Rachel Ann Nunes, a proud Mormon author of 47 novels, says her Christian romance novel A Bid for Love was ripped off by a Salt Lake City area schoolteacher. To make matters worse, the teacher, Tiffanie Rushton, added sex stuff to it. Nunes told the Associated Press, "I feel like my life has been stolen."
Nunes is suing Rushton, who published her supposed ripoff as an e-book under the name Sam Taylor Mullens, for $150,000 in damages. She says she's traumatized and can't sleep at night because of what Rushton did to her. The AP notes that Nunes named a character in A Bid for Love after one of her seven children, which makes Rushton's added sex scenes "particularly disturbing."
Nunes lays out her case that Rushton plagiarized in a somewhat difficult-to-parse GoFundMe proposal. It does appear that Rushton lifted exact lines from A Bid for Love and used the same general plot.
While Nunes is heartbroken over Rushton's alleged plagiarism, she does understand why she added the not-so-Christian eroticism: "It really is the thing that sells the most," she admits.
[Photos via Rachel Ann Nunes]
