Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

The recipe for pemmican is fairly standard.  And it was very fatty because at a point in the winter they would not have fresh meat.  I dunno if this proves anything.  I’m no defender of Edwards.  She is completely unoriginal.

Well, duh.  This comment goes with the next part of the investigation,not this one.

This author has thousands of readers who are loyal fans.

You people are sick.  Are your lives so pathetic that you have to single people out and attack them?

Do you even know any of these authors that you are always attacking?

Maybe you should get to know some of them before you go around bashing them. 

You may think this is funny and makes you look good.  It doesn’t!  All it does is show what kind of evil person you are.

Instead of trashing people and their work promote a charity, or do something nice.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who has said anything nice about your website or the people on it.

As far as I’m concerned, plagiarists (and their overwrought fans) can say all sorts of bad things about me, but it still won’t make them stop being plagiarists (or overwrought fans).

I’ll say something nice about this site.

It’s interesting and informative, and very often fun.

Reporting isn’t bashing, and very often reporting isn’t nice.

I don’t know Cassie, and would never bash her. But I will bash, again and again, the act of any writer copying another’s work—and calling the work his/her own.

Tolerating it or defending it isn’t standing up for the writer, it’s standing up for the act of copying.

I can never understand why anyone would do so—but having been copied, my pov is pretty firm on the issue.

“You may think this is funny and makes you look good.”

Aaactually, no, I don’t think anyone finds this funny- because it’s not funny, and it makes me as a reader sad that no one caught this before Edwards had produced such a monolithic catalog of bad stereotypes and worse dialogue.

Plagiarism is not okay in any setting.

Rabid Fangirl Alert!

Incoming! Incoming!

Plagiarism is theft of another writer’s work. It’s that simple. And having thousands of loyal fans doesn’t make a writer any less of a thief when she copies chunks of text from someone else’s work.

Calling someone out on their thieving and providing the evidence of that theft is not bashing, and it’s not evil. It’s doing good by exposing the theft, and by standing up in public to say that such theft does not become acceptable just because the thief has thousands of loyal fans who think she can do no wrong.

*put on your conspiracy theorist hats*

I normally read SBTB through its RSS feed and interestingly enough, today I cannot access SBTB through my home OR work interwebs (I had to use a proxy server).

Coincidence? I think not :P

Oh Bitches, stuff like this is why I love your site. You give Romance books the attention they deserve (even if it is not flattering).

problem59. Too right!

*takes a drink*

I don’t find this funny at all, I find it pathetic, not on the part of the Bitches but from Ms. Edwards. She’s sold gods know how many books unethically as far as I’m concerned. I learned in elementary school that when you use someone else’s work word for word you quote it and give proper credit, did Cassie skip that day?

By the way, reading these comments has only cemented my respect for Nora Roberts.

*here’s some irony for you, my submission word is quality51*

Seeing all the stuff y’all are finding, I’m surprised it has taken this long for someone to make the link.

Given, I didn’t discover it, but I’ve never read one of her books because they were obviously so shitty you could smell them on the shelf.  But, to be a bad author AND a plagarist?  Wow.

Then again, generally people plagaraize because they can’t write.

Hmmmm…

*applauds Nora and Jules Jones*

I’ll say something nice.  I hate romance, but I still read and enjoy this site.  Why?  It’s damn good.

I couldn’t identify Cassie Edwards’ work if it bit me in the rear end, but this is pretty cool to watch.

What What, in MY butt?

Sorry.  My inner Encyclopedia Dramatica editor couldn’t help it. ;)

I was plagiarized in high school. The captain of the girls soccer team read a short story that I’d written and told the class it was her own. When the teacher confronted her and asked where she came up with the idea - because I’d read my story the day before! - she said that she didn’t know ... it just came to her.

I can still remember the cold sick feeling I got when that little wench read my story as her own. Even though the teacher made her rewrite the story, I wouldn’t share my work with anyone for years fearing that someone would steal it.

Plagiarism is the lowest form of thievery and judging from this investigation, cheers to you for bringing it to light.

Mary C.

Heh.  She has a myspace page.

http://www.myspace.com/cassieedwardsromance

I’m just sayin’.

Oh Teddy! Yes rabid fangirrrrl alert! Oh why can’t we just be nice!
We’ll just look the other way when someone takes our money (for decades) and passes others hard work off as her own!
We’ll just let someone/publishers get by with crapola writing/publishing (for decades) that resembles a 5th grade, (copy it from the encylopedia geography report), while other authors are turned away.
We’ll do that… and be nice…

Wow. Kudos to the Smart Bitches for their willingness to slog through Cassie Edwards in an effort to uphold to the standards, and ethics, of publishing. Plagiarism is never, ever excusable and the more CE fans who come here and try to justify it, the more I will laugh at them.

Good work, Bitches. I cannot wait to see what the Publisher has to say (and perhaps what Ms. Edwards has to say) about all of this. Keep up the stellar work. (And, for the record, I’m one of the Bitchy supporters who does not see anything funny about plagiarism… but people who support plagiarists? Definitely funny.)

