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Sex, ferrets, plagiarism
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I know, I know. You saw that headline and thought, “Oh no, not another blog about sex and ferrets and plagiarism! When will he get off this kick?”
But listen up, cause this is a hoot. A romance novelist, Cassie Edwards, has been caught plagiarizing chunks of material from another source into her paperback novel “Shadow Bear,” a story of forbidden love between a Lakota chief and a white woman, Shiona Bramlett, in South Dakota in the 1850s.
After Bear and Bramlett have made the beast with two backs in his tepee, a family of ferrets starts making noise, and they discuss the critters.
“They are so small, surely weighing only about two pounds and measuring two feet from tip to tail,” says Shiona. She continues that she once read a book about ferrets. “I discovered they are related to minks and otters. It is said their closest relations are European ferrets and Siberian polecats. Researchers theorize that polcecats crossed the land bridge that once linked Siberia and Alaska, to establish the New World population.”
Let’s just pause here a moment. Shadow Bear, old buddy, if you have just done your manliest best with a woman, and you and she are entwined on a pile of pelts or whatever, and she starts nattering on about a book she read about ferrets, then you need to raise your game a notch. Trust me on this.
OK, back to the literary controversy. It turns out Edwards lifted her ferret research — word for word in parts — from an article by Paul Tolme in “Defenders of Wildlife” magazine. The plagiarism was discovered by bloggers at a romance novel blog called Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Once they uncovered that, they started plugging more and more of Edwards’ prose into Google and have found at least 14 more such instances in seven of her novels.
At first, Edwards pleaded ignorance. “When you write historical romances, you’re not asked to” credit your sources, she told the Associated Press when the news first broke. She later changed to “no comment,” and her publisher, Signet, has said it is reviewing her books.
Back in 2002 there was a flurry of plagiarism charges, with noted historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Stephen Ambrose both called out for sins of (depending on one’s viewpoint) outright plagiarism or just not crediting source material properly.
There’s outright theft, and there’s carelessness, and from what I recall of the Kearns and Goodwin cases, there was ammunition on both sides. I’m not going to pass judgment.
But I do take away one sure thing from all this: When I write my novel, and the hero and heroine are floating in post-coital bliss, and the subject turns to ferrets, as it usually does, I am by Golly going to be sure and footnote my research.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: News and Reviews
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By Jeff
January 23, 2008 8:33 AM | Link to this
OK, I must admit, a post-coital discussion of ferrets is weird, even by MY standards. (And my wife can testify to the fact that I have had some doosies!)
Kinda reminds me of what Bill Engvall says about some Ferret magazine his wife once got: These people actually get PAID for this??
On the other side of the romance fiction world (the classy Sparks side): I just finished reading The Rocking Chair by Joshua S. Mauney. While difficult for me in many respects - I knew the guy personally, and the book challenged me to look at him in a different light - in the end, it was even more emotional than Sparks’ first (The Notebook).
Phil, if you’re open to it, I can write a ‘guest review’ type thing on it and have it to you probably no later than tomorrow.
By Kate
January 23, 2008 12:57 PM | Link to this
Dag, this blog gets more fun by the day!
Post-coital ferrets! That almost beats my post-coital Venus Flytraps (which I would never plagiarize because the research is so daggone fun).
By erinanne
January 23, 2008 5:10 PM | Link to this
You may not be willing to cast judgement, Phil, but I certainly will in this instance.
It sounds like a word for word out of a textbook. Shadow Bear should have kicked her out of his teepee for even making him consider the blasted things! (If he was still awake, that is.)
What ticks me off is that this is the reason people keep asking questions like “in order to keep someone from plagerizing my work should I
a) do a “poor man’s copyright”
b) self publish twenty five copies of my novel and then try and sell it to an agent or publisher or
c) immediately mistrust anyone who even glances at my manuscript even if they are an agent or publisher because they might try to steal my brilliant idea. ^insert paranoid glances here^
The answer to all of the above is no, and yet because there are some people out there who are willing to insert an entire article on ferrits into a romance novel, people (especially new writers) are completely paranoid that someone will take their ideas. Come on, people, it’s not like it’s difficult to prove that it’s yours if you have all the notes and drafts you’ve done.
Besides, I can’t believe that made it through an editor anyway. It’s so stilted I could barely read the little bit that you posted.
/judgement. Thought it would be best if I leave that here.
By m
January 23, 2008 6:51 PM | Link to this
They only write romance novels because they can’t really write and this is further proof “THEY CAN’T WRITE”
By Charlie
January 23, 2008 8:01 PM | Link to this
I work in a book store. I have a couple of customers that are obsessed with Cassie Edwards. Let me just say that the realization that this is “textbook” style information is probably missed by her readers if the rest are like the ones I see. They are probably still so giddy themselves over what they have just read that it wouldn’t matter. But as a fairly well educated person (though I’m sure a 7th grader could have figured this out) that is so painfully obviously plagiarized. And finally, Phil has it right here. If your “post-coital talk” has to devolve to ferrets, wow, could you pick something interesting or comical: say, in the lines of something from 50 first dates and walruses? Finally even if you were going to steal that information how hard is it to rephrase a little. Say, “Wow, your ferret is pretty big he’s a full 2 feet. I bet his great, great, great grandfather was one of the polecats that led the pack crossing that ice bridge from Siberia.”
I should be an editor, my authors would never be caught pulling any of that crap.
BTW Phil: great title. I’d of never found this otherwise :)
By Seressia
January 23, 2008 10:37 PM | Link to this
My Dearest M,
Before you condemn an entire genre, might I suggest that you actually read a few of the books? I’ll be more than happy to give you a list to start with, written by women (and a few men) whose non-writing professions range from judges to pilots to professors to stay-at-home-mothers.
I write romance and I’m not afraid to say so. I’ve won awards for my writing. I also write in my “day job.” And when I was in high school, I won a city-wide essay contest for the MLK, Jr. holiday which enabled me to meet Coretta Scott King. Seems to me that I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish any of that if I was unable to “really write.”
By Katie
January 24, 2008 5:41 AM | Link to this
Perhaps some think that ferrets are more interesting than sex.
they are terrible pets!!