Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Wow. Just… wow.

I firmly believe plagiarism includes all works, nonfiction and otherwise, but honestly, with this (and a Pulitzer winner! Did she think nobody would notice??): There can be no doubt.

Okay, I’m pissed now.

I am speechless.

Holy WTF

Has Dorchester made a statement yet, and what about Kensington?

Did she assume no one would read a 60 year old book (at the time)?  In some ways the rewarding of some of these passages disturbs me more than the word for word instances. 

How many books of hers have now been verified to contain plagarized passages and how many sources are we talking about now?

Oh, wow.  Savage Dreams 1990.

it’s official: my head a’sploded.

I’m tempted to compare the audaciousness of it to when I had to explain to another writer during this year’s NaNoWriMo that the title “Of Human Bondage” was not only already taken, but fairly famous… and she had not heard of it. **headbrick**

But this is…

daaaaaaaaaaang.

There are a couple of passages in this table that I’d say don’t really count in the “passages plagiarised” tally.

But there are more that do. Wow. It just goes on and on.

Looks like Jove was the first publisher.  Who owns Jove now?

My cynical mind:
I am not really surprised.

WAITAMINIT! Go down to the one that starts “the roar of horses”

am I reading this chart right but did she put the same paragraph more or less in TWO separate places in the SAME book?

and nobody caught this? Not even to tell her when it first came out that “hey, you repeated yourself here”?

I am seriously questioning the abilities of anyone involved in the prepublication editing/proofing process of this one. I mean come ON!

Answered my own question.  Penguin owns Jove.  All right, will make it all tidy when there is some ‘splainin’ to be done.

As if this cake needed any frosting. . .

whoops, that should have read “the world was full of the roar of hooves”

and, I don’t know if this occurred to anyone else, but in a few of the old Warner Bros cartoons, Bugs Bunny used “Laughing Boy” as a derisive term to Daffy Duck. “Hey, Laughing Boy! One bullet left!”

**sad I knew that off the top of my head, but true…**

Okay, well Savage Dream is Dorchester, right, so maybe it’s time to send some public pressure their way, too, to address this.

That’s certainly putting the sprinkles on the frosting on the cake.

Okay, lone voice in the wilderness, but WHY does this take it to a fundamentally different level?  Part of me agrees with you, much to my chagrin, but why is it more egregious to have her steal the words of a novel than a non-fiction source?  Why?

Anyone else feel like crying at this point? I mean, I had this whole post planned about the assumption (in my experience) that “copying” non-fiction of all kinds is okay*. 

(BTW, this wasn’t meant to imply in any way that the earlier examples posted here were at all justifiable (IMO). But I was trying to understand why this sort of thing happens and how people can defend it.)

Now I just want to hold my head in my hands and weep.

Shit…

*It was just me and a soapbox ranting about how non-fiction is often seen as glamorous fiction’s boring, nerdy stepsister. And how there is a conflation of “facts” and the language they’re couched in. And how because non-fiction is merely the recital of “facts” little creativity is involved.

Which, as anyone who’s ever sweated days to try to make information interesting, readable, digestible and entertaining will tell you, is sweet, savage horse patootey.

Because by plagerizing fiction, it can’t be claimed as “research”.

As someone who used to teach college English, I looked at the previous samples and wondered if Ms. Edwards was like some of my students—genuinely baffled about the correct way to incorporate references. Doesn’t make it right, but it made me wonder . . .

This discovery really demolishes that theory.

This is just . . . just . . .

Sweet heaven.

Sarah: it takes it to a fundamentally different level because now there’s no longer even the veneer of a “shoddy research citation on non fiction material” defense. I agree that it should be no different/worse/bad to plagiarize nonfiction than it is for fiction, but once you swipe from fiction, the “research” angle goes out the window. That’s the angle, not from the inherent ethics POV, but from the perception of it POV.

Sarah Frantz—I think it bothers me that the book won the Pulitzer.  I mean, if you’re gonna plagiarize, go for the best.

Why this strikes me as so much worse, even CE has gotta know, you don’t copy from somebody else’s work of fiction.  If her only excuse is well, hell, it was published in 1929, that still isn’t like saying my research was sloppy.

I think it goes beyond careless to not giving a flying fuck whose phrases she borrows.

if she wants to recycle her own passages, that’s not exactly great writing, but it’s not heinous in the same way.

Although it could be copyright infringement, especially if those other books are out under other publishers.

Okay, lone voice in the wilderness, but WHY does this take it to a fundamentally different level?

Like EAP, I don’t see it as any worse, but I’ve now lost any ability to even entertain the possibility that this was all about a confusion over factual information.  Now I’ve shifted over to the “there’s NO WAY she could think this was okay” position, even though we know it never was.  And yeah, now I’m starting to wonder more directly about her editors and publishers, too.

[Everything I said before, without the generous benefit of the doubt I gave Edwards].

This is just horrible news. After reading through these absolutely lyrical passages, I can understand the temptation to copy and paste much more than I could in the case of the academic prose. But now the question for me becomes how much of Edwards’ manuscripts or indeed her writing “style” itself really belong to her? These passages would presumably be much much harder to spot as transcriptions. What are her fans really enjoying? If it is her descriptions, well we now know that many of those were taken word for word from other sources. If it is her “voice” then these examples bring the authenticity of even that in to question, as far as I’m concerned.

My sense of humor tends to the bitingly sarcastic, unfortunately, and I have exercised it—perhaps too freely—in my earlier posts. But this is just beyond the realm of humor and verging on a real tragedy for all involved. Please, please let the trolls understand that this is not something that can even begin to be excused as a lack of knowledge about proper attribution. This is behavior that any writer should instinctively shun, in my opinion.

Okay, I get what everyone’s saying.  It’s not more worser from our POV, but from the understanding of her supposed intent.  Check.  I can get that.

I’m just going to watch the new Persuasion tonight on PBS and try to forget all of this for a while.

“why is it more egregious to have her steal the words of a novel than a non-fiction source?”

I can only think of one reason—and that reason conflicts somewhat with your post earlier today.  There are instances in historical fiction when using someone else’s words verbatim is accepted.  E.g. using an historical soldier’s journal for a fictional journal entry.  If the use is acknowledged, it’s lauded as realistic detail.  It doesn’t even need quotes or a footnote to get a pass—just (usually) acknowledgment of the source.

“am I reading this chart right but did she put the same paragraph more or less in TWO separate places in the SAME book?”

and nobody caught this? Not even to tell her when it first came out that “hey, you repeated yourself here”?

I wouldn’t necessarily jump on that.  It’s a grey area in style.  Often it’s a good thing to reinforce (or mirror) an earlier description.  Making certain passages echo each other can give the book cohesion.  That doesn’t mean it’s always good writing—too much, and it’s simply repetitive.  But neither is it always bad writing.

That basically colors the whole situation with intent, if you know what I mean; it’s much harder to argue for ignorance or innocent confusion in this sort of case.

Even if she did think this was okay—heck anything’s possible—I think we’re finally at a point where it’s going to be tough for ANYONE ELSE to make the “it’s no big deal” argument or to dismiss this as *using* research material.

Before I was appalled, but hoping for the best, “Well she’s 71, they might not have covered plagarism versus research and proper citation way back when she was in school, I know pleanty of kids who never learned even now” 

But from a ficitonal piece? The even if you never learned proper citation practices, sheer logic should tell you its different to use research material from a nonfiction than a fictional piece.

There’s probably a lot of “She’s 71! leave her alone!” going around.  And even though I’d feel a lot better if this stuff were being thrown around on a 35 year old, I just keep reminding myself, she’s still writing and publishing so she is obviously not a poor senile old woman.  My own father is 72, and if somebody tried to pitch him shit he’d be perfectly capable of handling it himself.  And how old is Ursla LeGuin? Far older than Edwards.  She’s a brilliant and fiesty author, and if anyone accused her of plagarism you bet she’d go for the juglar herself.  What’s more, she may be 71 now, but she certainly wasn’t when she did this stuff.  This certainly isn’t a case of a poor old woman, feeling to exhausted from her old-ladyness, couldn’t bring herself to carry more than one library book home.

Yes, it is very sad that a woman’s career could be destoryed by this (although whoever it was that copied Nora Roberts is still publishing, so there you go), but itn’t even sadder that her whole career is based on pulling stunts like this?

I keep thinking it might all come down to, “I just wanted to write, I didn’t think anybody would notice”.  But writing is hard work, and any writer who takes pride in their work will tell you they are constantly trying to improve themselves.  A writer wants to be able to say his or her latest book is the best of the collection, because it would certainly suck to start off well and then go completley downhill.  Constant self improvement is as much of a goal as finishing the next story, so I’d feel a lot better about CE if, even if she’d done this at the beginning of her carreer, she’d tried to improve her methods later down the line.  But from what I can see, she found a formula that seemed to work, and stuck with it.  Now it’s come back to bite her.

