Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 52

You don’t know me, and you aren’t even trying to understand me…

So, last night, I lost my shit again. Why doesn’t matter at this point. It’s just another trigger in a long, long list. I started talking about how I was initiated into sex abuse by my babysitters after they found my porn stash. I was 7. I started stealing porn that year to bribe the older boys with, and they gave me the pages they didn’t want. I got the pictures of the “ugly women,” and I got the sex stories.

This is a paraphrased account of what I ranted about on Twitter. And, before I go on, I have to say, I sometimes feel bad that my followers have to deal with these frequent explosions from me. I try not to react so much to other people, but once I’m upset, I can’t contain my emotions and I blow up.

Someone wrote DMs to me, telling me how what happened to me was not my fault. They said I’d been groomed by my “pedophile” baybysitters. That would be a pair of sister, one 11, the other 12. This person who thought to help me was ready to label other children as pedophiles for experimenting sexually. I pointed out that I already knew about sex when they found my porn stash. I was already curious and wanting to explore, so their offer seemed like a good idea. I’m not saying I wasn’t abused, or that it wasn’t molest, or that it wasn’t a bad thing. I’m saying, what this person said didn’t match reality. It’s the story that they wanted to make up about me, so that I wouldn’t have to be responsible for my own mistakes.

Since that first idea didn’t fly, and it was clear that the little girls who approached me were not pedophiles, this person changed direction and said it was those older boys who groomed me for sex by giving me the porn. Again, this is simply not the case. I was not instructed to steal porn for them. I made the choice to steal it so I could bribe them, and then they would stop hitting me. After the first few stories I’d read, I requested the letters and stories. I groomed myself.

I’m not saying the boys were innocent angels. They beat me so often, I was afraid of all boys. But they didn’t groom me for someone else to exploit me. I did it. It was my mistake, and what followed after might not have totally been my fault, but there is no outside source who was coaching me toward my corruption.

And y’all people can’t handle that kind of reality. I lose track of the number of times that people tell me that what happened to me didn’t really happen that way, and there must be someone else to blame besides me. Y’all are so eager to absolve me of my crimes that you’re not willing to hear my story. I can talk about it all I like, but you don’t hear me. You hear the voice in your head that narrates my story in terms that are more appealing to you. You lie to yourself even as I’m trying to confess my truth.

People who get tired of me talking get mad and ask what the point of my constant confessions are. Am I wanting other kids to grow up like me? No, I wouldn’t want anyone to grow up the way I did. I wouldn’t want anyone to grow up feeling worthless and unworthy of affection. I talk because I want you people to open your eyes and look at everyone. I want you to see the warning signs around kids who are at risk of being exploited. I want you to care more and to stop projecting your outraged feeling on the victims to silence us. I want you to try and understand our pain. And what depresses me is how many of you put your outrage over the thoughts and feelings of the victims.

I don’t feel angry at that person for denying the validity of my memories, or at anyone who’s done this to me over the years. I know that this need to absolve me is your misguided efforts to help me feel better. But it does depress me, because I wonder how anyone can begin to understand why I feel so broken, when they aren’t even willing to accept the story of how I broke myself.

How can any of you know me, when you never stop talking to hear me?

Time to face facts…

Let me start off quoting this Tumblr post:

A survey of 11-to-14 year-olds found:

· 51% of the boys and 41% of the girls said forced sex was acceptable if the boy, “spent a lot of money” on the girl;

· 31% of the boys and 32% of the girls said it was acceptable for a man to rape a woman with past sexual experience;

· 87% of boys and 79% of girls said sexual assault was acceptable if the man and the woman were married;

· 65% of the boys and 47% of the girls said it was acceptable for a boy to rape a girl if they had been dating for more than six months.

Despite surveys like this, it seems the vast majority of adults are still in favor of not talking to children about sex and leaving it up to the media to shape our children’s sexuality. The above is what we get from people who sell sex for a living, selling a false image of women to children.

That mainstream media image problem is why Kristen Stewart is vilified for “being unfaithful” while her older lover walks off scott-free. Shades of The Scarlet Letter, in 2012.

That mainstream media image problem is why Lana Del Rey appears nude on the cover of GQ while all the men are dressed in tuxedos.

This pervasive attitude about women as objects is why an Arizona judge told a woman groped by a cop in a bar, “This wouldn’t have happened if you weren’t there.”



America worships violence and shuns sex while at the same time obsessing over it as the most evil thing. Every movie can have violence, and that’s okay, but even a hint of sex turns the whole thing “adult.”

YA worships the 17-year-old virgin and many stories take slut shaming and sex lecturing to incredible now lows. Stories over and over again present males jerks as “alluring” and “exciting”, and girls are given the same message over and over, to save themselves for their one true love and live happily ever after. At no time will teens be shown a role model already having sex, because that’s evil. So they’re not really young adults to the vast majority of you. They’re just stupid children who need to be lectured to. I’d almost agree that they need lectures. The problem is, looking at the lectures coming from the moral majority, I wouldn’t want kids learning this shit from you. You’re bad role models.

Geek culture jumps on characters like Bella Swan because she’s passive, and then offer one sexist male-created female character after another as examples of “real women.” No shock, almost all of these real women are praised because they act like men. Geek culture can’t handle a woman acting like a woman, so characters who do are dismissed as negative female stereotypes. This is how we get a group of so-called feminists praising Ellen Ripley, a male-created fictional female, and then accuse Bella, who time and again tries to sacrifice herself for her family and friends, of being a “terrible character.” Bella’s low-self esteem and clingy need for approval may be more reflective of the modern teenage girl, but you’ll bash her while praising a woman in a skin tight Lycra body suit because she acts like a man. This is sick social engineering, giving people the idea that women will get somewhere in life only after they act more like guys.

Geek culture tells women they can’t be real geeks unless the boys in the club vet their credentials, otherwise they may just be “whores in glasses seeking attention.” This is from geek males who claim that all of society is unfairly judging them, even though their entertainment industries generate huge profits and billions of positive consumer impressions. Even when they’re winning, geeks claim they’re still the real underdogs, and that women are persecuting them unfairly. Geeks are so afraid of girls in their club, they police their hobbies relentlessly to look for fakes. And wouldn’t you know it? Most of the fakes are the females.