And Hi Nora! I would be honored if I could, someday, get the smack-down from Nora Roberts. That would be so cool. Too bad I hate plagiarism.

My heart bleeds for the authors who were so callously stolen from.  But you know who else I feel really bad for?  Cassie Edwards’ fans. 

*ducks*

I’m serious.  However much I may fault their taste (and I really do), they trusted her to give them an original story.  They were lied to and betrayed.  No one deserves that, not even rabid little fan girls who attack the Smart Bitches (all hail the mighty Smart Bitches!) for telling the truth.

Honestly Miri,

If this keeps up I am so pulling a Hubbard I am changing my name to the good reverend T. Pig

Founder of the Church of Psalms: Sexual Healing Through Romance where I shall liberally excerpt other peoples work in my Inspirational Novels and explain it is for Jeeeeesus. No talent required.

Remember to tithe 10% regularly and often ya’ll. And… Buy my latest Epistle!

You people are sick

No, what’s sick is that there are people out there who think plagiarsm isn’t a big deal. Theft is theft, whether it is intellectual or property.

Disgraceful.

Sarah,

If it’s Medicine Men of the Apache, here you go: http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=FdetVNST9wAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA451&dq=john+g.+bourke&ots=Zu4L5Erwmo&sig=q9aRlQI8xqlLw1iKoCjg96GcA5I#PPR37,M1

Google Scholar has made available in full a ton of books that are out of copyright.

I’ve got some other issues with them for various librarian reasons, but this is definitely one of the benefits of the project.

I’ll say something nice about this website—it’s the best romance novel site out on the web with the best sense of humor (we know these books are silly, and we still love them!).  Grow up, fangirl.

<

< stands up an applauds the SBs >

>

You should be commended for bringing to light something that appears to have been going on for some time.

<

< keeps applauding but this time for Nora & Jules for their very eloquent comments >

>

The first thing I thought of when I read Sara’s post was “Nobody likes me, everybody hates me guess I’ll go eat worms”.

I will say something nice about everyone here, y’all are the smartest bitches I know!

Big girl britches for everyone!

I’m sure if it was another romance writer ripping off CE then CE fans would Get It.

Wasnt it Plato’s allegory of the cave that meant “knowledge is limited only by people’s perception of reality”?  Apparently Ms. Edwards knowledge is limited only by *other* people’s knowledge.

Sad.  I wonder how often this happens that nobody catches.

Thank you, Sarah and Candy and Kate.  As a college professor who tries to beat into her students’ heads what plagiarism is and how to avoid it, I thank you, because it’s wrong and actionable.  As an author of academic texts (which are, admittedly, unlikely to get plagiarized), I thank you, because I want credit for what I write.

When I read rabid the fanGrrl’s comments, I thought she was kidding.  I thought she was parodying what would be said by the rabid fangrrls.  The fact that she wasn’t is very scary.

And can we talk about Jenny Crusie’s comment—what was up with that?

Wow, nice catch. I cannot STAND plagiarists (man, I wish everyone shared that opinion…) and the fact that her editors let not only quality go but also basic checking just pisses me off. I know writers (and I’m a wannabe one that also fits) that try so hard to be original and interesting and incorporate research from many places, not copying & pasting it from one place. To her fans- I know how strong loyalty can be, but if one of my favorite authors was caught doing the same thing I would have to sadly drop them. I would not, however, fling insults at people who simply noticed the act and pointed it out to others.

I love this site, you bitches are constantly making me think.  It’s also nice to realize that there are other people in the world who don’t think having an English degree and enjoying romance novels are incompatible. 

As for plagiarism, I expect that Sarah and Candy would be just as quick to call out any other author they found pulling this as they have Cassie Edwards.  Having millions of fans does not excuse this behavior and anyone who thinks it does is fooling themselves.

At this point the attention to our site has crashed the server (poor server. I have to apologize to our service host) and I’m getting email about how we’re nasty bitches who need lives or should be banned from the internet.

I never know whether to laugh or cry at the fact that those posts that generate the most hate-response are also the best trafficked.  And then when you do the “productive” stuff that the critics call for, nobody shows up to the party, least of all the haters.  What’s up with that?

What shocks me most about this whole kerfuffle is that it was incredibly easy to find this evidence.  The section on ferrets in Shadow Bear initially jumped out at me, for example, because it was written in a very different voice than the rest of the dialogue in the books—especially that “researchers theorize” line.  If Edwards’ editors had checked, they could have found these passages with a minimum of effort.  Everything found in Shadow Bear I tracked down initially in under an hour, although it took somewhat longer to type up.

Also troubling, though, is the fact that there were a large number of suspicious passages we couldn’t find just with Google.  If this is actually plagiarism in action, there may be much more that’s difficult to find without a manual search of popular texts on various Native American groups.  I don’t envy anyone that task.

