Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 45

And now, a short note on reviews…

I haven’t done any posts requesting reviews in a while, mainly cause I have been getting a few reviews per month, and given my sales numbers, this is a pretty good ratio of buyers to reviews. Totally works for me, y’all. But today on Goodreads, I got this 5-star review from a Twitter friend who’s been reading my second comedy novel, A Frosty Girl’s Cure, and the thought occurred to me, I need to point to this and say something to readers who are reluctant to post reviews.

Look at how short it is. It doesn’t have to detail the plot, cause you can find the blurb online if you want that. It doesn’t have to give in-depth character analysis. It just has to say, “this is how I felt about the story.” You’re in, you’re out, you’re done. Like a trip to Taco Bell, but without the resulting pains in the butt.

I think a lot of people think of book reviews as book reports, those godawful assignments we all got in school where the teacher asks us for 500 words on a book we didn’t want to read in the first place. It makes a book review feel like schoolwork, and most of us would rather not do any of that once we graduate. (Which is a damning indictment of the current education system when so many people HATE learning because of school, but that’s a topic for a later rant, when I’m in the mood.)

But the thing is, most writers would be happy to get that short review of 3-6 sentences. Even if your review leans more toward “It wasn’t my cup of tea.” It tells us you’re out there, that you read the book and gave us a shot. It does a LOT to motivate me to keep going after reading most reviews, because then I don’t feel so freaking lonely.

There is one exception to this, the negative review that makes it clear the reader didn’t read the book at all, or that they just skimmed it. This makes me extremely sad, but it only happens a few times, and most people who give reviews make the effort to read the whole book before giving their thoughts.

But anywho, when I ask you for a review, I’m not asking for a 500 word essay covering all the major themes of a book. If you’re so inclined, you can just go with a stars rating, or with stars and a two-word review like, “It rocked,” or, “It sucked.” One of my lower reviews on Goodreads is just, “Awful, awful book.” Still counts as a review.

I try not to ask for reviews too much, and again, I haven’t for a while now because I am getting reviews. But I want to appeal to people not just to review my stuff, but all the authors and artists you try out. It helps the artists by spreading the word on their work. It helps other people to decide if they want to try out this artist or not. And it gives other readers examples to see that no, they don’t need to give a book report for a review unless they just wanted to.

A final note: the same reviewer who posted that short Goodreads review turned around and posted this expanded review on Amazon. Both of these are good for me, long or short. And yeah, the longer review makes me smile wider. But I don’t need that from y’all. Just a few words to let me know you’re out there is all I ask for. And if you’ve already done it for one of my books, know that you have my gratitude for all your support.

Movie review: Resident Evil: Retribution

Dear God, what in the hell did I just watch? I feel like hunting down the director of this shitball and assaulting his testicles with a rolled up copy of the script. The subtitle Retribution apparently means retribution against Resident Evil fans, because this whole film is one long kick in my girly bits. We finished watching this and then watched Jonah Hex, and watching Retribution made Jonah look good by comparison. (Note I didn’t say Jonah Hex was good, only that it looked good being compared to a messier pile of shit.) I now have a new low-bar standard for films, and henceforth when watching a lousy movie, I will say, “Sure, it’s bad, but is it Retribution bad?”

First, remember how the last movie ended, with Alice killing Wesker and rescuing that boatload of captured people? Well, forget that, cause the start of this film gets rid of all of them, ret-cons the Red Queen, and oh yeah, Wesker isn’t really dead. Here in this new film, he looks like he’s trying to run a passing Agent Smith vibe, but he looks like a CGI character. Hubby even remarked, “He doesn’t even look like a real person.” And he doesn’t. If they told me he was digitally inserted into the movie and wasn’t a real actor, I’d have no trouble believing it.

This whole movie takes place in yet another Hive-like structure, where the Red Queen is also in charge. This Hive isn’t just an office and lab colony. Oh no, it’s a simulation of four cities, a suburbia full of clones, and a Russian nuclear submarine facility. This structure allows the movie to jump from one exotic locale to the next without anyone doing anything except walking from one area to the next.

The clones premise is kind of stupid, because the Red Queen is now supposedly testing the virus to learn how to control it so she can destroy humanity. You may not recall, but the Red Queen’s job in the first movie was to contain the virus and prevent an outbreak. But that made too much sense, and so now we have this newer version of the story where an AI meant to preserve security just goes fuck all on the human race.

The other problem is, these simulations blow up huge numbers of cars and slaughters a few thousand clones at a time. But while the clones’ origins are vaguely explained, there is no factory to produce all the other shit being blown up day in and day out. But then I’m really asking too much from the writers, expecting them to cover gaps in their logic. This movie is the closest I’ve seen to making a movie into a video game, and that means it has all the flaws of video game writing. It doesn’t make sense, and every setup is just an excuse for a gun fight.

And WHAT THE FUCK is up with the zombies in the Russian scenes? They drive, ride motorcycles and shoot guns. They have LOUSY rubber masks for makeup, or so it seems, and there was even a smiling, chainsaw-wielding zombie.

The CGI work in this was AWFUL. There’s a scene where a clone Alice is fighting off a zombie with those fake-ass mouth tentacles gripping her head, and it looked like someone had badly hand-drawn cartoon tentacles into a live-action movie.