Our society is giving more and more power to males and their increasingly violent values, and even when women speak out and ask for a positive change toward equality, men complain that women are “just drawing attention to themselves.” Well look assholes, if you’re getting kicked on the ground, do you do it quietly and let it happen? NO. You fight back. For men, that’s not just okay, it’s unequivocally enforced as the only way manly males should respond. But women should “just lay there and take it and not draw attention to themselves.”

Men, this is why I’m aggressive in policing your comments. This is why I’m a bitch about your “little jokes” that you don’t think are such a big deal. And a lot of dudes are like, “Hey, lady, I’m a nice guy, so don’t you dare judge me!” Well look, Rambo, the fact is, after you’ve been bitten by ten breeds of dog, you begin to give all dogs a wide berth. You assume all dogs bite, and yes, you plan your whole world-view accordingly. At this point, I’ve had multiple men who claimed to be friends call me a bitch, a moron, a pervert, and yes, even a pedophile. I’ve been told I’m full of shit, or that I’m blowing problems out of proportion. I’ve been told to pipe down, or else I’ll never make guy friends like this. (This despite the fact that I have a lot of guy friends. Those would be the guys who take responsibility for themselves.) I’ve been vilified for wanting to bring up your lousy methods of dealing with sexuality and abuse, and I’ve been asked questions like “What gender were you when you got raped?”

Men have treated me like shit time and again, and so no, I don’t feel I can trust any of you, not even if you act nice around me. I can’t even trust my guy friends because there is the potential that they can turn and attack me for having an opinion. ANY opinion which is contrary to a male’s view is instantly wrong, and my expression of said opinion opens me up to attacks from men. Hey, I was “just asking for it,” wasn’t I?

Despite your aggression, I will keep bringing these topics up because we need to expose the truth before we can work toward any positive change. And the truth is that men are so afraid of sharing space with women that you will attack us and disenfranchise us. You will attack anything we like, and you will promote masculinity over anything feminine. Surveys show that men think women who talk more than 10% of a conversation are “taking over.” You can’t even approach us and offer us a quarter of the same rights to free speech. You’ve dominated the views in all our media outlets, and you’ve ridiculed anything that became popular with women or girls.

This has got to stop, guys. THIS HAS GOT TO STOP. And the only way it will is when you stop talking over us, open your ears, and your brain, and really listen to us. The only way this can stop is if you stop worshiping violence and start treating sex as something less than a power trip. This behavior will stop when men stop shouting about being treated unfairly and realize they’re still standing on women to keep them down.

You ain’t no nice guy…

Guys, men, dudes; go and read this Tumblr post. Go on, I’ll wait, and since it’s a long story, I promise, I’ll make my point short and to the point.

Done? No, did you really read it, or did you skim it? Really read it.

Now, I have on many occasions been approached by guys, and not once has “I’m married” ever deterred them from asking if I want a coffee or “do I have the time?” Both of these are subtle pickups for sex in Italy, and even me saying no doesn’t deter them. And folks, I ain’t even all that attractive. I got a flat chest and almost no ass. Imagine how often a beautiful woman has to put up with men hitting on her. Think about how every one of these men feels that woman owes them politeness, simply because they find her attractive.

Dudes, you cannot treat women like this and still get away with the claim that you’re really just nice guys. You ain’t no nice guys, and I get sick of people telling me I need to be nice to you because you’re not really sexist. If you think I owe you niceness just because you haven’t yet harassed me, you’re lacking in empathy about how many men already have harassed me. And like I said, I don’t have nearly as many problems as really pretty women.

So, you want to impress me as a truly nice guy? Then behave yourself in public, and don’t assume any pretty girl owes you the time of day just because you’re a nice guy.

On fake reviews…

I’ve debated with myself whether I wanted to write about authors faking reviews for most of this week. Mainly because I’ve already said enough crazy shit last month to worry over without jumping in the middle of this stinky shit pile. But the news just keeps coming out with more examples of big time bestselling authors who don’t just glowingly praise their own stuff, but who also use their sock puppet accounts to attack other writers. And with each new case, the temptation to put my feet in my mouth and munch shoe leather got stronger.

So, let’s get out of the way what I consider to be the worst of these offenses, sock puppeting to attack a rival writer. I make no secret about when a book ticks me off, but when I write a bad review, it’s under my name, and it’s only going to show up on my blog and Goodreads. Also, it’s not going to be something that I revisit over and over again. And, just because I didn’t like one book from a writer doesn’t mean I might not give them another chance in the future. I just didn’t like that story, and that’s where I prefer to focus my temporary displeasure. This writing thing isn’t a competition for me, so I don’t need to try and get ahead of someone else by cutting them down.

As for paying for reviews, I can almost understand it. I see a lot of writers at all levels begging for reviews, and the stats coming back say most readers simply don’t care to help. It’s a very, very small part of a writer’s audience who choose to leave reviews or ratings. As far as the rest of the readers are concerned, just buying the product is support enough, and if that UF author’s series fails right after book one due to a lack of sales, it’s certainly no one else’s fault but the writer for not advertising enough.

There’s a catch-22 here that readers aren’t acknowledging, which is the fact that readers ALSO won’t buy a book based on the author’s promotions alone. It’s not just a problem for self-pubbed authors anymore either, because people have a hard time telling who is who anymore. The result is, they don’t trust most author promos online, and they must see some reader reviews before they will commit to the sale. Despite some people claiming that reviews aren’t such a big deal anymore, a survey showed that 78% of readers did NOT buy a book until after looking at reviews.

So, we writers know that reviews are vital, and we beg readers to help. Readers don’t care to help, and don’t believe our self-promotion. So what is a writer to do in this mess? I know I’ve sat here many nights considering putting out tweets like “If I can get 10 reviews on ____ by the end of this month, I will tweet a picture of my boobs.” Not because I’m an exhibitionist, but because I’m getting desperate.

Am I desperate enough to pay for reviews? Well, no, and I’m not really desperate enough to use my tits to get reviews either. (It just sounds like a good idea after my second gin and tonic, is all.) I can sometimes come here to my blog and explain that reviews are vital, but it’s up to readers to decide whether or not they feel like making the effort. When I get a review, I want it to be honest whether I solicited it from a blog by handing out a free book or I get it from a reader who bought my book and decided it was worth a review. I want that honest 3 star review for Roll the Bones more than I want a glowing 5 star review from someone who didn’t really read the book. And the reason why is because an honest review tells me if I accomplished my goals or not as much as it informs other readers of how the book is.

