Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 54

True Blood Tuesday S03E02 “Beautifully Broken”

It’s True Blood Tuesday, and I’m mad as hell at some fruit and wasteful dish usage in this episode. Download the MP3 here and hit play when the HBO logo/sound fade. Approximately.

New Year’s Resolutions: How did I do in 2016? What will I do in 2017?

I’m not a big fan of “New Year, New You!” type posts. I feel like I’m already kind of locked into the groove of being my old me, so I might as well stick with it. But I do make resolutions. For example, these are my resolutions from last year, and how well I did keeping up on them:

1. Reading Challenge Last year was a bad year for me, reading wise. I was in a total funk, and not just one of those “I devoured this book, now nothing else compares” funks. I just had a hard time picking a book and sticking with it. This year, in an attempt to combat that, I’m doing this reading challenge.

I didn’t even come close to finishing the reading challenge. But I did read some great books, like Truthwitch by Susan Dennard, which I think might have been my favorite book all year. But the moment I made a goal to do more reading, I quickly abandoned it. This is going to be a theme in this post.

2. Take Weekends Off Toward the end of 2015, I got serious burnout. Burnout spirals me into depression. Depression makes me a person I don’t like. And when I don’t like myself, the burnout gets even worse. I made an effort to take the month of December off. I didn’t exactly stick to it. But this year, I’m making myself a strictly Monday through Friday gal. Weekends won’t be for work, but for just hanging out and Me Time. Hopefully this prevents further burnout.

I did start taking weekends off, and I pretty much stuck to it, with the exception of a couple of writing retreats. But this didn’t stop me from getting burned out, because my next resolution was:

3. Write 600,000 Words This might seem like it’s in direct contradiction to the whole “Take time off, don’t get burned out” thing, but I think that my new schedule will actually make me more productive, so this is probably totally do-able.

Oh, totally doable, huh? Your new schedule is going to make you “more productive,” you say? I wrote 435,319 words in 2016. That’s a lot. But it’s not 600,000. And I’m still burned out. When it became clear (around September) that I wouldn’t make my goal, everything in my head ground to a screeching halt. More on that later.

4. Tag Things On This Blog The lack of tags infuriates some of you. I understand. I’m just not good at tagging. I’m going to make an effort to tag stuff now. I probably will not go through and retag all my old entries, as this blog was started in 2008 or something and I don’t have that kind of time to devote to it. But I’ll at least try.

I said I would try. I never said I would succeed.

So, those were my resolutions last year. These are my resolutions this year:

1. Stop tracking word counts. This may seem counterintuitive to avoiding burnout. After all, how will I have proof that I’m actually getting anything done. In the past, the thought of not entering my daily totals into a spreadsheet would made my skin crawl. But tracking isn’t helping anymore, as I find myself too focused on the numbers and not on the joy of creating. I came up with a new tracking system, instead. This is the tracking system I used in my bullet journal last year, in addition to the spreadsheet on my computer:

1000", ">2000", "Finished a whole scene", "Wrote a blog post," and "felt good about work." In the first two columns, only >1000 words, wrote a blog post, and felt good about work are checked off. The third column, only >1000 words is checked off. The last two columns are empty." width="604" height="457" />

 

Those last two days weren’t forgotten. I didn’t make my word count or finish a scene or blog post on those days. So I didn’t feel good about my work, no matter what I did accomplish. Maybe one of those days I formatted a manuscript or filled out an interview. Maybe I did research. But none of it counted as work to me if I didn’t see numbers in the spreadsheet. Writing doesn’t always mean actually putting down those words, especially if you’re self-published. By discounting everything else I was doing, I was asking myself to work twice as hard. And if I didn’t hit that mark, I didn’t allow myself to feel good about anything I’d gotten done.

This is my new way of tracking my work:

Instead of focusing on quantity, I’m going to worry about how I feel. Because entering numbers into a spreadsheet destroyed all the joy I used to feel about writing. Which leads me to my second resolution:

2. Be more forgiving of myself. I talk a good game about self-care and being kind to yourself. But wow, I don’t practice it. I over-extend myself, then get completely negative if I can’t fulfill my own expectations. Then I procrastinate. That just makes things worse. I spiral deeper and deeper into depression. Then nothing gets done, and I get even more depressed. Instead of focusing on times I mess up, I’m going to have to start remembering to look forward without constantly beating myself up or setting unrealistic goals.

