I generally don’t talk too much about romance books, namely because I’m not really interested in that genre. Although, as a disclaimer, I do enjoy one every once in a while, as long as it doesn’t involve rape, taking a woman captive, any of those domineering kinds. They have to involve humor, a plausible plot and bonus points if they involve Vampires. (Me? Picky? Never.) However, a story has recently hit the mainstream news outlets, regarding romance author Cassie Edwards’s apparently wide usage of plagiarism in her novels, and I feel that it applies across genres.

Now, I don’t care if it is horror, literary, mainstream, fantasy, whatever genre fiction, (and non-fiction for that matter, but that’s ‘nother post), I personally feel as an author that when one writer plagiarizes, it can cast a negative light, or at least an air of suspicion across all authors. In this particular case, the information first came to light on the blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, when one of the readers noticed a difference in style in one of the passages in an Edwards book. On a whim she plugged it into Google, and found sources where Edwards seems to have copied passages word for word into her novel. The authors of the site got curious, started digging, and started uncovering a large amount of places in several of Edwards’s books that were lifted, almost verbatim, from many nonfiction sources. And, not only did she use those authors’ words in her own writing, she didn’t even attempt to legitimize it by listing them as research sources. Further digging revealed that she plagiarized articles and fiction novels, most notably Pulitzer Prize winner Laughing Boy by Oliver La FargeThe Smart Bitches, Trashy Books people have done an amazing job of researching, documenting their findings, and discussing how Edwards’s publisher is (not) dealing with this issue. If you want to read more about this, go visit them here at the beginning, and there are links to all of the rest of the story.

While the issue of plagiarism has always ticked me off, (not to mention that every professor and teacher I have ever had drilled in the idea that it is BAD), there are a couple of things that I have found of interest in this case. This isn’t a case of a new writer plagiarizing a first novel, or an unknown writer getting busted. Edwards is 71 years old, and has written over 100 books! Yes, more than one, plus two zeros behind it, and as of my last check at least twelve of them have been found to have a substantial amount of plagiarism. Leaving aside the interesting question of how so much of this got by the editors, fact checkers, and who all knows who else in the publishing process over her long career, not to mention all of her readers, one of my biggest questions is how could she possibly have justified doing this? An even bigger one is why did she do it? As a writer I have to wonder, did she just hate the writing process? Did she get writer’s block and copy “once” to “get over it” and then just keep on doing it? Was she so focused on getting those 100 books out that she didn’t care how she did it? Personally, I don’t always like what I write, sometimes writing is hard as hell, but I take pride in the knowledge that the fiction that I do write is my own. Personally, I feel like plagiarizing is akin to selling your writing soul to the devil.

I’m not sure how much of a financial impact this is going to have for Edwards, and really, I’m not interested in seeing her get financially socked. The reason is that she’s already getting the worst punishment possible - now no one is going to think of her as a “real writer;” instead, she’s going to be that romance novelist who had to steal other people’s words because she couldn’t write good enough stuff herself. And I think that is about the worst feeling a writer could have.

As a final note, again, courtesy of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, here’s a link to biographies of some of the people Edwards plagiarized. If their words are being printed, they deserve to at least be known.