The Expert Book Smuggler

Please be aware that all events within this timeline should be considered speculation due to the lack of firsthand evidence. This timeline is a companion to this post.

8/2000 or 9/2000:

• Draco Sinister is first published to FanFiction.net around this time.

12/17/2000:

• ParadigmOfUncertainty user Voicelady informs Clare that Pamela Dean is the author she no longer remembers.

1/19/2001:

• LiveJournal user stellabmoore downloads version of Chapter 9 of Draco Sinister that includes the following disclaimer, “Credit for the inspiration for this conception of the wizarding afterlife goes to a book called The Secret Country, alas, I no longer recall who wrote it.”

3/2/2001:

• Schnoogle.com, the first of four FictionAlley websites is registered. This date indicates that FictionAlley was likely already being created prior to Clare losing her fanfiction.net account.

3/16/2001:

• Author RJ Anderson emails Cassandra Clare a review of Draco Sinister that clarifies Pamela Dean as an author Clare quoted, “Also, you get major big points for putting in a SECRET COUNTRY homage — the author is Pamela Dean, by the way, an old net.friend of mine and someone who’s been a great help and encouragement to me with my own writing.”

3/18/2001:

• The Yahoo! group cassie_and_rhysenn is announced by Rhysenn.

6/8/2001

• User Avocado begins reading Clare’s The Draco Trilogy after Heidi accidentally posts to the wrong Yahoo group and identifies multiple quotes from Black Adder, Red Dwarf, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Draco Dormiens. Avocado also recognizes quotes from Epicyclical Elaborations in Sorcery from Patricia Wrede and Caroline Stevermer’s Sorcery and Cecilia. None of the quotes were cited.
• Avocado follows up with a positive public review and privately emailed their concerns to Clare, who responded that she liked the quotes and intended to keep them.
• Sometime after this, a disclaimed appears on Chapter Four of Draco Sinister that states, “Disclaimer: I’ve mentioned all this before, but I suppose it bears repeating: none of the characters are mine, they all belong to JK Rowling (obviously) and Draco’s & others’ lines come from many sources: some are made up, some inspired by many sources, including but not limited to : Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Forever Knight, Due South, the X-Files, Woody Allen, the Handbook for Evil Overlords, obscure British sitcoms, Monty Python, Shakespeare, and I could go on and on, but rest assured that no maliciousness is intended and I am making not one cent (even more obviously!) off writing this, nor would I even want to. If you want to play spot-the-quote, feel free! More fun for everyone.”
• Avocado continues reading Draco Sinister and notices the following:
  • There was a reference to “Fire Letters” in an early chapter of Draco Sinister
  • There was a footnote in chapter 9 which said “Credit for the inspiration for this conception of the wizarding afterlife goes to a book called The Secret Country, alas, I no longer recall who wrote it.“
  • Chapter 11 made use of Nightmare Grass, Dean’s version of shape changers, and two specific lines Avocado recognized.

6/15/2001:

• Avocado leaves a signed review of Draco Sinister that states that Pamela Dean wrote The Secret Country Trilogy before contacting FanFiction.net moderator, Cairnsy, with their concerns. Cairnsy informs Avocado that they will look into it.

6/22/2001:

• Avocado receives email from Cairnsy confirming that Clare’s account would be deleted due to plagiarism.

6/23/2001:

• FanFiction.net forums erupt as Clare’s readers discover her FanFiction.net account was deleted.
• A new version of Chapter 9 of Draco Sinister was uploaded to the Yahoo! group ParadigmOfUncertainty, but the disclaimer listed the wrong Pamela Dean book.
• Clare participates in ParadigmOfUncertainty forums, “I have borrowed quotes, and quite intentionally paraphrased that scene from Pamela Dean, and was quite clear in stating that I was doing so. I was *not* passing off the Buffy quotes or any other reference as my own work (as anyone on this list clearly and surely knows.”