For example, here’s a big one: I started homeschooling my teenage son. And yet, I expected myself to have the same output as I used to have. That’s not, you know. Totally absurd, or anything.

3. Spend more time on hobbies. I’ve been viewing hobbies as something I don’t have time for. Things like reading, gaming (which I finally can do again, after four years, now that my seizures are controlled), knitting and crocheting, coloring, needle felting, all those things I like to do? I stopped doing them if I didn’t have a way to make them “useful.” I love soap making, but I turned it into a side business instead of a hobby so that I could justify doing it. I turned my bullet journal and planners into my only non-writing related hobby I regularly made time for, but only because it was necessary to plan my week. Stickers, coloring, etc. were just a bonus. This year, I’m going to train myself to understand that I deserve to take breaks and do things that aren’t just “useful,” but pointless and fun.

4. Resist. In the only way I know how. By reminding people, via social media and the creative energy I put out into the world, that the United States isn’t operating “as usual.” The things we’re seeing here now aren’t normal. They aren’t what we stand for. And while I physically can’t go out and march in protests, I can continue to be a voice. I’ve wanted to give up so many times in 2016 and accept powerlessness. In 2017, I’m going to resist not only that instinct, but the facism my homeland is descending into.

5. Watch more Disney movies. A long time ago, Disney movies–problematic as they can be–gave me a regular escape from reality. Embracing my inner princess just might save my sanity this year, the way twelve rewatches of Galavant and Supernatural got me through 2016.

6. Promote my work, without feeling guilty. I’m one of those authors who goes, “I wrote a thing. Read it, maybe?” Ha ha ha, no. Not anymore. I’m not going to turn into an hourly scheduled tweet, buy my book, buy my book kind of person. But I’m not going to be ashamed of promoting myself anymore, or feel bad if I post here about books that are going onsale. When I sit back and think, “Damn, this author moves way more copies than I do,” it’s almost always because they’re unafraid to sell themselves. I’m not a natural salesperson at all, but there’s a difference between a hard sell and actually being timid and apologetic about self-promotion.

Those are my resolutions for 2017. Do you have any resolutions? Share them in the comments. Maybe other people will see one of yours and go, “Hey, maybe I’ll do that, too!”

SURRENDER is here (again)! (Pinned Post)

Good morning! It’s release day! Surrender is now live on Amazon (and will be coming to other platforms soon, and the buy links will get added to this pinned post).

As with every authors’ books, word of mouth is key. The rights to this book were returned only after I waived a year’s worth of royalties (and allowed Ellora’s Cave to continue to sell the book and collect royalties for the rest of 2016; a clause in the agreement prohibited me from saying anything to stop my readers from buying their version of the book while it was still on sale). While a re-release is unlikely to recoup the money I lost to Ellora’s Cave, I’d like this book to reach new readers and have some kind of life post-EC. If you’re inclined, it would be so helpful if you’d let a reader or two (who won’t be turned off by historical erotic romance with polyamory/menage) about this book’s re-release. Obviously, this is not expected at all, and no hard feelings if book recs aren’t something you usually do.

Read on for buy links and an excerpt:

 

Deaf since infancy and condemned to spinsterhood by her father’s will, Honoria has one last chance to experience the carnal passion she’s read about in scandalous novels. She enlists an unlikely man to be her companion for five days and nights of wicked pleasures and fulfilled fantasies, never dreaming that her desire could become something far more complicated.

Esau isn’t a man acquainted with the finer things in life. Common and proud, he’d rather work on the docks than bed a rich woman for money. But Honoria is unlike any woman he’s ever known, and the only one who’s ever stirred him to tenderness—something he never dreamed he could feel.

But another man has fallen in love with Honoria. Her interpreter, Jude, is torn between responsibility and the secret desire he harbors for her. Though he’s tormented by the knowledge that Honoria takes another man into her bed every night, Jude knows that his true feelings could destroy her happiness.

Faced with an impossible choice, Honoria won’t let her future be decided for her again. And despite their differences, both men must learn to share Honoria’s heart…or risk losing her completely.

CW: Contains audist language and discussion of child sexual abuse. 

Previously released as Silent Surrender.

Purchase on Amazon

Excerpt after the jump.