Because by plagerizing fiction, it can’t be claimed as “research”.

Reading fiction, particularly fiction set in a similar period or genre, can definitely be considered research.  But to my mind, whether something is “research” is a red herring.  Intent is not what ultimately determines whether it’s plagiary.  What the author does is more important that what she means to do.

Oh - cringe. I had this book in my hot little mitts and only found (some, not all) of the reference works. Now I feel like a really crappy plagiarism-detector.

Must say, I’m not at all surprised by this latest development. If you can copy, word for word, 2-3 pages from an old reference text, why not fiction?

Plus, I’ve read her and she is a severely limited writer.

And Bernita gets ten points for predicting this development. Congratulations, Bernita. You have won this lovely lounge suite.

And our next questionis:
Does Cassie Edwards plagiarise-
a) Fiction
b) non-fiction
c) fan fiction
d) anything not nailed down
e) All of the above

Answer after the commercial!

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“if she wants to recycle her own passages, that’s not exactly great writing, but it’s not heinous in the same way.”

Someone up there mentioned that if it were different publishers then theoretically they could sue. That is correct. I remember a case where this happened with a songwriter in the 70s I think. One of his publishers sued the other because of the similarity between songs. I can’t remember how it came out though!

ooook..I agree, this did have its own place as a post, seperate from the others.

I assumed from day one (or two) that so much had been found so easily and quickly that there was no telling what else would be discovered.

As to her age, I am one that posted a discomfort about her age and how this may be affecting her and that stands, its a compassion for the elderly not a ” leave her alone you bitches” .

She’s been writing many years and her choices are coming back to bite her in the butt, by now she’s probably wealthy enough to have attorneys to deal with all this anyway instead of having to deal with it herself.

I’ve recovered somewhat.

For the people arguing that the SBs and their readers should stop and leave the matter to the publishers: what do you think are the chances that this latest example would have come to light from Signet, or from Ms Edwards?

I’ll tell you: Zilch. Zero. Ninguna. Rien.

Kudos for all of those (in the bitchery and otherwise), going through the books published under Ms Edwards’ name in order to find all the plagiarized bits.

Kudos to SBSarah and Candy for publishing it, and for contacting all the publishers involved.


===========


A personal concern: I hope there’s some way to find a consensus on what, exactly, is plagiarism of non-fiction, as I’ve had an online discussion with a self-proclaimed ex English teacher who thinks that “by defintion, taking out a coordinating conjunction and adding a dot for a semicolon makes it NOT plagiarism.”

Needless to say, I’m at a loss to explain how far from correct that thinking is. I need help here, and having authors, writers, publishers, readers, agree on some sort of baseline would help.

I think.

I hope.

Arggh. I apologize for characterizing those people who have posted in support of Edwards as “trolls.” Not accurate, and I’m sorry. Fingers are faster than brain sometimes, dammit.

Intent is not what ultimately determines whether it’s plagiary.  What the author does is more important that what she means to do.

Not necessarily. I just had a discussion of this unintentional echo syndrome; the story I completed for Nano this year had two major oopses, neither of them intentional: one line almost verbatim from “The Princess Bride” (and when it was brought to my attention I LMAOed myself sick) and a word I thought I’d made up that actually I’d forgotten was an item from a Final Fantasy game. Both are being rectified before the book goes out for the rounds, and neither, if I had noticed it as I was writing them, would have been in there in the first place.

Intent does matter, to a big degree. But intent as in “oops, forgot I knew that” and not intent as in “I didn’t know it was wrong to do that” or even the “it’s fair use, so nyaaa” as in the case of Ursula LeGuin’s one paragraph story being republished on BoingBoing without credit and the massive hassle that ensued, and the IMO inadequate response by the guy who did it.

snickers at E.Ann’s ” plage away”

the plagiarism line has been taken out of her Wikipedia page.

I think I find the whole thing arrogant. Arrogant in assuming that she’d get away with it, repeatedly.

BTW, my bestest chum, a librarian, should be sending you some info this weekend. She grabbed a book from the library she works in, and one set in New Orleans apparently lifted entire passages from material published by the Louisiana Folk Life Center.

“Intent does matter, to a big degree. But intent as in “oops, forgot I knew that” and not intent as in “I didn’t know it was wrong to do that” or even the “it’s fair use, so nyaaa” as in the case of Ursula LeGuin’s one paragraph story being republished on BoingBoing without credit and the massive hassle that ensued, and the IMO inadequate response by the guy who did it.”

Agreed.  I realized as I hit “Submit” that I should have been more specific.

Sarah Frantz - I don’t know why some consider it more awful when a fiction writer is copied over a non fiction author.  I think because we all have used non fiction sources at one time as a basis for writing that we did/do and therefore the knee jerk reaction is - but I wouldn’t plagiarize so it can’t be wrong.

This example lends some gravity to the situation for those naysayers out there and let me tell you - there are plenty.

Belated Credit:
I should mention that ‘lounge suite’ line is a direct rip-off of Monty Python’s Karl Marx game show sketch.

Thank you.

;-)

Well, there goes the “it was only research” excuse.

I’ve been checking CE’s official website periodically to see if she’ll post a statement about the situation. It used to have her photo, bio, book list, news about upcoming releases, and so forth. Today, it’s just a link that says, “Please visit my MySpace page.” Interesting. I guess she’s not going to address anything right now. There’s no mention of it on her MySpace page, either.

Websites:
http://www.cassieedwards.com/
http://www.myspace.com/cassieedwardsromance

francois, that was John Fogerty. He was sued by Fantasy Records (who owned the copyright to the Creedence Clearwater Revival catalog (Fogerty’s old band). Fantasy records said that his song “Old Man Down the Road” sounded too much like the Creedence song “Run Through the Jungle” but in the end it was ruled that it wasn’t plagiarism, just his style of writing/singing.

And in the interest of citation, the details of the above come from xponentialmusic.org, although I originally remembered it from one of those 100 most shocking somethings shows on E! or VH-1. Knew those would come in handy someday.

As to the case in hand, wow. After spending all day yesterday reading through all the comments on all the posts regarding this whole shitstorm, I ended up at Barnes & Noble in the romance aisle holding a Savage Something book, determined to find my own instances. I got through maybe three pages before I had to put it down, so good on you guys for muddling through. I’m really stunned at the sheer amount of the evidence at this point.

I have a copy of Don Poynter’s “Self Publishing Manual” and he says “Make it a rule never to repeat any three words in a row” when he advises writers on steering clear of plagiarism. And here this writer is not only doing that, but taking entire paragraphs by adding a couple of conjunctions.  And she’s doing this over and over ad nauseum.

If Edwards is not held accountable for this by her publishers and the courts, it will show that the whole publishing industry has become (and I pause for emphasis here and spit out the foul word) CORRUPT.

There is one thing I would like to see her address.  Her author blurbs claim that her grandmother was a full-blood Cheyenne, and in one interview she said it was her father’s grandmother who was the Cheyenne princess.  Savage Longings is, in fact, supposed to be based on this great-grandmother, Snow Deer and Charles Cline.  One of my interests is genealogy, and I did a little digging.  Her great-grandfather is a Charles Cline, but ‘Snow Deer’ appears in fact to be a white woman named Mamie Bolinger.  I could of course be wrong, but every census record etc. I have found suggests that back at least 3-4 generations, she has no indigenous blood at all.

Please note.  I am a classically trained mezzo-soprano.  When I sing out the word “BUSTED!” at full volume, the whole house hears it.  I only wish I could record it so that you could all enjoy.

BUSTED.

The wikipedia entry does still mention the plagiarism.  It’s now in its own section entitled ‘Alleged Plagiarism’.  Scroll down if you don’t see it.

I’m guessing that this latest discovery means that reading is no longer a pre-requisite for editorial staff?  You’d think someone in the office might have read a Pullitzer prize-winner, but apparently not.

P.S. .....  Just checked out Cassie’s MySpace page- from the touched up Glamour Shot photo, sure doesn’t look like she’s an unsophisticated 71 yr old granny who doesn’t know any better… take a look and see if you don’t gag like I did.

I just looked at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassie_Edwards again, and didn’t see it. The discussion page says it’s been removed for more stringent citations.

Sara—

I’ve heard that CE sent out a bulletin via MySpace proclaiming her innocence while saying that she’s being picked on because of her Native American heritage.

I haven’t seen the bulleting but am tempted to track it down. 

Anyone else heard of it?

If Lisa is right, and it turns out that CE lied about being part Cheyenne as well, the resulting internet explosion will be EPIC!

**puts on helmet**

The last login on her myspace page is 1/13/2008.

I hadn’t heard that, Nikki. I believe only your MySpace friends can read the bulletins you post, so unless one of us has friended her, I’m not sure we’ll be able to see it.

