Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 75

NEW RELEASE! The Feminist Utopia Project

Hey everybody! While I spend the week in the happiest place on Earth, you can read this new book imagining the happiest place Earth could be. I have a short piece in here, and there are fifty-six other contributors (including Janet Mock and Melissa Harris-Perry), all imagining a world with true equality for all genders.

 

What do we want?

In this groundbreaking collection, more than fifty cutting-edge voices, including Melissa Harris-Perry, Janet Mock, Sheila Heti, and Mia McKenzie, invite us to imagine a truly feminist world. An abortion provider reinvents birth control, Sheila Bapat envisions an economy that values domestic work, a teenage rock band dreams up a new way to make music, Katherine Cross rewrites the Constitution, and Maya Dusenbery resets the standard for good sex. Combining essays, interviews, poetry, illustrations, and short stories, The Feminist Utopia Project challenges the status quo that accepts inequality and violence as a given—and inspires us to demand a radically better future.

Amazon • Barnes & Noble • iBooks

DOUBLE STEVE BONUS MONDAY

(Austin)

Scarecrows. Screw those guys.

My town has been seeming taken over by scarecrows. Here is the saga (ignore my bike helmet’s askew-ness. One of the pads fell out at the post office today and wouldn’t stick back in, so it just kept slipping back. I assure you, I don’t usually wear it so high up on my damn head) (also, the videos are filmed vertically because it’s hard to ride a fucking bike and use a phone, okay?).

*next one has NSFW language

Jealous Haters Book Club, “Apolonia” chapter 14

To recap: Cyrus is an alien, his alien girlfriend is on her way with a space war ship, Ellie the cum burping gutter slut is an agent of the Majestic and apparently so is Benji, and space stuff is finally happening.

Some vehicles are coming down the street, so Cy, Rory, and Dr. Zorba go running out the back door, headed for the rendez-vous point with Cy’s space girlfriend.

The Old River Bridge was on the outskirts of town and at least a half hour drive. Traveling on foot and hiding in the shadows meant it would take us half the night.

I looked at my watch. “What time are you supposed to meet her?”

“By sunrise,” Cy said. “Without my sola I can’t be sure.”

The underline is italics in the actual book. A kind soul emailed me to tell me how I could fix my italics problem in the style sheet, but I’m so afraid, because I know for a fact that there have been times I’ve accidentally italicized something when I shouldn’t have, then thought, “Fuck it,” because I didn’t care because I knew you guys couldn’t see it. I’m a bit nervous about changing it, but I have held onto the email in case I decide to in the future.

Anyway, back to the recap. Dr. Z asks Cy if he has a car, which is a big negatory, good buddy. Dr. Z asks about his moped. Regardless of the impression Macklemore’s latest video might have given you, there’s no way all three of them are fitting on one moped. At least, not if they want the damn thing to move.

This is more the situation you’d need for that.

It doesn’t matter, anyway, because Rory left it in a ditch full of water. She tries to tell Dr. Zoidberg, but Cy tells them they can talk about it later. Maybe if he hadn’t spent so much time monologuing in the last chapter, Rory would have the chance to tell Dr. Z, in a single sentence, “Hey, your moped is not an option.”

They decide they’re going to sneak to this bridge. I still can’t figure out if it’s a bridge over a river called “Old River” or if it’s the old river bridge as in there’s a new river bridge and this is the old one. The reason I can’t tell is because of the random capitalization of “The Gym” in earlier chapters.

My socks were marinating in cold rainwater, and my skin felt soggy and raw. Only the knees of my jeans were wet, but the puddle of rainwater was traveling up the backs of the denim, and soon, my pant legs would be completely saturated.

I have to hand it to Maguire here. This passage really made me cringe, because cold, wet pants and socks are the worst. And she did a good job with it.

Aliens, Xena, fringe departments of the CIA I could handle, but nothing was worse than wet clothes.

Well, we’ll see how well you handle things when “Xena” actually shows up.

Rory points out that Benji was supposed to meet her at seven, and she’s worried that he’s been taken.

Cy turned. “How can you be so naive, Rory? He’s with them. You heard Ellie.”

“She was lying. She does that.”

Yeah. She lied about not being a CIA operative. And Cy is saying that Benji is lying about the same thing.

“Why won’t you see him for what he is?”

“How did he make Majestic, Cy? Did they recruit him in middle school?”

Okay, but…Ellie is also in the Majestic, and she’s the same age. I’m really confused about this whole “How did he make Majestic” phrasing. It implies that they know that there’s some involved process to getting on the team, when they don’t really know how it all works. It’s not like, “How did he become president at age thirty.” And they already mentioned that it was possible that Ellie was recruited in high school.

Unless there’s some other kind of situation going on.

They keep walking, and the professor needs to rest. Which gives Cy time to tell us how old he really is:

“Our cycle is different. But if I calculated my age in twelve-month cycles, I will turn seventy-five this year.”

OH SHIT RORY! Maybe you want to back off about Ellie and her “geriatric” habit now, huh?

Rory won’t accept it, though, saying that it isn’t funny anymore (because it was hilarious when you were just being chased by the CIA and Cy wasn’t an alien?) and again, demands answers.

This book should been called “The Big Book Of Why”.

They keep on walking and hiding from cars, and Rory asks Cy what will happen if they get to the bridge and Apolonia is waiting for him. And he says that he’ll go with her. Rory asks if he’ll say goodbye.

We walked in silence for a few minutes. It occurred to me to prod him for an answer, but I just couldn’t. It seemed trivial with everything else going on. But when Cy stopped, turned, and pulled me into his arms, I was glad I had given him the time he needed. I was melting in his arms while he held me exactly the way he had at the bottom of the steps the day I didn’t know I needed him–the first day he walked me to class. Back then, that embrace was letting me know that he was there. Now, it was an apology that he couldn’t always be.

This would have been 100% more poignant if literally any time had been taken to believably develop the alleged feelings between Cy and Rory. All we saw was him puking up pizza, her hating him for not stealing her job, him hugging her because she was late to work, a party scene in which he defended her from a guy after someone else had already defended her, and him creepily following her to her dorm the first night they met. That was it. The whole time. We’re supposed to be looking at this as a romance for the ages or something, but it’s not written in the book. We’re just told that they love each other very much.

Now let’s take a look at this sentence:

I was melting in his arms while he held me exactly the way he had at the bottom of the steps the day I didn’t know I needed him–the first day he walked me to class.

What even is going on there? Who didn’t look at that and go, “This is wonky, it needs restructuring?” It would have been so easy to do. Instead of “I was doing this while he did this like he did this other thing that one time,” it could have easily been broken into a few different sentences:

I melted in his arms. He held me exactly the way he had at the bottom of the steps the first day he’d walked me to class. The day I didn’t know I needed him.

Writing Tip: If you have a lot to say, you could always use punctuation.

Cy says goodbye, and Rory isn’t satisfied with that answer:

“Even though your story is the craziest load of crap I’ve ever heard, I’m out here, walking around in the dark, through the mud, with you. I came for you, Cy. We’re all probably going to prison. You’re just going to get on that ship…and what? Wave and say, ‘Thanks for risking your lives for me.’”

Okay, but Rory? You’re not out there because of Cy. You’re out there because your father and Dr. Zoidberg got you involved in some shit even they couldn’t handle. You’re out there because you’re hiding from the CIA, so you don’t really have a choice. Yeah, you went and tried to save Cy, but you were always going to be taken in. Besides:

“You don’t even believe in that ship.”

Good point, Cy. If this is all a load of bullshit, why is Rory following Cy? Couldn’t he also be with the Majestic? Couldn’t this be a trap? If you don’t believe his story, you’re putting yourself in danger because you’ve got a crush on him? Writing Tip: Don’t let your protagonist doubt another character’s motivations, yet continue to trust that character’s motivations at the same time, without reassuring the reader that your protagonist sees all the possibilities for how this could go wrong. At the moment, Rory is acting like she’s certain of everything.

“I believe in you.”

“this is not easy for me, if that’s what you think.”

“Then…let’s make it easy.” I shrugged, forcing a hopeful smile. “I just don’t want to miss anyone else. I know what it’s like. It’s too hard.”

You know what else is probably hard? Being away from your home planet and not seeing another one of your kind for the rest of your life. But he should definitely stay on Earth with you, since he’s known you for a whole couple of months and you have a crush.

“I don’t need you to love me to love you,” I said, remember Benji’s words and, for the first time, understanding what they meant. There were so many different kinds of love. I didn’t have to love him romantically. I could love him enough to see him home, wherever that was. “You’re still my friend. I care about what happens to you, and I’m still going to see this through to the very end.”