He’d only just settled into the hot water, a hiss escaping his lips, when the door opened. At first, he did not recognize the girl who’d slipped through the doorway. She wore a nightgown, pristine white muslin that glowed in the firelight. Her face glowed, too, like the pale milky glass in a streetlight. Small, dark eyes glittered from between two curtains of chestnut hair that hung, wavy from her braids, to her waist.

She came forward slowly, and he waited, motionless. It occurred to him to stand and leave, to collect up his clothes and never come back. He might joke about this over a pint, but deep down, he would always be unsettled that a woman had invited him into her home and asked politely if he would he fuck her.

But the memory of her slender body in his arms, fragile as a china doll even through her clothes, kept him where he sat.

She knelt beside the bath, the firelight illuminating her body inside her nightgown. The rosy points of her nipples stood out dark against the muslin, jerking upward with every ragged breath, though she appeared otherwise calm. Her eyes met his, and she searched his gaze with an intensity that discomfited him. He’d never in his life been so shaken, that he could recall. Not even as a child in the workhouse. Back then, and now, at the docks, he’d been able to stand before any man or woman, regardless of station, look them in the eye and make it clear that he was no man to be crossed.

This woman, Honoria, didn’t deserve to be frightened of him, and so he did not glower. Truthfully, he wasn’t sure it would have worked on a woman as bold as she was. For all her timidity as she trailed her fingers through water, studiously avoiding his thigh, she had come up to him in view of God and everyone at the docks and handed him that scrap of paper. She’d known what she was doing, and that she wanted him for the job.

That struck him with a new sense of responsibility, and made him doubt even more that he should stay.

She dropped her gaze, still playing at fanning her fingers through the too-hot bath. Slowly, the circles she made widened to brush his skin beneath the water, from knee to hip, and her breath hitched. Transfixed by the sight of her own hand touching him, she did not see him studying her, or, thankfully, the way he held his own breath as she laid her soft palm across his skin. The water made a ghost of her touch, and she lowered her head. A tremor shook her shoulders, and he feared for a moment she might be crying, but when she lifted her head, she was composed. She went to the little stand and lifted the soap, asking wordlessly, with eyebrows raised, if she could wash him. He nodded, only slightly unsure he answered the question she asked. Kneeling again, she plunged the soap into the water and brought it to his shoulder, moving it over the broad expanse of his back in circles.

He thought of the last time he’d been with a woman. He’d had her up against the wall out back of a pub, and afterward he’d left her standing there, laughing drunkenly and asking for him to come back.

There had never been a time when he’d had to be gentle with a woman. He didn’t like hurting anyone, and he never sought to, but he’d never been particularly careful, either.

Honoria cupped water between her small hands and lifted it to sluice down his back. Some ran down her arms, sprinkling the front of her nightgown as it dripped from her elbows. The wet muslin clung to her skin, and as she leaned over him to wash the other shoulder, her tight nipples brushed across his chest. She drew back, her face close to his, hand still braced against his soapy skin. He thought for a moment that she might kiss him, even pictured kissing her himself. Vividly, he imagined smiling at her, reassuring her without words then capturing her mouth. But the moment passed and she sat back on her heels, out of reach. Slowly, she lathered the soap over his chest, her fingers inching through coarse black hair. This time, when she reached across to scoop up the water, he did kiss her, fitting his mouth over hers and winding his arms around her back. She stiffened, her hands coming up almost defensively. Then, as if remembering this was what she wanted, she relaxed, but only slightly.

Sliding an arm under her backside, he lifted her into the tub, her knees parting on either side of his legs. She pushed against his chest and forced their mouths apart, breath tearing rapidly from her throat. She reached slowly between them, down, down, close enough to his groin that his cock leapt greedily toward her hand. He couldn’t remember ever being so hard, so sure that he would burst the second she touched him.

She lifted up the soap she had dropped and climbed from the tub, her dripping nightgown folding around her legs, revealing the dark triangle between them. She knelt again, concentrating now on his arms, on scrubbing his fingernails with the little brush. His hand was so large in hers, he felt at once like a lumbering giant and the most powerful man in the world. It was a good thing she had chosen him, and not another of the men on the docks. There were men who would see her smallness and want to crush it, who would delight in ruining something so pure.

Capturing her wrist, he dunked her hand into the water then brought it to his lips, still tasting a faint trace of the soap as he sucked one fingertip into his mouth.

