#29 Spilling the Tea on Romance Scandals

<p>For a genre that seems all hunky dory, there is certainly a lot of drama in Romancelandia. Especially when it comes to issues of authorship and publishing! This month, Jackie and Jen dish on some of the most notorious controversies, dramas, and petty squabbles (including heir own) that have rocked the steady ship of romance. Buckle in sparkly nerds. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.</p><p></p><p>Let us know what your favorite scandal was at the end of the month! There's no reward...but if you <a href="mailto:%20ragingromantics@nopl.org">email us </a>we might remember to give you a shout out in the next episode...maybe. We forget a lot of things.</p><p></p><p><u>Christiane Serruya</u></p><ul><li>After 22 years of practicing law, Rio de Janeiro-based Serruya decided to become an author. After 6-7 years of writing, she had churned out more than 30 works and had one of her short stories was published in a best-selling collection.</li><li>In Feb 2019 news broke that this "author" had blatantly plagiarized Courtney Milan and others. Soon authors like Tessa Dare, Lisa Kleypas, Kresley Cole, Karen Marie Moning, and over 40 others found their work copied into Serruya's. These passages ranged from short sentences with moderate rewriting to whole multi-paragraph sections that were near verbatim.</li><li>Tessa Dare started a whole hashtag: “#copypasteCris”</li><li>In short, Serruya says that she was not responsible for the plagiarism. Instead, she put the blame on an unnamed ghostwriter she hired from the site Fiverr...</li><li class="ql-indent-1">"ghostwriter" - writers for hire who are paid but receive none of the credit for the work produced.</li><li class="ql-indent-1"><a href="https://stratemeyer.org/stratemeyer-syndicate/">The Stratemeyer Syndicate</a></li><li>Then she goes and plagiarizes the queen herself, Nora Roberts. Nora retaliates and takes her to international court (because Queen Nora has the powers to do so), and an injunction goes through which bars the physical or electronic sale of Serruya’s books which were