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"Savage Whispers" redux
Aug. 8th, 2009 06:57 pm...yeah, I know, I said I was done poking at this Cassie Edwards book for plagiarized passages, but it's still sitting around my laptop zone and I happened to pick it back up and riffle through. And yes, I'm *still* finding more plagiarism.( Read more... )
This is actually one of the first Edwards books I checked-- randomly picked it off the shelf at the bookstore, riffled through until I found a memorably suspicious passage, put it back, and then went a-Googling when I got home. Since then, I found another copy at the library booksale and also borrowed her main source; I've just had to renew the latter so I figured I'd better get crackin' and type stuff in-- I actually went through both books a week or three ago and jotted down three double-sided pages of notes, but with the quotes only briefly marked with a few words at each end and copious ellipses.
This time, our heroine is Kaylene, the daughter of a circus family. She has a pet black panther, Midnight, and finds love among the Kickapoo near the Texas/Mexico border.
Edwards' key reference is The Mexican Kickapoo Indians by Felipe A. and Delores L. Latorre, Univerity of Texas Press, 1976. In addition to sundry verbatim passages, she also takes several major plot points from this book: the existence of sign language among the Kickapoo (although she doesn't seem to use any of the authentic gestures), the presence of blue-eyed tribe members ascribed to partial French ancestry, the role of a deaf-mute tribe member, and the banishment of four girls from the village for promiscuity.
Addendum: ...bah. I just can't face another bout of endless transcriptions. Will probably just type in my notes at some point.
This time, our heroine is Kaylene, the daughter of a circus family. She has a pet black panther, Midnight, and finds love among the Kickapoo near the Texas/Mexico border.
Edwards' key reference is The Mexican Kickapoo Indians by Felipe A. and Delores L. Latorre, Univerity of Texas Press, 1976. In addition to sundry verbatim passages, she also takes several major plot points from this book: the existence of sign language among the Kickapoo (although she doesn't seem to use any of the authentic gestures), the presence of blue-eyed tribe members ascribed to partial French ancestry, the role of a deaf-mute tribe member, and the banishment of four girls from the village for promiscuity.
Addendum: ...bah. I just can't face another bout of endless transcriptions. Will probably just type in my notes at some point.
Cassie Edwards: more random sniplets
May. 17th, 2008 09:40 pmWell hey, Dorchester has a few free sample chapters available on their website. I probably won't poke particularly hard at them, in that if (when?) I find *one* example of plagiarism in a book's sample, I'll drop it and move on to a new one. ( Read more... )
Cassie Edwards: "Savage Tempest", 2006
May. 6th, 2008 09:37 amPublished by Dorchester/Leisure Oct. 2006.
set in theNebraska Territory in August 1861.( Read more... )
set in theNebraska Territory in August 1861.( Read more... )
Cassie Edwards: "Savage Vision", 2005
May. 4th, 2008 05:17 pm...Yeah, I know, I still haven't really done anything with Savage Tempest yet. But since this was at the library today, and with such a fetchingly suspicious opening paragraph, I just couldn't resist.
SV is published by Dorchester, with a cute faux-label on the spine saying "First Time In Print!" (Mmmmyeah.) The setting is in 1851 Texas in/near Coral Creek, "a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico". (There are multiple suburban thingies called "Coral Creek" in/near Houston and Ft. Worth, probably among other places. Dunno where it's really supposed to be.) Based on a preliminary flipthrough of the early chapters, I am looking forward to this book being universally offensive, as the heroine's family has a devoted black maid (air quotes) and there are ominous runaway Chinese coolies (with opium) living nearby.
There actually is an interesting webpage about the history of early Chinese immigration to Texas at http://www.texancultures.utsa.edu/txtext/chinese/chinesetexans.htm , but kindly note that they mainly came as workers. To *work*. Not to batten off a cloud of opium smoke and a puddle of grog. Thank kew.