I sincerely adore that she’s MySpace friends with John DeSalvo!

Oh irony of ironies, this is a line from her wikipedia page:

“Edwards is known for her meticulous research.”

it’s in the Wiki page, at the bottom of the bio, right under the line “Edwards is known for her meticulous research.” The heading is “Alleged Plagiarism” and reads:

Alleged Plagiarism

On January, 8 2008, the romance novel blog site Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books began a series of posts alleging extensive copying from sources without attribution in the works of Cassie Edwards. Signet Books initially dismissed the charges, but within a few days announced that it was investigating them further. The author denied any wrongdoing[1].

This in case it gets torn down again.

“Because she’s Native American?”

to quote Dr. Phil (and the Texas accent must be used) “Are you KIDDING me??”

Guh!  That should be “bulletin”—no “g.” 

My brain must be fried from CE overload.

This has been bothering me for days…

... how does anyone, supposed Native American heritage or not, get away with titling one book “Savage” something, much less several?

I don’t care what you Smart (not!) Bitches (totally!) say.  I’m still going to continue enjoying this delightful Edward’s novel called Proud Wind and Savage Bias:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single Indian brave in possession of much wampum must be in want of a squaw.

“However little known the feelings or views of such a brave may be on his first entering a tribal lands, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding tribes, that he is considered as the rightful property of some one or other of their virgin maidens, especially those white maidens who were kidnapped from Midwestern families and have golden hair and snowy bosoms.”

More than one person I know received the bulletin yesterday. 

Lemme see what I can dig up…

~but I’ve now lost any ability to even entertain the possibility that this was all about a confusion over factual information~

Yes.

I felt, and stated, that copying from any source as illustrated by the examples struck me clearly as plagiarism. But the examples found from fictional work now erase, for me, any possible ‘research’ or ‘accuracy’ excuse for it. Even if I believed the excuse was faulty.

This is a pattern, to me, of abuse.

If she is indeed claiming she’s being picked on because of her heritage, shame on her again.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait, back up, bitch allegedly said what to the who now? 

Cassie, your Native American heritage is pastede on yey.

Oh Marta…

you win the internet!

So this is like fiction by patchwork?
I saw David Bowie write a song for “Diamond Dogs” in a documentary. He wrote a poem, then cut it up and rearranged it.
Big difference is that Bowie wrote his own stuff.
So you pick some books you hope nobody’s read, at least the readers in your genre, pick some bits, retype or paste them into a document and kind of construct a story to fit?
Sounds like a lot of hard work to me, and nowhere near as much fun as writing your own. Hey, that’s just me.

Like the magnetic poetry sets?  There is a romance one at the bookstore.  It’s words though and not phrases from a book.

I think that it has become gallows humor by this point.  It’s just that you shouldn’t indulge in gallows humor in public.  A lot of people don’t understand you are just breaking tension.

as Nora and others have remarked on Dear Author, it’s gone past the point of outrage, and is just horribly sad. and gallows humor is one reaction to that sadness, I suppose.

has anyone found a book of hers that does *not* contain lifted text?

There is the possibility she was told she had NA ancestry, and just took it at face value.  It’s also possible that I just have the wrong people, and she is part Cheyenne.  I think, though, that if her ancestry is fiction, then it ties into the rest of this story.

Marta Acosta: I think I love you. You must let us know how the book turns out. ;-)

If she is truly claiming this is nothing but a racial attack then I am even more disappointed.

Wow, I’m speechless. Oh wait no I’m not, this is a work of fiction, and common sense alone should tell you that you don’t copy word for word from another book. I can understand that maybe she was confused about non-fiction and the use of citation, but fiction? Really?

The lack of Native-sounding names in a person’s genealogy doesn’t mean he or she is not of Native American descent. In the South, at least, Muscogee and Cherokee who intermarried with whites and did not move west with their tribes often took English-sounding names. The genealogy on my maternal great-grandmother’s side of the family has no Native names at all, but her relatives are on tribal rolls nonetheless.

Lynne,

I agree about the English names.  That certainly did happen, and still happens.  My fiance is Navajo, and some of his relatives use an English surname, and some do not.  That said, her relatives are listed as white on the census records.  I have been looking through the available tribal rolls, but have not yet found any of her ancestors listed on any of them, assuming I have the right ancestors.

What Lynne says is true about Sir names. The two most common last names of the Catawbaw (local tribe to my area) are Harris and Brown. Nearer to the sandhills if your name is Oxendine people will assume you’re Native Amercian.

The comment about Ms. Edwards’ meticulous research appears to be true—what is at issue is whether she accurately attributed that research when quoting directly.

As for Oliver LaFarge’s “Laughing Boy”, I had to read it in 8th grade many (many) years ago.  I grew up in Arizona at a time when young people from various tribes were still brought to a boarding school in Phoenix (on Indian School Road) in an effort to “americanize” them.  The book made a big impact on me, in part because it took place so close to where I lived but mostly because it presented a portrait of the Navajo as a different culture that neither demonized nor romanticized it.  However, I’ve no idea how I’d react today.

To what extent is CE’s copious plagiarism tied up with her limitations as a writer? Is there a correlation between the two? Should this have been discovered sooner - before her hundredth book? How culpable are CE’s editors/ publishers? Does the fact that CE’s novels were left alone by credible reviewers/ critics account for why this went undetected for so long?

These are some of the questions I want answered. I truly don’t want to whap on Edwards, or participate in a witch-hunt, but perhaps my curiousity is leading me into that territory.

Well, I just found a passage in Passion’s Embrace—was that her only Harlequin Historical?  It’s from Green Timber: On the Flood Tide to Fortune in the Great Northwest By Thomas Emerson Ripley Published 1968.  American West Publishing Company, Tacoma, WA.  I’ll send the specifics just so someone doesn’t end up redoing it.

Could we please stop referring to all this as witch hunting? There are plenty of holier-than-thou genteel blogs doing exactly that, and frankly, when you have evidence up the wazoo, there ain’t no witch hunt.

/rant

OMG.

I didn’t think it could get any worse.

For one I didn’t believe that the “I didn’t know” plea was valid with regards to research.  This just shows it’s “I don’t care” rather than “I didn’t know.”  Intent verified (even though stealing is stealing no matter who you steal from fiction or non-fiction.)

Wonder what her husband will have to say about this to the media?

Holy hell.  So who’s going to volunteer to read the Bible, to see if she lifted anything from that novel?  ^_^

Oh, you betcha she knew. Move a word here and there, look up the thesarus, and so forth.  Too not to be a sheer coincidence.

Christ on a fucking piece of toast.

Thank you, Candy and Sarah, for sticking with this. And kudos to everyone who’s slogging through an Edwards novel: your stomachs are stronger than mine.

My brother-in-law is 3/8 Cherokee. Does this give my sister or nephew any rights in the Indian romance genre? I’m sure my sister could use the extra money from publishing a book.

bible’s out of copywrite..unless she pulls it from some “new” translation LOL

All I can say is “my God.”

copyright.

Not that I’m defending CE here, because this is clearly a continual thing across many of her works.  But in my personal experience, I once sat down to write a story and dreamed up this fantastic intro (which never got further than the intro)... only to learn, several years after that, that my first paragraph was nearly verbatim from someone else’s published work. 

I had read the published work as a kid, and it came back to me almost word for word as a teen, *without* remembering I had ever read it.  It was only when I purchased a book by an author I’d loved as a child - and not a book I remembered reading, either - that I discovered the source.

That could explain maybe one or two instances of “borrowing”.  But this many?  Come on.

Some of the issues that have been brought to light…

A) Do romance readers forgive too much from authors? (i.e. why has this been undetected for so long) Why? Is it some sort of syndrome not unlike reading bad fanfic on the internet?

B)Publishers must be held liable for plagiarism (including insuffecient paraphrasing and lack of reference) and copyright, even if it is between their own texts. Discuss.

C)A first-time published author must be put through training first, in order for them to fully appreciate the responsibilities and legalities of their position. Discuss.

D) The law of the land is insufficient to cover potential atrocities of publishing practices. Discuss.

Plagiarism is an ethical error. Repeated plagiarism may show moral deficiencies in the plagiarizer.

Plagiarizing from a Pulitzer winner is like juggling matches while standing on a powder keg. The question isn’t if the plagiarizer will be caught but when.

That’s all I’m going to say about this from now on. These alleged cases of plagiarism are making me sick to my stomach.

Warning Will Robinson…

Long freaking post…go to the P.S. for a short contribution…otherwise, I did warn you.

I’ve been reading and not commenting on this whole situation, feeling like my WTF pov had been covered, as well as wanting to think about why this bothered me so very much, because the ethics of it—while a compelling argument for my feeling of upset—does not seem to cover the amount of outrage and attention paid here and as well as within my internal debate team (Go Tigers! ‘Cause yes, they have a name).