Again, we haven’t seen evidence of this friendship at all. The entire relationship between Rory and Cy has seemed to be her hating him for stealing a job he wasn’t stealing, and him randomly hugging her when there seems to be no connection at all between them besides the one the author repeatedly assures us is there.

This whole conversation and passionate embrace thing, by the way, happens with Dr. Z still with them. He’s just not mentioned for the entire duration of the conversation, so I assume he’s just an awkward, silent witness to this.

Rory hears a car engine and recognizes that it’s Benji’s Mustang, because she can recognize the sound of one car on the road from every other car in town. Hey, maybe she can. Maybe Benji has some terrible car problem he hasn’t fixed the whole time they’ve been at school.

A broad smile spanned across my face.

Spanned? Is that the word we’re going with? Okay. It’s your life, Rory.

“It’s Benji!” I said, running toward the road. Relief rushed over me. They hadn’t taken him. He was okay.

Right. They haven’t taken him. And you’ve now had two people, one of whom you profess to love and trust, one of whom is actually in the Majestic, tell you that Benji is in the Majestic. But run right up there and reveal your position after you’ve spent all night hiking through the woods and shit to stay safe.

Luckily, Cy grabs her and holds her back, telling her that he doesn’t trust Benji.

The Mustang passed slowly. Cy and the professor ducked when they realized Benji had a flashlight and was shining it into the woods.

“Rory!” Benji called in a loud whisper from his orange Mustang.

So now Benji is out searching for her…how does he know where to look? Why wouldn’t he assume that she just blew him off for their dinner plan? You know, unless he had a hunch they would go to the Old River Bridge. And why would he assume that unless he was in the Majestic and already knew about the aliens?

And by the way, Writing Tip: We already know it’s his orange Mustang. We already know he owns it. Saying “the Mustang” or even, “the car” would have worked to eliminate repetition here.

Rory figures that since Benji has a car, and they still have a long way to go, she should totally give away their position. But Cy won’t let her. Probably because he has some sense.

I wanted to run after Benji, to ask for his help. My gut said that he could be trusted and that he would do anything he could to help.

Your gut tells you he’s okay, but two other people who know more about the situation than you do have told you that he works for the people who want to find and probably torture and kill you. Why would you take that chance, just to snag a ride?

Cy tells Rory that Benji will only hurt her, and she angrily replies that Cy is just threatened by him and doesn’t know anything. Cy says that she’s attracted to danger, and if she wasn’t, she’d be able to see that Benji is on the wrong side.

They walk the rest of the night, and Dr. Z is having a hard time keeping up.

When the sky began to show the first signs of daybreak, Cy’s encouragements were louder, and he sounded more like a drill sergeant. “We must hurry. No more breaks! It’s just over the hill!”

I sighed. The hill was five miles away. “We’ve got to get on the road, Cy! It will be so much faster.”

Okay, let’s stop and talk for a minute about distance. If the hill is five miles away, how can Rory know which hill he’s talking about? It’s not like she can see it, it’s five miles away. If the Earth were really, really flat, and there were absolutely no obstacles in your line of sight, your eyes can see a long way. We can see stars. Think about how far away those are, and we can still perceive their light with the naked eye. But Rory isn’t gazing up in to the boundless cosmos, she’s looking down a road that apparently runs through the woods. There must be no curves at all on it, no low-hanging branches, and no horizon. So in this area in the eastern part of the country (Rory described “moving east” to go KIT earlier in the chapter), I am to believe that there are five miles of total straightaway before the next hill, and places where you can see for a literal mile from ground-level?

I was going to be snarky by putting in a picture of the rolling hills in Virginia, because I thought that was where this book was taking place. But when I went back to search “Virginia”, there were no matches. So out of curiosity, I searched for “KIT” and “Kempton”, figuring there would be some mention of where they were located. Nada. Finally, as an experiment, I searched for every one of the fifty states, even the ones the setting descriptions didn’t fit, like Hawaii or California. Not a single one was mentioned in the entire novel. At least, not that the search function could find. Writing Tip: The United States is a big place. Just saying “east” and “it’s cold in November” doesn’t really cut it. Please name which state your story takes place in, even if the town and university is fictional. EDIT: We got an answer on this, she’s in Indiana. Kindle desktop app search function, you’re a worthless POS.

Anyway, back to distance. Earlier, there’s mention of Dr. Z “[...]wheezing for the last five or so miles.” So they’ve already gone over five miles, at least, plus all the time they’re walking that distance isn’t accounted for, and there’s another five miles. Rory said that the bridge is on the outskirts of town, a twenty minute drive away. If we substitute 55 mph, a common speed for country or “outskirts” roads in the U.S. to take care of the speed variable, a twenty minute drive is going to be about eighteen miles. I say “about” because I’m estimating, I’m not going to do the whole equation. I’m going to suggest that it’s a tad unlikely that Dr. Z, who is described as “geriatric” and who needed a break after twenty minutes of walking at the beginning of the trip, is physically capable of going this far.

And now let’s also discuss what it means to be walking down a road for five miles. They couldn’t be on the road before because they might be spotted walking in the dark. Now it’s starting to get light out, and they’re going to walk down the road. For five miles. That’s going to be like an hour and a half, I would assume, given the fact that they’ve already been walking all night and are probably stumbling around. So they’ve got a greater chance now of being caught, and that’s when they decide to go up to the road.

SURE WHY NOT

Cy was a good quarter mile in front of me, and Dr. Z was farther behind me than that.

Writing Tip: You might not need to measure literally every distance in miles.

A low, throbbing sound came from the other side of the hill. Cy seemed to recognize it and took off in a sprint, more than a sprint. He seemed to have switched on the nitro and surged ahead. A few moments later, he disappeared over the hill.

Exactly how long does the author believe a single mile is? How long does the author believe five miles is? Because they’re already at the hill.

I picked up the pace, afraid that he would see Apolonia and leave before I could see him one last time.

It’s so important that she see Cy one last time, she straight up ditches Dr. Z.

Just before I reached the peak of the hill, Benji’s Mustang appeared from the other direction, stopping abruptly the second he saw me.

How convenient, that Benji, who is definitely not working for the Majestic, just happens to know where the spaceship is going to be. He embraces Rory and tells her how worried he was about her. He’s still worried, because she’s cold, and he gives her his coat.

I had two fistfuls of his shirt, burying my face in his chest.

I feel like Rory is just content to cling to whichever guy happens to be nearest at the time.

Rory asks Benji how he knew where she was.

Benji glanced at the hill and then back at me. “Because that’s where everyone else is.”

Again, not suspicious at all. He just happened to be on the outskirts of town, miles and miles away from everyone, where all the military vehicles and the space ship are hanging out:

Military vehicles were surrounding a large craft, every curve of it hull smooth but not shiny. Strange symbols spanned a quarter of its length, and the light coming from its underbelly seemed to glow from its casing. It was hovering just a couple of feet off the ground over the remnant foundation of the old gas station on the far side of the bridge.

So yeah. Total coincidence that Benji stumbled upon this.

The bad news is that now that he’s seen it, this is pretty much Benji’s only option.

The Nayara had come to take Cy away. He would board her, and I’d never see him again.

So she’s standing right there with Benji, lamenting that the guy she loved is going to go back to his home planet, but when Benji says he thought she might have been with Cy, she’s insulted:

I turned to him, a little offended. “Seriously? You thought I’d just hop off your floor and get into Cy’s bed?”

Why not? You’re so in love with Cy that you actually want him to forsake his home planet so he can stay with you. Why wouldn’t you have had sex with him? Also, so what if you did? I get that you’re the slut police and all, Rory, but having sex with two dudes in a short span of time isn’t really that big a deal. And why do you think this is the time to have a conversation about your relationship, when there’s a spaceship right there?

So, how did Benji just happen upon the spaceship?

“I couldn’t sleep, so I went for a run to blow off some steam. It passed right over me, and then I saw the Humvees heading this way. I ran back to my car and drove this way, thinking there would be a roadblock or a checkpoint or something.”

Note: in the first sentence, the steam Benji is blowing off passes right over him. The ship hasn’t been mentioned for two paragraphs.

“Benji,” I said, looking up at him, “can I trust you? I mean, really trust you?”

His eyebrows pulled in. “Of course you can.”

I hugged him tightly. “Thank you,” I whispered, just as Dr. Z jogged the rest of the way to where we stood.

Well, as long as he says you can trust him. Untrustworthy people rarely lie about their trustworthiness. Glad we got this misunderstanding cleared up.