Sarah and Candy, this is a great site. We love it here. I love it here so much that I just voted for you at the editors and preditors poll.

http://www.critters.org/predpoll/reviewsite.shtml

Sarah Frantz: I don’t mean to stir things up even more but I have no idea what you are talking about in reference to Jenny Crusie’s comments. What did she say?

Another YAY for the Bitches. Just because they deserve it.

Katie W.:  On the second post, Jenny asked, “Here’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask for a long time.  Did Cassie Edwards run over your dog?”

As liz said in the same comment stream: “Why do you hate Janet Dailey?”

Wow, that’s…  *blinks*  I have only two thoughts:

1)  Hard to believe no one ever noticed that her prose shifted from aubergine to academic like that;

2)  I wonder if Soaring Hawk has a William Petersen kind of vibe, or if he’s more like Gary Sinise.  Nah.  I vote David Caruso.

Oh, no.  Wait.  Here’s a third thought:

3)  WHAT?!  Seriously.

Thanks Sarah F. for the heads-up.

And ARGH that Jenny Crusie comment made me mad (stupid pun fully intended). I’m completely with you and Robin re: your responses to that comment. I cannot believe that an author would even try to make this appear to be a personal vendetta against Edwards on the part of the Bitches. ARGH.

In regards to the other comments thread about how/why Edwards should have cited her sources: In general fiction books, it is not at ALL uncommon to find bibliographies of source materials at the end of the book. Michael Chabon does this best and, if you want to see some crazy source material bibliography, flip to the end of

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

.

Acknowledging source material should be standard, whether it’s a future Pulitzer-Prize winning book, a romance novel, or a sci-fi novel. In fact, I would love it if more romance authors gave detailed acknowledgments of their source materials at the end of their books. I’m always excited to see how much work the author put into the book, and to maybe find a cool non-fiction book that would be worth reading.

For now, though, I just want to see what Edwards’ publisher has to say about all of this.

I wonder what on earth the number of fans (or books published, or $$$$$$$ made) an author has to do with facts?

Sarah Frantz: I’ve been wondering about Ms Crusie’s question as well—but I chose to think she meant that Ms Edwards books are often referenced here at the SB’s as shinning examples of the worst of the genre. *shrug*

I bet the Cruise comment is from a troll.

I bet the Cruise comment is from a troll.

Why would anyone want to take their own life into their hands by impersonating a well-known author with a comment like that and then providing a link back to the author’s own website?

I’m not wanting to argue with you, Robin, but I’m not sure how the troll would get caught, much less take its life it its hands. It’s easy enough to copy and paste someone’s url and e-mail address. Who would be the wiser? What could Jenny do about it? And didn’t someone troll Tony the Chest (of Caddy trunk fame) here once?

Maybe I’m just an optimist—I have a hard time seeing Cruise condoning this.

I can’t remember who rooted out the Tony troll last time, but perhaps her talents would be of use here now?

I assumed the Crusie comment was meant as a joke.  Ms. Edwards has often been mentioned here, and I believe she has here only special book rating.  It could almost seem like a “crusade” and so worthy of a little poking fun.

Anyway, I will have to second third etc all the commentary against plagiarism.  Nothing really funny about it although the rabid fangirl reaction is funny from afar.  Kudos to Sara and Candy for being stand up gals and taking on the fangirl hordes. (Or should I say stand up bitches?)

Speaking with my employee-of-publisher hat on, I definitely appreciate the SBs bringing this to people’s attention; it’s material for an interesting discussion.

And speaking as an SB fan, now I want a new contest: choose one of Edwards passage/scholarly book passage pairs and write your own version, using the scholarly info but your own words.

(area11?  Is that where they store the books from outer space?)

If Louise Allen, author of the much-pummeled Virgin Slave, Barbarian King, has been feeling picked on, I bet she’s not anymore. I’d say the focus has shifted, and rightly so.

This isn’t a new sentiment, but I’m horrified at this (alleged) sloppy and blatant plagiarism. Shame on both the author and her editors/publishers. As if the romance genre needed another excuse for people to get sniffy and superior about it.

This is a tad off-topic, but more desultory googling shows that Edwards has also apparently copied.. herself:

From Savage Obsession, 2006:
“It was the most attractive lodge in the village, a long narrow structure of handsomely fashioned bark.  The ends were beautifully rounded and the roof gracefully arched.  The snow-white birchbark sides were decorated with striking totemic designs in brilliant but harmonious colors.”

From Savage Torment, 2007:
“This lodge, the Chippewas’ council house, was a long, narrow structure, handsomely fashioned of bark and appearing to be sixty feet or more in length and about twenty feet wide.  The ends were beautifully rounded and the roof gracefully arched.  The snow-white birchbark sides were decorated with striking totemic designs in brilliant but harmonious colors.  Slow spirals of smoke rose from four smoke-holes and an Indian stood guard on each side of its front door.”