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SV, p. 1 (as I said, the first paragraph):
T. Edward Pickens, "Small is Beautiful", National Wildlife April/May 1993, vol. 31 no. 3 (http://www.nationalwildlife.org/nationalwildlife/article.cfm?issueID=95&articleID=927):
Incidentally, Pickens' article is about eastern North Carolina, not Texas.( Read more... )
SV is published by Dorchester, with a cute faux-label on the spine saying "First Time In Print!" (Mmmmyeah.) The setting is in 1851 Texas in/near Coral Creek, "a few miles from the Gulf of Mexico". (There are multiple suburban thingies called "Coral Creek" in/near Houston and Ft. Worth, probably among other places. Dunno where it's really supposed to be.) Based on a preliminary flipthrough of the early chapters, I am looking forward to this book being universally offensive, as the heroine's family has a devoted black maid (air quotes) and there are ominous runaway Chinese coolies (with opium) living nearby.
There actually is an interesting webpage about the history of early Chinese immigration to Texas at http://www.texancultures.utsa.edu/txtext/chinese/chinesetexans.htm , but kindly note that they mainly came as workers. To *work*. Not to batten off a cloud of opium smoke and a puddle of grog. Thank kew.
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SV, p. 1 (as I said, the first paragraph):
Mossy boulders clad the shore. Fingers of muscadine vines trailed in the water, sheltering wood ducks half hidden under the low branches of weeping willow trees.
T. Edward Pickens, "Small is Beautiful", National Wildlife April/May 1993, vol. 31 no. 3 (http://www.nationalwildlife.org/nationalwildlife/article.cfm?issueID=95&articleID=927):
Mossy boulders clad the shore. Fingers of muscadine vines trail in the water, sheltering wood ducks half hidden under holly branches.
Incidentally, Pickens' article is about eastern North Carolina, not Texas.( Read more... )
Cassie Edwards sniplets
Apr. 2nd, 2008 07:54 pmHave obtained another of her books, Savage Tempest. First identifiable source (p. 63) is from George Amos Dorsey's The Mythology of the Wichita, originally published in 1904 and entirely available online. Nwahahah. Toward the end, there's also a passel of stuff about bald eagles from another National Wildlife article (I guess she has a subscription), plus some random crops-based stuff from here.
However, first need to slog back through Savage Whispers, as I finally decided to snag Battey's and McHugh's respective books from my library and should make use of them before they're due back again.
Also seriously pondering whether to go see a local talk by N. Scott Momaday later this month and hand him a copy of Savage Whispers, perhaps with some helpful highlighting/tapeflags. I'm thinking I'm pretty likely to go, if tix are still available; the big question will be whether I should (or even can) inflict Edwards' appropriation of his material directly onto him.
However, first need to slog back through Savage Whispers, as I finally decided to snag Battey's and McHugh's respective books from my library and should make use of them before they're due back again.
Also seriously pondering whether to go see a local talk by N. Scott Momaday later this month and hand him a copy of Savage Whispers, perhaps with some helpful highlighting/tapeflags. I'm thinking I'm pretty likely to go, if tix are still available; the big question will be whether I should (or even can) inflict Edwards' appropriation of his material directly onto him.
Cassie Edwards, "Savage Whispers" (1989)
Feb. 29th, 2008 11:06 pmThis is one of Edwards' older books, and it shows: presumably she wasn't yet able to coast on her reputation (and was twenty years younger), so the prose actually has some description and flow, and the plot is noticeably more complex-- compared to her recent routine, it's almost mindbogglingly frenetic.
The sex scenes in this book add up to about 50 pages out of 312. IMHO no self-respecting sex scene should use the word "tummy". Let's not even get into the repeated phrase "the upper lobes of her breasts", which, when remarked upon to the wombat-consort, inspired comparisons to Eccentrica Gallumbits.
The latest SMTB list has one lonely citation for the 2000 reprint of SW, from N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain (University of New Mexico Press, 1969; abbreviated below as WRM). I was working from an original edition of Savage Whispers (Charter Books, July 1989), but the more recent Dorchester reprint seems to preserve the same pagination.