So, there’s a roadblock and soldiers surrounding the ship. The roadblock is, inexplicably, within sight of the spaceship. You’d think they would have put up a road block (and more than just orange barrels, as Benji describes it) further away, so that the general public didn’t learn that, you know, aliens exist or whatever.

I glanced down, looking for Cy. I didn’t see him, but I did see the man with the crocodile boots standing in the middle of it all. No gun. No camera. Just staring at the ship with his hands on his hips.

If Benji and Rory can see them, it seems like they would be able to see Benji and Rory, too, right? They’re standing in the middle of the road at the top of the hill. It’s super convenient that the spaceship is distracting them.

The ship was lifting slowly into the air, and an LED-like glow lit up the edges of the ship.

Writing Tip: I know I’ve mentioned this one before, but as I’m currently working on edits for my own book and I’m super guilty of doing this all the time, it’s worth pointing out that “The ship was lifting” should be written as “The ship lifted” to make the action more immediate.

Also, try to not use the same word for a noun twice in one sentence. In fact, the sentence could have ended with “edges,” because the only other noun present is “air” and air doesn’t have edges, so there wouldn’t be confusion.

Another sound, this one familiar, was muffled by the ship. Cy was running toward the huge craft, waving his arms, screaming “Apolonia! Stop! Apolonia!”

Whatever you do, Cy, don’t draw attention to yourself so that the military dudes get you. Stay stealth.

Just as he said her name the second time, the ship pulsed for just a second, like the breath taken before a scream. In the next moment, gun-like barrels fired from the ship at the vehicles and soldiers. The sound and heat penetrated my bones, even a quarter of a mile away.

I am beyond finished reading about how far away everything is. This hill is a quarter mile tall/long apparently? Okay. Fine. Fuck it. Whatever.

Bullets weren’t coming from the gun-like barrels protruding from the front and sides of the ship. They looked more like fire in gel capsules. The capsules exploded on contact, but they also spread, igniting everything they touched. The fluid didn’t splatter though. It jumped.

So Cy is still standing there waving his arms, there’s a gun/fire battle between the ship and the military, and Rory says:

“C’mon!” I yelled, pushing out of Benji’s arms. “Take me across the bridge, Benji!”

“Rory, that’s crazy! You’ll get yourself killed!”

I opened the passenger door. “Cy is going to die if we don’t, and if he dies, we’ll all die.”

You’re all going to die anyway, dipshit. You’re going to try to drive a Ford Mustang through a fire fight between alien forces and heavily armed military while everything is blowing up and on fire. And on a bridge, which is historically the worst place to have any kind of battle.

But of course, they get into the car and speed down to where the action is happening, because everyone in this book is stupid.

She was blowing up everything. The surrounding trees were ablaze, and almost all the military vehicles were incinerated. He was right. Apolonia was emotional. He hadn’t shown up at the correct time, so she was going to punish those who had come in his place.

Pff. Women, am I right? It’s a good thing Rory never gets emotional.

Rory jumps out of the car to try to save Cy, but Cy sees that Apolonia is about to fire on the Jeep where the crocodile boots guy is hiding.

Cy saw what was about to happen and ran to stand between Crocodile’s vehicle and the Nayara.

“Apolonia! I’m here! Stop this!” Cy said. He took another deep breath and yelled something long and beautiful in what had to be his native language.

No, Rory, he’s just speaking French or some shit, because he got the urge.

So, it seems to me, the untrained reader who’s wandering through a plot that doesn’t make any sense at all, that if Crocodile Boots dies, their problems are basically over. I mean, he’s the one who’s looking for Rory and Dr. Z, right? Why does he need to be saved? If they kill him, won’t that keep him from going through with the nefarious plan to awaken the parasite by accident or something?

The Nayara lands again, and Cy gets on.

The man in the crocodile boots stepped out of the Jeep, took off his belt, and threw it into the Nayara. It wasn’t until it disappeared that I realized what it was–a grenade belt.

Why not.

The Nayara‘s whole front end explodes, and the ship crashes with a big hole in it. It rips up the earth and stops just short of Rory and Crocodile Boots, whose name, we learn, is Dr. Rendlesham. He orders the remaining soldiers into the ship to grab Cy and kill everyone else–because that makes sense. When you get a bunch of aliens who know what to do with the space rock you’ve got, you should definitely murder them all.

Finally, he threw me to the ground and straddled my hips. He gripped my wrists and held them against the dirt. A piece of steel was lying beneath my left arm, and it dug into my skin.

Unable to move, feeling sharp metal slicing through my skin, I was in our hotel room again. Sydney was crying in the bathroom, and my mother’s eyes were staring into mine. They were bloodshot, and the skin around them was wet and smeared with mascara. Blood was dripping from the wounds in her skull where they’d nearly beaten her to death with the telephone.

I thought they’d killed everybody with knives, and carved strange symbols into their arms and shit? Why do we keep getting new, random information about this murder? She also mentions that she was gagged with a dirty rag, which I don’t remember being a part of any other flashback.

Rendlesham’s disgusting voice brought me back to the present. “You’re quite the pain in the ass, Rory. More than one little girl should be.”

That’s because Rory is Not Like Other Girls™.

Benji tackles Rendlesham and tells Rory to run:

Conflicted, I took a step toward Benji. He was going to get himself killed.

You better rush right over and make sure his sacrifice is totally in vain.

Luckily, Rory decides that she probably should get out of there. So where does she run?

STRAIGHT INTO THE SPACESHIP FULL OF SOLDIERS.

It was my first instinct to find someplace safe to hide, but hiding wouldn’t help me find Cy. If he was still alive, he was probably critically injured and needed help. I had to keep going until I found him.

HOW? HOW ARE YOU GOING TO FIND HIM? HAVE YOU BEEN ON A SPACESHIP BEFORE? YOU’LL JUST KNOW WHERE TO GO?

“Cy?” I half-whispered, half-yelled.

So, you just talked in a normal tone.

I crawled on my hands and knees, feeling in front of me, hoping to come across the door Cy entered. He couldn’t be far from it. “Cyrus!”

Within moments, I was in a narrow corridor. My hand landed in something cold and slimy. Hard bits rolled around on my fingers. I reached out farther, and I felt a sharp edge and then a nose and a chin.

“Oh Christ. Please, no,” I said, my hands trembling.

And that’s the chapter. I cannot even begin to tell you how incredibly frustrating this book continues to be. There are plenty of examples that suggest the author really could be good at prose. But the structure of the book sucks, the entire plot is inconsistent, and everything is so needlessly convoluted that it’s impossible to follow. Besides falling into a few of the problematic tropes that a lot of New Adult novels fall into, this book doesn’t even have anything to be outraged over. It’s just a boring, bad book. And 73% of reviews on Amazon are positive. 50% of those are glowing with praise. It doesn’t seem possible.

It’s pretty clear to basically anyone who’s been following this blog since last year that I’m doing this recap because I straight up do not like Jamie Maguire as a person. It’s the only recap I’ve ever done because an author’s shitty behavior tipped me over the edge. But now that I’m over halfway done with this disaster, I wonder if this was even necessary. Honestly, I believe that for all the crappy stuff she’s done to bloggers, all the celebrating of author misfortune she’s done, being forever known as the author of Apolonia might be punishment enough.

DON’T DO THIS EVER: “From The Horse’s Mouth” edition

You write a book. You think it’s excellent. Your beta readers love it. You send it off either to a freelance editor that you hired with the intention of self-publishing, or to a publisher. In the latter case, let’s assume your book gets accepted, and it undergoes a round of edits. Either way, you get your manuscript back and it’s covered–absolutely covered–with notes. Maybe the editor felt a character’s motivations weren’t strong enough. Maybe there were factual inaccuracies in your book. But that doesn’t matter. You know in your heart that your book is perfect, and the editor is trying to stifle your creative voice.

I’ve edited fiction as both a freelancer and for a small press, and in that time I worked with authors who were genuinely grateful for my feedback, as well as authors who had mistakenly confused “editing” with “uncritically praising and applauding” and did not like the dose of reality they received. Some of my greatest hits:

An author whose manuscript contained the n-word over three hundred times. When asked to remove every instance of the word, the author balked and insisted that it was needed to maintain the historical accuracy and realism of the book’s Old West setting. It was a vampire book. Bonus: the word was almost exclusively used against indigenous Plains people. Author’s response: “They didn’t have bad words for Native Americans back then.”
An author who called me at home after ten p.m. on release day because a minor character who never appeared “on-screen” and whose name was mentioned once in the first chapter of the novel had the wrong middle name when mentioned for the second and only other time at the end of the book. This was my fault, she informed me, because a “true professional” would have caught it (though she didn’t during numerous passes of her own manuscript). The author insisted that “hundreds of readers” had reported the mistake to her, but real-time sales data showed that the book had been purchased twice.
A freelance client who refused to pay me for the work I did on her over 100k word manuscript because she felt I was “too critical.” The work was later published, though whether she took my advice, I don’t know. What I do know is that she cheated me out of nearly $700.00.