And the mind-wiped Jill Valentine…what a lousy character. Just so you don’t forget she’s being controlled by Umbrella Corporation, her irises randomly shift to become the company logo. Every time this happened, my eye twitched. HARD. And, did they just pay the actress minimum wage? Because she does not act once through the entire film. She shouts orders like she’s phoning this whole movie in, and despite her firing 12,000 fucking rounds of ammo, she doesn’t hit a damned thing besides walls. All the bad guys are like this. They couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn with a sawed-off shotgun from five feet away. The unmemorable male cast fighting to meet Alice and Ada Wong in the base don’t even seek cover while facing HUNDREDS of gun-toting Russian zombies, because the zombies seem to be aiming at the walls rather than the four dudes standing twenty fucking yards away.

Near the end of the film, Alice meets a cloned little girl, a deaf kid named Becky who thinks Alice is her mother. Becky is taken by a licker in a blatant ripoff of the Newt/Ripley scenes from Aliens. Alice even has to tear Becky out of a goopy pod, just like Ripley had to do with Newt.

I really thought the movie couldn’t sink any lower than this, but just when I thought it was over, the only two surviving villains pilot a NUCLEAR SUBMARINE to intercept the heroes and push for a final fight that kills off another unmemorable dude. The whole time this fight went on, I was yelling “What the fuck? You can’t drive a nuclear fucking submarine with two fucking people!”

The movie STILL drags on to set us up for another movie, showing Washington as a hell on Earth, and Wesker is in the president’s office in the White House. At this point, we can say fuck off to the idea that this is a zombie franchise, because what’s going on now is a CGI fuckfest where Sony is throwing digital shit at the walls just to see what sticks.

I saw some early reviews of this say, “You’ll like this only if you’re familiar with video game narratives.” And those poor bastards are victims of Stockholm syndrome. They’ve been so abused by Sony’s treatment of the RE series that at this point, they’ll defend bad acting, bad CGI work, plots points that make no fucking sense, logic holes big enough to pilot a nuclear submarine through with ONLY TWO PEOPLE driving it, and bad guys so pathetic they couldn’t even generate nostalgia for reuniting the casts from the previous films.

And lastly, what the fuck was up with Leon putting his hand on Ada’s bare leg at the end of the movie? He was a douche throughout the film, but that scene kicks him over into supa-sexist creepy for absolutely no reason.

I give Resident Evil: Retribution NO STARS, and I weep for Michelle Rodriguez, who gets fucked over in this movie despite being given two roles. I weep for the whole cast, and I hope I never meet the director in a dark alley, because only one of us is leaving with testicles dangling from a rolled up script. And I don’t have any testicles.

Another Indiegogo update…

This will be a shorter post, as I just wanted to let you know how we’re doing on our Indiegogo campaign to get my editor paid for her work on Thicker Than Blood. It’s been just six days since the campaign started, and we’re already past 80% funding with $420. We’ve already blown past what we made last year on our campaign for Roll the Bones, which collected $380 after 30 days. This year, we’ve got over 50 days to hit our goal and then move on to pimping for stretch goals. We didn’t even think we needed stretch goals when we launched this campaign, and only two days later, we were like “Whoa, we need to add extra bonuses?! How it that possible?”

The response this year is just stunning. Two contributors chipped in $100, and another offered $50. We’ve got four contributors at the $25 level, and two more at the $15 level. Just…wow.

None of this would be possible without Twitter. And it really is all on Twitter. I don’t know what’s up with Facebook, if it’s just that people don’t see my updates because of how the site works, or if they’re ignoring me. But either way, I can’t get anyone to share my stuff on Facebook. Like, ever. But Twitter has been AMAZING for the number of RTs we’ve had. All our contributors seem to be coming from Twitter as well. Y’all are like the kings and queens of social sharing. You are true indie supporters as well, and I am blown away by all you’ve done for me and my editor.

Whether you contributed or just shared our links, I owe you many thanks for your help. I believe we will be able to hit $600 before the end of the campaign, maybe even $700. So Tara will have money to help pay for her college courses, and I will be able to sleep better knowing she got paid for all her hard work on the series.

Thank you. A thousand times, thank you. Your generosity and support is what helps keep me going, and now, you’ve helped support my editor as well. You’re awesome people, truly the cream of the crop.

Why is porn on the Kindle framed as a problem?

So, get this. C-Net has an article on porn photo books showing up on the Kindle store. The tweet I saw this linked to said “Kindle has a porn problem.” I went off about this on Twitter, but I want to talk about it here too, because it’s just one more example of how people are hypocrites when it comes to sex.

People make it out like this is a problem, but let’s face facts. Amazon sells sex toys and bondage erotica. I can go onto Amazon and buy the Fisticator 9000 and an erotica ebook about fisting right now. No, scratch that, I can buy a pet bed/vibrator combo, (no, really, that’s a real product combo on Amazon) nipple clamps, fuzzy cuffs, and a bondage ebook, no sweat. But, suddenly it’s wrong if I can find grainy black-and-white boobies? 50 Shades of Grey is okay to sell to the public on Kindle, but grey-shaded boobies is going too far? Why is it I can buy a Chihuahuadong dildo and a bottle of lube, but I can’t instant click my way into some inspirational fap material? (FYI: I would never really buy a Chihuahuadong dildo…it’s just too small for my fapuccino-making needs.)

I don’t really care one way or the other about porn showing up on the Kindle. If I’m in the mood for porn, I go to YouPorn and watch free movies in full-screen glory. Some are even HD, so I can tell the chick’s shaved two days prior to her shoot due to the length of her stubble. I can do that for free, so I can’t imagine going to Kindle to buy grainy still images with a badly written story to go along with them. I’ve just got higher smut standards than some people, I guess.

