The Jungle Book

Would it surprise you to know that the Disney story, The Jungle Book, was actually taken from the public domain and rewritten? The story it borrowed from was The Jungle Book, which was written by Rudyard Kipling. The book was a collection of stories by Kipling. The stories were first published in magazines in 1893–94.

You can read the original tale here. If you're familiar with the Disney version, you'll be amazed when you read through this story. This gives you a prime example how you can take a work from the public domain and create your own story which, by the way, would then be copyright by you.

That's important to understand. If you simply copy one of these books and put your name down as the author, there is nothing to prevent others from doing the same. It's legal but come on . . . that doesn't benefit anyone. Read the story you enjoy and then sit down and use it as a template to develop your own story.

I'll feature a number of my books on this site and they will all be books I've written with inspiration to stories in the public domain. You can go to Amazon and read the free previews of the books and you might want to buy whichever ones interest you, not only for entertainment but also as an education on how to create your own book using the public domain.

No, not all my books are written in this manner, as I generally sit down with an idea and start writing and see where the idea goes.  I don't write out an outline or anything.

But obviously when I fracture a fairy tale I reference the original fairy tale. And in A Victim of Circumstance I read a number of stories by Edgar Allan Poe and then sat down and started writing an original story using the concepts from three of his tales. The story just kind of flowed.