OA Comment: The bigger headline is that St. Martin's sold out. I'm so fucking livid right now it's not funny. Yet another of the Big Five whose books I will no longer purchase. And of course my favorite series is published under them (Minotaur). 

I hate everything. 

From PW announcement:

Rose Hilliard at St. Martin’s Press took world English rights (working in conjunction with Macmillan U.K. and Macmillan Australia) in a three-book deal to an adult series that began as Twilight fan fiction. The original work, called the Diva Diaries, was, according to SMP, downloaded over two million times. The author, Leisa Rayven (who posted the original story as KiyaRayven), is Australian and took the work offline in September 2013. She is now represented by Christina Hogrebe at the Jane Rotrosen Agency, and extensively revised the work before selling it; the first book is now called Bad Romeo, and the second Broken Juliet. The series is told in alternating perspectives, with each book narrated by one member of a Hollywood couple: she’s the “it girl” and he’s a “bad boy actor.” The duo’s relationship dates back to high school, when they met playing the leads in their class production of Romeo & Juliet. Bad Romeo has BDSM elements, but, explained Hilliard, features a “sweeter” love story than the one in that other erotic series that began as Twilight fan fiction (ahem, Fifty Shades of Grey); Bad Romeo is scheduled for early 2015.

Fanfiction can be read here: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782299/1/The-Diva-Diaries

Seriously bad writing and story even for a fanfic. Even if they did edit out the chapter-long sex scenes that will be the worst you've ever read. If they didn't, I can't promise that your genitalia won't want to shrivel up and die.

Simon and Schuster not only lacks integrity and ethics they lack any sort of taste whatsoever. Real authors: Send your books to better publishers, there are still a couple out there. Hopefully this one will collapse under the weight of the sheer and utter crap they acquire instead of real books.

OA Comment: I would say "shame on you, Shay Stahl", but she clearly has no shame. Her and all the other P2Pers and plagiarists lack the basic integrity, ethics, and morals with which the rest of us were graced. This is just appalling on every level but I guess unsurprising from this kind of person. Of course she's the victim because she couldn't get away with her theft. I hate how these people have ruined literature and publishing. I can't even begin to understand what's wrong with her supporters. You just gave to love how conclusive evidence is not enough for some morons people. It's really too bad these repugnant people never get what they actually deserve.

 [reblogged from 38 Caliber Reviews]

"Ignorance of law and ethics is no excuse, however. Plagiarism victimizes writers. It betrays the trust of readers. It tarnishes the craft of writing." Paul Tolme from From Janet Dailey to Cassie Edwards-Newsweek's evolving views on plagiarism in romance novels.

Stahl and Spangelmaker9

I thought I had said all I wanted to say but Stahl has managed to  enrage me a little more. Stahl has issued a long letter to her fans about the terrible, terrible time in September when she was wrongly accused of plagiarism. Please also read Fangirl's blog here. Stahl laments the cruel accusations and offers the excuse that of course her work resembles that of other writers because there are no new ideas and we all use the same language and have some of the same experiences so, yeah, her writing would be "similar" to other authors.

Stahl and Spangelmaker9

If this is true then how come all these blogs about Stahl's plagiarism are not eerily alike? Are we not sharing the same experience?

" It astonishes me that in this day and age, people can still get away with passing someone else's work off as their own, and be very successful. I'm not suggesting that each romance novel should be a work of great literature. I don't like eating my vegetables very much, either. I'm not expecting all that much originality, either. I like reading romance novels because I always know what to expect. Without the formula, the genre wouldn't work. However, there are hundreds of writers out there who work within that formula to tell love stories that stir up emotions and capture my interest, and they do it using their own words. I don't think that's too much to ask." -Merrie Frisbie

Yes, but:

"Yeah, the problem with this line of defense that she's taking is that I never said she stole my story or even my ideas. Everything Changes does not have the same plot as The Art Teacher. She stole MY EXACT WORDS, lifting whole passages, just changing the names and the tense (TAT is written in present tense, Everything Changes is past tense), and shoehorning my words into her own scene. Half the time it didn't even work well, since the scene I wrote containing those words was about something entirely different than hers. As I read through Everything Changes looking for all of my work, I stumbled on a passage that I could tell wasn't hers. The wording, the sentence structure, the prose style, just jumped out as not belonging with what came before (it was also way better than what came before, but that's for another post). I knew it wasn't mine, but I also suspected it wasn't hers. I screencapped it and tweeted it and within ten minutes someone had identified it as coming from The Practicum by The Fic Chick. She can't claim she was just "influenced" by things she'd read (especially since when she was originally confronted about this, she claimed to have never read any of the fics involved). Influence means there are similar plot points or themes. We're talking about exact wording."  -Spanglemaker9

Stahl and Spangelmaker9

Um, yeah.