We could talk of roads to hell and all that but really that seems to be a topic well in hand.
Oh I lie, I do have a comment or two, I will be short. The act itself I see no need to discuss because:
Plagirist = bad
I would suggest reading the thread for just the entertainment value of the comments.
My questions are: [the ‘you’ being general of course]
Why would being stupid and allowing yourself to be [repeatedly] ‘scammed’ make you not responsible for your actions?
If you claim to own something, claim to be a writer, claim to be telling the story of your heart, pimp your name all over the place to help others [for a fee of course] find their inner writer then ‘discover’ [nudge nudge, wink wink] your ‘work’ is someone elses and suddenly need to out the fact you forgot to mention you paid a ghost writer for your soon to be SELF published novel that came from your heart and hardwork [paypaling is work too].
You do all this and I am suppose to cry you a fucking river. WHY? Color me all sorts of shades of heartless but the fact that you were screwed while trying to screw other people seems all good and well to me.
Karma is a bitch.
Of course I am on the side of cynical and think something is rather rotten in denmark. But nine out of ten times I think that and I have been wrong a few times. So…
I can not understand for the life of me why the chick from Writer Beware is singing Hill is a bad bad man so don’t be mean to the stoopid. He seems to also be an invisible evol man who has taken advantage of many but is so clever no one knows what he looks, even though he escaped very bad things happening to him for his evol deeds by paying back some of the many people he screwed.
Ok that isn’t really what she is saying but what I took away from the post was comments at Dear Author are bad and kicking a ::cough:: innocent who was taken advantage of [repeatedly and willingly cuz ya’ll she gots the emails to prove it] so cut her some slack.
Nope. Not I. I can’t even understand why that is ok. And the general ‘chatter’ of ‘bestsellers’ getting ghosts ALL THE TIME. ‘Everyone’ knows this, ‘nobody’ cares stuff is bullshit. Name me some names or shut up about it. It we are talking celeb books where people get shocked to know the ‘star’ didn’t write their book, ok, fine. Yes people are drinking from the fountain of stupid in big gulps.
But it seems ‘people’ are meaning best selling authors ghosting their work with no credit. I could buy that idea and if I KNEW someone was I wouldn’t read them. I would be annoyed. I would call bullshit. Other than the feakish sells of VC Andrews [really who are you people buying him/her] I don’t know of anyone. Tell!
I digress, really my biggest issue with the whole thing would be the selling of her ‘hardships’ in life as a reason to buy her work or excuse her fuck up(s). I am very sorry if your life has thrown you. It is great you can over come it. If your book is about that struggle or even fiction based on it… lets call it a novel for grins. I can see riding the wave of look at poor me.
But we are talking sci-fi fantasy here a writers sad tales of [repeated] woe shouldn’t mean shit. The idea behind it, the amount of very, very, bad things that have happened to this person over and over and over and over spell to me she is an attentionwhore. The way she has gone about it screams she is lying. The fact that she thinks no one should question ‘because I could DIE and my blood would be on your hands’ sort of tells you accountiblity factor there. Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy much?
Of course I have been on the internet too long and seen to many people put too much effort into ‘killing’ themselves so they can watch the drama online. The fact I have watched it play out more than once with great time, effort and sadly no fucking computer skills to pull it off, has jaded me. I don’t give money to people begging on the streets either so maybe I am just a bad egg all the way around.
Regardless of how it happened I still have to say:
Plagirist = bad
And the invisible Mr. Hill may have already paved his road to hell but I fail to see how Mary isn’t far behind. No matter what story you decide to swallow…
The way I saw it, Syb, is this:
It’s like if you hire a hitman to kill your husband and in the process, the hitman kills a whole bunch of people to get to your husband… you’re still responsible for all those people. ‘Cause you’re the one who hired the hitman in the first place.
Nevertheless, i call BULLSHIT pinning this stuff on ONE guy who is so fiendish and devilish and shadowy that no one knows where he is. Is he Keyser Soze or something?
