Paul Tolme, who wrote the original article on ferrets for Defenders Magazine, responds with an article about his work and his reaction to seeing his writing elsewhere in Newsweek magazine:
[T]hat is some bad dialogue. It stands out as clunky and awkward even by the standards of romance novels. That’s because Edwards didn’t write it. I did.
I traveled to South Dakota in the spring of 2005, flying into Rapid City airport, renting a car and driving to Wall, where I checked into a dumpy motel overlooking an industrial yard. It was as unromantic a location as you could imagine….
From dusk until nearly dawn we sat in Livieri’s truck—two dudes looking for weasels. Nobody said science was sexy.
After three days in Wall, where the highlight is visiting the famous Wall Drug Store, I could hardly leave town fast enough. I returned home and wrote the story for the Summer 2005 issue of Defenders magazine, which detailed how ferrets in the Conata Basin were being threatened by a federal effort to poison prairie dogs.
Had I known that my text would one day appear in a romance novel, I might have sexed up my story: “Hot-loving polecats do it in prairie dog holes.” Instead, here’s the passage where I detail the life history of black-footed ferrets. You may recognize it.
I do wish Tolme hadn’t dismissed the Edwards novel as “standard romance-novel shlock.” That particular prose may be shlock in his opinion, but it’s not standard for romance novels. But you and I both know that.
For more information about Black Footed Ferret conservation efforts, visit the Black Footed Ferret Recovery effort site. Hat tip to Ishie, who dropped the link in a comment thread.