It may seem obvious to you that this behavior isn’t acceptable, but I find it astonishing how many authors don’t. That’s why I’ve consulted some other editors I know to share–anonymously–their favorite cautionary tales.

• “In recent memory, my worst author response was actually a non-response. I encourage every author to tell me what he/she needs–even if that means they need a different editor. This is a business. I don’t take it personally if a client needs a different editorial style. Just buck up and be honest. Recently, an author emailed me just a few days before her book was due. She said it wasn’t written. I was kind; these things happen all the time. Less than a week later…she released said book.

Now, it was a full novel. She couldn’t have had it written, edited, and revised in 6 days. So clearly, she hired a new editor but didn’t want to tell me. So she lied instead…despite knowing I’d see her posts on her personal profile and author page on FB.

I don’t wish her ill will, and I hope the book sells. But the fact is, she cancelled with too little time for me to fill the hole in my schedule, which means I didn’t earn a paycheck that week. I suspect authors forget sometimes that when they mess with an editor’s schedule, they’re also messing with her livelihood. I take great care to meet my deadlines. It’s a point of pride. I don’t think it’s unrealistic to ask clients to do the same.”

• “I once had an author tell me that she was working really hard, trying to get her book finished as quickly as she could by a fast-looming deadline. Not more than ten minutes after receiving that email, I saw that the same author was tweeting about going to the salon to get her hair colored and her nails done and after that she was meeting her husband for lunch and a movie. “

• “I worked for a publishing house that, despite preaching author equality, had a vastly different set of rules for their bestselling authors vs. the rest of their author pool. Company policy was that all manuscripts must be ‘finaled’ (edited, proofed, formatted, etc.) and turned in to management two weeks prior to the release date.

However, I routinely edited manuscripts for a certain author, who was one of the company’s bestsellers, two to three days prior to the release day because that’s when she’d finish it. The worst was when my designated proofer and I pulled an editing all-nighter while the author sent the manuscript a few chapters at a time because she was still writing the book the night before it released. Actually, make that the morning before it released. I don’t think I got the last chapter until four AM, that morning. It went live at ten AM.”

•  “I was editing an anthology. We were getting down to crunch time when one author finally sent me her manuscript for edits. It was rife with misogyny, plot holes, and characters that were TSTL. I worked for days editing this book and sent it off to the author asking that it be turned around ASAP. Almost two weeks later (less than a week before the anthology was supposed to release), I finally got the book back with a note telling me how hard she’d been working on it. Yet, when I opened the manuscript, not a single edit had been made until late in the evening ten days after the manuscript had been returned to her. The book then sat untouched for another two days when she attempted to do all of the edits and somehow added twelve thousand words in one day. Track Changes makes a time and date stamp on all edits. “

•  “I’ve had more than one author go on social media upon receiving edits to complain about their editor not liking their writing and/or that their editor thinks they’re stupid or failures. Conversely, there are those authors who complain that the reason the edits were so bad was because the editor doesn’t like the genre or doesn’t understand the story. “

•  “I was editing a a book that had been co-authored by two authors. It was an M/M erotic paranormal story. Now, I’m not one who believes that all erotic content should follow some sort of unwritten rule. The sexual interaction can come early on or later. It’s whatever fits the story. However, if you’re going to market a book as an erotic tale, there needs to be some kind of erotic content. As I went through this book, I got about three-quarters of the way only to realize there’d been nothing more than a kiss. And I was only a couple of chapters away from the end. So I asked the authors what any editor would…  there is going to be erotic content in your erotic novel, right? But what’s better is that they both wrote in places they could add some, but neither ever did. Ended up going multiple rounds in order to actually reach their marketable audience.”

• “An author called me at home, crying, because a proofer said that they felt a phrase the character used was ‘a little corny’. This brought on a deluge of angry, hysterical tears.”

• “One author argued with me about whether or not a scene was rapey. Heroine is actively saying and thinking no, she doesn’t want to have sex with all these men. “Heroes” proceed to have sex with her anyway. Or, as it’s accurately termed, the “heroes” rape the heroine.

• ” I was editing a book, and I came across a mistake that, dear god, made me laugh so hard. And it was written incorrectly not once but twice because the author thought it was the correct phrasing… The author wanted to say that the character had gotten angry, but wrote…. ‘and he let all his mad out.’ This same author also continually mixed up your and you’re. When I politely reminded them of the difference they left a comment saying they already knew the difference. They had no idea why there were so many mistakes, then proceeded to mix them up again throughout the edits.”

• “I’ve had authors who insist on keeping ethnic or racial slurs when they’re pointed out, because ‘They’ve become common usage.’”

• “I used to work with an author who, when I would ask a question about a character or the plot, would write paragraphs upon paragraphs in comments explaining it to me. Even after working on numerous books together, this was a regular thing. A good rule of thumb, if something needs that much explanation, that information needs to be in the book, not in comments to your editor. As an author, you aren’t going to be on hand when readers ask these questions. ”

• “The overenthusiastic thesaurus user—As much as authors should avoid repetitive words and phrases, sometimes, it can be made worse than simple repetition. In an effort to avoid repetition, it requires much more than simply pulling up thesaurus.com or clicking synonyms in your document and replacing the word. That can lead to some clunky and awkward sentences—particularly when the new word isn’t exactly the same as the word replaced and it actually changes the meaning of the sentence.

So there you have it. Don’t argue with your editors, ignore their suggestions, miss your deadlines, and if you’re going to lie, don’t expose yourself on social media. Follow these way not difficult rules and you should be fine.

DOUBLE STEVE BONUS MONDAY

 

(Carell)

The Big Damn Buffy Rewatch, S02E20, “Go Fish”

In every generation there is a chosen one. She alone has still not learned her lesson about buying Cheez-Its to keep in her office. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:

Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
All the monsters look like wieners.
If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
Angel is a dick.
Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
Science and technology are not to be trusted.
Mental illness is stigmatized.
Only Willow can use a computer.
Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.
Cheap laughs and desperate grabs at plot plausibility are made through Xenophobia.
Oz is the Anti-Xander
Spike is capable of love despite his lack of soul
Don’t freaking tell me the vampires don’t need to breathe because they’re constantly out of frickin’ breath.
The foreshadowing on this show is freaking amazing.
Smoking is evil.
Despite praise for its positive portrayal of non-straight sexualities, some of this shit is homophobic as fuck.
How do these kids know all these outdated references, anyway?
Technology is used inconsistently as per its convenience in the script.
Sunnydale residents are no longer shocked by supernatural attacks.
Casual rape dismissal/victim blaming a-go-go
Snyder believes Buffy is a demon or other evil entity.
The Scoobies kind of help turn Jonathan into a bad guy.
This show caters to the straight female gaze like whoa.

Have I missed any that were added in past recaps? Let me know in the comments.  Even though I might forget that you mentioned it.

WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it. 

CW: Rape

I’m looking forward to this recap, because this is an episode that I actually haven’t watched all that much. It’s nothing personal against the show, it’s just that it’s another one of those monster-of-the-week episodes that isn’t interesting enough to stack up to the episode before and after it. You get to this part of your rewatch and go, “You know, I can just skip over this one, because the two-part season finale is next.” So, let’s see how I feel about this one after not having watched it for probably ten years.

It’s night time on the beach, and the Sunnydale High kids are throwing a victory party for their swim team, despite the fact that’s a) cold outside, b) prime vampire chow hours, and c) again, it’s night time in Sunnydale, what is the matter with you people? (#8) Xander objects to the cold and to the idea of the swim team being an actual team, and Cordelia accuses him of being jealous. Xander cops to that, saying it’s unfair that guys previously considered dorks are suddenly the star athletes of their school.

Cordelia: “Well all I know is my cheerleading squad wasted a lot of pep on losers. It’s about time our school excelled at something.”

Willow: “You’re forgetting our high mortality rate.”

Xander: “We’re number one!”

Cue sad music, so we know that we’re cutting to Buffy. At this point in the season, while I know why she’s sad and what purpose it’s serving in the narrative, I can’t help but laugh when the party mood suddenly goes all morose piano and Buffy staring longingly out at the ocean.