...WTF?  Either she was looking at the same source-book for both of these passages (in which case it’s sadly not on Googlebooks), or she was cribbing from her earlier works.  Or she has a remarkably formulaic memory.  Aargh.

Castiron, that is a brilliant idea.

To the “Cruise” comment (I doubt it was her but if it was)
As a collage girl who was, back in the day, a rabid fan of everything Cassie Edwards (dudes I was 22!) and spent full price on EVERY book she wrote from 1989-1992. I’ve since grown out of that phase of romance readership, but look back with a pleasant sigh on all those longass bus rides to school.
After today it does feel like Cassie Edwards ran over my dog!
There is NO way i’m mad at SmartBitches for uncovering this info, why should CE get a “oh there there” for screwing up because she’s a matricarch writer? Tough!
If someone were to plagiarize Ms. Edwards and pass it off as their own work without giving due credit, you bet your ass the SmartBitches would raise hell and put a block under it.

I third Castiron’s brilliant idea.

And here’s hoping that the Crusie comment was a joke and/or troll because I love me some Jenny Crusie.

I wasn’t gonna hop in on this because all day, it’s been giving me that sick feeling I get when I pass a car crash on the road. But Jenny Crusie is a good friend of mine, and she’s no troll; she had a point and she made it. And I have to say, I’m with her.

NOW PUT DOWN THE PITCHFORKS. Yeesh. There’s no more dangerous place to exhibit an unpopular opinion than on an internet forum. Just do me a favor and hear me out before you light your torches. Once I’m done, have at it.

There is no defending Cassie Edwards here. This is disgusting and infuriating for all the reasons Sarah pointed out, and everyone who is horrified by the willful theft of honest work is absolutely in the right. But I’ll tell you, the gleeful bashing of Cassie Edwards - not in the investigation, but in multiple reviews and posts here prior to today - got old for me a while back. If you don’t like her books, don’t read them. There’s so much good romance out there. Why read someone whose books you hate? It never made sense to me, but I never said anything, because hey - it’s Sarah and Candy’s site. Y’all do as you please.

So, while there’s no excuse for what Cassie Edwards appears to have done, I think it would be naive to say this investigation came out of a vacuum. It happened because the Cassie Edwards obsession tripped over something (other than lousy writing) to justify it.

All Jenny did was point this out; I’d ask that no one lump her in with the people who lack the courage to speak up respectfully in public and put their name on it.

Sarah, Candy, you guys know I love and respect you, and anyone sending you nasty e-mails on the side needs a serious smackdown. I’m just making a point, and standing up for my friend. I know you’d do the same.

Lani, I get where you’re coming from - but are you saying that because Candy & Sarah already thought CE was craptastical it somehow affects what she may or may not have done in her book? It is what it is - how it gets a light shined on it shouldn’t affect whatever it turns out to be.

Secondly, I really really take issue with the prevailing theme in romance that it’s not ok to bash a bad writer.  Everything on this site is done with glee, not just the trashing of CE’s quality.

It doesn’t need justifying.

And the thing of it is, the folks who don’t think there’s anything wrong with plagiarism are sortakindahalf correct.

That Ms. Edwards did research is fabulous. That she went and found studies and descriptions of things she herself could not directly experience is what a writer is supposed to do, if the writer is trying to bring elements of realism to their work.

Unfortunately, a writer is also supposed to incorporate that information smoothly. It should flow naturally as part of the narrative or dialogue, and should never, never, never sound like a mini-lecture expounding on some irrelevant detail.

And that’s the real tragedy. If Ms. Edwards had internalized the information she studied, and then allowed it to incorporate naturally into the story when appropriate, it would have been all her own words, and it would have been a hell of a lot less stilted. It might even have improved the prose sufficiently that the Smart Bitches wouldn’t have had to create a new level badness in their grading system.

What I DON’T understand is how weasels, including the one who ripped off Nora, can continue to be published quite regularly and with great success without suffering any long term damages.

I’ll admit it—I’m a mean, hateful bitch.  I not only won’t ever buy Jane—errr THAT WENCH’S—books again, I think her career should have been freaking OVER.

There are other careers.  For any artist to rip off another—nope, that should be your exit ticket from the club.  It’s a sacred goddamned trust.

It happened to me years ago and not only did the culprit lash out at me over it when she was FORCED to admit wrongdoing by lawyers (after being given several chances to bow out quietly), she attacked me with slander for years from an overseas website the host refused to remove.  Then again, she was a nutcase who couldn’t return to her own country because she had too many outstanding warrants… one for falsely accusing somebody of child molestation after HE outed her for fraud.

A thief is a thief and an artist who steals is NOT an artist.  She’s a wannabe who betrayed all artists.

Go work at the discount club, where you can purchase your plagiarism with the cover ripped off on aisle 4.

Publishers who put this crap on shelves over and over again should be forced to repay the cost of the book to anyone suckered into buying it… plus shipping and handling… and pain and suffering.

