Honestly, we’ve been nervous about this particular edition of Odds & Ends, because there was a big story this week.  HUGE.   Of course we are speaking of the plagiarism allegations made against The Story Siren which blew up all over Goodreads, Twitter, and many of our own home pages.

But was it really that huge?  If we’ve learned one thing this week, it’s just how small and insulated our community here in the young adult book blogging realm really is.  This story was apparently reported almost four months ago on two fashion blogs: Grit and Glamour and Beautifully Invisible (they’ve also further summarized their rather comprehensive evidence and responded to the breaking news here and here).  The amount of time it took for this story to make its way through the internet (aka – the fastest diffuser of gossip ever created) is pretty eye-opening.

With that in mind, we think it’s time for our small community to collectively take a deep breath and try to approach this with a cool head.  This isn’t the end of the world as we know it.  We can move forward from this.  We agree wholeheartedly with Kelly from Stacked, who suggests that we have a frank and open discussion about plagiarism and our role as bloggers.  We are looking forward to the future posts that are sure to appear on Stacked about this topic.  We also loved Kat’s post on Cuddlebuggery: Book Bloggers Plagiarizing – What Happens Now? in which she discusses how we might move forward.

Let’s show the rest of the blogging community how mature, respectful, and intelligent we can be.  Let’s take this “scandal” and use it to make ourselves better.  Let’s not let this become the proverbial elephant in the room – let’s talk about it in a level-headed way.  But at the same time, let’s not let this kerfuffle take over our community.  Let’s get back to discussing highly intelligent things, like this commentary on the sexist portrayal of women in book covers (as compared to men), as illustrated by the semi-nude photos fantasy author Jim C. Hines and his wife Amy so hilariously put together.   Hey, if there were ever a time when we needed a good laugh, it's now.

The Book Eater wrote a hilarious (and also depressing because it's so true) post about the key ingredients for a hit YA novel in the current dystopian/post-apocalyptic trend.

In massively exciting news, Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, etc.)  is going to pen the screenplay for Patrick Ness' Chaos Walking series!

Tor/Forge also announced that within a few months all of their books will be DRM-free.  Could this be one of the first in a long list of major publishers to make the same decision?  What does this mean for the future of ebooks? We are excited to find out.

Tatiana unearthed another cool podcast - "Authors Are Rockstars" and this episode features an interview with Laini Taylor. Laini is as delightful on audio as she is on her blog and in her books.

Here also are two great interviews with author Paolo Bacigalupi - one is a Q&A from Publisher's Weekly and one is an interview that was conducted by A.S. King for SF Signal.  Paolo Bacigalupi will be going on a book tour in the beginning of May for his new young adult book The Drowned Cities (which we reviewed here). Catie will be venturing out to cover the last stop in Bethesda.  Will any of you be checking out this tour?

A few of our favorite authors are also touring this summer: Kristin Cashore and Neal Stephenson, just to name two. So many authors are choosing to stop at indie book stores; here's a search tool to find and research indie book stores near you!  Who's coming to your town?

That's all for this week!  What's going on in your corner of the web? Let us know in the comments.