The C-Net story says Amazon makes sure you can’t get porn on their on-demand video. But you can get torture porn horror movies like Hostel, and hundreds of films with excess violence can be downloaded to anyone with a few dollars and single click. But porn, the fantasy depiction of sex, is not allowed on a store that sells sex toys and erotica.

And please, don’t talk to me about protecting the kids, because you’re missing the point. If kids can download horror movies (which usually have nekkid boobies somewhere in the course of the film, plus the de rigueur sex scene) and that’s okay, why is sex ALWAYS considered more evil than depictions of violence and murder? It’s true, I keep my porn DVDs hidden in a box away from my PIXAR collection, but really, to find this stuff on Amazon, you have to be looking for it. I don’t expect Amazon’s referral algorithms are going to say “Other customers who bought Little Bunny Foo Foo also bought: Ass Blasters in the Double Anal Dimension.”

So what’s the dealio, people? Why is grainy black-and-white photos of naked bodies more evil than having horror films available on demand, more dangerous than selling sex toys and erotica in the same store as children’s toys? How does having grainy porn on the Kindle undermine the market when they already sell erotica? I don’t think it does, and I think this is just more pearl clutching from people who still haven’t drifted very far from their insane Puritanical roots.

(And remember, the Puritans didn’t come to America to “escape religious persecution.” They came to make religious colonies because the Church of England forbade them from locking their people up in stockades for weeks on end, a practice the CoE felt was inhumane. Americans didn’t descend from people fleeing oppression. They descended from religious nutcases who were more afraid of God and their genitals than they were of bondage and torture.)

Why I bitch…

Every once in a while, someone will come along and tell me how I’m doing this blogging thing all wrong. I’ve got books to sell, and so I should buddy up to people and talk about happy topics. I’m told that I make people feel inadequate or inferior, and that this is no way to make friends. I sometimes worry that maybe they’re right, and maybe I should find nicer stuff to talk about.

But for those one or two folks who say I ought to clean my act up, when I go out on Twitter and ask, “Am I doing all right?” I get back a lot of positive responses. I’ve been told that I’m saying and doing things that few other writers have the guts to do. They say I’m more honest and open about my past, and that I’ve helped educate them about what victims of abuse have to deal with every day. I’ve opened some eyes up about how hard it is to be openly queer and put up with daily doses of hate from the moral majority. And in this way, I’m not a friend so much as an educator.

Despite these encouragements, there are still times when I feel like the whole thing’s a wasted effort. I reach some people, and they learn how their privilege is harmful to others. But for every one person I reach, I feel like I make three or four new enemies. My traffic numbers here are always kind of low, and despite being at this indie writing gig going on seven years now, I’m still not that well known. Nobody’s going to invite me to talk at a con panel, or have me as a guest for a podcast interview, and I doubt my work will ever be nominated for an award. And I think, “Well maybe I could, if only I toned my act down.”

I bounce back and forth on this, about what I’m supposed to be talking about here. But the thing is, I don’t do writing advice posts, nor do I write about a publishing industry I have no interest being a part of. I write about things that matter to me, and that I want to matter to you. Sometimes, I get angry because I don’t feel like anyone is reading, or that anyone cares. I want to make you care, and I want you to understand how much work has to be done to make things better for everyone, not just for a sheltered and select few.

And okay, I sometimes take some time off from this to do a game or book review, or to write a lighter post to joke about something. But to my mind, these are the random extra features. You don’t come to me for my opinion as a reviewer. If you want up to date reviews, there are better writers for that, writers who review games or books right after they come out. There are other writers already giving out enough advice on the craft, and who talk about publishers and agents and what not. I have no interest in these things anyway, and I have the feeling it would show in my writing.

I don’t want you to come to my blog to read pithy jokes, or to get advice on how to handle character development. When you come here, I want it to be because you’re looking to understand me and people like me. Yeah, I make that harder because I rarely tackle an issue with the right “tone.” But you know what? No abuser ever stopped hitting me cause I asked them nicely to think about my side of things. No oppressor has ever stopped harming others just because their victims remember to say “please.” So if you come to my blog expecting sweetness and light, it just goes to show how little you know about me.

The reason why I bitch as much as I do is because there’s so few people willing to give brutal honesty anymore. Tact and the desire to fit in waters down everyone’s blogging, until what they really mean to say is lost under all the butt smooching and platitudes. There is a time and place for butt smooching, and I do my best to acknowledge the support I get from people out there. But there should also be a time for getting angry and shaking my fist. Besides, if all I show you is what I think will please you, that would make me a poser and a hypocrite, and those are two things I never want to be known as.

Denying reality, but demanding a false realism…

This last two months, I’ve been working a lot harder than I should, and the stress is starting to break me. I’ve not been able to go a day without fatigue attacks, whether I’ve worked or not, and now I’m suffering from a number of MS-related issues in addition to having bouts of insomnia.

The problem with the fatigue is that when I drop, I’m not getting restful sleep. I’m just shutting down and collapsing. Obviously, this makes me moody, and it’s been extremely hard to stay positive and focused on my current projects. When I do finally get to sleep, I have nightmares, and I wake from them feeling ill. So I sit up and try not to go back to sleep, lest I go right back into the same nightmare.