An example: someone emailed me their 3 star review for Roll the Bones, and they didn’t feel like I’d done much world building around the magic system. This is a fair cop. That person said these things in private, and then asked if I wanted them to make the same comments in a review. I told them, “Yes, please do make a review,” and sometime this week or next, they should post it to their blog. And they’ll have a few other things that didn’t work for them in their review, and all of their niggling dislikes are fair calls. That’s what I like about the review. Because I can say “All right, that idea didn’t quite work for the readers. I’ll know better next time.” I can learn something from their review, and I can’t learn anything from a person I paid to blow 5-star sunshine up my ass.

I’ve had a few bad reviews that I took exception to because it seemed the reviewer wasn’t reading my book so much as skimming it. So, being that they weren’t paying attention, they grossly misrepresented my work in their review. The best example is a 2-star review for Blind Rage, in which the reviewer said “I don’t think this much melancholy is fitting for someone who only lost their girlfriend.” She was referring to Wendy, Jobe’s foster daughter, who left Jobe because she said he was a monster. The book’s introduction made it clear that this was his foster daughter, and that his mistakes led to the death of Jamie, Wendy’s “astral twin” brother. So that’s the loss of two kids who Jobe loved, one dead, and the other one saying she’s lost all confidence in him. To my mind, that’s a pretty valid reason for being deeply depressed, but the reviewer skimmed right over those sentences and assumed Wendy was “just a girlfriend”. If other readers looked at her review and based their choice to read my stuff off of her review, that misrepresentation hurts me directly. So yeah, I got pissy about it, and I got bent out of shape because it’s not an honest review.

Another example is on Amazon, a 2-star review for Zombie Punter that says “This story has only a few zombies and a lot of gay sex.” (I’m paraphrasing here.) In fact, Zombie Punter has two sex scenes out of 22 chapters, and the rest is all zombies, all the time. It’s not just a case of skimming. It’s an outright lie made by a homophobe, and it’s the kind of dishonest review that can turn people away from the book for thinking it’s gay porn with some zombies tacked on for flavor.

So, to be clear, I love honest reviews. I would love for more of them, even if they are 2 or 3 stars. If y’all can’t grasp why I need your help, I’ll repeat myself: I have multiple sclerosis and can no longer work a part-time manual labor job anymore. I cannot maintain a part-time office job either. This writing hobby and my freelance editing are the only ways I earn money. More reviews from you would lead to more sales. Which in turn might allow me to afford a few more expenses and luxuries. So that’s why I ask for reviews, because I could really, really use your help.

I’ve said this kind of thing before and had people jump me for “having a poor attitude.” Well maybe I do, but I would never try and trick y’all with fake reviews. Some of the professionally published, bestselling authors would. I would never attack my fellow authors under a fake name. Some professionally published, bestselling authors would. So if you can appreciate that I’m behaving as ethically as possible in this crowded market of fakers and phoneys, all I’m asking for is a minute or two of your time after you finish my story. If you’re unable to think of what to say about a book, just leave a rating. Drop 3 stars on me and walk away knowing you contributed your opinion. It still helps in a small way.

But when you hear another story about other writers faking reviews, stop and ask yourself, “When was the last time I reviewed a book for an author I liked?”

If your answer is a smug “The last book I read, actually,” then you can safely ignore this entire ramble except for this last sentence: thank you for supporting your favorite authors, and please do keep up the great work.

Writing ramble: I have a minor problem…

Yes, the weather’s going wonky, so I’m dealing once again with mood swings. And let me tell you, this time they’re a real doozy. I go from depressed to enraged in 2.2 seconds, and then shift to guilty and melancholy in another two.

I suppose it’s good luck that I finished my last writing project when I did, because now I don’t have to worry about negative emotions leading to a writing block. But it’s also kind of a bad thing because my usual post-book brain drain problems are compounded by the wonky weather mood swings. So not only do I hate all of you, but I also hate myself too. And no, I don’t really hate y’all. I don’t even know you. But once the mood swing hits, logic and reason both get up and leave. And then…oh yeah, fuck the lot of you.

One of the things driving me nuts in these mood-swinging times is these sudden desperate urges to do something to change my fortunes. Maybe if I released a new book today, y’all would show up and buy a few copies, and I could feel like I accomplished something. Maybe if I wrote a better book, today, I’d start making enough sales to handle my medical needs. Maybe I could write “something more meaningful,” and that would be popular even if the rest of my stuff got ignored by the mainstream.

But there’s no point in selling a story today, because no matter what I put up from my queue of unpublished works, none of them are likely to sell. I’ve got four sequel to books that didn’t sell well, and one standalone story that I’m already feeling doubtful over on the grounds that it’s “too gay” to be popular. (Well, it is a gay romance, so you’d think it’d be okay in this instance.)

I don’t need to write better to sell a lot either. I need to write “right.” Any bestseller I read tells me it’s not the quality of the writing that moves units. It’s the choices of which characters to put on display, the right choices of plots and themes that will appeal to the reader quickly if summed up in a blurb. There’s formulas that offer a higher chance of success, and my inability to embrace those formulas are what keep me from capturing more mainstream interest in my writing.

Almost everyone wants to be a spy, so if I wrote a spy novel, that might have a chance of selling well. But I don’t like spy novels, and if I tried to write one just to cash in, it would read like shit. So it wouldn’t sell well, and so there’s no point in me pushing to write a story that I wouldn’t want to read myself.

And then there’s the “more meaningful” urges, which make no sense. I’ve written a lot of books, and all of them have a lot of meaningful things to say, both on the surface and between the lines. I can’t get any more meaningful without making a book of lectures, and then I’m not telling a story so much as browbeating the reader with my personal beliefs. I drop books where the writer gives me that impression of only lecturing me, and I think most readers do. So I think this inner voice asking for more meaning is a red herring. Or perhaps it’s a MacGuffin. Either way, it’s not important, and it isn’t a real problem with my previous stories. The only time when it is an issue is when I’m in these mood swings, so I can ignore that inner voice pretty easily.