I don’t think the surprise here is that an author committed plagiarism, or even permitted it on her behalf. The issue is that another author pointed out the elephant that’s been allowed to sit for so long in the middle of the room without comment from anyone. It seems to have become a dirty little secret in the industry, and how DARE that author break ranks and say something about it.
I recently read the work of an author that, while not technically plagiarism, combined concepts that were unique to two other very successful authors’ works. Yet this author’s work has received laud throughout Romancelandia. Hell, one of the successful authors, whose concept she copied, even gave her a cover blurb!
Let me be clear that I’m not referring to the fact that all vampire books, for instance, would probably have certain ideas in common. I am referring to concepts unique to the works of certain authors.
And then there’s Sunny. This author of thinly disguised fanfic has become an RT darling and her Monere books have been, according to her, nominated for multiple awards. The Mona Lisa books owe the essence of their world building to Anne Bishop’s Black Jewels Trilogy, but the main characters and many of the scenes in the Monere and Lucinda books are substantially from Laurell Hamilton’s Merry Gentry and Anita Blake series. Again, TECHNICALLY not plagiarism. But when entire scenes are copied from LKH books, does changing a few of the words mean it’s STILL not plagiarism? When does a derivative imitation earn the charge of plagiarism? I personally think Sunny has crossed that line in multiple scenes in multiple books. Ironically, I also think her Monere books are pretty damn enjoyable. And why wouldn’t they be? After all, she copied from the best!
So this latest incident of plagiarism doesn’t surprise me a bit. This behavior has been ignored and rewarded for too long. And that whole, “Woe is me, I should be excused because I’m a victim†bullshit is just that… bullshit. What DOES surprise me is that, finally, another author had the stones to point it out. And has been vilified for doing so.
Bev, there’s plagiarism… and then there’s
CTRL + C, then CTRL + V.
Personally, I find it all highly entertaining. “Stupid author tricks” par excellence.
Hey – the rest of us do stupid tricks, why should authors be exempt? 😉
After staring at that for a minute because Bam obviously mistook me for someone that knows WTF that means (I THINK it means copy/paste right?), I would just like to point out that, at least in one spot, “Alexander” was changed to “Archimedes”. So, SEE?! It’s not an EXACT copy, now is it? 😛
there are 250+ comments at dear author… one should explain that…
LOL
I’d taken a break from this train wreck and was catching up on Dear Author and Making Light, and following all the various links. Came across this post which annoyed the crap out of me… http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1720707&postcount=71
And I also want to know how much ghostwriting really goes on, not just the claim that “everybody does it” and so on. I want examples other than celebrity biographies, with author’s names. Plus, I still don’t understand why you would want to have a work ghostwritten as an writer who claims that writing is her gift. Wouldn’t you want to do your own writing in that case?
I hate guilt trips – and telling me how bad you’re off and all your physical disabilities and how I need to treat you differently and give extra consideration to you feels like a guilt trip (you in the general sense, not anyone specific). I’ll read your book if I’m interested, I’ll evaluate it on an equal footing with everyone else. Just cause I or other people don’t stick all our personal issues, problems, disabilities or whatever in all our communications doesn’t mean that we don’t have such things going on in our life. I’m sure there are plenty of writers out there who write despite adverse circumstances, without hanging everything out and trying to get more readers through a guilt trip.
I wonder if she thinks that everything will be fixed by rewriting the relevant text and apologizing? I’m sure Gemmell’s estate isn’t too happy about this situation. And she seems to think that she’s incredible writer – comparing herself to Edgar Allen Poe, and thinking that her book could be like the Harry Potter franchise. If she’s so good, why would she accept working with a ghostwriter?
I don’t think she has put any thought into it. Nor do I think half of the shit she tells us is true.
She has been at this a while it looks like. She is selling services, so either she is making a pretty penny off others being stupid. (dude still say she could be hill in drag)
Or it is nothing but a thang. Attention. Look at meness. The pics for all we really know are two humans this person has never met. The articles in the paper look like canned content from the ‘author’ press releases.