This week, I’ve got myself worked down to only one project to promote, and I’m hoping to put off the muse from any new writing projects so I can recover some energy. This project is my editor’s campaign for her work on Thicker Than Blood, and it’s been going fairly well so far, with contributions up to $350. All the contributors thus far have been regular readers of mine, and several are fans of the Peter the Wolf series. I’m still struggling to connect with any new readers though, and if we want to reach any stretch goals, I’m going to need to work on that. I suspect, however, that this post will not help matters much. Ah well, such is life.

During this last year, while I’ve made preparations closing out the series, a number of child abuse cases have come to light, and they all follow a familiar pattern. People in positions of power have abused children, and because of their authority, other adults didn’t just look the other way, but actively worked to silence the victims and cover up the crimes. The most recent allegations are about old abuses, with the victims now coming forward as adults. There’s the Elm House pedophile scandal, and an orphanage in Jersey where politicians went to molest and rape children who had no one to protect them. The whole system failed these kids. Cops did nothing. The government actively worked to close investigations, and even now, they are working to bury the stories.

Despite the loud outrage that comes out after these stories break, nothing really changes. People growl and snarl about what they’d like to do if they had five minutes alone with the abusers, but that’s about the extent of their concern, which never actually extends to the victims. It’s a bit of saber rattling to ease their guilty conscience for not giving a shit, and once they’ve vented, the abusers are pretty much free to move on to their next victims. This is how modern society treats all problems, actually. We yell “That’s not right!” and then we let the crime go on anyway. Sometimes, we even continue to support the people committing the crimes. “Name one example!” you shout. The Catholic church. You’ve seen how complicit they are in abuse cases, how far reaching the cover up goes. But at the end of the day, when the Pope goes on a world tour, people throng to see his parade. They support the abusers, and they ignore the victims.

What has any of this got to do with my stuff? Well here’s the thing. Peter Holmes, the victim of childhood sexual abuse, is a sexual predator as a result of what happened to him. His story is as much about the mistakes he makes as it is about his coming to terms with his addiction and doing something about it. In the course of his first book, he abuses a younger neighbor, and when the truth comes out, the adults involved try to separate him from his victim, Alice.

However, a numbers of reviews that came in from my so-called friends all asked the same thing: “Why didn’t anybody do anything to stop this?” It’s like they chose to make up their own version of the story, glossing over the fact that Peter was kept from Alice, and that she began sneaking over to see him. When they got caught again, Alice is also punished and told to stay away from Peter.

The negative reviews glossed over the fact that Peter’s foster parents sought therapy for him, that they grounded him and tried as hard as they could to steer him in the right direction. They dismiss Alice’s decisions entirely, and this is something that I see a lot in real world abuse cases too. To adults on the outside of an abusive relationship, children are just stupid cattle who have no thoughts or ideas about what is happening to them. The whole issue of abuse falls on the sick perverts grooming their victims, and how the victims interpret the abuse is irrelevant. Even after a victim is in therapy, the standard method of dealing with their concerns is to tell them “stop thinking about it and move on.” It’s cruel, and it rarely results in a positive outcome for the victims. Yet this has not changed the methods used by therapists. It’s a medical insanity, using the same methods over and over even if they keep getting consistently poor results.

People got mad at me for saying that Alice might voluntarily seek to keep the relationship going, even though this is realistic and is similar to how real abuse works. People got mad at me because I told the story from an abuser’s perspective, so to their minds, that means I’m glorifying the deed or encouraging others to do the same things. And finally, they got mad because I chose to talk about a topic that they don’t feel has any place in a fantasy setting. To them, apparently, fantasy should only project the same old black and white moral values it always has, even though this isn’t very realistic.

There’s this strange disconnect from readers who demand realism from their writing, but don’t like reality intruding in their fantasies. We should make up evil monsters so the white hero can slay something and save the day, and everyone can go home feeling good about themselves.

But that’s not how our world works. In the real world, the cops aren’t good guys, and good people are really assholes. When 14 men in Texas gang-raped a little girl, the townspeople didn’t get upset about the girl being raped. They talked about what a shame it was that the men’s reputations were ruined. When the Penn state abuses story came out, the victims were attacked by the students for tarnishing the reputation of a local hero. When a drunken teen was carried around to multiple parties to be gang-raped, other people at the party photographed it and posted it online because they thought it was funny. This is reality. This is how the victims of abuse get treated by “good people.”

The irony is, in my story, many of my fictional adults show more responsibility than real world people do. But while people in the real world make little to no effort to help victims of abuse, they also find the strangest things to get upset about. So my book is “evil” because I’m talking about a huge white elephant in the room that they don’t want to discuss. I get attacked as promoting a lifestyle, and people are more mad at me for what I did to a fictional little girl than they would be for a real world little girl who was gang-raped.

I don’t write stories about monster hunters who save the day, because I see this as just another form of othering. It’s okay to hate the monsters, because “they aren’t like us.” I don’t believe that. In fact, one of the reasons I write the way I do is to suggest that we have more in common with the monsters than we like to admit. Humans are monsters. We’re petty and cruel, and we use the simplest justifications to ostracize or shun others. Some men use sexism to justify hating women. Some people use racial stereotypes to justify their xenophobia. At no time do these real world monsters ever see themselves as bad. Indeed, they call themselves the moral majority, and they remain proud of their hate. People crow about how they fight Westboro Baptist from protesting at soldiers’ funerals, or at the funerals of Sandy Hook victims. But when Fred Phelps was bashing the parents of Gwen Araujo and Matthew Sheppard, that went unchallenged. When the GLBT begged for support against Westboro, it wasn’t a problem for “good people.” It only became a problem after Wesboro went after straight people. This is reality.

