoe, the author of 'Frostbite' I did a review of it in the 'Honest Reviews' section. 

I have watched this whole shitstorm unravel from the beginning. Our naughty Author Melissa wrote a book called 'Heartthrob' and holy hell! It is a mirror image in the cover and content of Tiffany Roberts 'Ensnared' book one of the Spider mate series. Even as I watched and read the context of this book called 'Heartthrob' I kept it all to myself because I didn't want my thoughts and being a fan to reflect badly on Tiffany, but now that she has put a statement out and brought to much more to attention I would like to share it here. 

Here is the statement made on Tiffany's Roberts Facebook page: 

We did not want to say anything publicly about a certain author and have remained silent about this for months, but due to her constantly calling us out, accusing us of allowing harassment, accusing us of sending readers to her to attack her and send her death threats, we have decided to speak out to defend ourselves.

Early in our limited interactions with Melissa Blincoe, she asked about the artist who had done the cover for Bound. We told her without issue (though the artist was not accepting new commissions at the time). I even sent her info on the designer who made our logos, gave her feedback on a cover she had for an upcoming book (that is unrelated to everything that follows), and followed her author page at her request. I had no issue with her.

Then I saw the cover for her book Heart Throb. The similarities were striking and made me very uncomfortable, especially after Melissa had personally told me how much she adored Bound from the Spider’s Mate. I did not want to associate with her after this point. I blocked her on all social media platforms, and have had her blocked since February. Then Heart Throb released. We received messages from readers about the similarities they noticed between Heart Throb and Ensnared, including similar scenes and terms.

We want to pause here to clarify one of the main issues that Mrs. Blincoe has repeatedly brought up during this—that we act as though we own spider characters. We don’t. We’ve never claimed to, and have never acted as though we do. Naomi Lucas had a spider-shifter cyborg that I took inspiration from because I’d long wanted to do a spider. Some of Sam Griffin’s original art of humanoid arachnid characters also served as a big inspiration (and we worked with her from the beginning to design the vrix). CM Nascosta, Octavia Kore, and Bebe Harper have all had arachnid heroes, and we have gladly shared their books and supported them.

Anyone can write a spider hero. The more the merrier! But one thing of note is the differences between our vrix and all the spider heroes in everyone’s stories (and the elements and plots of those stories). Everyone has their own take on such creatures, and that’s part of what makes the monster romance genre so wonderful.

When Heart Throb’s cover first came out, we had several readers confused about it, wondering if they’d missed a Spider’s Mate book because the character on that cover looked so much like a vrix.

Even with all that was brought to our attention, we did not speak out against Mrs. Blincoe. While there was clear evidence of her borrowing from Ensnared when it comes to Heart Throb, there was no word-for-word copying, and it wasn’t plagiarism. There was nothing we could do. We said nothing. We made no statements, made no call outs. We did not want to draw negative attention to Mrs. Blincoe despite our unease with the situation. We understand that we have a larger following, and we had no interest in turning any harassment her way, just as we had no interest in further supporting Mrs. Blincoe as an author or remain ‘friends’ on social media.

A friend of Mrs. Blincoe left a 1-star Ensnared and try to friend us on FB, which I declined. This same individual has also threatened legal action against us, but that’s only adjacent to all of this.

Then came all the art. It seemed that for every art piece we’ve commissioned for our vrix characters, Mrs. Blincoe has commissioned one that is uncannily similar. We have had several artists we regularly work with inform us that she has tried to commission them, and many of those artists felt uncomfortable because she was requesting art so close to ours. The minor changes to limb placement in many of these could not hide that they were almost all the exact poses we’ve had in our art. The images speak for themselves.

Still, we ignored her. We didn’t say a word.

Then my narrator approached me, asking me if I knew Melissa Blincoe, because she had reached out to him to narrate her book, Heart Throb. He found it odd that she would have him narrate that book (which features a spider hero), but not the previous book in the series (which does not). Then he saw the reviews on Heart Throb stating that her book was similar to Ensnared.

Again, we didn’t speak out against her.

Even when she continued to make TikTok videos, accusing us of allowing (or implying we were endorsing) harassment, we did not say anything. We have posted a video stating we do not condone harassment, and we have made posts in our Facebook Group stating the same. The rules of our group forbid harassment within it. We have worked hard to create an environment that is positive for authors and readers alike, a safe place where other authors don’t have to feel attacked or criticized. We’ve never once asked anyone to attack someone whether on our behalf or otherwise, and never would.

All that said, we cannot control the actions of others. Mrs. Blincoe has claimed she is bombarded with harassment. We were unaware of any such harassment, as again, we had her blocked on all social media platforms since early this year. We’ve made no effort to influence anyone’s opinion regarding her and her works, and have, as stated, gone out of our way to avoid bringing her up.

Our understanding is that she has shared screen shots of threats she has received. Again, we’ve never condoned such things, and have publicly spoken out against such tactics before. If she is referring to reviews she has received on her books, we also have no control over that. Our stance on this entire issue has been to allow readers to decide. We’ve never told anyone what to think. We have not poisoned the well. We are not responsible for readers noting similarities and calling Mrs. Blincoe out on it.

When Mrs. Blincoe released more artwork that was incredibly similar to ours, a friend of ours, April Lee, decided to speak up about the situation and share evidence of what was happening. It seems that Mrs. Blincoe categorized this as harassment, though it was mainly a comparison of said art that allowed everyone to see the similarities side-by-side.

Concerning Mrs. Blincoe’s new series, which contains the books Frostbite and Thawed, it has been brought to our attention that there are lines in her blurbs that are quite close to parts of blurbs from our Spider’s Mate trilogy. The cover art for both books also happens to be quite similar to original artwork we had commissioned for our Spider’s Mate series a long while ago, in which Ivy is in her wedding dress. These matters were brought to us by readers, and we appreciate them for noticing.

In December of 2021, Mrs. Blincoe had left a 5-star review on our book Bound. In October 2022 (after months of this ongoing issue), she left a new review on Ensnared giving it two stars and grossly mischaracterizing scenes in the book to outright state that they were r@pe.

All that said, Mrs. Blincoe has claimed that she has been harassed. She has implied that we are behind said harassment, and has outright said that we are allowing it to happen. Again, we condemn any form of harassment and have never condoned any of it.

But we have been silent for a long, long time, and we are no longer going to sit back and allow slanderous accusations to be made about us. Please understand that this is not a call to action on your part. We do not need anyone to fight this battle for us. We will be handling matters on our own. But we could no longer remain quiet about this situation. After ten months of it, we’ve had enough, and we’re speaking up to defend ourselves.

Note: I had to unblock Melissa to get screenshots of our conversation, and FB doesn't allow me to reblock for 48 hours.