Plot Monkeys

Hey hey from southern California! We’re almost through our annual retreat and thought we’d give you a bit of an update.

First…what we’re doing.

We’re plotting. Oh, my goodness are we plotting. We started with Leslie’s entire 1st Black Cats book. Moved on to Janelle’s next entire Wilde book (right down to GMC, plot points, individual scenes.) Carly’s next Lucky book (just as detailed as Janelle’s. We even nailed her villain’s GMC–Goal, Motivation and Conflict for those who care.) Tomorrow is Julie’s turn, we’re hammering out her next phantom book and we expect it to take many hours, much chocolate and a whole lot of laughing and bitching. Nobody’s had to go in Time Out, though there have certainly been some loud voices and passionate disagreements. Not to mention weird conversations about stuff like Brazilian waxes and what an uncircumcised…ahem. Never mind.

What else. Hmm…we’re eating. Way too much. Carly and I start on chocolate in the morning. Janelle and Julie go for dessert at lunch. There are visits to Dairy Queen and See’s candy. And nonstop dashes to the fridge for another Diet Coke or bottled water. I’ve got two night’s worth of dinner leftovers in the refrigerator, which Carly is harassing me for keeping since they make the ice taste funny and we ALL know they’ll be in the trash can when we check out.

Griping…friends bitching. Need any more explanation than that? I thought not.

We’re also doing some more serious talking. And one thing we’ve been talking about is something everybody in Romancelandia–and writing’landia–is talking about.

Plagiarism.

I can’t imagine there’s anybody out there who hasn’t heard about the big plagiarism scandal rocking the romance world this past week. It started on www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com, got picked up by www.dearauthor.com and has since made its way into the mainstream media in a very big way. It’s distressing, it’s maddening, it’s just damned sad for all of us.

While Julie and I both got involved in some message board discussion last week, we didn’t bring it here right away. We don’t usually talk about anything heavy here–none of us wants the drama–so we didn’t bring it up on Plotmonkeys. But in talking about it in person here this week, the four of us decided it was imporant to publicly state our united opinion on this issue. We want you–our wonderful readers, friends, and Plotmonkey community members–to know exactly how we feel about it. And hopefully to help spread the message about just how insidious and ugly an assault this truly is on any creative person.

First, think about this: Three of the four of us monkeys have been plagiarized in the past.

That’s 75%.

That’s almost unfathomable. And it’s entirely unacceptable.

Plagiarism in any format–whether it’s an author swearing she’s using nonfiction books for “research” and she just forgot to credit her sources, or a fanfic site conveniently changing the names of a published story and presenting it as their own, or a desperate author stealing entire chunks of another author’s book and then selling it to an unwitting publisher–is wrong. It’s illegal, it’s immoral, it’s unethical.

There are no acceptable excuses. None.

Two of us discovered the plagiarism when we were tipped off by loyal readers paying attention. So here’s a sincere thank you, and an invitation to keep on being watchdogs, not just for us, but for any author you enjoy. If you see it–if you suspect it–point it out. Get involved. Only by dragging these ugly, dirty little secrets out in the open is the message going to get out there that stealing someone’s words is STEALING. It might not be a diamond necklace, or a credit card or a stereo, but in many ways, it’s worse. Stealing the words right out of someone’s brain is almost like a physical assault.

And we four–Carly, Janelle, Julie and I–sincerely hope you’ll join us in stepping up to fight back.