She heaved a shuddering sigh and closed her eyes, her face as close to pure rapture as Esau had ever seen. She trembled like a rail tie when the engine steamed through, and he took her other hand, slick with the soap, and guided it to his cock.

She shot to her feet, eyes wide, covering her mouth and nose with both hands folded in a silent prayer. “Deliver me from mortification,” he assumed, from the way she turned her back.

He rose slowly from the tub, looking all around for something to dry himself. When he found nothing, he was content to soak the fine carpet on his way to her. Her shoulders stiffened an instant before he reached her, but she permitted him to lay his hands on them. Slowly, he slid his feet closer, wet muslin sticking to his legs and stomach, catching onto his skin to draw her to him. When he held her back flush against his chest, she leaned her head on his shoulder.

This was when he would have liked to whisper something in her ear. He didn’t know what he would have whispered, if she could have heard him. He’d never had a tender way with women.

Instead, he eased her nightgown from one shoulder and bent his head to brush his lips across the skin there. His hands fell to her hips and pulled her back, tight against him as he tasted her neck and smelled the rose-scented sweetness of her hair. Her head lolled to the side and tipped against his chest, baring more of her slender throat to him, revealing the soft line of her jaw and her small, perfect ear. His mouth found that, too, sucking the lobe between his lips and worrying it lightly with his teeth. Her chest rose and he slid his hands up her body, cupping her small breasts. Her knees buckled, and he lifted her in his arms, cradled to his chest, and carried her to the bed. It was so ridiculously massive that when he sat her upon the mattress, they could see eye to eye. Unflinching, she stared back at him as she slowly drew free the ribbon at the neck of her gown.

SURRENDER cover reveal and release date!

Hey there everyone! Let me tell you a story!

Once upon a time, an author wrote a book. With every page that passed, she fell more in love with the characters. By the time the story was done, the characters fell in love with each other. The author was so proud and happy. She wanted to share the book with the world.

So, the author submitted the book to a famous publishing house. She awaited their decision nervously, but she knew, deep, deep down in her heart, that somehow the book would find its way to readers.

Then one day, huzzah! The publisher gave her a contract. They took her story and gave it a fancy package. They gave it a new title. The author was proud of her little book, even though it didn’t find many readers. She was happy if even just one person read it.

But her happiness was short-lived. Within just a few years, rumors began to swirl that the publisher was not all it pretended to be. Some authors weren’t getting paid. The publisher began to lash out nastily at any who opposed them. Royalty checks stopped coming. The author despaired.

This story has a happy ending, for the author signed a magical contract waiving her right to any of the royalties due to her in return for the book. At the stroke of midnight on January 1st, 2017, the publisher’s spell will be broken.

Which brings me to my news today. That book, a hot, historical three-way, will be re-released on January 1st. My hope is that it will find even more readers after I had to spend so long urging people not to buy the book.

So, here you have it. Victorian-era polyamory, scandalous sex, a heroine who knows what she wants…what’s not to love, right?

 

 

Deaf since infancy and condemned to spinsterhood by her father’s will, Honoria has one last chance to experience the carnal passion she’s read about in scandalous novels. She enlists an unlikely man to be her companion for five days and nights of wicked pleasures and fulfilled fantasies, never dreaming that her desire could become something far more complicated.

Esau isn’t a man acquainted with the finer things in life. Common and proud, he’d rather work on the docks than bed a rich woman for money. But Honoria is unlike any woman he’s ever known, and the only one who’s ever stirred him to tenderness—something he never dreamed he could feel.

But another man has fallen in love with Honoria. Her translator, Jude, is torn between responsibility and the secret desire he harbors for her. Though he’s tormented by the knowledge that Honoria takes another man into her bed every night, Jude knows that his true feelings could destroy her happiness.

Faced with an impossible choice, Honoria won’t let her future be decided for her again. And despite their differences, both men must learn to share Honoria’s heart…or risk losing her completely.

CW: Contains audist language and discussion of child sexual abuse. 

Previously released as Silent Surrender.

Surrender will be available from Amazon on January first. Additional platforms to follow. Come back to the blog on release day for buy links and an excerpt!