Beware, Huge Side Note Ahead—(also, I think that ethics are something that few people make well thoughtout/verbalized/written down rules for within themselves…hence situational ethics…which can be seen as a type of ethical rule if you’re desperate…and yet it has become so much the norm that I suppose a person could indeed argue for sit. ethics as a choosen form of personal ethics)

Detour Over Now—

This was what I have come up with and what I offer to this community for mulling and/or disagreeing etc—it goes along with the “broken trust” idea that has cropped up in numerous posts…

CE has broken a rule of expected behavior, and not by accident but with intent (as todays bit of evidence shows). This is a BIG DEAL as it goes deeper then a question of ethical standards.

Here’s why I think whats I think,(not being a cultural anthropologist [english major—and yes, the grammar and sp here are bad, I save up for my papers—] I don’t have “authority” in the subject, er…outside of my own observations)so here it gos:

I think every person in a culture in any given situation has a reasonable expectation of behavior from those they are interacting with, and when someone breaks away from the expected behavior we (the culture) view it as being dangerous in some way, shape or form, especially if said break is done knowingly…(i.g. when a driver on the road does something like cut you off while speeding and you almost break a blood vessel while screaming “ASSJACK!!!”...its ‘cause he went against expectation and for that moment the whole world wasn’t safe because what that one person did was tell you anyone could break the rules at any time [of course, that could just be me]). CE’s break from our expectation of behavior is a break of the type of trust used to determine our understanding and even our perception of the world we move in.

To me and the Tigers (go team) the above is the essence of what has happened here when broken down; decloaked from the debate of legal definitions and ethical questions, this is the reason it has not been put away…I think we are all trying to reafirm what we understand to be behavior that is safe…behavior that allows any person to reasonabley expect that a stranger will treat you well, that a newspaper being read will tell the correct day and an approximation of a weather forcast,and that we will all move past eachother and along with eachother in such a way as to allow a relaxed stance in our own environment.

In short, CE has made all of our shoulders hunch up into our ears because she broke major trust by cutting us off on the highway, right where the SmartBitch interstate exchanges with the RomanceReader freeway.

This is why CE-isms will be the conversation until we feel safe again in our romance-reading-smartbitch-participating environment.

So, for all those who feel that this has been going on for long enough…I say Road Trip!...we should follow the detour signs until what she broke is rebuilt in this community, until we feel safe again.

P.S. “What endangered safety is this lady taking about, for Gods sake?” you ask…the way I see it, it is our investment into a form of lit. that has been looked at askew by all and the sundrey, which we have supported and held up and said “look, this has value and good writing and something to offer…and I’m not stupid for reading it, you are for dismissing it.” She has taken that and unraveled part of the new identity that romance lit and romance readers had begun to be seen in and, more importantly, identify themselves in. One does not f!ck with another’s identity, it just isn’t done.

Here endith my mini essay on shit I think. Tanks SBs for listening…it’s because you all make me feel safe to spout forth.

Can one of you tell me how you used google to find all these? I’d like to try it with another of Ann Rinaldi’s works of historical fiction for children. My email is .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Thanks,
Debbie

Uh-oh. I feel badly for everyone involved.

Wow…

Since anything I could think of has already been written, I just have a question of curiosity:

Have the Bitches made a decision about the question of repeated material across books with different publishers? Will it be included in the PDF and sent to the publishers with all the rest? I admit, it was the first thing I thought of when Candy brought it up. Like I said, just curious as to the answer.

http://mrsgiggles.braveblog.com/entry/30611

Mrs. Giggles is going soft and seems to think that Smart Bitches and Fandom_wank are connected. Or that Candy posted on fandom_wank.
My respect for Mrs. Giggles has plummted greatly.

Wowee wow wow.

Y’know, in all fairness, if she were a writer I read (which I don’t… but not for any personal reasons), I would probably forgive her a few lifts here and there… albeit if she actually CHANGED the words around and didn’t copy them verbatim. And even if she did.. well, if she was a NEW writer, just finding her groove, etc.. OKAY. I’ll even forgive her that.

But Holy Crap on a Cracker, Batman! The woman’s sold over like what, 100 books? And she hasn’t figured out you can’t copy everyone else’s homework? How can she possibly plead “I didn’t know…” when she’s supposedly a professional

? What would she say, I wonder, if someone had lifted her words? Hmmm.. I suspect she’d be the first one on the bullhorn hollering she’d been plagiarized.  But that’s just MHO…

Ok, now it’s just… I don’t know. Words fail me.

I held out the small ( tiny, if truth be told) hope that she really DIDN’T know she was doing wrong. This last revelation however blew that right out of the water. ( I am not a fan of hers, but I can’t help but to be hopeful that a well known, published author would somehow NOT have been doing this out of ignorance or worse yet- knowingly!)

I have a question for Candy &/or Sarah. Are you two expecting any feedback from the publisher(s) and RWA in regards to all this? Because I’d really like to hear how they rule when all of this is investigated/reviewed. Not that I wish ill will on the woman herself. But she’s done wrong, and must therefore face the consequences. IMHO.

Anna makes some good points.  I’d like to give my take on why people seem to fall into two different camps on this topic. 

I think a lot of the difference in reaction can be parsed back to the idea of the ‘sisterhood’ of romance readers.

Since we are continuously attacked, vilified or ridiculed for our reading choice, a knee-jerk reaction to yet another thing that opens us to further ridicule is to say, ‘Let’s not talk about it, because it will just give us another black eye’. 

Many of us get frustrated with the idea of ‘sisterhood’ at all cost, because we are told not to voice our negative feelings about certain books or make negative reviews public, because ‘it hurts the authors’ feelings and these books are their babies’, and similar arguments.

This seems also where the ‘they demean us by calling themselves bitches’, ‘we don’t like them because they are mean’ feeling comes from since it’s considered ‘soiling our own nest’ and after all, don’t we get attacked enough without doing it to our own?

If we go further on the spectrum of the ‘sisterhood’, however, we come to the majority of posters here. Those are the ones who seem to me incensed on behalf of themselves and for all their sisters out there who have spent their hard-earned money - or if the anecdotal reports of CE’s readership being a majority of elderly ladies can be taken as correct - their hard-earned pensions, on something that is not original work.

Many also feel that the trust between author and reader has been broken, the ‘sisterhood’ has been violated, because this author lied to us.

These ‘sisters’ have moved away from the knee-jerk reaction of defense for defense’s sake and moved on to the concept of ‘we need to police our own, so we don’t get laughed at for reading romance any longer’.

I do know that the hope that one day we won’t have to justify our reading tastes is probably futile, but hey, most things in women’s evolution have been hard to come by (personal freedom, property ownership, voting rights, etc.).

So, the vast gap I see here between the different positions, does spring from the same root cause, the sense of ‘sisterhood’. 

We just differ in where we see the betrayal in the sisterhood. By the author ‘sister’ who plagiarized or by the reader ‘sisters’ who didn’t stay in the fold of sticking together at all cost.

I wonder if we would see an age slant on this topic if we knew the age of posters her and elsewhere.

I have many more thoughts on this topic, but this was muddled enough.  I just hope I made some of my reasoning clear.

Where’s The Fruitbat? My head just went ‘splodey.

I’m in (sarcasm)love(/sarcasm) with people who say, “I don’t read the meanies blog, but I agree with you, they are so mean!!!!” or words to that effect.

Hint: to state an opinion as fact you need to know whereof you speak.

Not that I know jackshit, since I’m myself am a meanie

GC you hit the nail on the head.
That’s exactly what’s happening on one of my main loops “It’s really bad, let’s drop it”, “Shhhh, it’s bad enough don’t say anything else”. It’s so frustrating! But what I think they don’t understand is that many will see silence as consent and if we don’t stand up and say it’s wrong that will only hurt us more.

I doubt if it would be age but I wonder about education or at least having been involved in some activity that required intellectual rigor.  The women who taught me—and it was mostly women until I went for my professional degree—would be far older than CE now but they would not have tolerated this for a minute.

Anyone else remember the kerfuffle over the similarities between L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle (published 1920s, LMM died 1942) and Colleen McCullough’s The Ladies of Missalonghi (published 1980s)?  I don’t remember hearing how or if that was resolved.  The fact that they fall into genre/women’s/romantic fiction makes me wonder if it ever was (this being, of course, a lesser field of ‘litteracher and writting’ than Real and Important Fiction, ahem).

“I don’t remember hearing how or if that was resolved.  The fact that they fall into genre/women’s/romantic fiction makes me wonder if it ever was”

These things often go unresolved, in any genre.  Sometimes it’s just too hard to establish the connection legally.  Sometimes there’s no reasonable remedy—the damage is done.

