Make ferrets, not war. Or something like that.

[truepenny]

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.

Comments

[orrin.livejournal.com]

Paul Tolme completely won my heart with that article.

[meijhen.livejournal.com]

heh....I donate to DoW on a regular basis :) They, and the Humane Society, are my favorite charities.

But yay, Nora Roberts for kicking this off!

[meijhen.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I agree, that is a great article from Paul Tolme.

[gerbilicous.livejournal.com]

"Then, a few pages later, as Bramlett and Shadow Bear bask in their postcoital glow, my ferrets arrive on the scene."

That sentence just made my life.

On another, unrelated note, I'm about half way through The Mirador and I LOVE it (lovelovelovelove)!

My only sadness is that poor Mildmay can not catch a break to save his life. :(

[albionidaho.livejournal.com]

Thank you for these links. They are utterly fabulous. I am totally in love with Tolme'.

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

A) Yayyyy, ferrets, Tolme, Roberts, and research!
B) I had sworn off reading about the incident before I came across the Tolme link, and oh, I'm glad I read it, because HOW the lifted parts were used was FAR more amusing than I had possibly imagined! Priceless! And unbelievable.

DDT

[(Anonymous)]

This has nothing to do with plagiarism.I just wanted to add something to your DDT comment. Feel free to ignore.

DDT became an environmental nightmare because it was rather lethal, not very degradable and had a tendency to climb its way up the food chain. DDT was an enormous success when it came to combating malaria because it was rather lethal, not very degradable and bloody effective at killing mosquitoes. It was cheap. It was easy to use. By spraying it in roofs, ponds, pools and anywhere the little shits tended to breed the parasite's life-cycle was halted at a point when they were not inside people making them sick as dogs. Malaria levels went down in Africa and disappeared from southern Europe.

DDT should not have been used as an agricultural insecticide. That's like using napalm as a weedkiller. No argument whatsoever there. And towards the end of the DDT program in Africa it was blatantly overused due to complacency and lack of proper discipline and rules. But it was a shame that one of the few schemes to combat malaria that actually worked was sacrificed at the alter of the West's environmental conscience. It's easy for us to say "DDT is evil and should be banned EVERYWHERE". We are not crippled by malaria, either physically or financially. It is therefore easy for us to value the sound of birds singing or the sight of the bald eagle in flight over the health of people on a distant continent.

DDT is a horrible poison but malaria is worse and we took it (DDT) away without giving an alternative. How arrogant can we get?