Because she’s on her own, separated from the heard, that’s when the male pounces, sputtering bullshit about the ocean:

Buffy: “It’s just so…”

Swim Team Guy: “Eternal. A true mother giving birth to new life and devouring old. Always adaptable, nurturing. Yet, constant. And merciless.”

Buffy: “Boy. I was just going to go with big and wet.”

The swim team guy, whose name, we learn, is Cameron, tells Buffy that he sometimes trains in the ocean so he can swim against the current. Buffy is more receptive to this than his vaguely sinister ocean poetry, and tells him that she feels like she’s swimming against the current, too, but in a metaphorical type way. Cameron flirts and Buffy seems to be into it, until someone calls for help. It’s Jonathan, the kid who basically gets bullied and has a bum life until it ends in season seven. He’s getting his head dunked under water by some of the swim team athletes, who seem to be interpreting their win as a license to be a-holes.

Which leads us to the theme of this entire episode, which is #11: Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.

Buffy chokes the swim douche and saves Jonathan, who isn’t so thrilled to be rescued by Buffy. Cameron, however, tells the swim douche he deserved what he got. Another member of the team leads swim douche away from the party to cool off. Swim douche is mid-complaint about how creepy he finds Buffy when he stops, seemingly hypnotized by the ocean. He disappears, and his friend goes for help.

Then we cut to this pile of still-steaming, empty skin:

Then we see the vague form of something creepy slink down a drainage pipe.

Back at Sunnydale High, Willow is still teaching the computer class. My head canon is that there’s a teacher shortage in Sunnydale on account of how they always die, and no one from other districts will accept the job because it’s too high risk.

Anyway, one student, Gage, isn’t doing his assignments. He’s playing solitaire with naked lady cards that I don’t recall coming standard with Windows 3.0. As the bell rings, Principal Snyder comes in and congratulates Gage on the victorious swim meet. Then Snyder sets his sights on Willow. He asks her how class is going, and tells her that they’re having a hard time finding a new computer teacher (see, told ya). He asks her to cover through finals. When she accepts, he praises her for being a “team player”:

Snyder: “A team player wants everyone on the team to succeed. Wants everyone to pass.”

In other words, Snyder wants Willow to pass Gage despite the fact that he refuses to do any classwork or even bother to show up for tests. Snyder is angry that Willow has given him a failing grade so close to the state championships. Willow argues that she’s just trying to grade fairly, and Snyder tells her that since Gage is such a great athlete, he’s under more pressure than everyone else.

You know, putting a student in a place of power over their peers is a bad idea. If Willow wasn’t Willow and wasn’t concerned about being fair, she could academically ruin any classmate she wanted to.

Unfortunately, this also means that she can be manipulated by an administrator who has power over her, which is exactly what Snyder is doing, though he never explicitly tells her to change Gage’s grade.

Xander is as outraged as anyone should be to hear that a classmate is getting special treatment from teachers:

Xander: “That is wrong. A big fat spankin’ wrong. It’s a slap in the face to everyone one of us who studied hard and worked long hours to earn our D’s.”

Cordelia doesn’t agree:

Cordelia: “Xander, I know you take pride in being the voice of the common wuss, but the truth is, certain people are entitled to special privileges. They’re called winners. That’s how the world works.”

There’s brief banter about Thomas Jefferson that kind of makes Cordelia the winner of the debate, even though she’s taken a morally repugnant stance: because Thomas Jefferson owned slaves, Xander’s citing of “All men are created equal” isn’t a very solid argument.

Xander laments that Buffy isn’t at school to back him up, and we cut to Buffy and Cameron driving up to school. And Cameron is still talking about the ocean. Buffy is visibly bored, and interrupts him by telling him how great it is that he hasn’t been romantically pressuring her. Cameron responds by sexually harassing her and trying to lock her in his car. Then she slams his face into the steering wheel twice, which is the appropriate response in a situation like this. Unfortunately, this unfolds just as Snyder walks past.

Hey! In season three don’t they make a big deal about how seniors can go off campus for lunch? Buffy is a junior. Why doesn’t she get in trouble for cutting class?

In the nurse’s office, Cameron is getting his broken nose iced while Buffy argues with Snyder. She tells him that she was the one being attacked, not Cameron, but Cameron says Buffy led him on and suddenly changed her mind. He uses the way she’s dressed as an example of her slattern ways. The swim coach comes in and diagnoses Cameron as not having a broken nose on sight. Uh…the nurse is like, right over there. Anyone want to ask her opinion, since she’s a medical professional and not the coach of a high school swim team?

Snyder’s only concern is whether or not the team will still have a chance in the championships. The coach tells him that he needs Cameron to get better right away, since one of their other swimmers is missing. Buffy asks what happened to him, but Snyder tells her to butt out. The coach tells Cameron to go to the steam room to keep his sinuses clear, then tells Buffy she should stop dressing the way she does. And Buffy makes this face:

In the library, Buffy vents to the Scoobies, who aren’t listening and are actually annoyed by her ranting. It’s played off humorously, as though Buffy’s anger at the unfairness of being slut shamed by a school staff member after being sexually harassed by a smug little shit who’s going to get away with it is somehow self-absorbed and trivial. (#6), (#27)

Come on guys. You’re supposed to be our friends.

The Scoobies tell Buffy that the missing swimmer’s skin and cartilage was found on the beach.

Buffy: “So something ripped him open and ate out his insides?”

Willow: “Like an Oreo cookie!”

I like Willow’s enthusiasm over someone getting skinned, because of what goes down in season six. Obviously this was unintentional foreshadowing (because season six and season seven are so badly fitted to the show as to be an afterthought. There’s a reason why. I won’t cover that until we get to it), but it tickles me anyway.

Buffy says it doesn’t make sense that the creature would leave the skin behind, and Xander agrees:

Xander: “Yeah, the skin’s the best part.”

In the steam room, Cameron the rapist hears a noise, and outside in the locker room, a sinister shadow looms. Cameron is a little groggy, so this should lead to monster goings on, but it’s just the coach coming in to tell him that he’s been in there long enough.

Xander takes a break from research to go and get a soda, and accidentally bumps into Cameron in the hallway. Cameron tells him to watch where’s going and calls him a loser, prompting Xander to mock Cameron for getting his nose mashed in. But he immediately brings it around to how even though Cameron is on the swim team, he isn’t entitled to sex with Buffy. While that’s true, it seems like Xander centers an awful lot of his knight-in-shining-armor behavior around a ha-ha-you-didn’t-get-to-sleep-with-Buffy attitude. It comes off as a twisted superiority complex, like he’s mocking them for falling out of the competition while he still has some kind of chance. (#5)

Cameron says he’s hungry, and Xander tells him the cafeteria is closed. But Cameron gets those sweet, sweet swim team entitlements, so she goes anyway. Once he’s in the cafeteria, he smells something gross. Xander’s still deciding what pop to get when he hears a clatter and a scream. He runs to the cafeteria and finds tables and chairs overturned, but no one there.

Well, except for another skin pile:

 

And this guy:

OMG, are you a xenomorph? I love your movies!

In the library, Cordelia is playing the role of a police sketch artist, while Xander criticizes her for not getting the horror just right.

Can we discuss Cordelia’s hidden talent for a minute? She drew that picture from Xander’s verbal description alone. That’s an incredibly difficult thing to do; there’s a reason some police sketches have you shaking your head when they actually catch the guy. Cordelia doesn’t get any credit for her cool skill in the series. At least Giles cuts Xander off mid-critical rant to ask him if that’s the monster he saw. Xander has to admit that yeah, it’s pretty close.

Giles: “Are you sure?”

Xander: “Well, it was dark, and the thing went through the window so quick, and I was uh, a little shocked when I saw it, and…”

Cordelia: “Go ahead. Say it. You ran like a woman.”

Xander: “Hey, if you saw this thing, you’d run like a woman, too!”

Ugh, #6. I’ve always found it strange how in a show that’s entire plot is about a young woman who is supernaturally strong and brave, fear is often linked to femininity. Especially in reference to Xander, who is arguably the biggest, Shaggy-level fraidy cat of the series and one of our few male protagonists.

Buffy and Willow show up with news. The two students who’ve been killed by this sea monster are the best swimmers on the team. The gang hypothesizes that the reason the students have been killed is that someone who hates the swim team is out for revenge. And the first person they can think of? Jonathan, the official school loser of Sunnydale.

Wait a minute. There’s no doubt that Jonathan has reason to hate the swim team. They did gang up on him and try to playfully drown him. But this is a team that’s going to the state championship, right? Why wouldn’t the very first suspect be someone from the opposing team? Wouldn’t that make more sense?

