As a former Highlander fan, denizen of the Big List where ferret and weasel jokes were rife (long story), I had to read this tale of the bodice-ripping plagiarism case that somehow involves black-footed ferrets.
For one thing, the author of the offending bodice-ripper is from Mattoon, IL, not far from where some Highlander fans gathered a few years ago for a mini-convention and garage sale of HL-themed gifts. It’s not the kind of place where there are many bodices, let alone where they get ripped.  But it is the kind of place where people who read trashy novels live and dream. Thank goodness for people like the Smart Bitches, who read this crap so the rest of us need not bother with the stuff that truly isn’t worth reading.

I  won’t be reading any romance novels (ever), but I admire women who take them seriously enough to ferret out the good ones, and snark on the bad ones. Heh.

Below, the author whose non-fiction article was one of many sources found almost word-for-word in the novelist’s book, describes how sexy it is to study ferrets and write about their hot, steamy relations.

Move Over, ‘Meerkat Manor’ | Newsweek Books | Newsweek.com

Nocturnal, ferrets come out after dark to hunt for prairie dogs, their main source of food. With Livieri at the wheel of his pickup truck, we bounced down rutted dirt roads alongside the prairie dog colonies that fill the Conata Basin—a federal grassland near Badlands National Park. Researchers find ferrets by shining a spotlight on the moonscapelike setting of a prairie dog town. From dusk until nearly dawn we sat in Livieri’s truck—two dudes looking for weasels. Nobody said science was sexy.After three days in Wall, where the highlight is visiting the famous Wall Drug Store, I could hardly leave town fast enough. I returned home and wrote the story for the Summer 2005 issue of Defenders magazine, which detailed how ferrets in the Conata Basin were being threatened by a federal effort to poison prairie dogs.

Had I known that my text would one day appear in a romance novel, I might have sexed up my story: “Hot-loving polecats do it in prairie dog holes.”

h/t Salt Blog, and thanks for the good laugh!