6/24/2001:

• Author RJ Anderson emails Clare encouraging her to rewrite the plagiarized portions of her fic or contact author Pamela Dean for permission to use her work, “What I am begging you to do, if you’re not in the process of doing it already, is to rewrite the relevant parts of DS in your own words, in such a way that all parallels to Pamela’s writing of that scene are eliminated. Ideally it would be even better to come up with your own concept of the afterlife scene that was substantially different from hers, but failing that, writing it over in an original manner would be a big help. I would hate to see you shut down or embroiled in a legal situation and I am truly afraid that this might happen if you continue to use other people’s work (even with credit given) in your own.”
• Michela Ecks, a staff member at FanFiction.net, posts excerpts of an email exchange with Pamela Dean who states she needs to contact her agent to figure out how to handle FanFiction.
• A list called ranting_page is created to continue the discussion with Clare participating.
• Michela posts to HP_FanFiction that she is leaving the fandom. Moderators of the list soon announce that Michela was banned from the list.

6/25/2001:

• Michela Ecks posts about Clare’s plagiarism in a forum and is soon banned from ParadigmOfUncertainty.
• RJ Anderson emails Clare with an update from Dean, “It would to some extent depend on how it was done — I mean, I’ve borrowed whole lines from Shakespeare. There’s no legal issue since that’s public domain, but it’s one thing to make a deliberate allusion that one expects the readers to recognize and resonate with, and another to take somebody else’s work and imply that it is something that you wrote yourself. And there’s a little bit of gray area where somebody might be doing or think she was doing the former but had strayed into the latter through ineptitude, or might be thought to have strayed into the latter by inept readers; and a wider really genuine gray area where resolution is just difficult. If it were a clear case of stealing my prose with no marker at all indicating an intent to allude, I’d be extremely upset if it were my work, and given some email I’ve gotten recently I wonder if actually it was.”
• A cookie for chapter 15 of Draco Sinister is posted to ParadigmOfUncertainty with a note that reads, “This scene is taken from the middle of DS15, when everyone’s getting ready for the big birthday party. I wasn’t going to post a cookie, but I thought a cheerer-up was in order. THIS COOKIE CONTAINS A QUOTE FROM BLACKADDER. Let Edmund Blackadder come after me with his big snake if it bothers him. Oh, and shippiness is contained herein.”
• Clare posts in ranting_pages that she DID contact Dean for permission to use her work, “And just to say, I *did* go to the author for permission, yesterday. And sent her a copy of the chapter. We’ve exchanged some very nice email since. I’ll let you know how it shakes out. Odd that she was so very much less concerned bout this than say, Michaela, considering that she’s the one with the right to be upset in the first fucking place.”
• Clare posts in cassie_and_rhysenn that fans ask her to include quotes, “I had never made it any secret that that’s what I was doing, and since fanfiction is by its nature so derivative, and since I have seen so many other fanfics doing similar things — pulling chunks of text from books, rewriting scenes from movies, dozens upon dozens of quotes from Buffy and Monty Python and Blackadder and so forth (I even had a sort of unofficial quote-nabbing contest going with other fanfic writers — if we found a cool quote we’d claim it for our next chapter before anyone else snagged it) it really did seem to me that as long as it was disclaimered, it was fine. As long as I was clear about what I was doing, it was fine. I used to get dozens of emails in which readers sent me sources — sometimes quotes, sometimes whole pages of text from books or plays – saying “Cassie, I think you should have Draco say this” or “maybe you could use this description/place/setting.” It seemed to me that my audience understood what I was doing, or trying to do, with my fanfiction, and that as long as I was not concealing this from them, it was all right”

6/26/2001:

• Clare responds to Avocado’s review via email stating that she had fixed the citations and that she knew Dean had written the book.

6/27/2001:

• Cookie for chapter 15 of Draco Sinister is posted to cassie_and_rhysenn that reads, “Just a cookie to cheer up the list a bit. This is from DS15, when everyone’s getting ready for the big birthday party. This cookie contains a line from Buffy. She can stake me personally if it bothers her.”
• Around this time rumors began popping up that Clare had loved The Secret Country so much that she wrote portions of it in her notebook and later thought it was her own writing. These rumors have yet to be substantiated. The exact timeline of this is unclear.

