Best-selling novelist Nora Roberts is suing a Brazilian writer for copyright infringement, alleging that Cristiane Serruya has committed "multi-plagiarism" on a "rare and scandalous" level.
In papers filed Wednesday morning in Rio de Janeiro, where Serruya lives, Roberts called her romance books "a literary patchwork, piecing together phrases whose form portrays emotions practically identical to those expressed in the plaintiff's books." Citing Brazilian law, Roberts is asking for damages at 3,000 times the value of the highest sale price for any Serruya work mentioned in the suit.
"If you plagiarize, I will come for you," Roberts told The Associated Press during a recent telephone interview. "If you take my work, you will pay for it and I will do my best to see you don't write again."
Roberts added that she would donate any damages from the suit to a literacy program in Brazil.
Efforts to reach Serruya were not immediately successful. Her novels, all apparently self-published, include the series "Shades of Trust," ''Shades of Love" and "Ever More." The court papers cite six Serruya books for including lifted passages: "Royal Love," ''Royal Affair," ''Unbroken Love," ''Hot Winter," ''Forever More" and "From the Baroness's Diary." The lawsuit alleges Serruya copied passages from Roberts' "Unfinished Business," ''River Ends" and "Whiskey Beach," and includes examples of close similarities between their books. Roberts' suit alleges that Serruya has copied passages from dozens of other authors.
Speaking to the AP, Roberts also criticized Amazon.com for not being more vigilant about the books sold on its site. Roberts and authors have complained that Amazon's Kindle Unlimited e-book subscription program, for which royalties are based on how many pages are read the first time the customer reads them, is an incentive for unscrupulous writers to quickly throw together material from other sources.
"Amazon didn't find any of this," Roberts said of Serruya's books, noting that she had been tipped off by readers and fellow writers. "And that strikes me as a problem."
As of earlier this week, most of Serruya's work had been removed from Amazon, although many books remained available on Barnes & Noble.com, Google Play and elsewhere. In a recent statement to the AP, Amazon said that it takes "violations of laws and proprietary rights very seriously."
"We use a combination of teams of investigators and automated technology to prevent and catch the vast majority of bad actors who attempt to violate our policies before they publish," the statement reads. "In the rare instance where one gets through, we investigate and remove violating books. Additionally, all Kindle product pages contain a link for anyone to flag suspicious titles and the team investigates all titles that are flagged."
Serruya has faced allegations from several other writers and even inspired the Twitter hashtag #CopyPasteCris. In February, author Courtney Milan titled a blog posting "Cristiane Serruya is a copyright infringer, a plagiarist, and an idiot," and cited numerous passages from Serruya's "Royal Love" that closely resembled Milan's "The Duchess War." Serruya apologized on her Twitter account, and called allegations she had plagiarized "distressing." She has since left Twitter and the Romance Writers of America has withdrawn "Royal Love" from consideration for the RITA award for best fiction. (The prize is named for the RWA's first president, Rita Clay Estrada).
Allegations that Serruya copied from Roberts emerged around the same time. In correspondence shared by Roberts with the AP, Serruya emailed Roberts' publicist, Laura Reeth, insisting she would "never intentionally plagiarize anyone" and blaming part of the problem on ghost writers.
"I made a mistake," she wrote in February. "I was fooled by some 'mentors' and 'coachers' who told me that 'More, more, more, fast, fast, fast.'"
In an email back to Serruya, Roberts demanded that she "immediately, unambiguously, acknowledge — without excuses" her "unauthorized taking" and "immediately and permanently remove" pull every novel in question. Roberts told the AP that she decided to sue after Serruya failed to respond.
Roberts is one of the world's most popular and prolific authors, with hundreds of millions of copies sold worldwide. She was initially known for her romance books, but also writes mainstream fiction and publishes crime novels under the penname J.D. Robb. On her blog, Roberts has repeatedly attacked Serruya and strongly hinted that she would sue.
"She's a blood leech sucking on the body of the writing profession," Roberts wrote last weekend. "Arranging for a truckload of salt to dispense with her has been taking up a lot of my time, energies, sanity. Hopefully, once that's in place the frustrating and infuriating distraction of her will fade, at least a bit."
On her web site (https://www.crisserruya.com), Serruya is described as a late bloomer, having worked as a lawyer for more than 20 years before she "decided to give writing a go."
"And — amazingly — it was just the piece that was missing from the puzzle of her life," her biography reads. "Now that she's hooked, she can't free herself — and doesn't want to be freed."
Roberts has taken legal action before. In 1997, she sued the popular romance writer Janet Dailey. Dailey, saying she under "immense stress" because of her husband's health problems, acknowledged that her novels "Aspen Gold" and "Notorious" included ideas and passages from Roberts' books. The case was settled out of court.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A big, new package of U.S. military aid will help Ukraine avoid defeat in its war with Russia. Winning will still be a long slog.
The arms and ammunition in the $61 billion military aid package should enable Ukraine to slow the Russian army's bloody advances and block its strikes on troops and civilians. And it will buy Ukraine time — for long-term planning about how to take back the fifth of the country now under Russian control.
“Ultimately it offers Ukraine the prospect of staying in the war this year,” said Michael Clarke, visiting professor in war studies at King’s College London. “Sometimes in warfare you’ve just got to stay in it. You’ve just got to avoid being rolled over.”
The U.S. House of Representatives approved the package on Saturday after months of delays by some Republicans wary of U.S. involvement overseas. It was passed by the Senate on Tuesday, and President Joe Bidensigned it into law on Wednesday.
The difference could be felt within days on the front line in eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russia’s much larger army has been slowly taking territory against massively outgunned Ukrainian forces.
