If the Teepee's A-Rockin' . . . Cassie Edwards' Mistake

I really couldn't write about this when the Cassie Edwards plagiarism controversy hit the romance writers' networks.  I was laughing too hard.

I have writing to do today (eh, real writing) but I can't resist throwing my two cents into this boiling cauldron of hot prairie action. Nature writer Paul Tolme traveled all the way to South Dakota to study and report on the black-footed ferret.  In his own words (as featured in Newsweek), Paul stayed in a small, cheap motel and traveled across the prairie to study the endangered prairie animals.

Now, three years later - Paul found out through the Romance bloggers Smart Bitches Trashy Books that romance writer Cassie Edwards appropriated his 2005 online article about prairie ferrets as . . . DIALOG . . . between her characters Sexy Bear and Beast Woman.  Or - hmn - was that Greasy Bear and Sleaze Woman?

Nora Roberts was quoted in the NY Times article (linked above - password may be needed).  Nora was victimized in the 1990's by fellow romance writer Janet Dailey (Nora also writes with fantastic success as J.D. Robb).  The situation was similar in the sense that Dailey had been appropriating Roberts' books for some period of time (later pleading mental incapacity or illness) - literally copying and just changing the NAMES.  The explanations that I read of Dailey's reasons for her appropriation of Nora Roberts' work never made any sense to me.

And the explanation of Cassie Edwards' regarding her cut-and-paste internet plagiarism of Paul Tolme's nonfiction nature article about ferrets makes even less sense.  She says she didn't know it was wrong!

Putting plagiarism aside - she didn't see this as "wrong" when she put it in the file she sent to her publisher, it got printed, and they charged people money for it?

"What I have observed of them, myself, is that these tiny animals breed in early spring when the males roam the night in search of females," Shadow Bear said, watching as the last of the ferrets bounded off and disappeared amid the bushes away from where they had first been spotted. "Mothers typically give birth to three kits in early summer and raise their young alone in abandoned prairie dog burrows." (Edwards, 220-221)

Thank you, Shadow Bear. Can we have hot Teepee Sex now?  Smart Bitches have a 51 page pdf side-by-side comparison of the Edwards DIALOG passages and her sources.  Nature writer Paul Tolme was not the only one plagiarized.  Pulitzer prize-winning author Oliver La Farge's 1929 novel Laughing Boy (still in US copyright) was also appropriated.  And Land of the Spotted Eagle by Luther Standing Bear (first published 1933 about Lakota life and traditions).

It isn't funny.  Cassie Edwards has published more than 100 books with most of the major romance publishers.  Cassie seems to be dumb like a fox.  Her current publisher Signet?  Just plain dumb.