Secondly, I really really take issue with the prevailing theme in romance that it’s not ok to bash a bad writer.  Everything on this site is done with glee, not just the trashing of CE’s quality.

Hey, Liz! See, this is why I try not to post here. I get trapped here for days, just for the fun of intelligent discussion. It’s great when I have time, but now I’m under deadline. Agh!

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t give bad reviews to bad books. I’m saying that once you’ve reviewed an author and decided she’s badbadBAD, you’ve made your point for God and country. Cassie Edwards has become shorthand here for “crap writer” and whenever her name has come up, it’s been open house to pick her carcass clean. That’s way beyond just giving her a bad review.

The main reason I posted was that people were starting to think that Jenny Crusie defends plagiarism, and that’s not the case AT ALL. I just wanted to make sure that was clear.

And—E… there are people here who think there’s nothing wrong with plagiarism? Really? They’re not kindasortaright. Taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own is terrible. Research good. Plagiarism bad. Are people arguing that plagiarism in this case is okay? I must’ve missed that.

Deadline. Going. Really mean it. ;)

But this didn’t start because the Bitches were hunting for more ways to rag on Cassie Edwards. It started because SB Candy gave her friend and Edwards book, and the friend noticed some stylistic issues and decided to use Google to research them.

It could just as easly have happened if SB Candy loved Edwards and gave her friend the book as an example of great romance.

Well, I may view that differently because CE was code for crap writer on the BBS servers way back in the start of her career. For real, people would say “Cassie Edwards bad?” So I think tying that trend to this site is giving undue acclaim.

I think we disagree. You seem to feel once you establish ‘bad’ you should leave it alone, and I think this site is all about beating dead horses into costly shoes. Nor do I see that as wrong. But I’ve been hearing CE bashed since about book three. I am old and all.

Good luck on the deadline.

the fact that the first and only comment by Crusie was remarking essentially how mean the SBs were and not on the contents of the charge or the issue of plagiarism says volumes.

I didn’t automatically think Crusie was condoning the plagiarism, but IMO her comment did deflect “blame” back to the SBs and in its brevity bypass completely the plagiarism issue, leaving only the whistleblower effect.  And that bothered me for the reasons I stated.  Now if the real issue is “gleeful bashing,” or being a minority voice on a popular blog, I have expressed enough opinions on both those topics on Crusie’s blog and elsewhere that I probably don’t have to repeat them all here.  But because of that, actually, I’m in no better place with Crusie’s comment.

Coming out of the woodwork to say—agree with liz on this, because if a writer continuously churns out work that is deemed holycraptasticbad, we’re allowed to continuously bash it as such. Now, flogging one single dead horse over and over may get tiresome, but Edwards has earned her reputation through countless bad novels.

Is the romance community more sensitive to bashing because its authors are generally more accessible to its readership than in other genres? I dunno, but maybe that’s a question for another day.

Published novel = fair game, y’all. Multiple published novels = greater instances for bashing.

I think it’s great. Candy and her pal Kate, the Woodward and Bernstein of investigative romance blogging. This story’s got everything - a light hearted exchange between friends uncovers a sinister secret at the heart of the romance industry. Will Candy and Kate escape the fangirls’ wrath?

Sorry. To be serious for a moment, I think this is a pretty straightforward case of getting caught red handed and facing the music. There is an element of glee, because it’s Cassie Edwards, but I think Sarah and Candy have been pretty restrained about the whole thing. Plus, this is a news story of legitimate interest to readers of romance. It should be out there. Edward’s readers, both present and future (God help you), should know.

To be honest, I thought Crusie was making a lighthearted comment because Candy is notorious for her Cassie Edward’s hate. I don’t think she defends plagiarism. I do think there appears to be an unspoken code of some sort that writers adhere to; no bashing other authors: close ranks at any sign of attack. Maybe there is even a knee-jerk defense mechanism for when things like this happen? Writers sticking together.

I wonder what on earth the number of fans (or books published, or $$$$$$$ made) an author has to do with facts?

Sweet fuck all. Just look at Ann Coulter.

Hi. I’m Crusie.

I apologize for being unclear.  This is what happens when you go for snark instead of direct communication.

I am against plagiarism.  If Ms. Edwards has plagiarized as it certainly seems she has, then she should pay the price.

I think that the SBs should savagely review any novel they find wanting, including Ms. Edwards’.

I think that this site is one of the smartest sites on romance on the net.

I also think this site has made Cassie Edwards a scapegoat and a whipping boy, taking gleeful delight in pointing out how bad she is over and over and over again to the point where it’s close to harassment.  The woman is a bad writer, we get it, we get it, so why did Candy give her friend one of Edwards’ books when she knows what outstandingly good books there are out there?  Because it’s Cassie Edwards, and she’s so much fun to kick.  The only thing I do not like about this site is the way Edwards is treated. 