I grew up outside of this shared societal narrative about humanity’s inherent goodness. I saw organized religions treat me and people like me like shit. I dealt with bullies, and with teachers, whose jobs should have been to protect me, who said I had it coming for not conforming to the herd mentality. I’ve reported abuse to the police, only to have them turn me right back over to my abusive mother and walk away. And after bullying made me react more violently, I was deemed a threat to the kids who were torturing me and sent to a shrink to ask what was wrong with me. Not one of the people who assaulted me ever had to speak to a therapist about their violent tendencies. I, the victim, was questioned about why I couldn’t just lay down and take the abuse. This is reality.

So I don’t buy into the innocence of children myth. I don’t believe in the goodness of society, nor do I accept platitudes about life getting better. The reality is, most people suck. They are abusive and cruel, and they justify their views all the time by only consuming lies which suit them. This is escapism’s biggest flaw, in that it prevents people from acknowledging their darker side. Without self-examination, there can be no growth or development.

This may be the worst crime I committed in Peter the Wolf, throwing it in the readers’ faces that abuse happens because the average person simply doesn’t care enough to help others. It’s a smack in the face to be told you aren’t the good person you think you are. And because of the offense I cause, people will tend to look for reasons to hate my writing, even if their reasons have no relation to what I actually wrote.

These same people LOVE to read books with murder, rape, and mutilation, provided that at the end, there is some kind of false reassurance that the bad guys will be dealt with. But here in the real world, sometimes people get away with atrocities because all good people turn their heads to look at something less troubling.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I want to bring it up in this context. Women are advised not to scream “rape” when they’re looking to draw attention to themselves, but instead to scream “fire!” This is because when a women screams rape, the good people who hear her stop listening. They shut the victim out because it’s “none of their business.” But if she screams fire, that gets through to a person’s sense of self-preservation. Then there is a greater chance of the rapist running away because there are witnesses who make the crime more risky.

No one likes to admit this. No one wants to confront that they are a bad person. And really, I get that. I spent a good portion of my life justifying being cruel to others because of what had been done to me. I was just paying people back for their pettiness. But I grew a conscience, and over time, I had no choice but to look at myself and admit that I was a monster.

And I still am. My consistence keeps me in check, but should I ever lose that, I could very easily go back to running scams, or to looking for victims to abuse. A lot of people try to convince me that I’m not a monster, that I’m really a good person. This isn’t so much to affirm my goodness. It’s meant to downplay the things that keep me up at night. Because no one wants to talk about this stuff. It’s just too awkward, and it might lead to a painful self-assessment where others look at themselves in the mirror just like I did. No one wants to do that, to look and admit that they don’t like what they see. It’s easier to buy into the social narrative of our collective goodness.

But that narrative is a lie. The average good person is okay with child abuse, provided it doesn’t happen to their kid. The average person accepts slavery because it keeps the price of products cheap. They talk about how we conquered racism and sexism, despite the fact that both problems are worse now than they were twenty years ago. People like me who say this, who ask them to confront reality, are the bad guys. Not because we do anything at all to make the world worse. No, because we don’t shut up and stop reminding others that they bear some responsibility for the state of our world.

So when people push for realism in writing, what they really want is a logical lie that fits their preconceived notions of how the world works. They do not want to see anything that confronts or challenges their views, and they will become openly hostile to anyone who attempts to challenge their proclaimed goodness.

I am a monster, but I’m not the bad guy making the world the rotten place it is today. I’m just one artist trying to depict the world in my art in a manner that’s reflective of us, not projecting virtues that we don’t possess. This will cost me more friends over time, I know. This will make me many enemies who will all claim my motivations are really about encouraging abuse. Because it’s easier to project a lie onto me than it is to ask, “Am I really as good as I claim?”

Your perceived reality of humanity ignores prejudice. Your version of reality allows you to be proud of achievements you never completed, to ignore the harm you do to others in petty little ways. Your shared goodness makes it easier to justify every evil you commit or condone. And this is why you shy away from anything that might push you to look in a mirror and see the monster lurking inside you. You externalize your evil through vampires and werewolves, through serial killers and mad scientists. But the most awful monster on planet Earth is a good person who never questions themselves. The most awful monster in your neighborhood is you. And that’s a bitter pill to swallow, isn’t it?

Still butthurt over Twilight?

This is not my Breaking Dawn review. What brought this on was your standard photo meme on Facebook, another crack at sparkles. At least two of these are posted per day, usually by dudes, and always with the same spitting disdain that they have for anything seen in a feminine light. Normally, I just sigh and click “Hide” so I don’t have to see these stupid daily jabs at a fandom that doesn’t deserve all this hate. But yesterday, I got tired of biting my tongue.

I made a series of comments under the same photo, and have decided to paste them here, correct my typos, and expand on some sections. If you think sparkles are the worst thing ever, feel free to walk away now. But I’m about to explain why what you’re doing is pure sexism, and you might risk learning something if you read this. So if you are proud of being ignorant, walk on, dickhead. The rest of you buckled in? Okay, here we go:

Still butthurt much, men? You know, I’m starting to get that the real reason you protest sparkling so much is because you see it as emasculation of one of your most typical male power fantasy tropes. Every other complaint lobbed at Edward and his kind really boils down to, “They made us look weak!” Which is kind of stupid because aside from the “vegetarians,” all the other vampires in the books are pretty evil and still capable of munching humans with reckless abandon.