But there is one thing coming out of all of this depression that I feel like holding onto. As regular readers of my blog know, the muse really wants to do another story with kids. It would be a huge departure from my usual efforts. This story would not have any fantasy elements to it, and my aim would be portraying the characters with as much accuracy and reality as I could manage in fiction. It would not have a happy ending, and with what the muse is proposing, a non-ending would be more likely.

Obviously, some rules of writing still need to be respected to make this story work. Real life never has to makes sense. Lots of bad things happen, and there’s no logical explanation for it. Real life isn’t required to explain the how and why of events. But in fiction, there has to be that sense of logic, even if doing this consistently isn’t very realistic. This isn’t a rule that writers like, and they deal with it as a necessary evil. It’s a rule enforced by readers, who feel that if a fictional event happens for “no good reason,” then it doesn’t make sense and ruins the story.

Reading is something of a compromise, a trade of your time for mine. If you are willing to sit down and crack open my next 200 page book to invest a few hours in my fictional rambling, I have to be willing to make some concessions to you to make this reading time feel worth your while. I have to make concessions to you to keep you reading all the way through instead of tossing the book early on, probably while declaring, “This writer is an idiot!”

Which puts me in a pickle, because what I want out of this next story will be damned hard to keep readers going past the first moment of intimacy. So how can I keep people reading to understand that the story isn’t about those scenes, but about the way the characters develop in reaction to these moments of too early intimacy?

The first thing I feel I need to do to compromise with readers is to have a lot of short scenes that don’t advance the central conflict, but which show the characters being happy, seemingly healthy kids. I want the vast majority of the book to be about these interactions, and I want those few awkward scenes to exist for a reason other than to titillate or offend. They have to make the reader understand something about the characters, or it’s not worth showing.

See, it’s like this; when I tell people about me and my childhood, there’s only one of two ways I can do this. I can tell you about the abuse and neglect, and that will make you think I had a rotten childhood and there was never anything good in it. This is inaccurate at best, because while my childhood was extremely messed up, it wasn’t all bad, all the time. I could tell you about trips to Six Flags or to Lake Texoma for the family campouts. I could tell you about my endless quests for candy, or what cartoons and comics I loved. I could tell you about a number of happy holidays and birthday parties, and then you get this idea that I have an almost normal life. This is also inaccurate, and it erases a great deal of the experiences that defined me as a teen, and later as a confused adult trying to imitate “maleness.”

But the truth about my life story is more complex than either of these methods allows me to convey to readers, and it’s not easy to depict that in a fiction story either.

Put another way, someone had long ago commented how it was unreal how I could talk about sex between us kids like it was something we’d do after watching Smurfs. But that’s just it. We didn’t have sex all day, and nothing else happened to us. We did watch Smurfs, and Jem, and Go-Bots, all kinds of other cartoons. We played with toys and video games, and we went to visit friends, other kids we knew that we talked about normal stuff, and they had no idea about our private affairs at home. We were long-time lovers, and yet paradoxically, we were still little kids in a lot of healthy, wholesome ways. We went to school, hated homework and cafeteria lunches, attended dances, went trick-or-treating, and did all the same mundane things the other kids did.

But what happens is, when mention of sex enters any child’s story, everything else that went on in their lives before or after is erased in the minds of most outside viewers. It’s not important, and it’s no longer a part of the “real” story. All that matters to other people is the sex. It overshadows everything else in the child’s life, and not because they fixate on it, but because society does. It’s that social fixation on sex as an act of evil that shames abuse victims and eventually turns some of them into abusers.

In my current state of depression, I wonder how I can handle this mammoth task, how I can juggle scenes more fitting for a middle grade book with scenes of intimacy between minors. No matter how delicately I write those scenes, people are going to say it’s unrealistic. Not because it can’t happen in real life, but because they don’t want to acknowledge that it does happen all the time. “Unrealistic” is not an accurate charge so much as a reality filter that allows people to dismiss reality and pretend that kids are innocent angels until adults fuck them up. That’s just not true. Yes, adults do A LOT to help mess up kids, but that doesn’t change the fact that lots of kids aren’t angels even if they have great parents and fantastic teachers. Some kids are just bullies no matter what their folks are like, and some kids are sexual abusers without any outside help from a molesting adult. Even with parents buttering them up and telling them what special angels they are, some kids can’t feel right with themselves without cutting someone else down. That’s reality.

Some will say that the story should be about something else. Or they will wonder why there’s a point to showing the kids going to school, talking to friends about mundane things. If the central conflict is about the sex, then why tack on all this “boring stuff”?

Other people will say that the point of the story isn’t to shed light on the problem, but to condition others to think “this is not so strange.” This charge now gets slapped on almost all YA fiction that adults don’t like. The characters aren’t demonstrating bad behavior for entertainment purposes, but to train kids in how to be evil. And it isn’t true in any of these cases, but people love to say this to dismiss books that might have something intelligent to say about making mistakes.

The point with a story like this is to say, “This kind of intimacy between kids is always happening, and we need to find better ways to deal with it than what we’re doing now.” No one can look at the current rising popularity of rape culture and tell me that this isn’t a conversation we all need to be having. Abuse in all forms is on the rise because so many people refuse to discuss it in any way. So obviously, this is not going to go away if you choose to ignore it. Continuing the same plan after years of continual failure is not a sign of peoples’ commitment to “goodness.” It’s just a denial of the biggest problems in our society, and there’s nothing healthy about living in denial. (Trust me, I’m a huge expert on this.)

Broaching the topic is going to piss off people. But hell, I pissed off a few billion people just by being transsexual and bisexual. A few million people indirectly wish for me to burn in hell simply for the crime of being born. So if I can deal with that much invisible hate coming my way already, surely I can handle more heat for continually bringing up the topics of sex abuse and kids.

What I’m aiming for is a story that embraces the real complexities of growing up as a troubled child. No, it’s not all bad, but it’s not a great life. But it is a common story in real life that’s all but erased in our storied worlds. The worst part about this kind of widespread social erasure is, people don’t care about hearing the rest of a person’s history after being exposed to the worst abusive elements of their private lives. If a person is deemed “bad” by the public, fictional or real, nothing in their life story is worth sharing with others.