So when I saw another “Cassie Edwards, ohmygod” post, the fact that it was about plagiarism is not what annoyed me first, it was that it was another shot at Cassie Edwards, discovered because people were reading her to make fun of her again.  She plagiarized, I hope she goes down for it.  But she doesn’t deserve the constant humiliation this site heaps on her, nobody does.

I realize this will enrage SB fans.  I realize this will make some people think even less of me than they already do and that opinion was pretty darn low to begin with.  I’m good with that.  Have a nice day.

Brandi - I’m willing to have your child.

Jenny C - I don’t really have an opinion about you. I’m not really an SB fan. So I suppose I bring you back to the point I made to Lani, being that the things you object to in CE’s treatment here are Not New and have been the case for decades. Sci Fi has it’s own whipping boys. A large body of dreadful work gets you turned into shorthand.

If CE doesn’t like being shorthand, she could work at being, I dunno, better? Working in different genres under other names? Or accepting, as the rest of us do, that not everyone will love us and cashing the paychecks.

you gals are frickin’ amazing. Keep these wonderful exposes up!

my word: under
Ha! Cassie prolly wishes she were a bit more undercover right about now :)

Anyone who writes a book called SAVAGE WINDS (hold your nose!) already knows she’s stinkin up the joint.

Snark on, bitches!

I can certainly see your point, Ms. Crusie.  We do give Cassie Edwards A LOT of crap. But think less of you because you think it’s not cool and have the cajones to say so?  Nah.  I think more of you for voicing an unpopular opinion and doing so with style and class.  And I know I’m not the only one.

We may be bitches, but I hope we can be fair bitches.

I’m pretty uncomfortable with bashing, but I find myself sort of agreeing with the poster who pointed out that Ms. Edwards comes out with book after book after book of the same quality. It wasn’t one book the Bitches disliked and trotted out everytime someone wanted to giggle.

OTOH, I do feel sorry for Louise Allen who must have thought she’d fallen down the rabbit hole when she woke up one morning to find hundreds of bloggers doing in-depth analysis and critique of her ONE book. (A slight exaggeration?) Yikes! Nothing wrong with it, but a shock for her, I’m sure!

Candy wrote:
“Because loud, repeated attention for bad work is every bit necessary for balanced discourse as loud, repeated attention for good work.”

Yes. But for the same person, ad nauseum?

On the Cassie Edwards = shorthand for craptastic thing, and how it should stop already.

Unless I’m completely off my rocker (always a possibility), I’ve gathered that the SBs at large also use shorthands for great writing (Laura Kinsale comes to mind). Should they stop doing that as well?

Actually, it really doesn’t matter how craptastic anybody on this site says Cassie Edward’s books are.

Clearly the author has fans who like her books for whatever reason they do. I do find the opinions expressed about those who read Cassie Edwards to be off putting, but I don’t think any opinion expressed on the matter on this website influences Cassie Edwards one way or another.

That said, the charge of plagiarism has to be accounted for. Irregardless of who Cassie Edwards is, and there is no reason to fault the ones who caught it. Except for the glee part. That’s just weird.

That said, the charge of plagiarism has to be accounted for. Irregardless of who Cassie Edwards is, and there is no reason to fault the ones who caught it. Except for the glee part. That’s just weird.

First, it’s regardless, not irregardless. Second, when and where have Sarah and Candy expressed glee over this?

Personally, I think some people are mistaking incredulity and shock for amusement.

On topic..

Regarding picking on Cassie Edwards I think there probably are several romance/fiction authors that if you researched deeply enough you’d run across similar passages that match up to their research resources. So I don’t take it as a Cassie Edwards witch hunt.

Offhand, paranormal romances come to mind, many times my eyes glazed over as I flipped pages because of the endless “how to’s” that had to come from somewhere, because the writing style seemed to differ from the rest of the book.

Lets face it, writing using a computer and having google books and other resources at their fingertips must make it very easy to “copy/ paste” when writing.

I mean, in all honesty what would SBTB be without copy/paste? lol

What are copyright laws in this situation? I remember some cases of religous book use,  a certain amount of content was viewed as fair use and over that was violating copyright? But that was years ago so my remembering might be flawed.

ok a lil off topic

It’s great to see you guys using books.google.com!I LOVE it. You can read a LOT of pages of a LOT of books.

Some of Cassie Edward’s are available as “limited view” which means they cut out a page here and there.

Savage Heart, Obsession,Innocence and Torment to mention a few.

And Jennifer Crusie..there are about 8 of your’s available for limited view.

And ooo lala at the amount of Ellora’s Cave books there! WITH the naughty bits even!!!

It’s a great resource and entertainment web tool.

Ms. Crusie!

I have a lot of your earlier books, so I most certainly did not fall in the category of not liking your books and you.  Nice attempt at a preemptive strike against your perceived detractors, though.

I have to say that I’m rather taken aback by your attitude.

I may have concurred if SB had repeatedly gone after any one author on the basis of 1 or 2 books, but the fact that CE has so many more books published than 1 or 2, and from what we all could see from just these short examples all of them rather low in quality (not even mentioning the plagiarism), leaves her open for repeated critical review.