Then there’s all the fuzzy stuff, like the JK Rowling/Jane Yolen conflict, which is mostly about story structure; and Bob Mayer’s issue with the Lost TV series, which is of a similar magnitude but probably unactionable. The JK Rowling/Stouffer case, which has more specific details and sounds really bad depending which facts you look at:

In Stouffer’s [ca. 1980] The Legend of Rah and the Muggles, which features a character named Larry Potter

However, the court ruled “Ms Stouffer lied to the court and doctored evidence to support her claims.”

Going along with GrowlyCub’s drift…let me know if I’m wrong GrowlyCub…

The definitions we use for ourselves (our “sisterhood” definitions)can be also be broken down into the sisterhood of: I choose a book—my choice is a reflextion of me—therefore the genre is a reflection and writers within the genre are as well—what does this mean when a writer is revealed to be unethical, one who has sold 100 bks to other romance readers…oh shit, betrayed stinks…sisterhood.

And then there is the reverse…the sisterhood of the writer; that a writer’s readership is a reflextion of the writer’s craft etc. On that note…how do authers feel when they have fans of the rabid/embarressing kind who go bizarro for the writer they adore, responding to this and that as if they represent the whole of that writer’s readership to the world at large?

I think sisterhoods are like overlapping circles, each person falling into as many ideas and groups as the ring of themselves passes through…you know, the whole “we are all linked” thing, which is why I think the CE raises so much ire…

And yes, I said it Chicagoland style—THE CE

I found this site only recently.

CE’s publishers had to know about her modus operandi (lifting from fiction and nonfiction sources). They’ve published over 100 books by this author.

If a couple smart bitches on a romance blog could uncover this why wasn’t it recognized by at least a few of the hundreds of editors who worked her copy over the past 20+ years?  I’d bet my shoe collection they knew about it.

It would appear that the industry had an unwritten, ‘wink and look the other way’ code of ethics. Romance publishing is a business first, and CE was a brand they’d carefully nurtured, an investment they couldn’t risk.

RWA, as the premier advocate for romance authors, should have been on top of this years ago. Surely it had been brought to their attention. There are a few smart bitches over there. Needless to say I won’t be renewing my membership. The integrity of the genre is at stake, and now the best they can do is to issue a “gosh, we don’t know what to do here” statement.

I don’t know which is more disappointing—CE’s actions or the industry’s response.

There have been many good responses to Sarah Frantz’s question about why this (copying fiction) seems more egregious than copying non-fiction, but I’m going to add my 2 cents’ worth. 

I think, isolated from other considerations, they are equally dishonest and upsetting. In this particular case, what makes the fiction copying more upsetting to discover is remembering that pitiful comment CE made to AP - ‘I thought I was doing research, I didn’t know I was supposed to include in-text citations,’ or whatever the statement was.

At the time, there was a tiny soupçon of credibility to that. Now, ... well, words fail me.

wow wow wow
where can i get my hands on this pdf?

I would guess the next step is to try the same exercise with a dozen other prolific Romance writers - Find out whether this is a problem specific to this writer, or an industry wide issue.

CE’s publishers had to know about her modus operandi (lifting from fiction and nonfiction sources). They’ve published over 100 books by this author.

If a couple smart bitches on a romance blog could uncover this why wasn’t it recognized by at least a few of the hundreds of editors who worked her copy over the past 20+ years?  I’d bet my shoe collection they knew about it.

I respectfully disagree. Candy and Sarah have reviewed Cassie Edwards’ books and they didn’t pick up on it.

Tens of thousands of people have read Ms. Edwards’ books and apparently none of them picked up on it (enough to go checking facts).

Why would the editors pick up on it? They are hired to spot a saleable romance novel and fix any remaining problems in that novel, not to be widely read in every type of non-fiction that their authors might use as reference material.

In short, I can’t believe this was a conspiracy. If tens of thousands of Cassie Edwards fans didn’t spot this over the course of 100+ books, then it isn’t reasonable to think the editors would have.

“If a couple smart bitches on a romance blog could uncover this why wasn’t it recognized by at least a few of the hundreds of editors who worked her copy over the past 20+ years?  I’d bet my shoe collection they knew about it.”

At least in part because the technologies used by the smart bitches didn’t exist for the first 90-odd books.  That doesn’t excuse unobservant editing, but in the past if someone suspected plagiarism, it was much harder to confirm.

I agree with Anna: there’s the issue of breaking of trust between writer and reader that should have CE’s readers pissed off for being duped; I think once the anger and denial stages pass there’s going to be a massive riptide with regards to that. But anyway: here it is: writers lie all the time, and the readers not only let them, they expect it. The reader is prepared to believe even the most tenuously set up situation so long as the writer maintains the continuity throughout. Readers know that writers lie in the context of “you’re telling me a story that’s not true, but within its own context, it’s correct and plausible and I can escape into something that follows its own logic within the span of the two covers” and yet that is the ONLY way that readers will allow a writer to lie to them.

To think we do not know when we are being sold a pig in a poke is insulting. To think we are so dense that we won’t figure it out is condescending—even if it does take 20 years to be caught out in it, it comes out. It always comes out. The question is whether the perp will be alive when it does.

Keep in mind I do not read romance as a genre and admit, much to my chagrin, to committing many of the assumptive faux pas already outlined regarding the literary merits of the genre and the tastes of the readership in general, for which I apologize (and that includes my mother and sister… oops).

Twenty years ago before SF or fantasy or comic books or Anime was cool and hip and popular, we were geeks getting slammed into lockers and getting our books dumped and having our taste in literature questioned on a daily basis. That is now changing, albeit slowly. Romance can break its stereotype too, but not if the only reason it gets mention in the mainstream press is because of things like this. To write is to create, whatever you write, whatever the genre.

There’s a syndrome in the art world of (allegedly) stealing wholly and completely art from other sources, repainting it and claiming it as your own (cf: Todd Goldman, Roy Lichtenstein). This is no different, and cannot be condoned by any creator of any art form. Period.

“I do know that the hope that one day we won’t have to justify our reading tastes is probably futile, but hey, most things in women’s evolution have been hard to come by (personal freedom, property ownership, voting rights, etc.).”

Did you really just compare people mocking the reading of romance novels to women being denied the right to vote and own property?

Really?

“Romance can break its stereotype too, but not if the only reason it gets mention in the mainstream press is because of things like this. To write is to create, whatever you write, whatever the genre.”

I think what’s doing the most for romance is the crossover subgenres—they’re like a gateway drug; new audiences are trying romance.  Expanding the audience by definition pulls books out of their genre ghetto.  I think that’s part of the success of sci fi in the last couple of decades—it’s the Age of the Geek, and the audience has expanded enormously.  (No aspersions intended—I’d say any of us posting on here are all geeks together.)

Okay, I’m back. 

I was able to track down the bulletin that was sent out via My Space. Since permission is given to forward to my friends, I’ll take that as permission to post here.  I mean, y’all ARE my friends, right?

Also, a disclaimer:  I have no way to verify the enclosed message originated with Cassie Edwards but it sounds a lot like her statement to the press.

(Misspells/typos are NOT mine—they are exactly as posted.)

****************************
Jan 12,
2008
12:11 AM
Subject:    A Few Words From Cassie Edwards. Please pass this on….

Body:  With Cassie Edwards approval I pass this letter on, concerning the plagiarism accusation against her. She needs our support. Please forward this to all your friends.

In acknowledgement of your support contact me at: http://www.myspace.com/destinyschoice8 or write to Cassie at: http://www.myspace.com/cassieedwardsromance

Thanks, Lisa :)

Cassie Ed..

Date:

Jan 11, 2008 4:57 PM

————————— Original Message
From: Cassie Edwards
Date: Jan 11, 2008 11:58 AM

Hi, Lisa,
I just got on My Space and I found your wonderful encouraging letter. Thank you for believing in me, for I have done nothing wrong. My publisher is standing behind me 100%, for they know my work better than anyone, and they know that all romance authors who use research for historicals have to use reference books to do this. My readers love this accurate material about the Indians. And if I couldn’t use this material my books would not be worth anything to my readers who depend on me.

The sad thing is that I am writing these books now in a way to honor our Native Americans, past, present and in the future. And I am honoring my great grandmother who was a full blood Cheyenne. She would be so proud of me if she could read what I am writing about the Indians who have been so maligned for so long. And do you know? I feel picked on now as our Native American Indians have always been picked on throughout history. I am trying to spread the word about them and what do I get? Spiteful women who have found a way to bring attention to themselves, by getting in the media in this horrible way.

Right now I am getting hit from all sides….CNN, The New York Times, AP, everyone who those women could think of to contact. And what is also sad is that a fellow author, has spoken up and condemned me.

Thanks again for your support. When I am feeling stronger I plan to write a bulletin on My Space, but right now I am totally drained of energy from what has been done to me. I hope that you will tell your friends, who are so much also mine, the wrong that has been done to me, and tell them that I will get through this. I will be found innocent and vendicated of any wrong.