Edwards makes extensive use of Momaday's book (abbreviated below as WRM), as well as his article/essay "A First American Views His Land", first published with various photos as pp 13-19 National Geographic, Vol. 150 No.1, July 1976, and later reprinted (text-only) in his anthology The Man Made of Words, McMillan 1998 (abbreviated below as FAVL; page #s are via antho MMW or magazine NG).( Read more... )
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And now (as of 11 May 2008) I really am done looking for sources, having reached the LJ size limit for this post :b
The sex scenes in this book add up to about 50 pages out of 312. IMHO no self-respecting sex scene should use the word "tummy". Let's not even get into the repeated phrase "the upper lobes of her breasts", which, when remarked upon to the wombat-consort, inspired comparisons to Eccentrica Gallumbits.
The latest SMTB list has one lonely citation for the 2000 reprint of SW, from N. Scott Momaday's The Way to Rainy Mountain (University of New Mexico Press, 1969; abbreviated below as WRM). I was working from an original edition of Savage Whispers (Charter Books, July 1989), but the more recent Dorchester reprint seems to preserve the same pagination.
Edwards makes extensive use of Momaday's book (abbreviated below as WRM), as well as his article/essay "A First American Views His Land", first published with various photos as pp 13-19 National Geographic, Vol. 150 No.1, July 1976, and later reprinted (text-only) in his anthology The Man Made of Words, McMillan 1998 (abbreviated below as FAVL; page #s are via antho MMW or magazine NG).( Read more... )
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And now (as of 11 May 2008) I really am done looking for sources, having reached the LJ size limit for this post :b
Cassie Edwards, "Savage Quest" (2007)
Feb. 29th, 2008 07:51 pm"Savage Quest" was published in Feb. 2007 by Dorchester. The main story takes place in 1879 in what is now Montana; our intrepid heroine, Annamae, interprets dreams as part of a small travelling circus.( Read more... )
SMTB's latest update of their Cassie Edwards PDF is now EIGHTY-SEVEN PAGES. In landscape layout, even.
I have a vague, junkie-like urge to go find more (secondhand!) Cassie Edwards books to put to the question. Nwahahahahah.
I have a vague, junkie-like urge to go find more (secondhand!) Cassie Edwards books to put to the question. Nwahahahahah.
Hah-- found an Edwards book in the library's booksale zone: Racing Moon, New York: Signet, May 2003. Appropriately enough, we begin with some stolen breechcloth material.( Read more... )
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Addenda-- poking at the limited preview of Savage Heart (Zebra 2007) available on Google Books.( Read more... )
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Addenda-- poking at the limited preview of Savage Heart (Zebra 2007) available on Google Books.( Read more... )
"Swift Horse" ctd (done)
Jan. 14th, 2008 10:23 pmFigured I'd better start a new entry before I run out of room in the first one. Bleah.( Read more... )
Update, 15 Jan: ...y'know, it strikes me as a bit gauche to pause in the middle of a four-page stretch of intensive plagiarism, just to have one character swoon over the beauty of the stolen descriptions (note the italicized phrase below).( Read more... )
Update, 15 Jan: ...y'know, it strikes me as a bit gauche to pause in the middle of a four-page stretch of intensive plagiarism, just to have one character swoon over the beauty of the stolen descriptions (note the italicized phrase below).( Read more... )
SMTB already has some entries for Obsession, but since Google Books had some pages available, I figured I might as well see if I could find anything else. (I have no good reason for doing this right now considering how teeth-pullingly sloooow my net connection has been acting, but hey, it's a hobby.)
You know it's going to be bad when almost all of the Author's Note has been plagiarized. ( Read more... )
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Addenda: swung by the library to check their Cassie Edwards stash, and brought home Swift Horse, which is about the Creek Indians but also has a bonus escaped slave whose dialogue is written... quaintly.