 

Doctor Who, Romance, and a Preemptive Case for The Doctor/Bill

Spoilers for “The Return of Doctor Mysterio”

Let’s start with the obvious: this year’s Christmas special wasn’t going to top “The Husbands of River Song.” There was just no chance that the bittersweet but ultimately fairy tale ending of River and The Doctor’s time-crossed romance could be topped by our regularly-scheduled post-drought appeasement episode. But it did give us the return of Nardol, newly freed from King Hydroflax’s robot body (I do hope that The Doctor was kind enough to reassemble Ramone, as well), and it set up what’s likely to be the main conflict of the next season when we see that the Shoal has infiltrated UNIT.

But it also set up a sense of creeping dread with regard to the next companion. Once again, a broken-hearted Doctor is going to be setting off on an adventure with a woman of color as his companion, and once again we’re being set up to know in advance that The Doctor is really, really sad, because…love.

Look, I’m not one of those viewers who wants to see The Doctor fall in love with every single female companion on the show. Until the last season of Matt Smith’s run, I shunned Whouffle (a portmanteau name for the fan ship based on Clara’s quest to bake a perfect souffle). As far as I was concerned, Rose and River were the only romantic relationships we needed to see on screen (he could do what he wanted with Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth I in his own time). Doctor Who is not, as I have asserted many times before, a soap opera, and there’s a whole scope of human drama to explore outside of eros-type love. Still, I find it suspect that now, for the second time, we’re being eased into an acceptance of a non-white female companion who will not, under any circumstance, be getting romantic with The Doctor.

Much of my suspicion is based on the sheer amount of big-picture arc Steven Moffat seems to recycle from the Russell T. Davies era. Clara’s departure from The Doctor’s life mimics Donna Noble’s memory loss. His desperation and loneliness at losing Clara is an echo of his earlier separation from Rose. And, like Rose before her, Clara is in an interracial romance that’s threatened by her complicated feelings for The Doctor. When Rose was taken from him, The Doctor was too emotionally wrecked to reciprocate romantic feelings for his companion in the next series: a black woman named Martha.

While “The Return of Doctor Mysterio” doesn’t echo the story of the first post-Rose Christmas special, it does try to evoke a similar foreshadowing. The Doctor is fresh off the final twenty-four years he’s spent with his wife, River Song (on his timeline, anyway). He knows that now that they’re parted, she’ll be heading off to her death in her own timeline (coincidentally, the very first time he meets her). But the lines establishing his grief are largely throw-away, happening in the midst of an otherwise cluttered plot featuring superheroes, killer brains, the gender politics of child care and (I kid you not), a bizarre attempt to make a screaming squeaky toy an object of great sentiment. Nardol, his wife’s ex-personal assistant, is there to sum it all up for viewers at the end, after spending a couple of short dialogue exchanges alluding to The Doctor’s pain. There are no poignant words about lost love and loneliness like the ones he shared with Donna Noble after he lost Rose, but there is a very clear sense that we’re supposed to be feeling what we felt then, regardless of whether or not the script supplied it for us.

Which brings us to Bill, our incoming companion. Bill, as we know from her introduction in the trailer that debuted with “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” is a plucky, inquisitive young woman who enthusiastically travels with The Doctor through the next season. She’s young, she’s pretty, she’s funny, and if her Prince t-shirt is any indication, she’s also very cool. She’s played by Pearl Mackie, a biracial woman. Bill also just happens to be coming into the show after The Doctor suffers a romantic loss. Considering what happened the last time The Doctor lost a companion he loved (and whom he can remember), it seems likely that once again, a woman who isn’t white will be the companion who coincidentally stumbles across The Doctor at a time when he simply cannot love again.

As I said before, I agree with fans who feel that love stories aren’t (and shouldn’t be) the focus of the show. But they’ve always been there. The Doctor has been falling for humans since the sixth story aired over fifty years ago, all the way up to the 1996 TV movie, in which he whimsically considers a life on Earth with Dr. Grace Holloway. But since Martha appeared in the reboot, it seems like fans object to these relationships more when the person The Doctor has fallen for isn’t a white woman. A search on the fan fiction site An Archive of Our Own turns up only fifty-nine fics featuring The Doctor and Martha as a romantic pairing, as opposed to the 5,066 about The Doctor and Clara, the 4,899 about The Doctor and Amy Pond, the 5,867 stories about The Doctor and River Song, and the 13,101 dedicated to the romance between The Doctor and Rose Tyler.