Fiction characters like this are shunned and erased to make room for an escapist delusion that almost all modern fiction strives for. Modern fiction seeks to placate the reader and validate their world views. I think some works should shake readers up and make them question the reality they think they know. This is all easier said than done, and no matter how timidly I depict the intimacy in this story, it’s going to be a slap in the face of anyone expecting cute kids who can do no wrong.

There’s another problem here, and that’s establishing the initial relationship between the characters in a realistic way. When I was a kid having secret affairs, these relationships were pushed on me. They weren’t something I sought out and desired. It was only much later that I began to seek moments of physical connection, which is what led to me taking on a predatory mindset.

This is one thing that separates me from the main character, in that he does want to find someone else to replace his abusers after they leave. He’s transitioning and taking on the role of abuser as the story opens, so he finds his target in the arrival of a new neighbor, and…then something happens to bring the two together. What? I don’t know. I know I want it to make sense, and not just to me, but to readers too. They don’t have to like how the relationship starts, or where it leads because it would be depicting acts of abuse, after all. But readers should find the characters’ choices realistic enough to keep reading instead of throwing the book away and dismissing it as a bunch of sick fantasies.

That’s why I feel like the book needs a lot of material showing the “boring” side of life for the characters. I want to make the sex a small, small fraction of what happens in the book, and even if that abusive intimacy is the central conflict of the story, I want readers to come away feeling like the characters were tragically real and not one-dimensional props serving a role as fantasy fodder.

I’m sure I’ll be working on a lot of other books before I come back around to this idea. I probably shouldn’t bother blogging about this so early because I know how the topics of kids and sexuality never fail to upset people. But my main goal in writing has always been to give voice to the abuse victims who slip through the cracks, and this is one more facet of the larger theme I’m exploring.

Maybe I’ll write it and later feel like it’s a failure for the same reason my other books are, that it fails to “tell the story right.” Maybe I’ll publish it and get ignored, and it will all be another waste of time. But to me, these stories have far more to say about our real life problems than the vast majority of escapist fiction does.

No, I don’t think reality-based writing will ever beat escapism for popularity. But I know these stories are worth telling, even if the number of people willing to read them and try to understand is small. I think a bigger mistake would be for me to write fluffy escapist fantasy and deny everything that I know in favor of a profitable lie. What I’m doing is not unique, but it is rare. So even if it doesn’t earn me a lot, I do feel it’s worth my time.

The monthly status report and butt smooch

It’s the 28th, so it’s about time for another sales and progress report, followed by your monthly butt smooching. I’m already wearing lip balm, even. =^*

This month, nobody bought all my books all at once, so this month wasn’t as awesome as last month in terms of sales. But I’ve had 13 sales from Amazon and a sale of a three-book zip file on the blog bookstore. I’m still debating if I should call that three book sales or one efile sale, but for now I’m calling it one. I don’t have my Lightning Source numbers yet, but they shouldn’t bump me up by more than 3-4 extra sales. For me, for a summer month, this is really rather good. Last year at this same time, I only had half these sales.

Alas, Roll the Bones had a a terrible first month in terms of sales, getting only two for the entire month. A lot of the books I sold this month were not what I was advertising, which is par for the course with me. One of these days, I’m going to figure out how advertising actually works. And then? Hand over fist, baby.

(>_>) Well I can dream, anyway.

Setting aside the first month sales, Roll the Bones did manage to get a good review, three stars, which totally works for me. I also got a good review for Sandy Morrison and the Pack of Pussies from Wading Through Electronic Ink, and Peter’s series got another review this month, with the second being a YouTube video review for Peter the Wolf. So, it wasn’t a great month for the new book, but it has been a good month for regular sales, and I got a few extra reviews. Definitely can’t complain with new reviews, especially when none of the reviews are bad. =^)

Overall, this summer’s sales have been much better than I normally get during this time of year. So first, thanks to all of y’all picking up my books, and then I’ll thank the reviewers for taking the time to write up a little something for their fellow readers. I really do appreciate the financial help, and even more the help with word of mouth promotions and reviews. That I continue to sell books is a sure sign that some of you are helping with promotions, and I appreciate all the help I can get.

I’ll close with a writing update and let you know that I’ve completed the first draft of A Boy and His Dawg, a YA werewolf romance that I’ve been working on since the start of summer. It’s about halfway over 50K but depending on what the editor thinks, it could get bigger or smaller. You may recall, while I was writing this an editor offered to read the completed story because she liked the premise I was pitching for a unique werewolf story with a gay protagonist and an African breed of werewolf. I double checked to see if she still wanted to read it, and she said she had space in her schedule to look it over. I’ve sent the first draft to here, and I can’t say if she will like the story or not, but I’m sure she will have suggestions for what to fix or tweak. I’m also going to be looking for beta readers to check this story out before I consider any publishing plans. If you would like to beta read for me on this project, email me at: zoe_whitten (at) yahoo (dot) com. Obviously it will be a while before this goes on sale, probably 9 months to a year from now. I wish I could pump these puppies out for you faster, but the polishing process requires outside eyes, and it takes a long, long time to get all of those little freaking mistakes out.

So that’s the monthly report. Thank you very much for your continued support. I should have some new stuff out for you sooner rather than later. I just have to finish editing some of it to whack a few last typos. Of course I’ll never get them all, but I will hunt down as many of those wayward little bastards as I can. And when I find them…ahem.

Thanks, y’all. More books coming soon!

Initial review: Sony PRS-T1 ereader

My CyBook Opus kicked the bucket at barely a year old, and when I lamented to my sister-in-law that I was going to have to spend 150 euros to replace it, she offered to buy me a new reader. As much as I loved my Cybook Gen3 from Bookeen, the Opus was much less stable, and I’d dealt with random lockups and stability issues even after to ROM updates were released. So when the screen went black and I couldn’t recover anything, I decided to see what else was on the market that could read epub.