And while I’m on about this, I’m going to talk about Angel, Buffy, and Whedon’s take on vampires. See, Whedon ALSO set up his characters to drink animal blood in place of killing people. Angel and Spike both stalk Buffy and treat her as a possession to be won, and Angel’s brooding in his own show is actually much, much more noticeable than Edward’s self-loathing over what he is. Angel has the additional moping point that sleeping with Buffy will result in “perfect happiness,” instantly transforming him into pure evil Angelus. So he can “never be too happy.” Meanwhile, Edward has lots of moments of smiling and happiness. He has a great girlfriend, he’s a musician, and a great baseball player. Angel is just a pissy “champion” whining about how unfair life is because he wants Buffy and can’t have her. Even when he finds a girl he likes, he only sleeps with her because she’s a substitute for Buffy. Sorry dudes, but Angel is way more whining and self-loathing than Edward, and he even gives Louis from the Anne Rice vampire books a run for his whining money. So, why do Edward’s few moments of unhappiness get him complained at so much more than Angel? Sparkles.

Now, what’s interesting about this is how the same ideas as expressed by a male writer are applauded as badass, while Edward is despised for having the same traits, because one aspect of his physical appearance is seen as demeaning by male readers. This contempt bleeds over to the female fans who also pick up the chant, “Buffy would have staked Edward.” However, given Buffy’s past with Spike and Angel, and her ability to listen and judge vampires as individuals, it’s actually more likely that she would so totally bone Edward before dumping him and moving onto some other guy. Possibly after dying and being resurrected again.

But getting back to my problem with this Buffy/Angel VS Twilight thing is, fans are a-okay with a vampire doing all the things Edward does. They just can’t stand the idea of any aspect of a character emasculating their beloved monsters. To this end, Edward and his pacifist family are focused on exclusively, while James, Laurent, the Volturri, and all evil vampires are ignored. The series “sucks,” because Edward makes men feel lessened by his sparkling.

Meanwhile, Whedon gets a free pass for some truly lousy writing for WHOLE SEASONS, and these same behaviors that Edward, Angel, and Spike share are accepted because a man wrote it, and that’s different. Meyer is seen in the same vein as Rice for “ruining vampires,” even though she uses the same ideas as male writers. So, regardless of what other reasons people paw at, the whole thing boils down to sexism. If a man writes it, it’s badass. But if a woman writes it, it’s ruining the trope.

The thing that annoys me most of all is that the series isn’t even about the vampires, but about Bella and how a child of divorced neglectful parents comes into her own abilities as a woman. People always say “Bella does whatever Edward wants,” but this isn’t true in any instance given. Edward DOES tell Bella what he thinks she should do, and then Bella does what she wants anyway. She does this in book one to chase James, thinking she is saving her mother. She does it again in New Moon, chasing down Edward to save him from his own suicidal tendencies.

(By the way, Edward, who gets shit for “hurting Bella” by leaving in New Moon, is actually trying to protect her from himself, and the ONLY time he injures her is while pushing her out of the way of Jasper, who’s gone into a bloodlust. Even that torments him, and his moping is justified. Yet this is the point used most often to suggest that Edward is an abuser. It’s an act examined in a vacuum, but meanwhile, Spike can attempt to rape Buffy and still leave the show with ladies gushing about how romantic he is. Angel can beat Buffy for a full season, and his abusive nature is never questioned. Why does Edward catch shit as an abuser? SPARKLES. Feh.)

Bella does it again in Eclipse, when despite the very real danger Jacob represents as a new werewolf, Bella still chooses to see him and remain his friend. Edward’s concern for Bella is justified, and one only needs to look at Sam’s girlfriend to see that, or to look at scenes where Jacob is at risk of transforming and harming Bella. But again, events are examined in a vacuum, and so Edward ripping out the engine of Bella’s truck is seen as abuse, when all he’s doing is trying to protect someone he loves. Edward doesn’t hit Bella for talking back, always concedes defeat on every argument and issue they have, and tries to talk Bella out of becoming a vampire. But he’s still a big ol’ meanie. Why? Sparkles.

Bella’s story is one of a strong woman using passive methods to achieve her goals, and since passive women are not accepted by the mainstream, she is pushed to the background while people complain about Edward. The main character of her own books, Bella can’t catch a break with men despite the fact that she’s funny, smart, and has great loyalty to her family and friends. All these should be positive traits, but again, Edward sparkles, so Bella must be torn down as well.

In the final book, Bella chooses to protect her unborn child, even if it will mean her own death. This is consistent with her willingness to sacrifice herself for the ones she loves. And Buffy/Angel fans, look at the bullshit about Angel and Darla having a baby when “nothing like this has ever happened before.” THAT’S ALMOST THE EXACT SAME PLOT. But when your dude Whedon does it, it’s genius. When Meyer does it, it’s ruining the trope.

Being a victim of neglect, Bella never sees herself as worthy of love, and this rings true to me. I can speak with authority, being the child of divorced parents and a victim of neglect. So the writing in the story feels accurate, and all the same ideas in Twilight show up in other fiction. Bella isn’t Ellen Ripley, but Ellen is herself a trope of men, the badass woman who acts just like a man. Bella’s passive behavior is more consistent with how real women act when confronted with obstacles, but Bella doesn’t get credit. Why? Sparkles.

