Romance authors discover they’ve been plagiarized
On Monday night, a sharp-eyed fan sent romance author Courtney Milan an email that no writer wants to receive: someone had plagiarized her novel The Duchess War.
Milan has several examples posted on her blog and is also, as she predicted, discovering that Cristiane Serruya's works contain passages from several other authors as well.
Mid-afternoon, Milan added a new post with recommended steps for affected writers.
Serruya acknowledged their findings in a tweet on Tuesday, before she deactivated her account:
I just woke up to distressing news that my work has plagiarism from other authors. I am taking down all the works I did with a ghostwriter on Fiverr–who btw has closed the account–until I have made certain this is solved. @courtneymilan @TessaDare @romancewriters
— Cristiane Serruya (@CrisSerruya) February 19, 2019
The news hit the Guardian on Wednesday; the paper reports that Serruya's novel Royal Love was pulled from sale online and also taken out of the RITA competition.
The Romance Writers of America, which hosts the awards, said in a statement that it is investigating the plagiarism claims further.