After browsing through the entire book and sowing little post-it tags along the way, I've been working my way back through the tags from the beginning. I'm only up to page 67 of Swift Horse so far, and I'm already feeling exhausted :b( Read more... )
You know it's going to be bad when almost all of the Author's Note has been plagiarized. ( Read more... )
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Addenda: swung by the library to check their Cassie Edwards stash, and brought home Swift Horse, which is about the Creek Indians but also has a bonus escaped slave whose dialogue is written... quaintly.
After browsing through the entire book and sowing little post-it tags along the way, I've been working my way back through the tags from the beginning. I'm only up to page 67 of Swift Horse so far, and I'm already feeling exhausted :b( Read more... )
There's something about Cassie(s)....
Jan. 13th, 2008 12:46 pmHave been munching popcorn at the Cassie Edwards situation.
Having never read one of Edwards'(?) books before, I decided to browse through one yesterday while visiting Barnes and Noble, to see if I could spot any similar passages of disjointed didacticism. Yup. It was odd enough to stick in my memory, so when we got home, I plugged the keywords into Google Books and found what looks like iirc a damn near exact match. I'll have to wait on specific cites until I can find a used copy of the Edwards book to support my favorite secondhand bookstore-- our county library system doesn't have it, though it does have the original reference work-- but in the meantime I have a few appalled comments to make.
First of all, Edwards' prose is horrid to the point of parody. She indicates dramatic tension... by... inserting... ellipses... while simultaneously! ending every... other... sentence... with... exclamation points! Secondly, has no one ever seen any problem with most of her ~100 books being called "Savage [something]" as a description of Native American men pairing off with white settler women? And thirdly, of the few books of Edwards' that *are* in our local library system, almost all of them are in Large Type editions, which strongly suggests that they're being requested by Little Old Ladies who *like* them, giving me the uneasy sense of watching people stuff themselves with fast food... okay, yeah, it's their choice and it's not as if I want to *force* them to stop, but don't they know how bad that crap is for them?
Having never read one of Edwards'(?) books before, I decided to browse through one yesterday while visiting Barnes and Noble, to see if I could spot any similar passages of disjointed didacticism. Yup. It was odd enough to stick in my memory, so when we got home, I plugged the keywords into Google Books and found what looks like iirc a damn near exact match. I'll have to wait on specific cites until I can find a used copy of the Edwards book to support my favorite secondhand bookstore-- our county library system doesn't have it, though it does have the original reference work-- but in the meantime I have a few appalled comments to make.
First of all, Edwards' prose is horrid to the point of parody. She indicates dramatic tension... by... inserting... ellipses... while simultaneously! ending every... other... sentence... with... exclamation points! Secondly, has no one ever seen any problem with most of her ~100 books being called "Savage [something]" as a description of Native American men pairing off with white settler women? And thirdly, of the few books of Edwards' that *are* in our local library system, almost all of them are in Large Type editions, which strongly suggests that they're being requested by Little Old Ladies who *like* them, giving me the uneasy sense of watching people stuff themselves with fast food... okay, yeah, it's their choice and it's not as if I want to *force* them to stop, but don't they know how bad that crap is for them?
Draco Furtum
Feb. 14th, 2007 05:39 pmIdly paging through some of CC's Draco Trilogy again-- the last story, "Draco Veritas", which come to think of it doesn't seem quite right in Latin: "Dragon Truth", not "True Dragon" which would be (flips through Cassell) "Draco Verax"? But anyway, on the same grammatical template, although Cassell suggests the deponent verb furor, furari for "steal/plagiarize", I'm going to give up trying to remember how deponent participles work and just go with the related noun furtum for "theft/robbery".
Refs are to pagination in the extant PDFs. Actually not that much stuff this time; by the time I'd skimmed up to p.500 of DV, I couldn't stand the sheer tedium anymore.