For now, it’s all too raw and horrible, but I will be alright.
Love, Cassie

***************************
So, there you have it.  She’s just being picked on by mean bitches. 

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read this line:

And if I couldn’t use this material my books would not be worth anything to my readers who depend on me.

Quite telling,IMO.

More random responses:

I just stumbled across a similar example in which Ian McEwan, author of Absolution, (now a major motion picture, dudes and dudettes) was accused of plagiarizing from the memoirs of Lucilla Andrews, author of medical romances.

(A Booker Prize winner plagiarizing from a ROMANCE NOVELIST!  Oh, the humanity! ¹
How simply frightful!
How humiliating! How delightful!²

The article is here:
http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1957845,00.html

But I think what he has to say about the historical novelist’s approach to using other writers’ works as sources deserves to be quoted here:

¹Journalist reporting Hindenburg disaster, 1937
²My Fair Lady, Lerner and Loewe, 1956

I know well from researching Saturday, a novel about a neurosurgeon, that patient traumas, medical procedures, hospital routines or details of training demand the strictest factual accuracy. When all these elements are 60 years in the past, the quest for truth becomes all the more difficult and important.
It was extraordinary, then, to find in the Wellcome Trust medical library, in Oxford, No Time for Romance, the autobiography of Lucilla Andrews, a well-known writer of hospital romances - my mother used to read her novels with great pleasure. Contained within this book was a factual account of the rigours of Nightingale training, the daily routines and crucially, of the arrival of wounded soldiers from the Dunkirk evacuation and their treatment. As far as I know, no other such factual account exists. Andrews even recounted an episode that paralleled my father’s experience of being told off for swearing.

What Andrews described was not an imaginary world - it was not a fiction. It was the world of a shared reality, of those War Museum letters and of my father’s prolonged hospital stay. Within the pages of a conventional life story, she created an important and unique historical document. With painstaking accuracy, so it seemed to me, she rendered in the form of superb reportage, an experience of the war that has been almost entirely neglected, and which I too wanted to bring to life through the eyes of my heroine. As with the Dunkirk section, I drew on the scenes she described. Again, it was important to me that these events actually occurred. For certain long-outdated medical practices, she was my sole source and I have always been grateful to her.

I have openly acknowledged my debt to her in the author’s note at the end of Atonement, and ever since on public platforms, where questions about research are almost as frequent as “where do you get your ideas from?”. I have spoken about her in numerous interviews and in a Radio 4 tribute. My one regret is not meeting her. But if people are now talking about Lucilla Andrews, I am glad. I have been talking about her for five years.

© Ian McEwan 2006

(The accusation seems to have fizzled out, and numerous noted authors defended him, so it looks like he did in fact make sufficient acknowledgement.  Maybe someone can get hold of the book and quote the relevant credit.)

Le Guin is 78, and still capable of jumping all over someone who plagiarized her with hobnailed boots.  See her website.

And as has already been mentioned, this was done before the Internet was in everyone’s home, so it’s not simple cut-and-paste but copy-word-for-word.

I think francois was thinking of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord.”  From Wikipedia:  Following the song’s release, musical similarities between “My Sweet Lord” and The Chiffons’ hit “He’s So Fine” led to a lengthy legal battle over the rights to the composition. Billboard magazine, in an article dated 6 March 1971, stated that Harrison’s royalty payments from the recording had been halted worldwide. Harrison stated that he was inspired to write “My Sweet Lord” after hearing the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ “Oh Happy Day”.

In the U.S. federal court decision in the case, known as Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music, Harrison was found to have unintentionally copied the earlier song. He was ordered to surrender the majority of royalties from “My Sweet Lord” and partial royalties from All Things Must Pass. Former manager Allen Klein, who earlier had supported Harrison’s case, became the owner of Bright Tunes, after they parted ways. In the long run this worked against Klein, but it resulted in the case continuing for years in court.

The Chiffons would later record"My Sweet Lord” to capitalize on the publicity generated by the lawsuit. (end quote)

This is considered an example of cryptomnesia, completely forgetting something one has read/heard and bringing it forth as original.

Here is a site dealing with the McCullough/Montgomery issue:

http://www.riseagain.net/dichroic/archives/000037.html

And one with more about plagiarism than you ever wanted to know:

http://www.caslon.com.au/ipguide17.htm

And here is a description of such behavior by a publisher:  “an instance of the novelist as bowerbird rather than any kind of brazen break-and-enter into someone else’s work”.  (I keep thinking that should say “beak-and-enter.”  Look at the lovely fur on this weasel.)

Incidentally, MY maternal great-grandfather was Sitting Bull’s interpreter.  And his name was….......wait for it….................Savage!

(Weirdly enough, long before he met and married my mother, when he was still a West Point cadet, my father met General Custer’s widow.  I expect this to turn up in a Cassie Edwards romance any day now.)

(Memo to self:  Buy Marta Acosta’s books.)

I think we should have a contest: take one of the pages CE swiped and write a fictional passage based on it as she SHOULD be wrote, to transform it into FICTION, dammit, not as a lift.  First prize could be a Cassie Edwards novel.  Second prize could be two Cassie Edwards novels….

There is a user froma specific IP address that keeps editing out the plagiarism info on Wikipedia. Every time Wikipedia puts it back up, they take it back down.

Just an fyi—there is no such thing as an Indian Princess.  I read an article a few years ago condemning her for claiming NA heritage, but can I find it online?  No.  So it may have been OneVoice, which no longer publishes.  I’d kill to find it, though.

I guess this is circling home for me… I started off disliking this woman because of the horrible racism in her novels.  I am now finding myself really bothered by the absolutely agist nonsense defense that she’s too old to know any better. I find that really insulting.

But I’ll also admit that… well, I’m kind of stunned to feel bad for her.  With this latest revelation… yeah, it’s over.  And yes, YES, it really is very, very sad.

t’s the Age of the Geek, and the audience has expanded enormously.  (No aspersions intended—I’d say any of us posting on here are all geeks together.)

heh… anyone else remember when it was the uncoolest thing ever to know how to use a computer? boy, the abuse I took over my Commodore PET programming skillz… XD

everyone who those women could think of to contact.

. When I am feeling stronger I plan to write a bulletin on My Space, but right now I am totally drained of energy from what has been done to me. I hope that you will tell your friends, who are so much also mine, the wrong that has been done to me, and tell them that I will get through this. I will be found innocent and vendicated of any wrong.

For now, it’s all too raw and horrible, but I will be alright.

Best flowery fiction she ever wrote.

Ya know, if there had been ONE iota of ....I dunno, something other than ” I” “I” “I” “Me” “Me” “Me” I’d have a lot more compassion for her. As it is.. she really needs to shut up and let her lawyers and/or publishers handle everything .

Nikki: Wow. That’s mind-boggling. If that is from her, I can’t believe those protestations of innocence.

YFM: I see your point that comparing reading material to the right to vote might not be entirely apt. However, the widespread derision of romance novels, their writers and their readers is highly gendered. “For women, by women” seems, in some circles, to mean “trash” or “lesser-than.” And that’s not fair. So I understand where that comparison comes from. Earning respect for literature that is primarily viewed as feminine has been a struggle and probably will be for some time to come, sadly. For example, a recent commenter on this blog expressed surprise that authors did any research to write romance novels. I don’t want to accuse that person of sexism, but it does seem patronizing about a primarily female genre, and that’s telling, I think.

The word delusional comes to mind.
How do these books honor the American Indians? From the reviews I’ve read, they’re offensive.
I once wrote a story using the names of my great-grandparents. I’ve also written a fictionalized account of the murder of my great-great grandmother’s favorite brother. I was very careful in that one because of the possibility that there were descedants on the murderer still in the town.
Writing to honor your ancestors is great, but it shouldn’t be a plagerized, unreadable mess.

All of this is mind blowing.  I am not in any way trying to let CE off the hook, however, there is a part of me that just pities the fuck out of her.

In my mind (having nothing to do with the legalities) whether it is fiction or non-fiction the offense is the same. A plagiarist is a plagiarist.

At this point it will be up to the legal arena, publishers and CE as to how it washes out.

I do want to comment on something though that is disturbing as well…all the different blogs coming down on one another or the SB’s, etc.  That is crap. The bitches didn’t create CE’s publishing/lack of ethics issues, she did all by herself and to place blame or to be bothered by anyone for still writing about new developments is utter balderdash.  As one of the other blogs pointed out if you put out the blog you own the blog and if you don’t like what is being written, well, gee, go read something else or create your own.

I am still just amazed.  Peace.

And do you know? I feel picked on now as our Native American Indians have always been picked on throughout history.

This is just in: Al Sharpton will be her attorney.