The aid approval means Ukraine may be able to release artillery ammunition from dwindling stocks that it has been rationing. More equipment will come soon from American stocks in Poland and Germany, and later from the U.S.
The first shipments are expected to arrive by the beginning of next week, said Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Servant of the People party.
But opposition lawmaker Vadym Ivchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s National Security, Defense and Intelligence Committee, said logistical challenges and bureaucracy could delay shipments to Ukraine by two to three months, and it would be even longer before they reach the front line.
While details of the shipments are classified, Ukraine’s most urgent needs are artillery shells to stop Russian troops from advancing, and anti-aircraft missiles to protect people and infrastructure from missiles, drones and bombs.
What’s coming first is not always what front-line commanders need most, said Arakhamia, the Ukrainian lawmaker. He said that even a military giant like the U.S. does not have stockpiles of everything.
“The logic behind this first package was, you (the U.S.) finds our top priorities and then you see what you have in the warehouses,” Arakhamia said. “And sometimes they do not match.”
Hope for future breakthroughs for Ukraine still hangs on more timely deliveries of Western aid, lawmakers acknowledge.
Many experts believe that both Ukraine and Russia are exhausted by two years of war and won’t be able to mount a major offensive — one capable of making big strategic gains — until next year.
Still, Russia is pushing forward at several points along the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front, using tanks, wave after wave of infantry troops and satellite-guided gliding bombs to pummel Ukrainian forces. Russia is also hitting power plants and pounding Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, which is only about 30 kilometers (some 20 miles) from the Russian border.
Ivchenko said the goal for Ukraine’s forces now is to “hold the line” until the bulk of new supplies arrive by mid-summer. Then, they can focus on trying to recapture territory recently lost in the Donetsk region.
“And probably ... at the end of summer we’ll see some movement, offensive movement of the Ukrainian armed forces,” he said.
Some military experts doubt Ukraine has the resources to mount even small offensives very soon.
The U.S. funding “can probably only help stabilize the Ukrainian position for this year and begin preparations for operations in 2025,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a think tank.
In the best-case scenario for Ukraine, the American aid will give commanders time to reorganize and train its army — applying lessons learned from its failed summer 2023 offensive. It may also galvanize Ukraine’s allies in Europe to increase aid.
“So this just wasn’t about Ukraine and the United States, this really affected our entire 51-country coalition,” said U.S. Congressman Bill Keating, a Democrat who visited Kyiv on Monday as part of a four-member congressional delegation.
Zelenskyy insists Ukraine's war aim is to recapture all its territory from Russia — including Crimea, seized illegally in 2014. Even if the war ultimately ends through negotiation, as many experts believe, Ukraine wants to do that from as strong a position as possible.
Whatever happens on the battlefield, Ukraine still faces variables beyond its control.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who seeks to retake the White House in the November election, has said he would end the war within days of taking office. And the 27-nation Europe Union includes leaders like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who have opposed arming Ukraine.
Ukraine’s allies have held back from supplying some arms out of concern about escalation or depleting their own stocks. Ukraine says that to win the war it needs longer-range missiles it could use for potentially game-changing operations such as cutting off occupied Crimea, where's Russia's Black Sea fleet is based.
It wants a longer-range version of Army Tactical Missile Systems, known as ATACMs, from the U.S. and Taurus cruise missiles from Germany. Both governments have resisted calls to send them because they are capable of striking targets deep within Russian territory.
The new bill authorizes the president to send Ukraine the longer-range ATACMS, which have a range of some 300 kilometers (190 miles), “as soon as practicable.” It's unclear what that will mean in practice.
Sometimes, promised weapons have arrived late, or not at all. Zelenskyy recently pointed out that Ukraine is still waiting for the F-16 fighter jets it was promised a year ago.
Meanwhile, Russia is using its advantage in troops and weapons to push back Ukrainian forces, perhaps seeking to make maximum gains before Ukraine's new supplies arrive.
For weeks it has pummeled the small eastern city of Chasiv Yar, suffering heavy losses. Britain's Ministry of Defense says 900 Russian troops are being killed or injured a day in the war.
Capturing the strategically important hill town would allow them to move toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, key cities Ukraine controls in the eastern region of Donetsk. It would be a significant win for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who Western officials say is bent on toppling Ukraine’s pro-Western government.
Russian pressure was aimed not just at gaining territory, but on undermining Zelenskyy and bolstering critics who say his war plan is failing, said Clarke of King's College London.
The U.S. aid package decreases the likelihood of a political crisis in Ukraine, and U.S. Speaker Mike Johnson deserves credit for pushing it through Congress, he said.
"He held history in his hands,” Clarke said.
This story has been updated to correct Orbán's title, the Slovak prime minister's name and that the British estimate of daily Russian losses is for the war, not one battle.
Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine
From left, U.S. representatives Nathaniel Moran, R-Tx, Tom Kean Jr, R-NJ, Bill Keating, D-Mass, and Madeleine Deane, D-Pa, talk to journalists during a joint news conference outside Saint Michael cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A volunteer makes a camouflage net at a facility producing material for Ukrainian soldiers in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. A newly approved package of $61 billion in U.S. aid may prevent Ukraine from losing its war against Russia. But winning it will be a long slog. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Davyd Arakhamia, a lawmaker with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's Servant of the People party, talks during an interview with Associated Press in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
A woman rallies to raise awareness on the fate of Ukrainian prisoners of war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, April 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Ribbons with the colors of the European Union and Ukraine are attached to a tree next to memorial wall of Ukrainian soldiers killed during the war in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, April 22, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
The body of a woman killed by Russian bombardment in Chernihiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
Soldiers carry the coffins of two Ukrainian army sergeants during their funeral in Lviv, Ukraine, Tuesday, April 16, 2024. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)