It always comes back to one element that really doesn’t change the story one way or the other. There’s lots to enjoy in the story, if only people would let go of this butthurt over the vampires being “emasculated.” No one is, and people complaining over Twilight ten years after, even with some small press publisher pushing Vampires Don’t Sparkle as an anthology title, are still unwilling to admit that their issue with Twilight is a sexist attitude. But it is, and I find it rather sad that people can obsess negatively over four fiction books more than they do over real world problems. All because “sparkles are gay, and I ain’t no homo lover.” Oh, do get over yourselves, you simpering geeks. You play at being alpha males, but the vast majority of you are just sexists looking for a place to grind your small penis issue axes on.

So yep, that’s the expanded ramble. Making more friends every day. (>_>)

A Boy and His Dawg update…

Yesterday was the last day of my 5-day free promotion for A Boy and His Dawg, and I’ve kept the numbers to myself while waiting to see how this would turn out. I didn’t want to influence anyone with guilt trips if the numbers were low, and besides, ALL numbers seem low to me while I’m in the middle of a promotion, so I tend to be a leeetle biased.

Before I begin breaking down the numbers, I want to mention that a few writers on Twitter have mentioned over and over “sure, you can get downloads, but those are meaningless because they won’t lead to new sales or reviews.” Look, I didn’t do this to promote my other books, and although I’d love some reviews for Tobe’s story, I didn’t release the book free in exchange for reviews. People who’ve been with me long enough to remember when I was a WebLit groupie know that I had tried to make that request over and over, and I got SLAMMED for “being entitled”. Oddly enough, three years later, I see pro authors saying the same things I said, and readers ain’t listening to them either. (You would think most readers suffered from chronic arthritis with how reluctant they are to write a review, even for books they liked.)

No, my only goal in this promotion was to get more people to pick up one book which I did not expect to sell well. After a week of my usual pimping and begging, it had only 7 sales, and that was pretty much all I could expect from my current audience. Which is sad, but what do I want? It’s a gay YA romance in a world of readers afraid of catching Teh Gei by reading about Teh Gei. *shrug*

No, this time around, what I needed was to get the book in front of people who weren’t a part of my crowd, and maybe entice them to try something they might not normally pick up. If later, I get reviews out of the readers, that’d be nice, and I’ll be happy. If it leads to more sales because those freebie readers liked what they saw, that would be awesome, and I’d be happy. But all I wanted out of this promotion was bigger numbers.

So, did I get them? OH HELL YES. 647 downloads worldwide, with 507 in the US and 88 in the UK. But, along comes the real surprise: 43 in Germany. Which is awesome because I only sold two books in Germany before now. I got 3 downloads each from France, Italy, and Canada, and was completely ignored in Spain, Japan, and Brazil (This will affect my Christmas card list, you guys.)

These numbers are not nearly as high as other folks have released for their five-day promotions, but for me, this has been a very positive experience. But…would I do it again? Or, would I do this for all future new releases? I have to say I don’t know to the first question, and no on the second.

While it is very nice to get A Boy and His Dawg out there in the global market, the FIRST thing that leaps to mind when I look at the number 647 is ask, “But how much would I have made if everyone bought it?” Oh, roughly $1,290. You know, just more money than I earned from my writing all of last year. No biggie.

And while that sounds like bitterness, you have to keep in mind, I WOULD NOT be able to sell this book to that many people that fast. To get a book up to 647 readers, I HAVE to give it away, or wait around nineteen years to announce the sales numbers. (Yeah, that’s an exaggeration, I admit. It only took four years to get over 700 sales on The Lesser of Two Evils.) Doesn’t matter if I get good reviews or not. I write weird shit, and it’s not usually mainstream. I am a hard sell. I get that. I accept and embrace it like a fuzzy stuffed toy.

But that doesn’t mean I want to make every book free, not even for a limited time, because it cheapens my work. For the projects I’m investing more money in with the cost of an editor and a cover artist, I really can’t afford to blow off nearly $1,300 as a loss leader. I think any author who gives away books for the exposure needs to do it selectively, or else their audience will never buy books when they know they can just wait and get it free a few days or weeks down the line. So I think free is still useful for select titles that need help getting out there, and A Boy and His Dawg really did need the help. I just don’t expect to make many books free, or to use KDP select as a promotional tool that often.

One other observation: a lot of writers I saw blogging about free Kindle promotions said they had trouble with a sales slump on their other titles. Totally not a problem for me. During the promotional period, I sold 3 copies of Saving Gabriel in the US, and one copy of The Life and Death of a Sex Doll in the UK. Four sales in the first five days of the month is about par for the course for me, so I can’t say sales suffered for having one book free.

So, this concludes my experiment with KDP select and with the free Kindle promotion. I could maybe try this again with my next release, but making the first book in a series free just before the release of the next book. But I don’t even know about that because as I said, for as good as those numbers are, and for as happy as I am about the results, I did just blow off $1,290 on a gamble. And maybe the gamble will pay off and I’ll find some nice reviews and new regular readers. Or maybe none of those folks will dig my writing style and I’ll end up with bubkes. But $1,290 is a lot of money, and I can’t do that with too many titles.

