One more time, for the fun of it: NEW RULE. Don’t Write Fiction and Call It A Memoir. Corollary: fear the internet. If you’re writing about gang warfare or surviving the Holocaust, if it ain’t true, then it is fiction.
Seriously, what the crap is going on here?
EDITED TO ADD: Thanks to Anonym2857 for the link: New Rule #2: If your science is not tight, you have even more reason to fear the internet.
…[E]ssentially identical research published by different sets of authors — potential plagiarism — represented about 0.04 percent of MEDLINE’s database (roughly 6,700 cases in all).
Highly similar studies re-published by the same authors represented another 1.3 percent of the database’s documents.
Now the DejaVu database has been created to find “extremely similar Medline citations” and allow the scientific community collaborative access to figure out what’s padding and what’s plagiarism. The DejaVu project is funded by the Hudson Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Now, where in tarnation is the Romance novel research granting organization to underwrite all the fact checking that went into our point-by-point examination of Edwards’ novels?
I’d be interested in a more thorough investigation, to see exactly what she made up. A lot of the details of her story totally play to racist stereotypes; it’s creepy to think that maybe her editors initially overlooked holes in her story and weirdness in her background because she played into assumptions whites make about blacks.
Quite aside from the disturbing dishonesty and stereotyping – seriously, “Big Mom”?! – I’m mostly struck by the sheer stupidity of the stunt.
If she was raised as a regular girl in an average neighborhood, she probably has a relatively large circle of acquaintances, or at least people who know her on sight. Being found out was, as Darlynne pointed out, inevitable.
Did she think that at no point during promotion, picture-posting on the internet and a booktour fer chrissake, would anyone recognize her?
Did she think people would find it clever?
What would she do on the booktour anyway. Speachify ‘bout her life in the ‘hood with Big Mom and Terrell?
There are no accusations of plagiarism though, are there?
Because that would be really topping it off.
As many people pointed out, the SISTER dobbed her in. Nice!
Everyone in my entire family knows I have an agent (and they’re most likely bored to death with the details) and they know I write FICTION and it’s based on STUFF I MAKE UP. Which makes me scratch my head … because didn’t the rest of the family know what she was doing???
Aye-ya-yai
Clearly writing these books and trying to pass them off as memoirs was stupid.
But what really ticks me off is why is it that what they have done is so much worse than Cassie Edwards? Their books are being pulled and they are being publicly shamed but her books continue to be released (and re-released) and she gets no comeuppance at all? I haven’t read the books in question, but aside from the fact that their books are NOT memoirs I assume they were at least original??
I finally wrote up my own thoughts on these scandals. It really irritates me, and moreso that Seltzer’s books are being recalled but Cassie Edwards are not.
Here’s a link to that post since it is far too lengthy to put as a reply here:
http://tinyurl.com/yppsx8