Romance "author" Cassie Edwards takes the cake for Google-aided plagiarism.

[oddharmonic]

I want to make snarky comments about plagiarism, but this is so bizarre it stands on its own: romance "author" Cassie Edwards uses passages of an environmental magazine article as dialog in novel and is outed by the ladies of Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Links:
- Cassie Edwards Investigatory Extravaganza at SBTB
- "Move Over, 'Meerkat Manor'"

Comments

[baronessvarla]

That was an amazing read. Hilarious to read the actual dialogue passages & the real author's comments.

[oddharmonic]

I am considering checking out Ms. Edwards' books at the library... so I can look up academic-sounding phrases in Google Book Search. Heh.

Google Book Search turns up things I never imagined existed in the course of me looking for reference material for Wikipedia articles. Did you know that Margaret Wise Brown (prolific children's author, best known for Good Night Moon) died of an embolism that let loose when she did a high kick at a follow-up appointment after an appendectomy?

[revme]

That is HILARIOUS. I love that characters apparently, in her world, talk like boring science textbooks. I love the "researchers believe" part, too.

[oddharmonic]

All this time I thought my post-coital rambling was boring, but I stand corrected.

How do you footnote in spoken conversation? That might top post-sex Animal Planet channeling.

[revme]

Hm -- I'm trying to figure that out. I'm thinking it'd be sort of sotto voce; not really a whisper, just taken down a step, y'know? So you'd be talking like this and then this would here be the footnote and then the footnote would be over. This would be awesome if you could do that in the middle of a sentence and end the sentence perfectly.

[the_mock_turtle]

I had come across this story elsewhere, but I appreciated the perspective of the author in the Newsweek story. I share his hope that this might bring some attention to the plight of the ferrets.

[oddharmonic]

As do I. I am quite fond of ferrets, even though I do not feel the same about plague vect--ahem, prairie dogs.

[gamahucheur]

The prose is standard romance-novel shlock.
Wait. How does he know what constitutes standard romance-novel shlock?

[oddharmonic]

Perhaps he is a fan of romance novels.

I went through a phase of reading them... when I was 8. I was tickled that the same small-town librarians that made me get my parents' permission to check out sci-fi books a few years earlier let me check out all manner of romance novels without batting an eye. I was quite impressed with all of the colorful ways the books described intimate encounters. My loins have never burned. (And I hope they never do, as I imagine symptoms of unpleasant health issues would cause burning in that region.)