I found out that Sony’s current line of readers is epub-friendly, and it was roughly 9 euros cheaper than the model from every other competitor. It has a touch screen which is more responsive than the Bookeen Orizon and a simple set of gestures to turn pages and zoom. It also has Wi-Fi and access to an online book store, but I suspected this wouldn’t work in Italy, and I was right. I can connect the device to my Wi-Fi router, no problem. But clicking on the store button brings up a screen that says in Italian that there is no bookstore for my country. No option to shop in the US either. Just “sorry, no books for you.” Fortunately, since I’ve been buying DRM-free epubs all year, I have plenty of files to load on my new reader.

The screen looks great, as most e-ink screens do. The new Pearl e-ink screens are very nice, and they display text and ebook covers with nice resolutions and smooth pixels. The touch screen is responsive, and the gesture for page turns is easy, just a little flick of the thumb on either side of the screen. The pinch to zoom works pretty smoothly, though I don’t have much use for it reading reflowable text fiction instead of manga or other comics where zoom might come in handy.

About the only thing that I can’t sort out is the stylus. Sony sent this nice bookmark like stylus with a loop-over hook similar to a pen for attaching to a chest pocket. I guess that’s how you’re supposed to carry it, but most of my clothing doesn’t have a chest pocket, and I’d lose this tiny thing in my purse. There’s no recessed space for the stylus on the reader, so it’s an extra piece of plastic that I just leave at home rather than risk losing it on the road. If there were some way to attach it to the device and make it convenient to carry, I might use it. But since it doesn’t attach, I figure I’ll just suffer with fingerprints.

I’m also not entirely fond of the menu button layout, with the page turn buttons on the lower left corner. Yes I can just flick my thumb on the right side to move to the next page, but I kind of liked how the Opus had page buttons right under my thumb, making one handed operation easy. This is a minor quibble, though, as I don’t actually need the buttons at all. I’d just like them to be in a more convenient location in case I planned to use them.

I’ve only just started using the reader, so I can’t speak to issues of stability or battery life yet. One thing I do like is that when the device goes into sleep mode, the screen flashes to the cover of the book I’m currently reading. On the Opus, the sleep mode screen was essentially a series of ads for Bookeen. So having the ereader advertising my current read instead is an improvement, in my opinion.

Currently, I’ll give the Sony PRS-T1 four stars. I’d give it a higher score if Sony would let me buy books in the US store, even though I’m in Italy. Then the Wi-FI might be slightly less than useless. But Since I have sources for ebooks already, my bigger concern is, will it read the files I’ve already bought. It will, and the screen looks gorgeous. So that for me is good enough for now.

I’ll try to do another short review about stability and battery life after I’ve had some time to beat the new reader up a bit.

So, I’ve been reading…

I’ve taken the month off from serious writing partly because it’s too hot to work. But I’ve also had a bad year of reading, with my book selections not working for me during most of the early year. Many books I struggled with for months, and others, I read only a few pages before dropping them with no desire to go back. But this month, I decided to catch up on my reading goals, and I’ve been reading five books at a time, taking one chapter from each book in turns. I’ve been told this takes great willpower, but I find that’s only true for books that don’t suck. It also makes bad books somewhat more bearable, giving me a 25% improved chance of finishing them.

I’m not really reading to study, but I end up noticing things that I don’t think your average reader does. One thing that I’ve brought up before is how the mainstream has effectively erased diversity. Of all the books I’ve read this year, only a handful of main characters weren’t white. Those that weren’t white were usually written by non-white authors. Of all the white authors I’ve read this year, male and female, only one attempted to write a black main character. (And did so rather well, I might add.) Which brings me to the rambly topic of writing formulas.

If a writer wants a successful book, the first thing they will do is write a white heterosexual main character. That character will be morally good, though most likely an alcoholic. (Because alcoholism is the only disease heroes are allowed to have without being seen as too flawed. Can’t have a coke-addicted cop, but a cop who hangs out in bars? A-okay.) That character will either meet a new member of the opposite sex to appease the romantic demographic and give the shippers something to hope in, or they will run into an old partner of the opposite sex and realize they’ve been denying their true feelings. (Satisfying the same shipper demo in the process.)

Successful mainstream books are a formula that allows for a lot of variant forms of expression. But once you’ve read 20 or so books from a wide swatch of genres, you see how often this same formula is used—in sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, horror, whatever—you begin to see how little room in this field there is for depictions of diversity. Writers slip a token black into a cast of all whites, and half the time, the black guy can’t help but be the recipient of lines like “Damn,” or “Sho ’nuff.” Writers slip a “safe gay” into a group, someone who will be funny, charming, only slightly gay, and who will never talk about or have sex in the course of the story. Can’t risk freaking out any straight readers with actual gayness.

Some white writers get why this is wrong, and a very few make wonderfully diverse casts with all kinds of ethnicities and social backgrounds blending together in their settings. But a lot of others write white. White casts, white bit characters, and no queer characters in sight to make anyone feel funny. It’s white washing, and it’s a constant value in the mainstream.

And what it says about the audience and the publishers is, they’re extremely close minded. White people who read avidly will actively choose to only read about other white people. Straight people will work to avoid stories with queer characters.

I’ve said this before, but if I decided to only read books about my people, I’d have a very small stack of books to work with, and most would be autobiographies. Of the fiction on hand, fully half with a trans character are making gross caricatures of us, further reinforcing ignorant beliefs held about us. This is a skimpy and depressing pile to work through.

But the thing is, I will read stories about a straight white male in any genre or setting. I’ll do the same for any straight white woman. But I also seek out books with bi relationships. (Most of which are white, though. See what I mean?) I look for gay and lesbian romances. Not so much to support my fellow artists in the queer spectrum, although I could say I’m doing that too. It’s just that I’d like to see stories that aren’t told from the formulaic default of straight, white, and cis.

And this is what I’m talking about when I say the mainstream erases diversity, and with it, tolerance to real world diversity too. People long to see their real world reflect their art, and that’s not a good idea, given how starkly black and white our fiction is. Might makes right, gory violence is better than graphic sex, and the best main characters are so white, they blend in with the walls.

I have to work to find other perspectives, because the mainstream offers me nothing of gay or bi protagonists. The mainstream does not push books with trans main characters, or with casts of color. The mainstream pushes the same one size fits all story. And yes, the writers who offer up their work within the formula are able to do amazing things with it. Yes, they have talent, and I’m not knocking the merit of their art. But even the most “out there” artist who stays within the safety lines of white and straight is playing it safe for the sake of collecting “the easy money.”

