Not that long ago I received an email requesting that I review one of Cassie Edward’s books. No specific book was specified and no working contact address was left so I dismissed the request in favor of books I had been itching to read and other requests that I wanted to get finished. Truth be told, until today I had completely forgotten about that request, that is until I read this article in Newsweek where writer Paul Tolme talks about how Cassie Edwards plagiarized his work on the endangered black footed ferrets in her romance novel Shadow Bear.
Yes, you read that correctly, she stole material from research on ferrets for her Native American bodice-ripper. I couldn’t believe it either. The entire time I was reading the Newsweek article I couldn’t help but to snicker at the sadness of it. The passages that Tolme quoted from her book were insane, the stolen words stand out like a ferret in a room full of dogs. Yeah, that was a poor joke on my part, but it illustrates my point perfectly. I saw better plagiarized papers back when I was a teacher’s assistant in high school, and I was grading freshmen and sophomores’ papers!
A round of applause goes out to the authors at Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books for spotting this. They managed to stomach reading four of Edwards’ books in under 12 hours just to spot all of the segments that had been lifted from other works published before her own. The list is amazing and the ordeal was lengthy, as noted by the series of posts on this topic.
My thoughts on this range from outraged to highly amused. As someone who has been a victim of plagiarism in the past I feel offended on behalf of the authors whose work was stolen. As the writer, the creator, you invest a lot of time, effort, and love into your work and to see it with someone else’s name on it is like a slap to the face and knife in the gut. At the same time however I can’t help but to laugh at what she did. The lifted portions are awkward and absurd at best, and in the words of Tolme himself: My words did not enhance her novel. They were filler. I can imagine frustrated and horny readers cursing the ferrets and skipping ahead in search of the next nipple (p5).
Why do it? I’m glad that whoever sent in the request filled out the contact form with a fake email address and couldn’t be bothered to even name a book specifically to read. I’m glad I never had to subject myself to the torture of reading one of this author’s “works” and I certainly won’t be accepting requests to read any of her works – ever. It might be tempting to review one of her books for the LitBlogs challenge to review a book you can’t stand, but truth be told I’m not interested in wasting my time on her stuff, period.
Signet is apparently reviewing her works and “taking the allegations” seriously. Considering what their first response was I’m inclined to believe it’s only happening now because of the widespread public backlash.
For further reading:
Associated Press Article
Centralized Document of Cassie Edwards articles from SBWLTB
After reading all of this, how do you feel about this situation? Her husband and some “experts” are stating that she did not lift or plagiarize anything and that her paraphrasing is completely appropriate given that she writes historical fiction. Do you agree with this?
Unless something has changed since I was in school, even if you paraphrase something, you still have to site it as a source.
The problem is, in some cases, authors get someone else to do their research for them and don’t bother to check to make sure they know where the stuff came from. This isn’t the first case of a romance novel writer being accused of plagarism and it won’t be the last. Although usually it’s part of another romance novel that was plagarized not research work.
Also I think a lot of writers are under the impression that when using things like that, even paraphrased, in fictional works, they don’t have to cite sources because the main portions of the book/story are fictional. That doesn’t make it right, but I think a lot of authors feel they are protected under the “blanket” of fiction.
I’m afraid CE’s plagiarism is much wider, deeper, and more chronic than simply “improper research” or “improper attribution.” I tried an experiment, never reading any of her stuff before, and went to Amazon to do a “search inside” and see if I could source a passage. In less than 20 minutes I was able to find a verbatim lifting of two paragraphs of material from Land of the Spotted Eagle by Luther Standing Bear. This wasn’t a fine toothed comb, this was throwing a dart at one of her books and hitting plagiarism. Add to that her “sources” now include segments of a Pulitzer-prize winning novel.
Even if she had cited her sources, the sheer volume of the borrowed material would be problematic.
Charity,
I don’t think it’s so much as someone else doing the research and not knowing the source, because that implies that she was at least acknowledging that she used sources for her information. She wasn’t doing that. So this was a deliberate omission on her part, she got information, didn’t care where so long as it made her sound good, and slapped it into her books. Done and done.
I’m not sure if I agree with the statement that fiction writers are under the false impression that they don’t need to cite/acknowledge their sources. I’ve seen many authors from a variety of genres include an appendix to their book that includes notes on where they looked for information. More common however is the Thank You/Acknowledgments page at the front of the book. People tend to skip it, but the authors often thank their publishers, people who gave them information X, people who provided a map of Y, people who checked the historical Z’s, and so on.
Since she didn’t do this the implication is that she didn’t want to even acknowledge that the ideas and concepts were not her own. That screams “intent” to me.
S Andrew Swann,
And that is the problem, the amount of “borrowed” content that is abundant in her books. Can these even be called her books anymore since the bulk of them is made up of lifted passages from other works?
And then of course, this raises the question of whether or not any of the material is hers to begin or if she was borrowing ideas from someone else for her “original” parts of books. Point of fact, her integrity as a writer has been called into question here.
Can readers trust anything that has her named stamped on it now? Should they?
all I can say to that is wow…that’s actually pretty sad.
I haven’t read any of her books: bodice rippers aren’t my thing but I have read historical fiction. The ones that try to get the details correct usually put a list of suggested reading or a list of acknowledgments at the back of the book to cover where they got their info.
Wow, this is a bit shocking, but I guess it is true, not the first person and probably not the last. Still, quite sad to see. It sounds like from these comments the problem is even bigger than described in the post too…sad, sad.
So strange, I just wrote about plagiarism yesterday and mentioned Cassie Edwards. She stole other people’s work, plain and simple. There is no excuse for it. I feel very strongly about plagiarism. It’s a shame that she got away with it for so long. I wonder how many other established writers have been guilty of the same thing? Using it as filler was exceptionally lazy, it’s laughable until you remember that she profited from the hard work of others.
I haven’t read a book of hers in years, mainly because as I’ve gotten older I’m finding I need more from a book then a bunch of “bodice ripping”, but in my late teens, early twenties I bet I read almost every book she wrote. It’s sad, really!
Crystal,
I know what you mean! I first read “bodice rippers” when I entered my early teens. It wasn’t long before I realized I wanted more from a book as well. lol I haven’t read any of her works thankfully.
Oh my freaking god the woman did research for her book. Yes plagiarism is a crime.But you cannot condemn the woman for doing research can you? It isn’t like dude owns black footed ferrets…Get over it…People its a ferret!