My Wiki on Cassie’s plagiarism currently reads:

“On January, 8 2008, the romance novel blog site Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books began a series of posts alleging extensive copying from sources without attribution in the works of Cassie Edwards. Signet Books initially dismissed the charges, but within a few days announced that it was investigating them further. The author denied any wrongdoing[1]. As of January 13, 2008, one of the readers of Smart Bitches has found striking if not entire paragraphs from the Pulitzer Prize winning novel “Laughing Boy” by Oliver La Farge.[2]”

In case anyone missed it. Roheen, someone from the same ip address keeps deleting it? Wow.

In Regards to:
“I’ve heard that CE sent out a bulletin via MySpace proclaiming her innocence while saying that she’s being picked on because of her Native American heritage.”

I’m on that myspace and receive updates and bulletins from there.  Whoever said Cassie Edwards sent out any kind of bulletin is a liar.

I went through every bulletin I’ve received and there is not a single one from her.

Just wanted to clear that up!

Ha! Just went through the edit history of Cassie Edwards on Wikipedia, and it looks like a freakin’ game of backyard basketball, what with the updates and undos between the possibly pro-CE and pro-information of plagiarism allegations, stealing the ball, slapping it away.

But the edit policy on Wiki could be a blog post in itself, really. Can I see a slam dunk by the pro-information on plagirism, please? Go, team!

I hope that MySpace thing was fake.  Somebody seriously needs to just TAKE OVER for her now.

Jessica,

The bulletin wasn’t sent from Cassie Edwards.  It was sent from Lisa—whose MySpace page is located at http://www.myspace.com/destinyschoice8—and it contained a letter from Cassie Edwards. 

If you think someone has lied, then I’d recommend you check with either of them yourself.

Someone up-thread (or in the comments in the last post. It’s kinda big blur of badness by now) raised a valid question.

Has anyone checked an Edwards book that didn’t turn up plagiarised material?

My two cents:

I thought to begin with it was possible she was just one of those people who, if they’ve just read something, accidentally write it into whatever they’re writing - it’s easy to do, particularly if you’re somewhat on autopilot.

But the sheer volume of what’s coming out makes that seem unlikely, to say the least.

Hey, where’s Samantha and the Mitchell twins?  SOMEONE should be over here, telling us that copying prose from someone else’s novel should be considered “artistic license” or some such…

After reading through these absolutely lyrical passages, I can understand the temptation to copy and paste much more than I could in the case of the academic prose. But now the question for me becomes how much of Edwards’ manuscripts or indeed her writing “style” itself really belong to her? These passages would presumably be much much harder to spot as transcriptions.

megalith, sadly these passages were not actually hard to spot at all. The change in style from fairly short, simple sentences (with way too many exclamation points) to this type of prose—lyrical is a very good description—was quite jarring once I was paying attention.

Basically, every time I came across a passage that I thought was good or interesting, I googled it. Most of the time, I got Laughing Boy back.

It kind of makes me want to go read Laughing Boy, actually!

“writers lie all the time, and the readers not only let them, they expect it.”

Please, no.

A lie is a deliberate attempt to deceive.  It isn’t the same as writing a prose narrative that the readers know from the outset is indeed fiction. 

Yeah, I know, I’m probably splitting hairs, here.  But writing fiction should never be confused with—or become synonymous with—lying.

Oh, Amy, that just makes this even sadder.

And yes, Laughing Boy,/i> is now on my to be read list as well! Weren’t those excerpts wonderful to read? Must go down as one of the rare pleasures associated with this whole awful mess.

We had to read Laughing Boy in school (along with, of all things, The Front Runner. If a teacher tried that in 2008 he’d be fired). As far as I remember it was a great book.

Let’s see if I can fix this…

“I feel picked on now as our Native American Indians have always been picked on throughout history. I am trying to spread the word about them and what do I get? Spiteful women who have found a way to bring attention to themselves, by getting in the media in this horrible way.”

That is rigodamnediculous.

I think that is terrible. Awful.

This is gross.

I feel picked on now as our Native American Indians have always been picked on throughout history.

(tongue in cheek)

Isn’t it demeaning to Native Americans to say that their experiences in our history were them being ” picked on?”

AND EWWW at honoring her ancestors by writing about great granpas throbbing man member LOL

Sorry, talpianna, this is nitpicky, but the book/movie is called ATONEMENT.

OUCH!  Would you believe that’s the THIRD mistake I’ve made since 1953?  I’m an insectivore, Jim, not a theologian!  (And it’s not nitpicky at all; I made a major mistake and I thank you for correcting me.)

As a side note, go read Atonement. It’s heartbreaking. And
underlines the power of storytelling and the far reaching consequences of a
lie. Timely, no?

A point I meant to make myself but forgot to; thanks for doing so.  As for interviewing Andrews, in the passage I quoted from the GUARDIAN piece, he said that he regretted that he never met her.  Of course, this doesn’t mean he couldn’t have talked to her on the phone, or corresponded with her.  The chief point is that he ACKNOWLEDGED his debt to her IN PRINT as well as in interviews and speeches.

Oh, and since someone has mentioned the concept that fiction is equivalent to falsehood anyway, I can’t resist citing my all-time favorite Ursula K. Le Guin quote:

Fiction writers, at least in their braver moments, do desire the truth: to know it, speak it, serve it. But they go about it in a peculiar and devious way, which consists in inventing persons, places, and events which never did and never will exist or occur, and telling about these fictions in detail and at length and with a great deal of emotion, and then when they are done writing down this pack of lies, they say, There! That’s the truth!

OMGWTFBBQ!!!

No worse than before really, but certainly harder to dismiss.

And surely it’s more difficult to write a book this way than just doing it yourself? Are we sure CE isn’t actually a team of editorial interns, cutting and pasting away in the basement of the publisher??

Has anyone checked the early books - the 1980s ones?

I’ve checked one—SAVAGE OBSESSION.  Originally published in 1983 by Zebra (Kensington), it was the very first book in the Savage series, released *very* early in her career, and has had at least two mass market paperback reprints.  Same M.O. as the other books that have been checked.  Check out Candy’s handy-dandy PDF for full details.

Also, while completing research on PASSION’S EMBRACE, a Harlequin Historical, I stumbled across a unique phrase shared by PORTRAIT OF DESIRE by CE published in 1982 and the non-fiction book THIS LAND AROUND US by Ellis Lucia.  So, if anyone has that book, then you may want to give it a look-see.

A trend I’ve noticed in some blog comments—not just here but all over—is the notion that perhaps she started copying texts because of a stressful publication schedule.  Basically, that she got in over her head and THEN started copying. 

As far as I can tell, she has been using other authors’ words to “enhance” her own writing since Day One of her writing career.  Quite simply, that excuse is invalid.

Well, crap.  That’ll teach me to post without refreshing my screen first. 

Sorry to be redundant after Candy’s answer.

Restating my previous standpoint of unrepentant glee throughout this debacle, I would like to point out, on a more serious note, that it had been a good long while since I have seen a pity-party of the proportions implied in that letter.  You could play a decent drinking game with the number of personal pronouns.  Point blank: shenanigans were called, and she was found wanting.  If my heart were not a withered lump of tar, I might nearly feel sorry for her.  But no.  Not after that.  Not anymore.

Hey Nikki, how is TurnItIn holding up against your known data?

Yeah, I know, I’m probably splitting hairs, here.  But writing fiction should never be confused with—or become synonymous with—lying.

I remember a wonderful Christopher Anvil short story (can’t remember the name, but it was awesome) about the aliens that invaded Earth and how since they didn’t understand what fiction was, we had all these pop culture references to use as a secret code and we confoosled the heck out of them till they gave up. Likewise Captain Taggart explaining why episodes of Galaxy Quest were not “historical documents.”

There’s a difference between the lies storytellers spin as fiction that we readers are complicit in, the lies we accept (because fiction is not real—realistic it may be, but a made up story is a lie) and being LIED TO outside of the story by a writer saying it is an original composition. I don’t think that’s too confusing a difference, is it?

Writers do to words what stage magicians do to a deck of cards: manipulate it in an entertaining fashion. Or to put it more earthily, writers aren’t just liars, they are bullsh!tters. Illusionists. Exaggerators. And that is why it’s entertaining. So long as the lie is contained in the story and not in the act of telling it.

Hey Teddy Pig,

TurnItIn did not do well at all.  Sarah Frantz was kind enough to run the data through for me.  We ran two tests and it failed to catch anything on either one.

It didn’t even catch the ferret article, if you can believe it. 

My belief is that TurnItIn doesn’t check GoogleBooks and, therefore, wouldn’t catch these things. Why it didn’t catch the ferret article, I don’t know.

The scary thing, from an academic standpoint, is that it seems like if you go to the trouble of actually

going to the library and copying from a book, you’re fine.  The program will only catch the lazy plagiarists. 