That’s a sick fucking joke in writing, because the easy money in writing isn’t so easy to get. Every book is a lottery ticket, and whether you play in the publishers’ lotto or go in the self-pub pool, there’s a very real risk your book won’t pick all the right numbers. And anyway, it’s not easy to predict what will catch fire. This summer’s runaway success is a former Twilight fan-fiction cleverly disguised as a series about what a middle-aged woman imagines a bondage romance must be like. And she’s making money hand over fist. Nobody could have saw that coming. It defies the formula. Kink isn’t supposed to sell! But, one got through the filters. And lots of people hate it because “It reads badly.” NO! Bad porn reads like bad porn? You don’t say? Surely to be successful, bad porn should read like Shakespeare!

Other writers may clutch their hair and moan about the success of E.L. James. But personally, I feel like it gives me hope. If people are willing to read about bondage, then they might be willing to read something more challenging than the default formula. That’s still a long way away from saying they’d like my stuff, I know, but there is in this success proof that the market isn’t as straight laced and puritanical as the mainstream values might lead one to believe.

This is why, as a writer, I feel I need to cover the full spectrum of humanity and write about people of all colors, ages, and orientations. I’ve written about a straight white guy, and a straight black guy. I’ve written an interracial gay romance. I’ve written an interspecies lesbian romance. Hell, I wrote an interspecies trans lesbian romance. TOP THAT. Ahem…my characters are all over the age range charts, from 8 to 218. They come from all walks of life, and they all look at the world in their own unique ways. Yet I still look over my past works with a critical eye that maybe they weren’t diverse enough.

Moving to the internet hasn’t weakened mainstream values, but it has given writers with alternative values the chance to branch off and create small pools of readers for their efforts. These artists are something like me, being tired of reading about straight folks, and so they write books they want to read. And these stories are not changing much. It’s the same underlying formula used in straight fiction. Many times a white queer author will be just as guilty of making a “color-blind” world as a straight white author would. I know that if I did not constantly think about the topic, my casts could easily turn just as monochrome.

These offspring pools of smaller success still tap into the mainstream values for their stories, which is how they draw in new readers. It’s the underlying formula people are responding to, and the tinkering to the main character will be glossed over, for the most part.

In this kind of market, experimental works have a much harder time because they don’t have any established base to rely on. The same could be said of poetry. People like fiction books to be a fast flow of words that don’t challenge the mind. They go in slick and easy to process, and they don’t make the reader strain for understanding of subtler meanings. Mainstream fiction insulates the reader from reality. It creates a world where good and evil can be measured in black and white. And while the hero may suffer some in the course of the conflict, the reader doesn’t worry, because the hero never dies. The formula says so.

Or getting even more technical, the world is relying predominately on one formula of:

Introduction of characters

Introduction of conflict

Conflict

Resolution/climax

This is so constant, books that try to avoid a central conflict are drubbed for being “dull”. What, people ask, is the point of a story with no central conflict? What is the point of a book where nothing happens for 200 pages? Well there is no central conflict, but in many of these texts, the point lies in reading the situations and trying to infer what the author believes. Reading is an act of interpretation that’s uniquely individual. I can’t look at any book the same way you will. As a writer, I can tell you how I interpret my own work, but the moment you open my story, the words flow into your unique frame of reference. So maybe you will come out with an interpretation similar to what I wanted. Or maybe you will come up with something completely out of left field.

As a reader and a writer, I make a choice to seek out points of view that are different from mine. But I’m a writer, so I have a good excuse for needing to know more about people from all walks of life. It’s because I’m struggling for a sense of accurate diversity in my work. But readers, people, you have to make a choice about what you read. Do you really only want to pick up books with people exactly like you? If you’re a male reader, and you only read male writers, or only books with male main characters, isn’t that a little banal? To grow and develop as a person, one has to broaden their horizons and look around at other people who don’t live the same as you.

And it isn’t so hard to find fiction outside the mainstream on the internet. Anyone can invest a little time and come across more challenging fiction that’s still enjoyable and worthy of your time. Most of it will still rely on the conflict formula anyway, so there’s only a relatively small number of books that would challenge you with a “dull” scenario. And if you really don’t like a book, drop it. Hell, I would, and I don’t care if it’s classic literature or Mary Sue fan-fic. But, the thing is, I’m willing to give anyone a shot for my time. I don’t care if your book is part of a six figure deal, or if I’m the sixth reader of your online serial. I have an open mind, and I’m willing to see what you’ve got to offer.

“But that’s you, Zoe,” you say. “I’m just reading for pleasure, so what does it matter if I drift only to books with characters like me?”

Well, by only reading about white people, you reinforce mainstream cultural racism. You may not approve of racism personally, but by not seeking out and supporting diversity in fiction, you are financially supporting systemic racism in mainstream art. By the same token, you are actively supporting “the straight agenda,” ensuring that almost every work of modern fiction has a heteronormative romance angle, even if the story doesn’t need a romance angle. You may think that’s stupid, how so many stories tack on a romantic subplot. But it’s all part of the formula you support time and again. Which is why publishers keep demanding more of the same formula from their contracted authors. Because it’s an easy sell, relatively speaking.

And again, to grow and develop as a person, you should broaden your horizons and look for something to challenge you. Read a book about a gay couple, even if you aren’t gay. Pick up a book by an author who isn’t white. Seek out something from outside of your comfortable groove in the mainstream. Intentionally jump out of your groove sometimes, just to learn what else is out there. You’ll either toss a book in a few pages and move on, or you might risk learning something while you’re being entertained. That’s a double bonus, having fun while you learn.

There’s nothing wrong with buying from the mainstream. I’m not calling for a boycott, and my Goodreads list of read titles this year shows that I’m willing to read about straight white people along with all kinds of other folks. I’m asking you, my readers, to go over your reading selection from prior years and ask yourself honestly how many book pushed you out of your comfort zone by offering a point of view radically different from your own.

