Um-HMM.

Posted on May 21, 2009 by Gwaetgar

Not that this doesn’t happen to me all the time, but this is probably the highest level plagiarism I’ve been a victim of so far.

I have a copy of James Patterson’s Violets Are Blue, published in 2002, and I knew it involved “vampire crimes,” but I never got around to reading it. A vampire forum recently posted a short excerpt from the book with the comment, “note some of the references.” Well, I noted the references, and golly gee, they did sound familiar.

From Chapter 27 of Violets Are Blue (2002):

“A real vampire,” he told me, “is a person born with an extraordinary gift. He, or she, has the capacity to absorb, channel, transform and manipulate pranic energy–which is the life force.”

From my article “Real Vampires,” published in FireHeart No 2, Fall, 1987, and republished online (not by me) in 1997:

A vampire is a person born with an extraordinary capacity to absorb, channel, transform, and manipulate “pranic energy” or life force.

And…

From Chapter 27 of Violets Are Blue (2002):

It is said that blood is the highest known source of pranic energy.

From “Real Vampires:”

Fresh blood is the highest known source of pranic energy (life force).

Ummm…yeah. Mr. Patterson, shame on you. You don’t even have the decency to mention my name, like Susan Hubbard does in The Society of S. A hugely successful writer like you, and you can’t even slightly rephrase your source material? I am not impressed.

(EDIT: I ran a search and found this from 2005. Clearly, Patterson is not only a plagiarist, he’s a seasoned and unrepentent plagiarist. Hmmph.)

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