Jonathan gets blamed for a lot of stuff in this series. He’s the first person looked at when someone is threatening to kill everyone in the high school in season three, but it ends up that he was just trying to kill himself. Like, that’s how bullied he is, that he tries to kill himself because of it. Later, he does a spell to gain Buffy’s approval by basically rewriting reality and becoming Slayer-like himself, at which point the gang shuns him. In season six, he becomes evil, but he’s like, the least evil of the three bad guys in that season. I’m starting to think that Jonathan isn’t a bad guy, but circumstances–and everyone’s assumption that because he’s disliked, he’s naturally going to exact violent revenge all the time–warp him a little.

You know what? Jonathan is getting a number on our list.  #29: The Scoobies kind of help turn Jonathan into a bad guy.

Buffy decides that since the two best swimmers on the team have already been murdered by a sea creature, she should probably keep an eye on the third best swimmer. She’s not very covert about it, and Gage, the dude she’s trying to protect, definitely notices that she’s watching him. Meanwhile, Willow interrogates Jonathan. We learn that Jonathan tried out for the swim team in the past and never made it, because he has asthma.

Willow: “So. You delved into the black arts and conjured up a hell beast from the ocean’s depths to wreak your vengeance…didn’t you?”

Jonathan: “What? No. I snuck in yesterday and peed in the pool.”

In the hall, the coach is lamenting to Snyder that the deaths are affecting the team. Snyder wants that championship, so he says that of course the two dead boys would want the team to go on and win, but the coach tells him that unless they get another swimmer by that afternoon, they’re not even eligible to compete. Xander, who currently has no task in the supernatural investigation, overhears this.

That night at the Bronze, Buffy is watching Gage like a hawk and HOLY FUCKING DICKBALLS, THAT IS WENTWORTH MILLER.

Buffy is one of those odd shows that has a lot of guest stars, but not a lot of guest stars that went on to bigger and better things, so it’s worth pointing out when one of them does. And he didn’t even go on to bigger, better things in the Whedonverse, like a lot of Buffy guest players did. He got his own show and writes movies and everything.

Gage confronts Buffy about following him, and she tells him she’s just into banging dudes who swim. He doesn’t buy it, so she tells him the truth, that swim team guys are being killed and he’s probably next. But Gage believes everything Cameron said about Buffy, and doesn’t want anything to do with her.

As Gage leaves the Bronze muttering about how Buffy is this huge bitch, Angelus comes out of the shadows and sympathizes with him, trash talking Buffy until he can catch Gage off guard and bite him. Buffy runs out after Gage, because even though he’s a huge bag of dick-flavored brussels sprouts, she still has to do her duty. She finds Angel spitting out Gage’s blood, and he hurls the poor, helpless swimmer into Buffy to knock her down so he can make his escape.

Rather than pursue Angel, Buffy stays with Gage. He asks Buffy if Angelus is the thing that killed the other swimmers:

Buffy: “No, that was something else.”

Gage: “Something else?”

Buffy: “Yeah. Unfortunately we have a lot of something elses in this town.”

Gage is suddenly real interested in having Buffy protect him. He asks her to walk him home.

This is another example of #8. How do you attend Sunnydale High and not realize that the school has an unusually high mortality rate?

Buffy, Willow, and Cordelia are at swim practice to look after Gage, who checks to make sure Buffy is there and even gives her a little wave. Not so cocky now, huh, Gage? Cordelia and Willow can’t figure out why Angel wouldn’t want to drink Gage’s blood, but Buffy has a theory that there was just something about Gage’s blood in particular that Angel didn’t like. She thinks it’s steroids, and the other girls think it makes sense. After all, the team suddenly did start winning out of nowhere, and they’re all being hardcore jerks constantly. Willow thinks that the monster could be attracted to the steroids in the swim team’s blood, but their theorizing about all of this is interrupted when…

And of course the hormone-enflaming slow upward pan reveals that it’s really Xander, who, upon seeing his lady friends watching him, grabs the nearest floaty board and uses it to shield his modesty.

Xander: “I’m undercover!”

Buffy: “You’re not under much.”

Xander explains that he tried out for the swim team in order to figure out what’s going on from the inside. Cordelia is gripped by a powerful mix of status and lust as she realizes that she’s dating a guy on the school’s most successful sports team, and Willow tells them that her interrogation of Jonathan was a bust. She explains that he peed in the pool, just as Xander jumps back into the water.

This scene is a fan favorite, probably because hey, how many television shows aimed at teen girls in the ’90′s gave us a much crushed-upon male character nearly naked? In fact, it does so more than once, as we frequently see Angel, Riley, and Spike shirtless throughout the various seasons. And while the guys are always pretty ripped, they’re not bulked up hyper-masculine versions of what men think women like to look at. So I’m adding #30: This show caters to the straight female gaze like whoa. Let’s all stop to take a minute to appreciate how rare it is for a show to blatantly objectify the male character’s bodies for the gratification of a straight female audience, while never (that I can recall), filming sequences of female nudity in the same way.

In the steam room, Xander starts cracking wise about what steam rooms even are, while monster claws come up through some grates. Afterwards, he tells Buffy that Gage is in the locker room, and it’s her turn to keep an eye on him. Buffy’s wandering the hallway when she hears Gage screaming. She runs into the locker room and sees the sea monster, then watches as Gage’ s skin splits open and another sea monster comes out of him.

Well, that clears that mystery right up.

Buffy fights the monsters, but she gets clawed. It gives the slimy duo a chance to escape down the aforementioned grate while the coach helps her.

In the nurse’s office, legendary character actress Conchata Ferrell tells Buffy that she probably doesn’t need stitches. Wow, there is a lot of talent in this episode that I didn’t notice on previous watches. Probably because I didn’t watch it that often. Giles is there, too, because again, nothing weird about the middle-aged male school librarian having an unusually close relationship with a young female student, especially when we just saw an episode in which an inappropriately close relationship between a teacher and student led to tragedy, but whatever, Sunnydale High. (#8)

Giles asks the coach how he didn’t notice this was going on, but I feel like the whole conversation is kind of unreasonable:

Coach: “How could this happen?”

Giles: “Are you saying you don’t know?”

Coach: “You work so hard, you start to win suddenly. You think it’s just you. You’re inspiring the boys to greatness. But in the back of your mind, you start to wonder.”

Giles: “You never asked any of the boys if they were taking anything?”

Coach: “Maybe I was afraid to.”

Okay, but Giles? What was the coach supposed to ask? “Hey, boys? Are you taking some kind of potion or something that would turn you into a sea monster?” I mean, this kind of thing isn’t a side effect of normal steroids. If it was, professional baseball twenty-five years ago would have been massively weird. Also, we already know that the people living in Sunnydale seem to have no awareness of the supernatural shit happening around them, so why would the coach have even considered the possibility?

In the computer lab, Willow is looking up “school medical records” to see what various ailments the recent sea monsters had. Is this a thing? I can’t imagine that it would be. But it serves the plot, so whatever. They all had injuries and illnesses that indicated steroid abuse, but as Xander points out, turning into a fish person isn’t necessarily a well-known side effect. Buffy sends Xander to find out what his teammates are taking and how, while Buffy and Giles go on a monster hunt with a tranquilizer gun. They’re walking around the sewer when one of the fish things spots them.

In the steam room, Xander is talking way too much to the otherwise silent swimmers. Then he blatantly asks for steroids. The guys tell him that the steroids are in the steam. Then we cut to the pool, where the nurse warns the coach that what he’s doing is wrong and he’s hurting the boys. So they both know what’s going on. The coach decides that now that she’s not on his side, she’s gotta go. So he feeds her to the fish monsters by tossing her into the sewer through some kind of utility room hatch.

In the library, Xander is freaking out because he’s been in the steam a lot. While everyone is worried because Xander might turn into a sea monster and that would be bad for him, Cordelia is more concerned with what it might mean for her social status should her boyfriend transform into a monster. They decide that their priority should be finding out what’s in the steam, so the hospital can come up with an antidote.

Oh yeah. I’m sure that’ll fix everything. A small local hospital will just magically come up with a cure for fishpeopleitis.

Willow says she’ll go talk to the nurse (good luck) while Buffy’s going to interrogate the coach. He evades her questions for a while, then relents. He tells her that the USSR experimented with turning their swimming team into shark hybrid things. The coach is disgusted at Buffy’s lack of school spirit and pulls a gun on her, ordering her to jump into the monster pit. There, she finds the body of the nurse floating in the water, all bitten up.

Buffy: “So what, you’re just going to feed me to ‘em?”