In any case, thank you to everyone who picked up a copy of the book, and I hope you enjoy it. If you do, know that there is a sequel coming soon, and the muse is talking about making this a four book series.

And lastly, I want to make an update about our Indiegogo campaign. After two days of promotion, the project is 60% funded at $305. We’ve seen a $50 donation, and a $100 donation, and that’s so, so awesome. We haven’t yet seen anyone take the $15 contribution, which is the package deal to get all four books in the Peter the Wolf series. This is intended for new readers, and thus far, all our contributors have been regular readers who had already picked the previous books. We’ve still got plenty of time to pick up new readers, but I would like to again request your help. If you look on the campaign page under the cover, you can find buttons to share the campaign. Whether you contribute or not, sharing links is greatly appreciated.

And that’s it for now. I hope to have a book review up soon to break up the monotony of all these writing updates. That’s the good news. The bad news is, I’m finishing Breaking Dawn, and I plan to squee-gush my way through the review like a preteen who’s just seen her first episode of My Little Pony. So, consider yourselves duly warned.

Thicker Than Blood update

I really did not expect to be making an update this quickly, but there was a response to the first day of the Indiegogo campaign that’s nothing short of jaw-dropping. In our first day, we’ve earned $150 from only 5 backers, making over a quarter of our initial goal. WOW.

This is an amazing response, and given that Tara opted to go with 60 day campaign, we both realistically expect to go over the goal this time. But I’d like to push and see if we can entice more readers to preorder, and to do that, we’re bringing in some stretch goals So, if we can get over $600, I will send every contributor an ARC copy of Fangs, Humans, and Other Perils of Night Life, the sequel to A Boy and His Dawg, which I just recently completed. As an ARC ebook, there won’t be a proper cover, but I will work to get most of the typos out, and you can get the file in ePub, Mobi, or PDF to fit your ereading needs.

But that’s not all! For each $100 level we break over $600, I will write another short story set in the Peter the Wolf world. So, if we break $700, I’ll do a story with Peter’s sister, Heather, and Jake Forrester, the weredog Peter loves to hate. (Perhaps set between events in Dogs of War and Roll the Bones.) If we break $800, I’ll do another story featuring Peter’s enigmatic best friend Pi after the events of the last book, and at $900, I’ll write a story about Cassandra the child vampire before she met Peter.

Part of me says, “Eh, it’s not likely we’ll break $600.” But that part of me also said “No one is going to donate $100 for cookies.” And yet, someone did! Let this teach us all never to underestimate the powers of homemade cookies.

I’ve been on a recent butt-smooching frenzy on the blog, but y’all deserve sincere thanks for all your support. As I said on Twitter tonight, I don’t have many fans, but the ones I do have blow me away with the amount of support you give. I know a lot of the time I’m a cranky old lady who complains a lot, but these last two months, I’ve been very happily surprised by the responses to my projects. I’m sure eventually we’ll get back around to the complaining, but for now, I just want you all to know how much you mean to me. Thank you for everything, and I hope to have more new stuff to keep you entertained as a reward for your continued loyalty and support.

In conclusion, y’all rock, and I couldn’t do this without you. Go you. (No, really go. That’s the end of the post. =^p)

Indiegogo campaign for Thicker Than Blood

I tell ya, I picked the wrong week to give up speed. Sorry, old Airplane joke. But this is going to be a busy week for me. I’m still in the middle of promoting A Boy and His Dawg, which is free on Amazon until the 5th, but I’ve also got word from my editor Tara Frauendienst that she’s ready to start the Indiegogo campaign for the fourth and final Peter the Wolf Book, Thicker Than Blood. If you participated in the last campaign, you’ll find new ebooks being offered as incentives this time. There’s also an incentive level to pick up all four books, so if you haven’t started the series yet, this is the best way to get all four in one zip download.

In addition to asking for funds, I also need your help getting out word to new readers. Conveniently, right under the cover for the book are several buttons for sharing the campaign on Facebook, Twitter, and G+. Last year, our campaign hit $380 and I was able to pay Tara the rest to cover her fees. We would not have reached this level without people sharing the tweets, and fully half the contributors were not regular readers. This is why it’s vital that we get your help with promotions, because you probably have a lot of friends who don’t follow me and who might be interested in helping if they knew about the campaign, even if it’s just to do another signal boost.

We’ve already got our first contributor for $25, and the campaign minimum is only $500 to cover Tara’s fees for editing the book. Any additional funds would be awesome, and would help Tara pay for her final college courses to graduate. But whether we make $510 or $1500, all the proceeds still go to Tara. I’ll make my own funds off the regular sales when the book hits the vendors.

One last thing: contributors get access to the book a few weeks earlier than the final release date. This preview is both a thank you to y’all, but also a polite request to consider reviewing the book when you finish it. Obviously, you don’t have to if you don’t feel like it, but it would really help out in my early promotions if I had some reviews to show to new readers. (This is of course assuming you read it right after buying it, and I know some of you probably have huge to-be read piles like me. And that’s cool.)

I’m having to once again push back the release on Revival of the Magi, so April’s release will be Sandy Morrison and the Pixie Prohibition. So, that’s my week in a nutshell: promote one free ebook, promote a fundraiser for my editor, and get an ebook ready for release in two weeks. And you better believe I’m going to feel splattered by Saturday. =^/

Okay, that’s the news for now. Thank you in advance for y’all folks who contribute to the campaign or share links, and to those of you downloading A Boy and His Dawg. Really appreciate all your support.