Make ferrets, not war. Or something like that.

So, yeah. Plagiarism is bad. I don't really want to go into the whole Cassie Edwards thing; I would rather point you to this funny and charming article by Paul Tolmé, one of the authors Edwards plagiarized (and do follow the link: Jane at Dear Author has done a lovely thing in rounding up the biographies of the plagiarized authors). He both demonstrates exactly how clumsy and blatant the plagiarism is (and there's a whole 'nother level of trouble with the inability to distinguish between a modern source and something one's heroine could have read in her father's library ca. 1850, but I said I didn't want to go into it, and I don't) and goes on to make a more important point: that while we have our little tempests in teapots, as us sapient bipedal primates are wont to do, the black-footed ferrets are still in severe danger of extinction. (Parenthetically, did the government not fucking learn from DDT? Poisoning one part of the ecosystem IS NOT THE ANSWER. Footbone connected to the anklebone, trombone connected to the cat bone, and so on and so forth, and Jesus Christ in a bucket, what did you THINK was going to happen?)

So, ill winds and silver linings, insert your cliché here, something good has come of the whole embarrassing mess, as explained here:

Nora Roberts has volunteered to match up to $5,000.00 USD any donations made by Smart Bitches readers to Defenders of Wildlife, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that works to preserve not just ferrets but endangered wildlife across the US, most particularly that species much loved by paranormal romance writers: the wolf.

They've already raised $1500, and I think this is the best answer ever to a publishing scandal. We should all train it in as our knee-jerk response.

New kerfuffle? Give money to the animals. Then you may post.