If there are repeated negative reviews all over review-land, there might be some truth to that perception that bad writing is repeatedly foisted upon the public.

It has always baffled me that many readers and especially authors seem to think we as a sisterhood of women should not and ought not dare to criticize one of our ‘own’.  Bad writing in any form, by any author, should be ruthlessly exposed, so that only good writing is published.  After all, we all suffer from the perception that romance is trashy pr0n for mindless females who sit on their butts eating bon bons all day.

I find it insulting that NO one, neither editor nor publisher thought it either necessary to check glaring style inconsistencies, or if they found them that they thought it unnecessary to correct the issue before unloading these ‘works’ onto the unsuspecting public aka other women in the ‘sisterhood’.

I’m disappointed a romance author and academic would take this stance.

GrowlyCub

Wow. This thing brings up like 900 google entries.

And so much debate.

Keep up the good work everyone. Spirited debate, that’s the ticket.

Its too bad that CE sucks so hardcore, because a Loretta Chase plagarism debate would go an entirely different way. And we’d be crying.

just don’t snark so hard at each other that you start to cry anyway. Because if I was Cassie Edwards, I would totally be crying.

Although if I were Cassie Edwards I would deserve it.

Pursue the facts, and cut the lady a break.

I’m no fan of Cassie Edwards, or of plagiarism, but neither am I comfortable with the witch hunt tone of these postings.  Is Candy disillusioned by Edwards, or by romance in general?  She’s complained about the genre being too predictable and seemed to dislike JR Ward partly because her books are popular.  Is this like high school, where everything commercial isn’t cool?

I visit this web site often and I think you bitches are geniuses with snark.  But lately I haven’t been feeling the Love.

Wow.  I’m just reading all of this, comments included, for the first time.  First, I’m sorry and maybe (probably) no one is arguing this, but plagiarism is not ever ever ever okay.  Glad we cleared that up.

Second, I have a confession.  I don’t read the reviews.  I come here because it’s amusing and it’s a blog about something a care about (writing and romance novels) and did I mention it’s amusing?  So, I don’t know if Cassie Edwards gets bashed in the reviews or not, but… while it would suck to feel like there’s a whole blog devoted to how bad you are at your job, people are entitled to their opinion when they pay to read your work.  Even if they hate you.  Even if they’re kinda bitchy about it.  Or seriously bitchy about it.  If you’re still selling books and people love you enough to come to that blog and defend you, you’re still okay, I think.

Also, we’ll call this Second-subsection 2—I think it would’ve been very untrue to themselves and what this blog is about to discover something of this magnitude and NOT post it. 

Third, I don’t see how it’s anything less than hypocritical to write 100+ comments collectively on how the Smart Bitches have every right to say a thousand times that Cassie Edwards isn’t the best writer and then slam anyone, even if she’s a writer and even if she’s well known, for speaking their minds.  I think, if anything, this site is about saying what you think and it doesn’t matter if it’s fair or pretty or popular.  It’s what you think.  We’re all saying what we think.  And good for us.

I’m no fan of Cassie Edwards, or of plagiarism, but neither am I comfortable with the witch hunt tone of these postings.

What, exactly, strikes you as a “witch hunt tone”?

So—Edwards’ middle name isn’t Claire, is it?

Just checking.

Manon:

HAAAAAAH!!

Nice.

Oh. My. Lord.

I’m going to go read some Nora now, and make my heart feel better.

(In English majory, writerly terms: puke. Copying = Vengeful Wrath. CSI: Cassie Edwards and her rabid fangirls are making me *headdesk* more often than is good for me)

I know this is completely off topic, but what happened to the “recent comments” list?  I always used it to keep track of who was weighing in on what thread, and today I’m really lamenting its loss, what with three threads going simultaneously (not to mention those wonderful instances where someone reignites an old thread with just one new comment).

Good lord. Shooting the messenger much? What do Candy’s reading preferences have to do with Ms. Edwards’ suspected plagiarism? If we don’t like the tone of a message, we get to attack the messenger instead of addressing the issue? As though the method by which a misdeed is laid bare invalidates the misdeed itself.

I love the Smart Bitches and the website but I’m no “fangirl”—today’s my first day posting—and I sorta kinda really resent the implication that if I disagree with someone like Ms. Crusie (“this [Crusie’s opinion] will enrage SB fans”) it must be because I’m an overzealous SB defender.  Calling out this site for its Cassie Edwards mockery may be a valid point in a different context, but it’s in really poor taste in this discussion—whether or not it’s the intent, it deflects the attention away from the real issue and then points the finger at someone wholly unrelated to the plagiarism matter. I’m very uncomfortable with the whole “blaming the victim” vibe in some posts, not to say that we or the SBs are victims, but calling a well-thought-out, calmly laid-out analysis of factual evidence a “witch hunt” smacks of shooting the messenger.