7/3/2001:

• FictionAlley writers list is created.

7/6/2001:

• First post is made to FictionAlley. A second post from Heidi soon follows, “FictionAlley is going to be the OverSightfor the archive – and there are going to be 4 houses – one for novel-length fics (Schnoogle.com), and (most probably) one for romance, onefor humor and one for darkfics (mystery, romance, etc.) – the other 3houses will not be “novel-length fics”, though.”

7/22/2001:

• Advertisements for FictionAlley begin appearing in mailing lists.

7/28/2001:

• FanFiction.net goes down for an extended period of time.

9/1/2001:

• Pamela Dean posts the following to Usenet, “Sorry — having been recently hit over the head with just how little just so many people understand about copyright law, I didn’t want to let even a joke just lie there for somebody to take seriously; but I shouldn’t have forgotten to laugh.”

9/10/2001:

• R.J. Anderson responds to an email from Heidi, “Last I heard, Pamela had left the whole matter entirely in Valerie’s hands. However, Valerie is an incredibly busy lady with a lot of clients, and I’m not surprised Cassie hasn’t heard from her in a while.”

11/27/2001:

• Clare expresses her dislike of a popular Harry/Ginny fic, Alpha & Omega, in a FictionAlley forum, “I have come scuttling back here to hide, my friends. In my quest to attempt open-mindedness on ship issues, I decided to read an H/G fic. And I did, and I feel sick now. I won’t describe it too much, but it involved Harry and Ginny getting married *while still in school*, Ginny getting pregnant, and a lot of baby-talk. And Ron somehow being okay with his sister’s knocked-up-child-bride status. Oh my God. Yes, I know there is trash in every ship, but this was recommended to me as one of the best in that pairing!”
• Jeff, the husband of a forum admin, defends his wife and her friends by emailing Clare informing her he knew her real name and where she lived.

9/9/2002:

• A user reported to be Michaela posts that she contacted Heidi’s law firm.

11/23/2002

• Clare replies to a LiveJournal post credited to Michela stating that she she would not furnish proof of receiving permission from Pamela Dean, “There are several reasons for this. One is that I am unwilling to publicly post passages from emails I recieved from Ms. Dean in a public forum. I will not do that. Nor will I forward them to anyone but my legal counsel. Any legal documentation that would exist between myself and Ms. Dean I would also be unwilling to post because it would by necessity contain my personal information, including my actual name, as well as hers, and given the amount of death threats I have recieved, especially from users of your voy.com boards, I think it is clear why I would not do this. My personal physical safety –and hers –has to come before my fandom reputation. “

3/26/2003:

• Fermatojam creates a LiveJournal account and leaves a comment with bible versus on a post on Clare’s LiveJournal. Soon after, they posted the following, “Cassandra Claire – You are First!
  She has infected us with her captivating writing style and sucked innocents into her sick world. epicyclical. She is a virus on HP Fandom. She is part of a group of vile pedophiles and faggots who have seemingly taken over everywhere. I love good fanfiction, but to find it I have to visit sites infected with this sort of evil. Her Draco Trilogy is HOMOSEXUALITY for goodness sake and no one seems to be outraged by it. Well I am outraged that you have taken these meaningful books and turned them into evil and sin. Harry is a noble character and you have made him into a fag.
  Cassie Claire is anti- Potter. It is because of vile people like her that people like me are afraid to raise their voices in this fandom. But she is only the beginning. She is simply at the top of my list. I will pray for you and may God forgive you for the things you’ve written and the evil that you have spread. Don’t you realize that impressionable teenagers read your livejournal? Some even WANT to write like you. nmalfoy is an example. Equally as sick. I’ve been lurking for a while, gathering evidence against you. The convention is coming and I will be there to greet all of you. I will hopefully manage to save your souls. Praying for you.”

4/28/2003

• Clare posts a discussion to her LiveJournal in which she discusses pairing Ron and Ginny.

4/29/2003:

• Clare shares another LiveJournal post about pairing Ron and Ginny, “Right. I am taking my dad’s spy computer and I am going to the coffee shop and I am going to write. I shall not return until Ron has gotten some sex. It is a noble mission and I am a lonely pioneer.”

