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Wednesday, February 20, 2019

#CopyPasteCris My Take On The Latest Brouhaha of #Plagiarism In The Writing World: STOP APOLOGIZING!

Another scandal has hit the writing community. Another author (some say she doesn't deserve the title as she was caught red-handed to copy-pasting and hiring a ghostwriter) has been named and shamed: Cristiane Serruya. You can Google her name and the articles flood in: at last glance of the #CopyPasteCrisList, she had plagiarized no less than twenty-three six nine ( 23 26 29) - yes! 2369!! works including recipes ladies and gents. To make it clearer: 29 books from 26 different authors, 2 recipes, and 2 articles. (I've had to edit this part several times as the numbers kept changing on me). As the hours pass by, the list is getting longer and stranger. I mean, she plagiarized a recipe for crying out loud. To add insult to injury (I don't know who is injured so please, bear with me) SHE NEVER PAID THE GHOSTWRITERS!  Que horror!



No one can make this up! 

Of course, just like all of the (legitimate) authors out there, I am enraged but at the same time understanding of why she went this route. Enraged because she scammed everyone into getting into the coveted New York Best Seller list and made money off everyone by duping them, and she basically stole from the authors not only their words, but their thoughts and then their money. Talk about ...I won't say it! I won't!

As for understanding...well...greed peeps. Greed.


Why am I so angry about this? Well, it's because I woke up this morning and I was reading all these authors who are posting on their FB walls and blogs that they are legitimate authors who write from the heart out of their own talents. They were defending themselves! One was defending their speed in writing because they had been called out as someone who couldn't possibly write that fast. Another was saying they write too slow and should not even been considered included in the list. Whatever list that is, I don't know. Another was saying that they were or had been ghostwriters in the past or know of ghostwriters who make an honest living. 

Come on, peeps! What's with all this blaming all of a sudden? 

I agree. I know where you're all coming from. Cristiane Serruya cheated and she got caught. She did it. She is the one blaming the game on the anonymous ghostwriter she hired off Fivrr or however you spell it. She had the audacity to submit her plagiarized work to the Rita competition by Romance Writers of America, the same competition where the real author of the work Serruya plagiarized got rejected for whatever reason. Another point to consider, it was not Fivrr's fault either. What Serruya did she did out of her own volition, out of her own manipulations, and her own considerations. She, as a purported lawyer knew that once she is found out, people would call her out. So stop blaming and pointing accusatory fingers on those who are not involved in this scam. Stop apologizing for someone else's machinations. Stop pointing the fingers to yourselves.

No one should say sorry, only Serruya should say sorry. No one should apologize. Only Serruya has to apologize. So please. Stop it. Don't feel guilty if you're not involved. Don't deny something you've not even done or thought to do. What you can do is NOT to do what Serruya did. 

To think that this has topped #CockyGate boggles my mind. 






Now, what am I going to do? I'm going to wrap this post and write. That's what authors, real authors do, right?

WRITE!