Nora Roberts addresses accusations, calls Tomi Adeyemi unprofessional

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In a candid open letter, devoid of any names or book titles, American veteran author, Nora Roberts has shared her thoughts on this debacle with Nigerian-American authorTomi Adeyemi, rather candidly.

This is all due to the tweet made by the Children of Blood and Bone author, on Tuesday, November 27, claiming that the veteran author lifted her book title.

With pictures comparing Adeyemi's 25-week NY Times Bestseller 'Children of Blood and Bone' and Nora Roberts' upcoming sequel 'Of Blood and Bone', Adeyemi tweeted:"It would be nice if an artist could create something special without another artist trying to shamelessly profit off it."

Some hours later, the author retracted her statement, saying that she now believes the titles were created in isolation.

However, there was still a need for Roberts to clear the air, seeing as she was still being attacked and accused of plagiarism by an online mob.

In the blog post, she called out the Nigerian-American author as unprofessional and lacking basis for the accusations. She also said she is "sickened by" and "disgusted" at the people who would feel free to say vicious things about her though they do not know her.

Here is a short excerpt of the statement:

"I don’t believe, and have never believed in taking personal issues onto public forums. I don’t believe, and have never believed–will never believe–in a writer attacking another writing on a public forum. It’s unprofessional, it’s tacky and the results are, always, just always, ugly.

Recently another writer used her social media forums to baselessly, recklessly accuse me of stealing the title of her book–which is bullshit right off–to attempt to profit from this theft. She had no facts, just her emotions, and threw this out there for her followers.

First, let’s address the particular title which happens to be similar. I titled this particular book, wrote this book, turned this book into my publisher nearly a year before her book–a first novel–was published. So unless I conquered the time/space continuum, my book was actually titled before hers. Regardless, you can’t copyright a title. And titles, like broad ideas, just float around in the creative clouds. It’s what’s inside that counts.

It’s just a title.

By accusing me, in public, of attempting to ‘shamelessly profit’ off of her creativity, she incited her readers into attacking me–on her feed, then on my pages, then on the internet in general. She did nothing to stop this. I have been accused of theft, of trying to use this first time writer–whose book has been well received–for my own profit. To ride her coattails as I have no originality. This after more than thirty years in the business, more than two hundred books.

I was accused of plagiarism–for a title–of stealing her ideas–though I had never heard of her book before this firestorm, have never read her book.

And trust me, I never will now."

The main reason for her public address was, though Adeyemi had put out an apology, she has so far done nothing to put out the fires which she had "lit the match, foolishly".

She wrote: "While this writer issued a kind of retraction after I reached out to her, it didn’t stop some of her readers from calling me a liar, and worse. We reached out again, asking her to put out the fire. We’ve had no response, not from her, not from her agent. Shame on them."

Many are calling for Tomi Adeyemi to take down the controversial tweet and issue a more heartfelt apology. What do you think?