5/3/2003:

• User angua9 posts an essay to LiveJournal titled A Stubborn Romanticizing and Eroticizing Impulse, “A clear — though very repugnant to me — example of how strong this sexualizing impulse is can be seen in the existence of ships that transgress the normal bounds of human decency, such as incestual relationships, bestiality, child-molestation, and the like. These could, of course — though they usually are not — be treated seriously for the exploitative crimes they are, since they do exist in real life. They can also be used as a source of rough humor, along the lines of Harry/Giant Squid. However, it is an undeniable fact that large portions of the Harry Potter fandom are involved in such pairings in a non-ironic romantic and sexualized spirit, with a true investment of erotic energy. ”

10/25/2003

• Aja reposts the fic Twelfth Night to LiveJournal with the author note, “I have thought long and hard about what I’m about to do, but in the end it is my story, and I am just as proud of it now as I was the day I wrote it, a couple of weeks shy of a year ago. Please do not archive this fic for any reason whatsoever, without my express permission.”

10/26/2003:

• Clare announces on LiveJournal that she is taking time off to rewrite portions of Draco Veritas as they’be been ruined by someone she thought was a friend.

1/13/2004:

• A LiveJournal, fandom_scruples, is created, “This journal was created to reward responsible members of the fandom who do not post incest, rape, beastialiy, or NC17 fics where young children can access them. If you were friended, we’re highlighting that you’ve had the courage not to succumb to the ‘popular’ trends that have led to this fandom being infected with indecent and irresponsible fanfic. I woud personally like to thank arabe1la for having the courage to finally speak out against this.”
• A blacklist is posted to the fandom_scruples journal that includes Clare (epicyclical) and MsScribe among others.

4/26/2004:

• Clare’s Ron/Ginny fic, Mortal Instruments, is posted to her LiveJournal.

8/16/2004:

• Aja posts a forum reply that says, “It is true that Cassie wrote down unattributed quotes often, but The Secret Country was one of her favorite novels and it was highly unlikely that she would mistake the writing from one of her favorite novels as her own. What happened was that initially the passage was cited. She told me that when the chapter was posted on ff.net initially it had the proper attribution, and I believe her. However, the chapter stayed up for something like 2 years without being noticed at all, and in that time Cassie believes she did some kind of formatting changes to various chapters that caused the chapter notes with the citation to disappear without her being aware of it.”

12/5/2004:

• Clare posts to her LiveJournal that her apartment was broken into and multiple laptops were stolen.
• Heidi starts fundraising efforts to replace Clare’s laptops and within 10 hours posts that they have raised $2250 and more as mailed donations had yet to be counted. She encourages donations to replace stolen toys meant for a toy drive.
• User sapphireisle replied to a post in Heidi’s journal, expressing frustration that the laptop fund was getting so much money and attention when she and her mother, who had been diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, had such a hard time finding donations. Eventually, both Heidi and Clare posted links to the fundraiser.

1/14/2005:

• Fandom_scruples drags Heidi into the Gold/Black list controversy, “It has also come to our attention that a few of the writers mentioned are key organizing staff for Nimbus 2005 (which we won’t link to) and we are calling for a boycott of that conference unless they make a reasonable attempt to keep their adult material away from underage readers. We don’t think this is an unreasonable request.
  Several fics found at FictionAlley we believe have crossed over the R rating (which many feel is inappropriate for a site that allows 13 year olds to register at) and we are currently in the process of compiling a letter of complaint to send to heidi8. Because she may not be aware of these fics, we have left her off the list for now.”

2/?/2005:

• Clare’s Ron/Ginny fic, is taken offline along with her other explicit works.

3/12/2005:

• A post is shared to fandom_wank that accuses Heidi of giving sapphireisle the ‘cold shoulder’ by refusing to share her link.

3/13/2005:

• Heidi states on her Tumblr that the sapphireisle’s controversy was a misunderstanding, “I didn’t refuse to post a link. In fact, I suggested she post to the Fandom Help LJ (yes, i got the url wrong – that happens when I’m posting via a handheld, and not on the computer, as it’s impossible to have two browser windows open at a time), and I said that I would also use her Amazon link.”