Really for all we know this is some kid using the links to hack into computers. Well that is doubtful because Dear Author would be hacked and down as would bam and those other two boards.
People are great and often take things at face value. It allows others to fuck them nice and hard without them even noticing. The first time this kid/man/person-living-in-their-moms-basement hacked into a message board I was on it took a few years to stop it from happening again. And he is still trying it. that is mad time on your hands…
She could be a mix of on the up and up. Really disabled in some way, got some attention off her emo poems and craved more. But someone with her laundry list of illnesses and her hubby’s would have some serious medical bills. So either she has cash to spare from family because dude if there was a woe is me I fault THE MAN AND WON SOB in there we would know about the lawsuit and cash prize.
So where is the green? You hire yourself a ghost at 400 a month for a couple of years (or something too lazy to look). You are going to SELF PUBLISH which last I heard isn’t cheap. You and your disabled hubby… disability pay ain’t that nice.
So really not buying what she is selling. I would guess it is a mix of illness, greed and/or want of attention and more time than he/she knows what to do with.
Holey moley! I sat back and read all the comment and this is some serious stuff. I am speechless!
Did this so called author just really copy and paste the orginal story? She just typed everything word to word and tried to publish it.
I am speechless. Give me some popcorn so Ican watch this trainwreck.
Again, so sad. 🙁
The dear author thread spells it all out tres nicely. First she says it is the book of her heart she has been working on forever. The gift of her life is writing and she has over come blah blah blah.
Well no her website is more… I have had this shitty thing happen to me, and this, and this and this and this AND this. And because of my love for writing I have slaved away to publish the next HARRY POTTER. I rock and shit. Buy my books or I may get sad and die and it will be your fault.
that is paraphrased a lil…
so they posted her excerpt (WHICH IS STILL ON HER SITE) and the first seven pages of some book and they are exactly the same excerpt someone searched and replaced ‘most’ of the names (they forgot one or two).
She said people were lying and evol. Then said I sorry I was scammed the ghost I hired to write the book of my heart so I could self publish it and rip you off stole this work I paid for… I am very very very sorry someone took advantage or me. And you suck for telling me about it.
again paraphrased…
then deleted her message board thing on her site and her ‘agent’ who really sounds a lot like the writer is posting on message board talking hexing people and suing them.
I don’t do it justice go read the post 😉
Sybil, can you believe the amount of authors who are commenting about this? Over 200 posts? Dear Author really hit the nail on this.
I am expecting some pitch forks, fire and the townspeople to riot. (well, if this was a movie anyway)
The alleged bad author better go hide somewhere and fast!
You know, maybe she thinks that cause she’s stated being scammed, that resolves everything. She’s now guiltless, and once the ghostwritten chapter is fixed, everything is going to be great. After all, she seems to think that this is great publicity for her (on Making Light, comment 392). Uhm… hell will freeze over before I buy that book. And I’d say, this is not the good kind of publicity you want to have associated with yourself as an author.
Although she says that he wrote the prologue Chapter 1-4, so there’s a whole lot more to fix. And I wonder what kind of fixing she’s thinking of?
And because of my love for writing I have slaved away to publish the next HARRY POTTER. I rock and shit. Buy my books or I may get sad and die and it will be your fault.
That’s exactly the sense that I got.
I think she’s lying or a whole new species of delusional. Since new species are rare, I’m going with the lying until hard evidence.
Thank you, Sybil, for finally saying what I’ve been thinking about the money. Always follow the money.
I tend to be on the uncynical side – but on this I agree with you wholeheartedly. Nope – don’t feel sorry for her at all. I followed the whole thing and it was quite the thing. I loved the threatening to sue part of it – oh yes – and the hexing. That was quite delightful.
And yea, the buy my book or I will get worse and the you mean girls – how dare you do this to the poor struggling author – give me a break!