The thing to keep in mind is, I do that every time I read a mainstream book. To find a book that reflects anything remotely close to my values, I have to jump WAY outside the mainstream. I have an open enough mind to seek out stories about the other half. So I’m challenging my readers to try the same thing. Go out and find writing that challenges you. Find a new perspective to look at the world from, and give someone else a chance to tell their story. Sure, you might hate the book, and that’s the worst that can happen. But chances are even better you might come out of the experience with a broader mind, and very few people would consider that a bad thing.

Book review: Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

Hush, Hush has been on my TBR pile a long time through no fault of its own. I’d tried to read Fallen by Lauren Kate and since it didn’t work for me, the premise of fallen angels fell off my radar for a while, pun intended. But I finally got back in the mood for the meme, and I pulled this down to give it a shot.

A couple things needs to be said about the main character, Nora Gray, and her best friend Vee. These are not the brightest girls in high school, and they have low senses of self-preservation. They make bad choices. They never have a good comeback when involved in cut down contests. Nora is a horrible liar, being almost entirely incapable of coming up with believable excuses. She’s working at the lower end of the educational bell curve.

Does this make this book bad? No.

To get the story started, Nora is swapped in Biology class from her friend Vee to “the guy at the back of the class,” a move which set off about a billion red flags for me. I early on came to the decision that either the author had never been in a real Biology class, or the teacher’s strange unprofessional behavior had to be the result of mind control. And it does come out later that mind control is a factor in the story. but, as it’s happening in the story, a lot of what’s going on reeks of WTF. But readers who stick around will soon learn it all relates to Patch, “the guy from the back of the class.”

What to say about Patch? In a word, he’s creepy. No, really, totally freaking creepy. And I’m an expert on creepy. I found myself comparing this book over and over to Twilight, and I feel like Patch is ten times creepier than Edward. The scenes that he and Nora get close make me feel ill and nervous, and it doesn’t come across as romantic, even if Nora says that she thinks Patch is hot. To me it feel like a stalker cornering a girl he doesn’t belong around. Since Patch has mind control in his list of powers, it’s hard not to think he could influence Nora to feel things that she isn’t really feeling. And maybe he isn’t, but it’s still really creepy considering what he does to Nora twice in the course of the story. (Don’t worry, no spoilers.)

That mind control aspect is important, because a lot of things happens in this book that wouldn’t make any sense without someone pulling Nora’s strings. It allows for some good explanations for the weird scenes without creating too many incongruities. Still it is a rather convenient plot device, and near the end, it gets over played a bit. Also without realizing something else is at work here, some folk might be turned off by the Biology teacher’s behavior.

But, does this make Hush, Hush a bad book? No.

Where the book begins to get confused is in adding all these other characters into the mix who are connected to Patch, and thus to Nora. But when the reason starts coming out for one angel who’s ALSO stalking Nora along with Patch and the real bad guy, it doesn’t make much sense. She’s hot for Patch, and she wants him to become a guardian angel and return to heaven. And yet, she also plots to sabotage him from saving his charge and ascending. So her motivations come across as a little confused.

When the bad guy reveals himself at last, his reasons for wanting to kill Nora at least make sense, but the bad guy is just like Patch, also having mind control abilities. So his final monologue both clears up some of the incongruities and makes a few more. I did think his story was tied up a little too conveniently, and after so much build up in the rest of the book, the ending was kind of a let down.

And that closing chapter with the “romantic” kiss…no. Some other readers might think that scene is hot, but like I said, Patch was really creepy to me. I just don’t know if after a guy confessed that he thought about killing me twice, I’d still seriously consider a life-long relationship with him. But maybe that’s me being selfish, wanting to live longer, and all.

Ultimately, the story isn’t bad, but it isn’t great. It’s the first in a series, and I admit I feel enough curiosity about these characters that I’ll look for Crescendo. Yes, I think Patch is creepy and not all that romantic, but I don’t need to love characters to find their stories interesting. And I think both Nora and Vee are cringingly, hopelessly stupid. But, that doesn’t mean they can’t carry a story on their poorly cracked jokes and even more poorly thought out social plans. Seriously, Vee lets herself be talked into breaking into a school thinking “it’ll be fun.” ZERO sense of self-preservation, really.

So, I give Hush, Hush 3 stars, and I recommend it to paranormal romance and YA fans looking for something on the topic of fallen angels. It’s not a great story, but it’s a fun summer read that covers its potential flaws with a decent plot device. I’ll look forward to the sequel to see what new threats await Patch and Nora.

The ballad of Pinky McSparkles

I love Twitter. Can I just get that out of the way first? I interact with a number of people who are creative in various ways, and who sift through my crazy ramblings and sometimes reply to my outbursts in unpredictable and awesome ways.

The other day, I was rambling about how if I took up a pen name, I’d want to make sure that my alter ego was a kids book wuss of a creampuff author. So if she came back from the dead, as with George Stark, no way could she be tough enough to kill anyone, much less everyone I knew. This led to me briefly talking about why I don’t have a pen name, but I commented that I had thought about it. I had decided that I might do it, but only if I came up with a book so different that it demanded a pen name.

Well along come @CrookedFang to suggest helpfully that I should take the pen name Pinky McSparkles. And I went to tell hubby and he laughed loud and long. I laughed with him, almost until tears came out. What a brilliant name. It even tells you what kind of story she should write, some kids fantasy story about unicorns and rainbows and…

“And zombies,” said @Alpharalpha. More specifically he wrote:

Pinky McSparkles and the zombie apocalypse = want

So now there’s this idea flying out there, with added spin, and it’s just begging “Take a swing at me!”

And then, after I lamented that I’d have to hire someone to impersonate Pinky for the book signings with the kids, @Polerin volunteered to take on the role of Pinky. @Polerin is active in roller derby, and I thought, “Well, if Pinky McSparkles is supposed to survive a zombie apocalypse, she’d best be a roller derby girl.”

So here you have a possible plan that I may, or may not pursue. I mean, Pink McSparkles is an awesome name, but it demands a certain kind of story, a kind of sugary voice that exudes good cheer and rainbows. And sparkles. Can’t forget those. Right now, I don’t have anything that would fit her style, not even an inkling of a premise. But it IS a rather good pen name, and wouldn’t it be ironic if I sold a book under a new name and it sold a billion copies?

So I’ve got this whimpering request sent up to my muse: “Please, at some point, come up with a cute kids fantasy story worthy of the pen name Pinky McSparkles.”