Coach: “Oh they’ve already had their dinner. But boys have other needs.”

In other words, Buffy is now at risk of monster rape? Why is that even necessary at all? Being eaten isn’t bad enough? We have to involve male entitlement to female sexuality in this? How, in the past ten minutes, has this otherwise pretty good episode gone violently off the rails?

I suppose we could look at it as the coach punishing Buffy for her perceived sluttiness when she turned down Cameron and bashed his face into the steering wheel, and this could have been an okay turn if the two incidents had been linked explicitly. But now we’re so far removed from the threatened sexual assault in the first act, it really needed to be referenced here to make it work. Also, it would have helped if Buffy’s friends had been concerned, rather than annoyed, at the outrageous way she was treated by the coach and Principal Snyder earlier in the episode. As it stands now, coach’s off-handed rape threat seems to be thrown in as a way to make Buffy’s predicament “worse” than being killed, as we culturally view rape as an act that removes the sexual value of a woman. I’m tagging this an example of #6, even though it could have been transformed into something better with a few extra lines of dialogue.

It’s worth pointing out that David Fury, despite having some cracking episodes under his belt, has also written other episodes where rape is casually mentioned for shock value or actually happens and is dismissed, as is the case in “Bargaining, part 2″ when a male demon threatens the female Scoobies with death by rape in the most graphic and disgusting terms possible for prime time teen television, and “Gone,” in which an invisible Buffy forces herself on Spike without prior consent.

Back at the pool, Xander is being a hypochondriac over his possible impending fishness. He runs to the locker room to check his neck for scales, and soon a fish monster appears and jumps into the pool. Believing him to be a transformed Xander, Cordelia is beside herself:

 Cordelia: “God, this is all my fault. You joined the swim team to impress me. You were so courageous. And you looked really hot in those speedos. And I want you to know that I still care about you, no matter what you look like. And, and we can still date! Or, or not, I mean, I understand if you want to see other fish. I’ll do everything I can to make your quality of life better. Whether that means little bath toys, or whatever.”

Xander appears beside her and tells her that yeah, it’s not him, and the monster leaps out of the water at them.

I like how Cordelia is both selfish and selfless at the same time. She disregards the fact that Xander totally didn’t join the swim team because of her–he was doing it to investigate–but she also takes the time to reassure him that she still cares and wants a relationship with him, even in fish form. This is such good characterization, letting us see another side of Cordelia while staying true to what we’ve seen of her so far. That’s just fantastic writing, because it’s too easy to say, “This character is this way…gotcha! She’s actually this way.” Instead, it’s “This character is this way…and she’s also this way.”

In the library, Giles has rounded up all the swim team members and locked them in the cage. Yet another instance of Giles doing something that, if we didn’t know he was a Watcher, would be extremely creepy. “Yeah, I’m just a male authority figure locking these virile young boys in this cage. Nothing weird about that.”

One swim team member is missing, but Xander and Cordelia know where he is. What nobody knows is where Buffy is, and that is in the sewer with the fish monsters.

Buffy: “Great. This is just what my reputation needs. That I did it with the entire swim team.”

AUUUUGH, why?! Why equate rape with sex? Why equate sex with having a bad reputation? WHY WAS THIS ELEMENT EVEN INTRODUCED AT ALL?! (#6)

The monsters begin circling, and Xander finds the coach watching Buffy in the monster pit. While Xander fights the coach, Buffy fights the monsters, who are closing in on her. Xander reaches down and helps pull Buffy up while the monsters keep clawing at her, thus saving her from rape. That’s right, the character who once tried to rape her and has never admitted to knowing that he raped her is now the hero who saves her from rape. What the fuck is even happening?

Buffy and Xander are safe and gasping for air beside the sewer hole when the coach attacks. He’s not great at attacking, though, and ends up in the hole. Buffy offers to save him, but he tries to reason with the fish guys, who attack him.

Buffy: “Those boys really love their coach.”

So basically, the coach’s punishment for turning the boys into fish monsters is rape. WHY IS THIS HAPPENING? (#6)(#27)

What’s even weirder is that earlier in the episode, Buffy tells the coach that he should be in prison, being beaten by guards. They could have gone for a rape joke there, as they have in the past when prison has been mentioned. I wonder if it was in there and got cut specifically because of all the other stuff?

I also wonder if Fury thought the coach, who accused Buffy of being a slut and suggesting she was “asking for it” was getting a dose of some kind of poetic or karmic justice. That’s a particularly weird notion we have about rape in our culture, that it should also be punished by rape.

But you know, we also do the same thing with murder so I’m not sure why I’m surprised.

Buffy, Xander, Willow, and Cordelia are hanging in the student lounge area, talking about how Xander has to have plasma transfusions to get all the fish monster out of his blood. Cordelia tells him that he doesn’t have to be on the swim team next season, that she would be happy if he was a football player, too. Giles shows up and tells them that animal control weren’t able to find the fish monsters, but Buffy isn’t worried.

Buffy: “I don’t think we’ll be seeing them anymore.”

Giles “Where do you think they’ll go?”

Buffy: “Home.”

Cut to a scene of the ocean that Cameron was waxing so poetically about before, and the three former swimmers bobbing around in the waves.

So…that’s the episode. What even was happening?!

No, Smart Phones Aren’t Destroying Humanity

Last Sunday, the New York Times ran a piece about how smart phones are destroying the next generation. I always find it interesting that it’s always the next generation that’s being destroyed, but the generation writing think pieces about that destruction have always been mercifully spared. While the article does note that parents are as addicted to technology as their children are, it swiftly moves on to discussing the myriad ways teens aren’t communicating correctly.

I could mock this piece by scrounging up anecdotes about similar changes in technology that lead to dire warnings of societal collapse. There are plenty of examples: the internet. The telephone. The novel. I’m sure that even the harnessing of fire was criticized as a civilization ender, with middle-aged cave people lamenting the good old days when everyone lived in mortal dread of being eaten by a bear in the dark. But we don’t have to reach so far back for this one; smart phones and social media are providing all of us–not just the doomed “next generation”–with a level of connectivity to our fellow humans that we’ve never experienced before, and it’s all become possible in a very short span of years. All of us, even those who are writing disparaging think pieces, remember a time we would now consider unbearable. In the movie Hot Tub Time Machine, a teenager who mysteriously finds himself trapped in 1985 is astounded when a girl reminds him that there’s no way to text or email her. If he wants to talk to her, she explains, he has to come and find her. His response? “That sounds exhausting.”

And it was exhausting. And boring. And isolating. I grew up in a rural area, in a house where I was the only child. If the school year ended and I didn’t have a friend’s phone number, I didn’t speak to them until September–an interminable wait when you’re young and time seems so much longer. If I wanted to meet with my friends and spend time, the arrangements were contingent upon whether or not our parents had the means or inclination to get us into the same place at once. With no neighbor children to play with, summers could be very lonely.

My son, however, never spends his summers alone. Though he can’t always be with his friends in person, they gather online via Skype to play Minecraft or watch “let’s play” videos together on YouTube. They talk and they giggle and socialize, and some of them are doing this with the aid of smart phones.

Those lonely summers I spent might have been less lonely if we’d had smart phones. I could have texted or emailed my friends, rather than having to work up the courage to call them. To this day, I have debilitating phone anxiety that makes a single phone call an all day project as I sit and talk myself into dialing the number. I could have had long conversations via Facebook messenger, seen pictures from their summer vacations and shared my own. And failing all that, I could have downloaded books, rather than waiting for a weekly trip to the library.

I don’t begrudge my children the technology that provides them an adolescence filled with more conveniences than I had in mine. Will they grow up differently than I did? Of course they will, but every advance changes our way of life. That’s the point of advancement. We strive for change, but fear it when it arrives. Since we don’t want to blame ourselves for causing it, we resent the next generation for using the tools we’ve created for them.

Maybe kids these days don’t communicate the way kids did twenty years ago. Maybe it’s making them different. But kids twenty years before that were different, too. Our luddite insistence that any behavioral change caused by technology will spin us into a grim dystopia foretold in 1950′s science fiction novels proves that the only true constant is the human ego. Because how can the next generation possibly thrive or surpass us unless they duplicate our experiences exactly?

THE BABY Cover Reveal and Excerpt! (Plus a Boss Boxed Set! and other news)

Everyone is getting antsy for news about The Baby, and today I’m going to deliver! Now, after the “read more” tag you’re going to find the cover to The Baby, the final book in the Boss series, as well as a super hot excerpt from the first chapter. However, if you skip straight there, you’re going to miss out on some Boss related news you’re going to need if you want to keep up with Neil and Sophie. So exercise some self-denial and read through these details first.

