I'm currently - don't ask - trying to create a book listing; which means that at various times I need to find out which author wrote what book, and what series it came from.

Occasionally I have authors and want to find titles, or I have titles and need to find authors and/ or series(eses).

You would not believe how complicated it gets.

In our wonderful connected world, there seems to be no agreement on whether to have full stops or spaces in author names; whether to use full names or initials; whether to list them with first name first or last - and this is what started this mini-rant - how to deal with someone who steals another author's Big Idea - er, sorry "pays homage" to another world - like Lee Child's Jack Reacher stories which run to about 30 books (if you haven't read them, you should!)

I know of at least four other authors who wrote another 30 books in the same 'universe' with more and less reference to Reacher and his actual cases. A lady writing as Diane Capri, AKA 'M Diane Vogt' has a dozen or so books in "The Hunt for Jack" series - based off of the original JR (no Ewing jokes please).

He's famously an itinerant traveller (that's Reacher, not Ewing), wandering around the country on his pension with just the clothes he wears, and a trusty toothbrush - so, a tad difficult to get hold of in a hurry.

Ms Capri's main character is an FBI agent looking for Reacher and falling into the aftermath of the various situations featured in Lee Child's books. They are actually (and annoyingly) quite good, and from other comments I've seen I think LC is quite happy, and possibly flattered, to have created a franchise that others can use.

He also probably things it's good publicity for his books!

Sorry. Getting off the point here. Anyway - multiple books about the same guy or the situations he's been in, multiple authors... and Lee Child himself has collaborated with a few on his own books, including his own younger brother Andrew who seems likely to continue the family business.

But in preparing an index of books to read, how do you show Lee Child's series, link to authors he's collaborated with, and show their other books - but still differentiate the content from those who - allegedly - are off doing their own thing without even crediting the original author?

Add in the fact that some authors like Diane Capri are also M D Vogt / M.D. Vogt/ M. D. Vogt/ M Diane Vogt/ and Vogt, all of the above -that's 11 different variations on one name!!- I've been using REGEX searches a lot lately...

And don't get me started on series(eses). Reacher books are good: Series - Jack Reacher / book 01 - Killing Floor / author - Lee Child (That was the first series of the TV show). There's no argument about the series name or number, the title or the author.

But I just fell over Mercedes Lackey (not literally) who's a little younger than me, has written 140 more books than me (I'm currently at zero) and was credited on one list as writing - I kid you not - a book called "Elvendude" (which seemed a tad out of character for her...)

Looking it up by other means (Like Xena, I have many talents) I found it was written by some guy called Mark Shepherd who collaborated with Ms Lackey on a couple of books back in the dim mists of 1992 and 1993, but then wrote this particular offering with the tagline "Straight from Mercedes Lackey's world to ours".

That seems to be the well-tried Asylum Films technique of stuffing something sounding like somebody famous was involved with a project on the cover to try and boost sales... (never buy films or books when under the affluence of incahol.)

It was at least good enough to fool someone into flagging this as part of Mercedes Lackey's Canon in the dim depths of the Interweb. I feel sad for her, that "Elvendude" is linked to her otherwise premier SF name, and vaguely sad for Mark Shepherd too, who lost out on even being connected with this... er, 'work'...

(Darnit I'm now going to have to read that series to find out whether it's actually any good. If you want to look it up, try the name(s), obviously.

The series is SERRAted Edge (sic*) - and now I look it up, the whole series looks very rock-n-roll. I didn't realise ML was as involved as she seems to have been...)

Anyway. Congratulations if you made it all the way through this random rant. It got me out of correcting any more attributions for an hour or two anyway.

Keep reading! It broadens the Mind! (and, unfortunately other areas...)

PS don't ask me who Larry Dixon is yet (see picture) - haven't started on him.

* no, it's not sic bad, or sic very good - it's is actually spelt like that. (Again, see pic!)