Ebooks, Cassie Edwards Plagiarism, and Dudelsacking!
Good Monday, everyone. It’s chill and quiet here, with thin fog breathing between houses and streetlamps in the distance. That’s one thing about fog–how you know it is surrounding you too, but it seems you’re in a clear bubble walled by vapor. Another thing is how quiet even thin fog makes everything, a species of quiet different than the subaudible static of snowfall. I like fog.
For those of you needing an ebook version of To Hell And Back, this is the only one I’ve found. Several people have emailed me asking about an ebook edition of the fifth Valentine book, but I have no control over it and there doesn’t appear to even be a Kindle one yet. If you, dear Reader, find more ebook versions (not pirated versions, which are a whole different ball of wax) please let me know so I can link to them too, and my Readers who like ebooks can have a choice.
Choice is good.
Speaking of pirating…I suppose everyone has now heard about the Cassie Edwards flap, where passages from her books appear to have been lifted wholesale from reference material. Then, just lately, another bombshell dropped–whole passages apparently lifted from Laughing Boy, a Pulitzer-Prize winning novel written in 1929. (You can find Laughing Boy: A Navajo Love Story, here. If you’re, you know, interested in reading an original.)
The Smart Bitches are catching a lot of flak for breaking this story, but since our mainstream media seems to have deserted us for a sea of Rupert Murdoch’s money, bloggers and citizen journalists are stepping into the gap. If the SBs were men there probably wouldn’t be the huge blather about how they’re Being Mean, and if they were working for AP or something nobody would think twice about them doing research and breaking a story. But since they’re bloggers, female, and unapologetic about what they think, a lot of people are throwing them unnecessary flak. Don’t get me started on THAT dynamic, dear Reader. We’d be here all week.
If Edwards has some explanation for the passages lifted wholesale from research books, I’d love to hear it. I myself didn’t realize that the historical Republic of Gilead in the Valentine books was a nod to The Handmaid’s Tale–a book that changed my consciousness in high school–until I paged through an copy of the finished fifth book. In the heat of creation the name “Gilead” came out for a theocratic regime Dante Valentine mentions in passing when she talks about history–so I know how sometimes research can crawl and creep into your book. If you’re like me and have a steady pace of reading about a book a day, sometimes less depending on childcare and errands, there’s a lot of stuff knocking around in your head. It’s fuel and furniture for the creative drive.
But whole passages so distinct in tone and texture from the author’s own prose that it alerts a reader, who with five minutes of Googling finds evidence of egregious wholesale lifting? I might have been willing to listen to an explanation and a mea culpa, if Edwards honestly didn’t know that you’re supposed to attribute sources. I’ve done my best to be honest about where my source material came from, and when one writes fiction one reads nonfiction source work and uses it to inform one’s worldbuilding, but doesn’t dump whole frigging chunks of it into the book. Still…I’d be willing to listen to an explanation.
But lifting from a Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel, another artist’s work of fiction? Bad author. No cookie. Not another cent from me, if I ever bought your books in the first place.
Which brings up something else the Smart Bitches pointed out: if you’re thinking of boycotting Signet or Penguin because one of their authors boo-boo’d bigtime, it’s more harmful than helpful. They explain why here. Boycott Edwards all you want, but boycotting the publisher does nothing but hurt innocent authors who have no connection with the scandal. And that is part of why publishing is a pretty effed-up business to try to make a living in as an artist, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post. I just wanted to mention the SB’s post about boycotting and how it actually works in publishing as evidence that they’re not out there just to make a sensationalist buck. (Which is pretty hard to do in the blogosphere anyway, Drudge notwithstanding.)
Ah, enough blathering. You’re probably bored with the whole thing, and I don’t blame you. I’m keeping up with it because I’m in publishing, I write paranormal romance, and this scandal touches on issues that concern me deeply on a daily basis. But in case you’re not so deeply concerned, I present Corvus Corax, the phattest Germen dudelsackers around. These peeps are like Andre Rieu on acid or something, and I am bookmarking their YouTube stuff as Musecrack for when I write Jill Kismet’s circus book.
But I won’t plagiarize their entire act, I promise. Heh.*
There now. Wasn’t that worth getting up out of bed for?
* Yeah, I know. Mean cracks about the scandal reflect badly on me. But Jeez Louise, I am just looking at this stuff and shaking my head, going how stupid can you BE?
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