5/?/2005:

• Avocado sends 1st email to Pamela Dean inquiring if Clare had received permission to include text from The Secret Country and The Hidden Land. Dean responded that she remembered the incident and had passed it along to her agent.

7/5/2005:

• Michela Ecks posts a comment in a forum clarifying how many times Clare was contacted prior to her removal from FanFiction.net, “And she was contacted no less than four times, once in reviews and three times via e-mail, before she was black listed. One of of those e-mails suggested she fix them or she’d be reported. Another told her that she was being investigated by FF.Net staff for plagiarism. Cassandra Claire never responded to any of these e-mails, nor the reviews. I don’t know what that means in the context of what she said as Cassandra Claire said two different things: She never recieved any warning and she was on vacation and thus could not access her e-mail and could not have known.”

7/7/2005

• Heidi replies to a post in fwgreatesthits claiming that Pamela Dean’s The Secret Country and The Hidden Land were split post-publication, “Note to anyone who’s actually still reading at this point: Pamela Dean’s book The Secret Country was split after it was originally published into two, and then into three separate books; the section incorporated in Cassie’s fic was from what was originally The Secret Country and later repackaged into The Hidden Land.”
• Heidi replies to a post in fwgreatesthits stating that in August/September 2001 she was in negotiations with Pamela Dean’s agent to obtain permission for Clare to use text from her works, “She got permission through conversations with Pamela’s agent, btw, and in August and September of 2001 I worked with said agent to finalize the language which Cassie used in her fic thereafter. I remember it well because we were supposed to get in touch in the middle of the following week; we postponed it for months, though, because the following week began with 9/11.”

8/8/2005:

• Heidi replies to a post in fwgreatesthits claiming Michela Ecks contacted her lawfirm, “Please don’t take any hatred against me out on Cassie. She didn’t know I was posting my comments last month and she doesn’t know what I’m posting now. I have my own grudge against Michela, and it entirely stems out of the fact that in the week or so after Cassiegate, she emailed my law firm to complain about the fact that I was posting things like the definition of plagiarism and the contents of the Copyright Act on various websites (and other than on FFN, it was with the webmasters’ permission).”

8/25/2005

• Pamela Dean leaves a comment on her LiveJournal post specifying that The Secret Country and The Hidden Land were split into two books prior to publication.

6/18/2006:

• Aja creates a LiveJournal post detailing her fall out with Clare. The post includes conflict with ‘The Inner Circle’ and Clare accusing Aja of plagiarism.

8/6/2006:

• Avocado posts expose about Cassandra Clare.
• Clare announces she is taking her fanfiction offline, “VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE: After this last chapter has been up for a while, all my fanfiction on Fiction Alley and elsewhere will be deleted. If you would like to be able to read the Draco Trilogy again in the future, I recommend that you download it from this web page (each part is available as a separate .pdf file complete with references and illustrations) so that you’ll have it after it’s removed from the Net: http://www.heidi8.com/dt/”

3/1/2011:

• Clare posts the following to her twitter, “Hee, I return and my twitter stream is full of incest book recommendations. Wasteland bt @francescablock is yes, also wonderful (and YA).”

3/10/2011:

• Clare posts the following to her twitter, “Aw, I always wanted to be ”the crazy lady writing about incest.”

4/24/2011:

• Clare posts the following to her twitter, “@TMinstruments because the incest stuff is based on a true story that facinated me. Writers are interested in weird things; its how we are.”

8/25/2011:

• Aja’s article, NY Times to YA Publishing: Stop Being So Girly, is published. The article briefly mentions City of Bones.
• Maureen Johnson shares the article and Clare replies, “Tsk. Tsk. I scold you in email.”

10/12/2012:

• “October is anti-Bullying month: on hiatuses and hate blogs” is posted to Clare’s Tumblr account.