My prediction for the next season is this: that despite the flimsy evidence presented in “The Return of Doctor Mysterio,” we’ll be told that The Doctor simply can’t develop romantic feelings for Bill because he’s so broken up about losing River. Fans will argue that Peter Capaldi himself said that he didn’t want to act out romances between The Doctor and his companions, conveniently forgetting that his Doctor finished the romantic arcs of both The Doctor and Clara and The Doctor and River Song. They’ll say that they’ve tired of The Doctor falling in love with every female companion, despite the fact that, since the reboot, he’s had romantic relationships with only Rose, Clara, and River while traveling with an assortment of one-off, regular, and recurring characters. And they’ll never be able to answer the simple question of why, even taking all those factors into consideration, it just so happens that the only companions The Doctor falls in love with are white women.

That’s my prediction. My hope, however, is that if there will be no romance between The Doctor and Bill, that she will have a role as important as that of past companions. Let her save the world or be fated to save The Doctor. Let her be the new Donna Noble, saving the entire universe and becoming a legend that passes from galaxy to galaxy, and not the new Martha, who saves the world at tremendous personal cost and gets a less emotional send-off than Amy, whose greatest accomplishment was literally waiting. But ideally, why not let The Doctor fall in love with a fun, cool person in a healthy way, like he did with Rose? This next season, Doctor Who has the chance to impart an incontrovertible fact that is too often ignored in media: that white women are not the only women who deserve love.

And that is exactly the kind of message that The Doctor himself would endorse.

The Trout Nation 2016 Year End Wrap-Up

Is there really a way to have a “best of” with regards to 2016? I don’t want to disparage the year too much; I think I doomed us when I did that to 2015. But here are what I believe to be the highlights of this blog (from my perspective) in 2016, though even some of the highlights are dubious. And stay tuned until the end, where I will reveal the single best and worst things that happened to me in 2016.

January

I pissed off second amendment stans. It went just about as well as one would expect.
I “attacked” another author for the paltry sin of victim blaming a child and defending a pedophile. Again, went just about as well as one would expect.

February

A gunman tried to take away the spirit of Kalamazoo, but he just made it stronger.
We shared a very special Valentine’s day with Christian Grey and Anastasia Rose Grey Steele.

March

I went on a Jamaican Troutcation, courtesy of Apple Vacations!
The weed was excellent!
Unexpected things happened! Like turtle sex!
And you all got some travel tips out of the deal!
Unfortunately, author egos also reigned during March. Nobody likes self-publishing. Boo.

April

Like, nothing exciting happened in April.

May

I published Second Chance, Ian and Penny’s second set of books!
I shared what my fibromyalgia flares feel like.
A cover model decided to throw his entire career into a wood chipper and disable the safety switch.
And I had my 20th Who-nniversary 

June

A plagiarist tried to cover her own tracks and return to the market.
Diana Gabaldon continued to deride the very genre readers that made her a star.
I had a four-hour torture session with the IRS.
Our read-along of Apolonia came to a merciful end!
We got high and watched The Craft

July

I loved Ghostbusters.
A YA author went on a racist tirade against a young black teen.

August

I slapped Mr. Jen in the dick so hard it created a nuclear catastrophe. It was very romantic.
We got high and watched Labyrinth.
My daughter made the most epic cake the world has ever known.
I released The Stranger, the very first encounter between Neil and Sophie.

September

I vented my frustration at the gay-for-you trope.
And made a lot of crafts.

October

I started with the man in the mirror and changed my ways. Though I used a different song to express this concept.
I went on a walk through a magical mushroom forest.

November

Fuck November.
Get your hope from women.
My son didn’t give a shit about the Cubs winning the world series.
I used my own books as an example of how racist crap gets published.
Mr. Jen admitted to some crappy behavior.

December

The rise of the neo-rapemance
Mr. Jen unironically loves “Barbie Girl.”

The worst thing that happened in 2016:

Vichnaya Pamyat, grandpa.

And no list of the highlights (and lowlights) of 2016 would be complete without

THE BEST THING THAT HAPPENED TO ME IN 2016:

Peter Capaldi wished me a happy birthday. WTFOMGBBQ

So, that’s Trout Nation’s 2016 in a nutshell. Let’s hope 2017 is less “interesting” and comes with more happiness and cheer, so our 2017 round up is better and less bleak! Onward and upward (or, as my landlord often says, “good enough”)!

