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Sunday, January 13, 2008

Cassie Edwards' Last Hope Fades

The Cassie Edwards situtation has finally reached a pinnacle to which my tired brain can no longer aspire in its flights of outrage. At last, she has won my pity. The Smart Bitches have finally found both a fiction and protected source. If that weren't enough, it's a Pulitzer prize winning novel, Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge, still in print with Houghton Mifflin. Eeegods, folks.

I can't help but wonder if perhaps Edwards never thought it would go this far without somebody catching it. Or if, perhaps, she figured she'd pull the cutie once, then got a little relaxed when it passed, and maybe succumbed to deadline fever. But at this point she can no longer hide behind doing research and being unaware she had to cite it. I can think of no circumstances under which anyone, particularly a writer by trade, copies large numbers of passages nearly verbatim from a Pulitzer winning novel and has no knowledge of this being wrong.

It's too sad to be funny or even pleasant in a justice-is-served way anymore. Yes, even I can't feel much beyond a numb sense of sorrow.

2 comments ]:[ Add your comment:

Diana Castilleja said...

I was shocked to see the latest update today, but it didn't take me long to realize what I was seeing. And how it made me feel.

I am saddened by the depth of the woman's lies. Whatever excuse she gives them, fine. She is allowed her defense.

I am saddened that the romance genre has once again been hit with disdain on the whole, because what effects one, effects all. Even if there are those who don't wish to acknowledge it, and that is their choice. I can't ignore it.

I am saddened that there is more blame on the source than the issue. That the facts are being passed over as inconsequential because of the source of this debacle, detracting from the whole reason this started.

She wrote books, with other people's word, consistently and numerous times and claimed it as her own. And earned money because of it. That is to me a deepset dishonesty.

I went through so many emotions, and now... frankly, I'm just tired.

I can only pray that her publisher will take into account all the damage she has done to her reader's trust, to the romance community and to the genre, and do the right thing. Sweeping it under the rug is not my idea of the "right thing." I leave that willingly to the people who are paid to make that decision.

Night Diva Maria said...

Don't blame me, blame Toni Sue! LOL
She tagged me! So now I'm tagging you!
My blog you'll see, the rules that's due
Open up your chi and let it flow through you! :D

LOL if you can stand to visit my blog, I've tagged you!
Thanks for enduring! ;)

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