Release date: I’ve seen confusion about what the release date is, ranging anywhere from November 5 , 6, 10, or 25. The release date for The Baby is November 10.

Preorders: There won’t be a preorder for the The Baby, or any of my future self-published books. Here’s why: Amazon and other retailers have stopped counting preorders as first day sales. It used to be that authors could set up a preorder ninety days in advance and use that time to rack up sales that would rocket the book onto bestseller lists and to the top of retail charts. I’m not concerned with hitting lists; I did it once and nothing magical happened apart from an ego stroke, so it isn’t a huge priority. However, making it into the top one hundred in your category on Amazon, for example, increases your visibility and allows you to sell more copies. I learned this lesson the hard way when I made First Time available for preorder. Had preorders been counted toward first day sales, both books would have easily gained a spot in the top one hundred of their categories. They didn’t, and the book never broke the top thousand overall. Despite the fact that so many of you bought the book, without visibility the sales overall slowed to a trickle because new readers who might have been interested in it just didn’t find it.

Please, don’t think that I don’t appreciate that you preordered First Time. I loved the enthusiastic response it received, and I’m thankful for each and every copy sold. I’m just using it as an example to explain why The Baby won’t have a preorder.  And obviously, this is going to inconvenience or anger some of you. All I can do is apologize. While I love writing and sharing my writing with you, this is also a business, and I sometimes have to make business decisions based on circumstances I don’t have a say in. This is the final book in this series for Neil and Sophie, and if everyone who would normally preorder it just ends up buying it the first week, it’ll have a greater chance at the visibility and longevity that, frankly, I believe it deserves. I’m pretty proud of my work lately, and I want to see it do well.

Oh, about that whole “last book in the series” thing: While The Baby is the last book in this series, it is not the last Neil and Sophie book. I’m taking a break from them for now to focus on some other projects, but I have every intention of writing more for them. Stopping at five books gives us a convenient place for readers of the series to step off the train if they’re getting bored, but feel like they absolutely have to finish. It also gives me time to explore side characters, like the continuation of Ian and Penny’s story, and Emir’s own novel. So yes, Neil and Sophie will be back, but not in 2016.

THE BOSS boxed set: If you want to get caught up on all the novels in this series (or you want to force a friend to read them), there’s an easy way to do that now. A digital boxed set of the first four books is available now, for $1.99. The set is only available for a limited time, so spread the word. It’s currently available on Amazon and Smashwords.

All right. It’s cover and excerpt time. Are you ready?

 

EXCERPT:

Tonight. Pavilon Français. The moment you cross the threshold, you are mine. You will not speak unless spoken to. You will obey my every command.

I read the words over and over again as I stood in front of the doors. The building, a recreation of the Pavilion Français at Versailles, Neil had converted with the express purpose of holding all manner of carnal delights with which to torment me. And inside, my Sir waited.

My heart pounded in my chest. The gilt-edged note had arrived via courier that afternoon, written in Sir’s hand. I’d made the mistake of opening it at my desk. It had been incredibly difficult to concentrate on photos of jackets while pressing my thighs together all day.

And that had been his plan, all along. To get me thinking about him, his control over me, and the need I had to submit to his every sexual whim. It was a need that would never be satisfied.

So it was a good thing I was married to him.

I dragged in a shaky lungful of sharp January air. I’d arrived home in time to quickly bathe and shape my hair into large, fluffy curls that floated around my shoulders. I’d dressed my part, though I had no idea what Sir had planned. Some nights, I found myself spread-eagle, bound to a steel frame as Sir lashed my body all over with a flogger. Others, I’d be bent over a padded bench as a mechanical sex machine rammed into me while I screamed through my gag. No matter how much care I took with my appearance, it would be utterly ruined by the time we were finished. Still, I’d painted on sharp wings of black eyeliner over smoky silver shadow and stained my lips with a matte plum gloss. Beneath my black wrap dress with its three-quarter length sleeves, I wore dark maroon panties and bra—silky and perfectly cut. The panties were already wet from my anticipation.

I took a deep breath and pushed one of the doors open. The moment you cross the threshold. The toe of my black Madden Proto pump touched the tile. The bottoms of my feet tingled. My heart raced. My mouth went dry. I stepped through and closed the door behind me.

There he was. My Sir. My husband. Neil Elwood.

He sat in one of the ornate Louis XVI chairs before the fireplace. He wore a white button down and sharkskin gray trousers, perfectly crisp and presentable, despite the depraved things he would be doing to me. The light from the tall tapers in the candelabras gilded and darkened his hair, which was more silver now than its former ash brown. The soft overhead lighting was on, as well, to supplement the candlelight.

He motioned me forward with a snap of his fingers, and held up a hand to halt me when he deemed me close enough.

He hadn’t said a single word yet, and I was already his.

A door creaked, but I didn’t dare look away from Sir’s gaze. I heard the footsteps behind me before the soft, faintly accented voice. “Good evening, Chloe.”

My heart stuttered in my chest.

“Yes, good evening, Chloe,” Sir said. Chloe was the role I played when we were with our lover, Emir. We’d met him at an exclusive sex club in Paris where anonymity had been of utmost importance, but we still used those club names while playing. They were like terms of endearment, now.

Emir slowly circled me, his dark eyes drifting over my body in open appraisal. I was an object under his gaze, the same as a priceless jewel or an exotic automobile. His golden brown skin was further burnished in the warm, dim light, and dark whorls of chest hair showed in the parted collar of his black button-down shirt.

Neil and I hadn’t seen Emir in months, as he had been settling his divorce and had kept his sexual proclivities more secret than usual. That he was here, standing in our miniature pleasure palace, on a night when I knew anything could happen, seemed like a dream.

“Do you understand the terms I sent you?” Neil asked, never moving from his chair.

I nodded.

“Answer me.”

My breath halted in my throat. “Yes, Sir.”

“Our usual safe word system is in place,” he went on. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Emir said nothing, his gaze fixed on mine. He trailed one fingertip across my collar bones, then in a line down the V of flesh revealed by the dress’s low neckline. He pulled one side back, then the other, revealing my breasts and my satiny bra.

“Tonight, I’ve decided to loan you to my friend. He’ll use you as he likes, and you’ll let him,” Neil stated. “You may not object to a single command, except to safe word. You are nothing but a gift to please my friend. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Sir.” My clit pulsed almost painfully, and I squeezed my thighs together for some relief.

“Thank you, Leif,” Emir said with a sly smile. Another false name. Just as Neil had adopted Leif as his identity at the exclusive Parisian sex club they both belonged to, “Emir” was actually El-Mudad ibn Farid ibn Abdel Ati. Like Neil, El-Mudad was a billionaire with a penchant for kinky sex. He and Neil had planned this together, and that could only be to my advantage.

Emir reached for the tie of my dress and gave it a tug. It fell open, and he took in my body before pushing the sleeves down my shoulders. “Beautiful. Just as I remember.”

“What do you say, Chloe?” Neil prompted.

I met Emir’s gaze as my dress fell to the floor. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Emir slipped his fingers beneath my bra straps. “Take this off.”

I’d only just gotten dressed, but I’d known I wouldn’t be dressed for long. The disrobing lifted my arousal. At that point, my bra was as much a sex toy as any of the vibrators in the toy closet.

As I unhooked my bra and slid it down, Emir moved to stand behind me. He pulled me back with a hand covering my throat. The other hand slipped into my panties.

“Look me in the eye, Chloe,” my Sir ordered. I did as he commanded and saw the dark fire of possessiveness kindling there.

“He’s angry,” Emir whispered against my ear. He rubbed my clit with his fingertips. “He’ll punish you after this, you know.”

I nodded. I wasn’t supposed to speak.

“How will you punish her, Leif?” Emir asked, the hand at my neck skimming down to my breast.

Neil leaned with his elbow on the arm of the chair and brought his hand to his face, his fingers curved thoughtfully in front of his mouth. He got off on his jealousy, and on punishing me, especially. With a long sigh, he said, “The cane, I think. We haven’t done that in a while.”

My nerves sang with joy at the promise of pain, and the pleasure that would come with it.

And before it. My clit pounded under Emir’s talented fingers. He wedged one foot between mine and whispered, “Spread for me.”

I widened my stance, offering him better access. His other hand cupped my breast, kneading it, and I leaned against him for support.

“I could make you come like this,” he murmured against my ear. “I’ve missed the way you gush over my hand.”

My knees trembled.

“But I can wait a little longer.”

 

 

DOUBLE STEVE BONUS MONDAY!