True Blood Tuesday S03E01: “Bad Blood”

CAUSE BABY NOW WE GOT BAD BLOOD

YOU KNOW IT USED TO BE MAD LOVE

SO TAKE A LOOK WHAT YOU’VE DONE

BECAUSE NOW WE GOT TRUE BLOOD

So, it’s True Blood Tuesday. Long time, no see! Here’s the MP3. Play it when the HBO sound and logo fade. Then check out my Instagram to see all the spirograph drawings I made while we were chatting.

#BillyMack is dead! Long Live #MeetCute!

Mark your calendars, everybody! It’s that time of year again. What time? HOLIDAY MOVIE WATCH-ALONG TIME!

For the past several years, Trout Nation has gathered around the loving glow of the television to celebrate the season by watching that problematic Christmas fave, Love, Actually. But I’ve gotten a bit bored of it. You can only watch Rick Grimes creep on his BFF’s girl so many times, you know?

This year, we’re gonna shake it up a bit. This year, we’re going to watch Nancy Meyer’s classic romantic comedy The Holiday.

THE HOLIDAY  TWITTER WATCH-ALONG!
Friday, December 23, 2016
7 p.m. EST

If you’re into white people wearing expensive-looking sweaters and falling in love to Imogen Heap, this is the movie for you, boy howdy. Unfortunately, it’s not on Netflix. But you’ve got time to Red Box it, borrow it from a friend, or rent it on Amazon or YouTube. Or thief it off the internet. But I never told you to do that.

Make some hot cocoa and grab some cookies, start the movie at 7pm EST, and tweet to #MeetCute.

(Can’t make the posted time due to the Earth being to god damn big and round? Watch it and tweet anyway. We can all catch up!)

Yet another True Blood Tuesday postponed.

This week’s True Blood Tuesday is once again postponed by my dry, hacking cough. By next week I’ll either be on the mend or I’ll have succumbed to the consumption. Stay tuned.

Censorship, Readership, and Rape as Romance

CW: As the title of this post implies, there will be discussion of rape in romance novels and graphic description of rape scenes.

This weekend, romance Facebook got its weekly friend-and-acquaintanceship destroying controversy. It centered around a book–that I won’t name–which featured a plotline that goes like this: a survivalist-style woodsman and unrepentant murderer finds a young female college student he likes. He drugs her, kidnaps her, ties her to his bed, rapes her, and of course, by the end of the book, she’s realized that being owned by this sexy “alpha” hero is far preferable to the life she’d planned for herself, and falls in love with him.

You’d think this would outrage me to the point of bringing back my “Don’t Do This, Ever” column, but it doesn’t. This has sadly become a trend that readers clamor for. The days of the “Alpha” hero who asserts his dominance over the heroine through his forceful personality, yet surprisingly tender heart, are over. The new “Alpha” is the one who commits numerous felonies in pursuit of you and feels no remorse for having done so.

Swoon.

This particular case gained attention through the liberal application of drama within the erotic romance community. The author–who I won’t name–is rumored to have a long-standing feud with another author, against whom she made unsupported allegations of plagiarism. As outrage over this author’s rape-as-romance spread across social media, the accused plagiarist took action–by asking her readers to sink the book by contacting Amazon. After the call to have the book removed, readers tossed around the oft-used warning that “censoring” the book is a “slippery slope.” No censorship took place in this case; while Amazon chose to stop selling the book, it remained available from other retailers. No law was enacted to prevent the sale or possession of the book, which is available on the site once more, fitted with an alternate title and new, more mainstream cover. The slippery slope is a logical fallacy, and an unlikely scenario. Many books have been removed from Amazon for quality, formatting, or cover issues, as well as for content, and it has yet to result in a sweeping ban of erotica and erotic romance across the platform. There’s a lot of cash to be made selling erotic titles; it’s doubtful Amazon would yield those figures to their competitors. And if Amazon chose to no longer sell “dub-con” or “non-con” books, that would be their prerogative as a business, not a censorship move.

But the outcry over this act of “censorship” and the motives behind it reveal the disturbing thought process of some of the authors and readers of these types of books: any criticism of their fantasy is “judging” them, and any “judgment” is censorship. “Don’t judge people for what they want to read!” more than one Facebook post demanded. “Don’t tell people what they can and can’t enjoy.” But it’s not about what they are or aren’t allowed to enjoy. It’s the fact that fans of the rape-fantasy subgenre are able to so easily distance themselves from the subject of actual rape, to the point that their defense of their kink becomes active reinforcement of rape culture and blatant victim-blaming of real life survivors.