11/17/2012

• User ceiliah_ann posts an expose to Oh No They Didn’t claiming Clare located a users IP address and from there discovered their phone number in order to call them. Around this time, this user claims Clare bragged in chatroom that she had called the parent’s of a 13-year-old to tell them to knock it off.

8/21/2013:

• Movie adaptation for City of Bones premiers.

11/27/2013:

• Clare shares a Tumblr post titled On incest in literature/TMI in response to a question from a reader, “I’m a huge fan of the mortal instruments! I absolutely adore your writing and your characters! I do have a genuine question though. Why is incest such a reoccurring theme in TMI? Please don’t think I’m criticising your work. I just think it’s interesting because in Game of Thrones, there’s motive for incest (like keeping bloodlines “pure” and “royal”) but in TMI it seems to be genuine “I’m in love/lust with my sibling” and I’d just like to know why you chose such a typically tabooed reoccurring theme for your books?”

4/5/15:

• Clare posts the following tweet, “DELENA OR STELANA? Damon/Stefan. I don’t know why everyone doesn’t ship it.” before responding, “That make’s it better!” to a user who informed her they’re brothers.

2/9/2016:

• Clare is sued by author Sherrilyn Kenyon for allegedly copying elements of her Dark Hunter series.

2/12/2016:

• Clare’s lawyer refutes Kenyon’s claim as baseless.

5/31/2016:

• Kenyon’s lawsuit against Clare is dropped.

1/18/2018:

• Clare shares an update about author Sherrilyn Kenyon to her Tumblr.

12/5/2018:

• Fanfiction author Flourish confirms that Clare had a discussion with their mother when they were a preteen, but states they moved on from it.

1/16/2019:

• Sherrilyn Kenyon sues her husband alleging he poisoned her to destroy her career and reputation.

7/30/2019:

• Sherrilyn Kenyon drops lawsuit against her husband.

Index

Aja: LiveJournal user bookshop who wrote fan fiction and belonged to the ‘Inner Circle’.

Avocado: An HP fanfiction lurker who wrote the five-part post cited in this document. Also known as white_serpent.

BNF (Big Name Fan): a well-known fan, either in an individual fandom or in the fannish community as a whole.

Cookie: A short fic or an excerpt from a longer fic. The Harry Potter fandom primarily uses this term.

Chryslin: an Admin of Gryffindor Tower and author of the Harry/Ginny fic Deconstructing Harry. Left the fandom after her husband Jeff was outed for harassing Cassandra Clare.

epicyclical: Cassandra Clare’s LiveJournal account.

Fermatojam: homophobic Christian LiveJournal user and alleged sock puppet account for MsScribe.

Fanfiction.net: A fanfiction archive launched in 1998.

FictionAlley: A fanfiction archive created by Heidi, Flourish, and others.

Flame: a comment or message that is hostile, personally insulting, or intentionally offensive.

Flourish: A fanfiction writer and co-founder of FictionAlley.

Heidi: Clare’s friend, defender, and beta reader.

Imogen: an Admin of Gryffindor Tower and author of the Harry/Ginny fic Alpha & Omega

Inner Circle: a group of supposed BNF fans in the Harry Potter fandom including suspected members Cassandra Claire, Ivy Blossom, Stacey, Heidi8, Aja, Lori, Flourish Klink, Penny, Carole and Ebony.

Michela Ecks: Former staff member at FanFiction.net also known as Laura Hale, Partly Bouncy, and PurplePopple among other aliases.

MsScribe: Fandom user and CC fan with multiple alleged sockpuppets including Clarabella, SarahKJames, Fermatojam, Killiganhashope, Pottersginny, Sporkify, and Fandom_Scruples.

Sockpuppet: a secondary online account with an attached persona. Usually meant to provide the owner’s primary account support.

Slash: In fandom, “slash” denotes fanworks depicting same-sex pairings in romantic or sexual contexts.

Wank: can refer to multiple things including very public online arguments.

Whip-around: pooling money from a group to give to someone or buy a gift.

Yahoo! Groups: ParadigmOfUncertainty, HP_FanFiction, HP_Paradise, ranting_page, HP4GU, and fanfiction-writer.