Nora Roberts Means Romance
It reads like a novel: One famous romance writer plagiarizes another equally famous romance writer.
But it's not fiction. The two writers, Janet Dailey and Nora Roberts, became embroiled in a plagiarism case when Dailey was found to have stolen some of Roberts' work.
But that hasn't slowed down Nora Roberts, reports CBS This Morning's Thalia Assuras. She had four No. 1 New York Times best-sellers last year. And just this month, she's back with Enchanted and The Donovan Legacy and, writing under the pseudonym of J.D. Robb, Loyalty in Death is being published.
Has Roberts forgiven Dailey for her plagiarism?
"It would have been easier if I hadn't had to go to court, you know, or start a suit," says Roberts. "If we could have just handled itÂ…but it was more difficult because it was a drawn-out process, and in my opinionÂ…she never stood up to it."
Dailey appeared on CBS This Morning in September
and said, "I was going through an emotional, physical, mental, psychological problem .I had lost two brothers to cancer, [and] as my husband had been [in] surgery for cancer and all the career pressures that go on, deadlines, all that great stuff that was in it, which makes me feel so blessed today."
But Roberts says Dailey leaves listeners with the impression that the plagiarism had been going on for only a short period of time as an isolated incident. "We found instances of plagiarism over a course of years in many books," says Roberts, "so it's a little difficult for me to just say she was going through a stressful [time], besides the fact that plagiarism is a serious breach of ethics and can't be ignored. When you're going through a bad time, you can't say, 'I'll steal something.'"
Roberts says she views her writing as a business and so she must take it seriously "when someone takes my work, copies it and calls it their own. That's very serious. But I also have to get back to writing my own."
Her "own" includes the fictional Donovan family.
"They're a little more fanciful, these books," she explains. "They deal with cousins who are witches, white witches, so we have magic and fantasy. And each one of the Donovans in the original trilogy had a specialty. One was a magician, one was a psychic, and another was a healer. I got to play with that. With Enchanted, we found a second cousin, once removedÂ… It happens to be a shape-shifter."
Altogether, Roberts has written more than 130 novels.
"They don't just pop out," she says. "I only wish they did. It's a lot of work. But I'm fortunate. I love my job. I love the process of writing, so I write a lot. And I haveÂ…fast fingers. I have a fast pace."
Noting that popular fiction in general, and the romance genre in particular, gets criticized a lot, Roberts says her books "celebrate relationhips, and I think everyone really wants a good, solid relationship. Everyone really wants to love someone and have someone love them. That's what romance novels celebrate."