One GoodReads review for the book includes this passage:

After hearing the outrage over this book and talk of rape and the woman being unconscious, I expected something quite horrific, but really it wasn’t. There was no violence, he never lifted a hand to her and he did everything he could to care for her and give her everything she could ever want.

There was no violence, the reader asserts, because despite the fact that the hero uses horse tranquilizers to keep the heroine unconscious while he anally and orally violates her, he “did everything he could to care for her and give her everything she could ever want.” That the hero wouldn’t have had to “care for her” if he hadn’t drugged her and kidnapped her in the first place apparently never crosses the reader’s mind. Nor does the thought that “everything she could ever want,” to most women does not include captivity and forced “breeding,” as the book charmingly describes the hero’s ultimate goal.

“You can’t judge people for what they want to fantasize about!” was a rallying cry in defense of the book. But for all the insistence that readers instinctively understand that it’s just fantasy and they would never condone or desire such behavior in real life, GoodReads reviewers disagree. One says:

(Who doesn’t like a gorgeous bearded almost-savage hunk to take control and sweep you off your feet every day of your life, right?)

While another asks:

Where can I find one? [hero] was raised differently and saw the world differently. So going old school he found a woman …..and took her. Through patience most people wouldn’t have he brought her around to his way of thinking.

If you can suspend your beliefs in right and wrong and just read to enjoy the story you will find [hero] just as hot and sexy as the rest of [author]‘s men and be glad she came up with such a hot and fun story to share with us

The reviewer clearly states that she suspended her “beliefs in right and wrong” in order to enjoy the story, but still found the hero “hot and sexy,” as well as “patient.” Ah, yes, that rare, patient man who, in lieu of conversation and the usual getting-to-know-you process, jumps the gun and kidnaps you instead.

Another reader goes so far as to deny that the drugging, kidnapping, and raping is the hero’s fault at all:

[Hero] is all alpha but he is a softy. I love how he see what he wants and goes after it (her). Is it kidnapping? Nope. She is telling the world here I am. The number one mistake most people make. If don’t want something to happen then don’t tell people where you at 24/7. Be smart. Be safe. She is lucky it was him and not someone with ill intense.

Yes, she’s lucky it wasn’t someone with “ill intense,” like a guy who would…kidnap her, drug her, and repeatedly assault her? If women didn’t want to be kidnapped, drugged, and raped, this review says, they should be smart. And if they’re not smart, then they apparently deserve what they get and should be thankful for it.

On Amazon, another reader praises the book for exposing the reality of what it takes to make a healthy relationship:

This story knocks any fluffy piece of writing out of the water with it’s basic and bare boned portrayal of what a man and woman truly need to survive happily…and a man not afraid to take what is his.

Again and again, readers and authors who were disturbed by the content of the book and reader response to it were told that their objections were harmful, sexually repressive, and childish. From an Amazon review:

*Trigger*

Get past it. This book is hot.

 

Get past it, reader who may have experienced mental health consequences due to the content of the book that, even after republication under a different title, still bears no content warnings. It’s just rape, after all, a sin on par with bad grammar in the opinion of another reviewer:

Yes there is rape and a couple grammatical errors, but that’s it. There is a happy ending and it really is a great story.

The book was marketed as not just erotica, but an erotic romance with BDSM elements. Which re-opens an entirely different can of worms that BDSM just can’t seem to keep closed in the wake of Fifty Shades of Grey; our cultural understanding of what does and does not constitute BDSM is now defined by readers of a specific subgenre of romance who have likely never engaged in or researched actual BDSM. In this case, that definition now includes actual rape, as opposed to consensual rape-kink.

At the end of the day, authors are free to write whatever fantasy strikes them. Readers are free to consume it. But those readers and authors must accept that others will not be silenced so they can enjoy their fetish without guilt. No matter how it may be dressed up as “non-con” or “dub-con,” these books are rape fantasy. And there’s nothing wrong with enjoying rape fantasy–as long as that fantasy isn’t normalizing rape as a romantic aspiration, and as long as readers don’t reject the notion of rape being harmful just so they can flick their respective beans guilt-free. As long as that attitude persists in romance, people will judge readers and writers who contribute to that narrative. If you’re one of those readers or authors and that judgment makes you uncomfortable, well. That’s a whole lot of your problem.