Further addendum: have been occasionally adding bits and pieces from DS; some are exact matches, other are vaguer overlaps of thematic keywords.( Read more... )
Refs are to pagination in the extant PDFs. Actually not that much stuff this time; by the time I'd skimmed up to p.500 of DV, I couldn't stand the sheer tedium anymore.
Further addendum: have been occasionally adding bits and pieces from DS; some are exact matches, other are vaguer overlaps of thematic keywords.( Read more... )
DS vs. Cyrion (rehash)
Sep. 17th, 2006 11:08 pmStill playing with HTML columns/colors because they're fun. This is largely based on bad_penny's original comparison between DS14 and Tanith Lee's story "A Lynx With Lions". The latter has been reprinted several times in its own right, but afaik its first appearance was as pp132-161 in Lee's book Cyrion, NYC: Daw 1982, so I'm using the pagination from there.
Mostly what I've done is color-code the different sections and type in enough additional material from Lee to show how the original scene flowed together before being recycled, aside from the underlying plot device. Some of the overlaps are relatively piecemeal but still describe the same specific action with many of the same specific words. I can't decide whether it's overly persnickety to mark all of the individual small bits of shared vocabulary, vs. the entire lines that frame them.( Read more... )
Mostly what I've done is color-code the different sections and type in enough additional material from Lee to show how the original scene flowed together before being recycled, aside from the underlying plot device. Some of the overlaps are relatively piecemeal but still describe the same specific action with many of the same specific words. I can't decide whether it's overly persnickety to mark all of the individual small bits of shared vocabulary, vs. the entire lines that frame them.( Read more... )
DS11 vs. Dean, color-coded.
Sep. 10th, 2006 12:27 amBecause this has been bugging me since I saw this particular set of examples on bad_penny, I've slightly reformatted them to clarify the various bits and pieces borrowed from Pamela Dean. (Addendum: I also found another plagiarized line that hadn't been in bad_penny's original report.)( Read more... )
DS14 bits and pieces
Aug. 16th, 2006 04:17 pmThese overlaps are much vaguer than most of the stuff in my long post about "Prince on a White Horse"; I probably would consider them to be valid Easter-eggish homages rather than plagiarism. They may've already been pointed out elsewhere, so I suppose my only real reason to list them is a sense of conceptual tidiness.( Read more... )
Lycanthia/DS
Aug. 13th, 2006 06:49 amEndnote from DS6: "5) Lycanthe [sic]: The concept comes from Tanith Lee's Lycanthia, in which Lycanthes are symbols scratched in snow to keep werewolves away. I have retained the crossed-X shape."
More bibliographical info: Lycanthia, or The Children of Wolves, NYC: Daw, 1981. ( Read more... )
More bibliographical info: Lycanthia, or The Children of Wolves, NYC: Daw, 1981. ( Read more... )
Prince on a White Horse vs. DS14
Aug. 12th, 2006 03:14 pmChapter 14 of Cassandra Claire's HP opus "Draco Sinister" has the brief endnote, "Oggrings and skolks are from Tanith Lee's White Horse, Black Castle [sic]."
Tanith Lee is one of my favorite authors, but although she's incredibly talented and prolific, her books go out of print quickly; most of my collection is made up of used paperbacks from secondhand bookstores and eBay. They're difficult to find, and I don't have all of them. While I'm not in the flaming-pitchfork crowd wrt CC, I do like to encourage other people to read TL's books, even if that ends up adding to my competition in bidding wars, and I rather wish that CC had noted more specific textual overlaps beyond merely borrowing isolated words/names or general concepts.( Read more... )
Tanith Lee is one of my favorite authors, but although she's incredibly talented and prolific, her books go out of print quickly; most of my collection is made up of used paperbacks from secondhand bookstores and eBay. They're difficult to find, and I don't have all of them. While I'm not in the flaming-pitchfork crowd wrt CC, I do like to encourage other people to read TL's books, even if that ends up adding to my competition in bidding wars, and I rather wish that CC had noted more specific textual overlaps beyond merely borrowing isolated words/names or general concepts.( Read more... )