I could be wrong, though.

Anyone out there with more knowledge of the program, please correct me if I’m wrong.

But, to sum up, TurnItIn isn’t any help in this particular instance.  Looks like we’ll just have to keep slogging through CE’s backlist the good old fashioned way. Damn it.

Same with My Drop Box then I was able to find some of the items you pulled but only if they were provided by other sources than Google Book Search.

Y’all!  This is getting wilder all the time.  I have an idea!  If I self-publish a book that is made up of ALL plagiarized sentences (arranged in an order that it makes sense, for some value of “sense,” I mean) and then offer a Valuable Prize to any reader who can identify every steal and where it came from, I could sell millions of copies.  Only trouble is, I don’t have any good prizes.  But just think, I might get a real book contract out of it—or a real big lawsuit.  Will think on these things.

Meanwhile, has anyone checked _The Education of Little Tree_?  That one turned out to be a fraud (not written by someone who lived through it, as purported, but by a reg’lar guy, if I remember correctly), and it would be SUCH a hoot if there were material in her books from that one.  Or from that Dustin Hoffman movie that I loved as a kid—_Little Big Man_.  “Made in 1970 but based on a 1964 novel by Thomas Berger, it is a picaresque comedy and drama about a Caucasian boy raised by the Cheyenne nation during the 19th century.”  I semi-stole that ENTIRE line from the IMDB—see, I’m already practicing!  I still mixed it up a bit, but definitely didn’t put that into my own words. And it was wayyy easier than making it up myself.  No wonder plaggyizing is so popular. . . . *wink*

It boggles my mind that people are so angry that we’re studyin’ on this.  I would be so flattered if anyone wanted to read through my work, especially closely enough to find similarities to other books.  For some reason I am reminded of the student who turned in, as his final term paper in sophomore English, a 12-page paper that had a brilliant introduction and conclusion (about parallels and similar themes in Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost) but in which only the first two pages and last two pages had any content.  The middle of the paper consisted of him writing out the Constitution.  (This was so long ago that people still wrote papers by hand!!  1977.)  Our teacher flunked him, but all her classes got a good laugh out of it.  See, he figured she’d only read the first couple of pages, the last couple of pages, and check to see if he had a bibliography.  Some teachers back then resorted to that.  But ours didn’t.  Um, I guess that wasn’t exactly plagiarism.  But it was funny. . . .

I can only boggle at the new chapters in l’affaire Edwards at this point.  But it is satisfying to know that it was NOT JUST ME who went “buh” at The Ladies of Missalonghi!

Uh. Hmm. Test!

Thank you again, Candy, SBSarah, and general bitchery for doing this.

Keep that Plage-Away away from my new all-plagiarized manuscript!  It keeps making all the text disappear like neglected footnotes.  BTW, I am collecting good sentences from the classics for my new project over on my LJ. Come on over and contribute!

Several years ago, my friend Dennis Havens wrote a book titled _Regards, B. T._ with the premise that a publishing house “invents” a new best-selling author whose books are made up of passages from other books, and when a reviewer starts to squawk about what he’s found, he gets silenced because of the money involved (and the propaganda that’s going out in those novels, all of which is beneficial to the State) . . . his book was meant as a satire.  Dennis is very prescient.  One of the problems in the world of his novel is that no one has the time to track down all the passages that are in question, and the “spin” that comes out from the author’s supporters confuses the issue.  Without the tools we now have on the ‘net, we might be in the same situation.  Yay, Internet.  Hooray for all those who have put reference materials online and have done so much work to make things possible for us.

On a serious note, I meant in my previous post to thank those who have gone through and identified these passages and typed them up, and furthermore have put themselves Out Here to take the heat for raising the questions.  Thank you, all Smart Bitches!  Don’t let the critics whine you down!

I just read through the revised PDF-file and…words fail. There are a couple of instances I wouldn’t have called plagiarism on if taken one by one, but all together? That’s a truckload of damning evidence.
And not just facts and infodumping, but mood-setting phrases as well.
Blatantly and utterly lazy I-don’t-give-a-fuck copying sentences that could easily have been altered and parsed over several chapters.
Fer chrissake, if the source say “dull orange-brown dust”, would it kill ya to come up with “dust of faded ocre” or similar?

You’ve all done amazing work here.
It seems that this woman has habitualy stolen, lied and cheated for a good third of her life, and making quite a pretty penny doing so too.

How is exposing that mean?
She should be ashamed of herself. She has all the reason in the world to be so, and no reason at all to cry for the whaaambulance.

And the age-card? Please!
If I were in her age group I’d be bloody furious at that bit of patronizing bull.

Reading Candy’s compilation, I found myself alternately cringeing and disbelieving the sheer baldfacedness of it. And yet, I’m pretty positive this is just the tip, what with 88 books to go.

Someone break this down for me, please.

Prior to this, CE hadn’t broken any laws, right? It was an ethical debate. But now, since the book she copied from still has a valid copyright, it is illegal? Copyright infringement, correct?

The released statement “she’s done nothing wrong” is now wrong in itself.

So…what happens now?

Wow.  I can’t see how even Cassie Edwards’ staunchest supporters can countenance this.

I just read the letter from Cassie Edwards, posted above…  Made me laugh out loud, and groan, too.

Edwards, according to the book covers, lives in Mattoon, Illinois, which is not far from the University of Illinois where I teach.

Her ridiculous statement about honoring American Indians is EXACTLY like the bullshit that pro-mascot people here have been uttering for decades. Native students, staff, faculty, community members——I hate to say this, but REAL Native people——have been objecting to use of Native imagery as sports mascots for a long time. Decades. Literally.

But in central Illinois, and other places that have “Indian” mascots, their defenders can’t hear us, because we don’t “look like” the Indians of their imagination. My colleague here, LeAnne Howe (read her book MIKO KINGS) says we’re relatively safe on campus from the threats to Native people because we’re not recognizable by the yahoos because we don’t walk around in feathers and fringe.

It is important to know, that a lot of people who love American Indian imagery claim Native heritage. I teach here in American Indian Studies. I’m from a small pueblo in northern New Mexico. I was born at the Indian Hospital (govt health service), lived on the reservation, went to the reservation school…  Dances, for us, are a form of worship, not entertainment. I dance, as does my daughter and other extended family members.

Native peoples of the US and Canada don’t need Cassie Edwards stereotyped books to honor us…  We need respect for who we were, and who we ARE. America should stop its love-of-things-Indian and acknowledge that we are members of today’s society.

Debbie

Beyond the issue of CE claiming others’ work as her own; there are two other topics that bother me enough to comment on them.

First up, why are people angry that SBs are relating facts? I’ve been reading the blogs and comments; so far, I’ve only seen people talk about the copying and personal opinions about CE’s work in general.
I have not seen comments that could be considered mean per se. I haven’t seen anyone make fun of her dog, haircut, a stupid suit she wore to a party or anything not pertaining to the subject at hand.

Second thing,and this one pisses me off Big Time.
The age card. Poor old defenseless lady? WTF? What, like as soon as you turn seventy your brain leaks out your ears and you just sit in a corner shitting all over yourself??? Seriously, the age card is irrelevant. She’s not defenseless and we’re not showing up at her door with whiffle bats in the night.

Just my two cents y’all.

To finish an unfinished thought in my earlier post…

A lot of people who love Indian-things claim Native heritage in the form of a great great great grandmother. Note I said grandmother, not grandfather.

In Native circles, we hear this all the time. The grandmother who was an Indian princess. Rarely do people claim a Native grandFATHER. Speculation is that people don’t want a bloodthirsty savage as that ancestor, they want the wise grandmother, the royalty.

It is TRUE that a lot of people have ancestors that were Native. Due to many reasons, including racism, that ancestor hid that identity, left his/her tribe.
The ramification is that the present-day -claimant has no connection to that tribe. Many do not know the NAME of the tribe. BUT!!! In an America that wants to revere Native Americans, the claim can and IS used to authenticate writings, or bullshit ceremony that someone is selling. Some do this thing out of ignorance, others are fully aware of what they are doing.

Debbie

More and more the question is bugging me:
How did she get away with it for so long?

Oh my god—this is so depressing.

A lot of you are more shocked that CE stole from fiction (especially award-winning fiction like Laughing Boy), and see this as really crossing another line.

But I’m just guessing that when it comes to ‘research’, CE may not have differentiated much between fiction and non-fiction. In other words, for her,  Laughing Boy was just as good as a Navajo ethnography from the 1920’s.

Stealing from an author is stealing from an author, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction. I can assure you that many non-fiction (and even academic) authors take as much pride in crafting descriptive, gripping, and readable sentences as fiction authors do. It’s just that it may be a bit harder, being constrained by facts and all, and that fewer people read your work.

It’s just that it may be a bit harder, being constrained by facts and all, and that fewer people read your work.