Oh, Jenny Cruise, how far you have fallen…

http://jennycrusie.blogspot.com/2006/06/whats-bugging-me-now.html

To be honest? Finding out how pervasive the unattributed usage is has disillusioned me about the process of romance publishing, yeah. How long has this been going on?

Oh, come now, Candy. It’s got nothing to do with romance. Publishing, sure, but ROMANCE publishing, specifically? The most recent cases I’ve heard about have been literary fiction. It’s clearly spread generously around for all genres to share.

And I am all about personal responsibility. It’s about the plagiarist (sp?) first. Her publisher a distant second. Both you and Sarah read Cassie Edwards and didn’t pick out the copied parts as being (more) off. It seems as though ALL the writing may have been bad enough to throw off the scent.

(And what did happen to the recent comments list???)

I applaud the Smart Bitches for making this public. This is dynamite investigative journalism and they’ve handled the matter very professionally.

As for how picked-upon Cassie Edwards is, please remember the only victims here are the people whose books were plagiarized. Getting reviewed, positively or negatively, is part of being a published author. Having your words stolen is not.

And as jb excellent comment points out, it’s irrelevant whether Ms. Edwards gets a raw deal on SBTB. The SBs’ low opinion of Ms. Edwards’ writing did not drive the woman to start plagiarizing.

If it seems as though CE is being picked on perhaps the problem is that, while searching for an appropriate synonym for “friggin awful”, her name was the only one to come to mind. 

Solution: the smartbitches need to find authors that are as bad as or worse than CE.  Then, when they want to insult a book, they dont just to drop the Edwards bomb, there’ll be a plethera of other authors to allude to during a scathing review.  Instead of “It was bad, but not as bad as Cassie Edwards”, there’ll be “It was bad, but not as bad as ___”  Imagine the possibilities!!

So, while I try to check for crap level before purchase, I’ll nominate the worst romance novels in my house for the F (or at least D) list:

A Pirates Pleasure by Heather Graham

Close Encounters of the Sexy Kind by Karren Kelley

And I say these are bad not as an insult to their fans, but as a personal opinion.

Who said plagiarism was like mind rape? Was is La Nora? Can’t remember. But it’s so true.

And for those who think there’s bashing going on in here, just *breathe*. Forget the emotional and stick to the facts: someone wrote something, then someone else stole it and sold it.

I have a lot more to say about righteous bleeding hearts who’d want everyone to always be agreeable and nice (or else!), but it wouldn’t be polite.

You can’t blame Romance publishing for this. Edwards has been read for years without anyone catching this. Her publisher isn’t required to google her books to see if it’s original material. She, like all of us, signed a contract stating it was.

The plagiarist is to blame. Not the publisher, the editor, the reader, the authors being copied, the person or persons who discovered the copying or the bookseller who sold the books.

The plagiarist is to blame. Period.

When I was plagiarized (yes, I called it mind rape) I heard a lot of comments about it being because Romance novels were all the same, that the ensuing publicity damaged or demeaned the genre and industry.

Bullshit.

An individual copied another individual’s work and called it her own. It happens, unfortunately, in all areas of writing. I don’t hear acadamia being blamed when it happens there, or literary fiction being tossed into the mix of causes when it happens there.

But when it’s Romance, the genre and its publishers once again become targets. That’s not right.

If one must be disillusioned by this recent discovery, be so with the individual, and not the platform used.

Nor, she says going on, do I see this as a witch hunt. I got that term tossed at me, too, when I went after Dailey. An important line was crossed, and bringing that fact to light doesn’t make it a witch hunt.

Too often, far too often, in cases like this people point fingers at the victim or at those who blow the whistle.

Baffles me.

I haven’t read any CE so I have no opinion of her writing. As a reader, period, I feel insulted by writers or publishers who would do this. It doesn’t matter if it’s Edwards. It doesn’t matter what the genre is. I was shocked to see how the excerpts followed the text from the old books word for word. I would be shocked no matter who the author was.

I do have a technical question. Since these texts were written in 1902 and it’s public domain, would she be in any trouble legally? Other than looking really, really bad?

Candy, I’m back because this is bugging me. Why should the fact that Romance is a successful genre (cash cow) mean the industry is in any way responsible for the actions of a writer within that genre?

While I grant you that the offending passages appear to have been easy to find, no one—including readers—found them before. In my case Dailey had plagiarized me for years before it was caught—by a reader.  And it took some work on my part to go back and find all the other books involved.

No one had looked before, no one had noticed. That’s no one’s fault.

Romance, the genre, the industry, wasn’t to blame. But boy, did it take some knocks along with me because of this person’s actions.

I hate to see that happen again.

Copying needs to be taken very seriously, by writers, publishers, readers. And the blame for that offense needs to stay where it belongs, or once again, the issue becomes fractured and clouded.

Why is it than when I lose internet access for a couple days you Bitches always post something that makes the webernets go crazy??? Last time it was swan hat.

I really have nothing to add to this thread. Plagiarism is wrong.