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Now, after reading THIS BIG AUTHOR's rant about Nora Roberts which was deleted, I'm tempted to edit my play from last Sunday and add her for the More Cowbell scene. But really, you should just read this from Google cache:
When The Most Successful Author in Romance Judges Others
9:06 AM PST, January 11, 2008, updated at 10:03 AM PST, January 11, 2008
Hi, y'all. I debated whether to post publicly about this tempest in a teapot in the romance world, because the last thing I want is to be eviscerated by Nora Roberts' avid fangirls. But there's a quiet little stream of conversation in the world of romance writers as to why Roberts, unquestionably the richest, most award-winning, most successful romance novelist in the world -- in fact, one of the most successful novelists in the world, period -- hangs out at a blog site called "Smart Bitches," where the topics include open attacks on authors so far down the food chain that one wonders how Nora has time in her busy career to even notice they exist.
Now Roberts has weighed in (via an interview with the national press) on a controversy surrounding old-school historical author Cassie Edwards. I don't know Cassie Edwards; I've never read one of her many (nearly 100) historicals. But so far as I can tell she's a hardworking, 71-year-old author who's never slammed any other author in public. To the best of my knowledge Ms. Edwards is considered a rollicking good storyteller who likes to write westerns and pirate novels. She does not appear to have any pretensions, and her fans clearly love her books.
But -- according to reports launched by the Smart Bitches bloggers, who admitted beforehand that they don't like Ms. Edwards' old-style books, and have spent considerable time making jokes about them -- the author "plagiarized" bits and pieces of research material. The horrendous offense? Some passages about (I'm not kidding) buffaloes and ferrets. Looking at the passages myself, all I see is a writer who maybe should have paraphrased some research info a little better. I don't see malicious or greedy intent; I don't see "plagiarism" in any serious legal interpretation of the charge. If there's more to the issue than that, I haven't seen the evidence.
But I kinda doubt that Ms. Edwards' success is built on her nature writing. I kinda doubt she sat at her computer thinking, "If I use this other author's description of a buffalo, I'll sell ten times more books."
But now this grandmother (and accomplished violinist) is fielding national wire service inquiries about her alleged misdeeds. And Nora Roberts -- unsolicited, unharmed, with no personal beef with Ms. Edwards in any way, as far as I know -- has stood up atop her unassailable pile of money and awards to say -- in the national media --that Ms. Edwards appears to have committed plagerism.
Why does Roberts feel compelled to play lawyer, judge and jury regarding a fellow author? Roberts has achieved a level of good fortune 99.9 percent of authors can only dream about. But does that make her not only the spokeswoman for the romance genre, but also its enforcer of public condemnation for unproven offenses?
Not for me, and not for thousands of other hardworking authors trying to earn a living down here in the trenches, that's for sure.
Wow, huh. I'm speechless. BTW, the comments after this "new" post on Amazon were obviously addressing the original post above. They'll probably be deleted next ;-).
My deleted scene would definitely have:
La Nora standing "atop her unassailable pile of money and awards" saying something smartass ;-).
The big topic around the Internetz this weekend was about fangrrls. What is a fan/fanatic/fangrrl? It's a negative term these days because of the swarms that can attack your blog if you so much as say a bad thing about their favorite author's books. I repeat, in case it's not loud enough: BOOKS. B-O-O-K-S! Now, it's also a term tossed at readers who agree with an author's opinion. Opinion. O-P-I-N-I-O-N!
I'm so confused. So are we all a bunch of fangirls fighting, unable to think for ourselves? Am I crazy, but is it okay for some people to say something is wrong, but not others? I really don't get that. Sometimes, dealing with crapenters seems like a cakewalk.
Talking about fangirls, Bad Puppy (also now known as Horny Bad Puppy(TM))'s new year resolution is not to destroy any more of mommie's romance books:
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