Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 81

DOUBLE STEVE BONUS MONDAY!

(thanks to Deelylah Mullin)

Pre-order FIRST TIME!

Finally–FINALLY!–pre-order for First Time is open to EVERYONE!

Here are the short descriptions and the links to buy. Stay tuned for more info

 

 

IAN:

Newly divorced and romantically pessimistic, Ian Pratchett doesn’t know why he’s been set up with Penny Parker. She’s unrelentingly positive, utterly superstitious, and sexually inexperienced—everything Ian is not. But when sparks fly between them, Ian sees the possibility of a life he’d given up hoping for…with a woman he would never have expected.

Amazon • Barnes & Noble • iBooks • Smashwords

PENNY:

With the wounds from a bad breakup still healing, Penny Parker is reluctant to dive back into the dating scene. She’s especially wary of being set up with an older man, but Ian Pratchett wants the same future she’s after: family, stability, and true love. Though all the signs point to Ian being The One, can the timing ever be right between two people born decades apart?

Amazon • Barnes & Noble • iBooks • Smashwords

 

Jealous Hater Book Club: Apolonia chapter 11

So many people have asked, “You’re not abandoning the Apolonia recaps, are you?” and my first instinct is like, “Why, is anyone still reading them?” But fear not, I am back with yet another recap.

In the last chapter, Rory saw soldiers take Cyrus away. Now she’s outside of Dr. Zoidberg’s house, waiting to see if it’s safe to go up to the door. She decides that it is:

Knocking on Dr. Z’s large wooden door was painful with cold knuckles, but I tried four times. I was glad that I’d been going to The Gym with Benji, or I’d have really been hurting.

WTF, how heavy is the door knocker at Dr. Z’s house?

Standing on the porch, shaking from the November night air, my heaving lungs were gasping for sufficient breath. The cold burned my throat every time I sucked in, but all I could think about was Cy.

That’s funny, because all I’m thinking about is the fact that earlier in the book you made such a big deal about not feeling cold because you were traumatized or whatever.

When Dr. Z doesn’t answer the door. Rory runs around the outside of the house as a storm rolls in. She’s trying to figure out which window might be to Dr. Zoidberg’s bedroom when more soldiers show up:

The doors of eight identical green Humvees flew open, and men with guns filed out, quickly surrounding the house.

So, I’m a super secret government agency, right? And I’ve got this super important space rock thing I’m trying to steal. Would I want to drive eight Humvees down a residential street in the middle of the night? Or would I want to do something a little less alarming, that people aren’t going to ask too many questions about?

Just wondering.

Rory watches through the window as the soldier guys go into Dr. Zoidberg’s bedroom, only to find the bed undisturbed. They appear to be leaving, when one of them comes around the corner of the house.

I closed my eyes. You won’t see me. Just keep walking. My heart pounded, and I struggled to keep the air in my lungs while I verged on experiencing a full-blown panic attack. I didn’t fear what they would do to me if I were caught, but I feared what they would do to Cy if I didn’t save him.

I’d only been that frightened once before, just before one of my killers pressed the sharp edge of his knife into my arm. My mother was already lying on her side, the light in her eyes nearly snuffed out–her blood spread around her–but she blinked once to let me know she wasn’t gone yet, that she would stay with me until it was over. She lowered her chin, asking me to look into her eyes, to watch her so that we could go together. And so I did while they cut into my flesh and laughed about it. I’d always feel satisfaction from knowing that I frustrated them by not crying out like Sydney.

Anyone else getting motion sick from the selfishness see-saw here? For one of the very few times in the book, Rory thinks about someone who isn’t herself. This is immediately followed by how much better she is than her friend Sydney, who just wouldn’t be quiet while she was being murdered.

This is the same Sydney, you may recall, who died specifically to teach Rory a very important lesson about herself.

The soldier doesn’t see Rory, and they all leave, so Rory steals Dr. Z’s moped:

The kickstand flew back with barely any effort, and it wasn’t long before I was zooming down the road, five blocks behind the Humvees, as fast as Silver could run.

Okay, well, good luck with that, because fully weighted Humvees can still go like fifty mph, and Silver, described as an “ancient” moped is probably a 2 cylinder and could realistically only go thirty mph.

Expletives slipped out from my mouth at every other block as the Humvees moved farther and farther away. They turned east, and I leaned forward, hoping that would somehow encourage Silver to surge ahead.

The red lights of the Humvees were still visible once I turned, and I smiled with relief but not for long. It began to rain and not the light, warm kind that made people look up and smile. It was the hard, stinging cold rain that feels as if it was cutting into your skin.

And I would know, because I remembered the knives of my murderers as I laid on the floor, blood–my mother’s and my own–seeping into my beautiful long hair while Sydney wouldn’t shut her yap a minute and just die already.

I’m actually astonished that a paragraph similar to that didn’t appear after “cutting into your skin.”

She follows the convoy to Old Copper Road, then realizes she’ll be spotted tailing them.

Instead of Old Copper Road, I drove another mile south. I knew where they were going, and hopefully, it was where they were holding Cyrus.

If you knew where they were going, why did have to tail them?

I pulled over into the ditch and laid Silver onto its side, squinting through the rain, in the direction of the old warehouse nearly a mile away.

There is so much happening in this sentence, and I’ve noticed it in another place in this chapter, so I’m going to bring it up. Writing Tip: Be aware of your prepositions. She didn’t have to pull over “into the ditch.” She could have pulled over and laid Silver in the ditch. She definitely didn’t need to put Silver “onto its side,” when “on its side” would have worked. Just make sure you don’t have too many or the wrong prepositions in your work. This shouldn’t have gotten past line edits.

Also, if you leave a moped on its side in a ditch in the rain, good luck starting it back up.

Rory can see the warehouse all lit up and knows that there’s no chance it’s a second party going on.

Zipping up my vest, I set out across the field, high-stepping across the brush, trying not to leave my boots in the mud. Terrible thoughts of what was happening to Cy behind those walls crept into my mind. He was of Egyptian descent. Maybe they thought he was a terrorist…or worse, maybe he was a terrorist.

I think what would be worse was if the government was holding someone prisoner who wasn’t a terrorist, to be perfectly frank. And Cy isn’t “of Egyptian descent.” He’s from Egypt (I know, I know, he’s not from Egypt, he’s an alien) and Egyptian. Which is even worse, from a “fallen into government hands as a suspected terrorist” standpoint.

And I’m about to break into a commandeered military post and do what? Save him? I could be caught, put in prison, or put to death.

“That only happens in the movies. They don’t even kill spies anymore,” I said aloud, tucking my chin to keep the icy rain from hitting my face.

What happened to Rory being immortal? We just found out in the last chapter that she is literally immortal. She can’t die. Yet we’re supposed to fear for her life here? That’s the high stake?

You can’t introduce an element like a character’s immortality, then assume the reader will come along with you on your “oh no, this character could die” trip.

Speaking of tripping, Rory gets her boot stuck and falls over in the mud and manure, but she makes it out of the field and to the back door of the warehouse. Luckily, no one is guarding that door, but as she tries to open it, a soldier comes out to smoke a cigarette.

A soldier walked out, lit a cigarette, and then blew a puff of smoke into the night air. His back was to me, so I slid around and along the door until I was inside and then snuck down the hall, hiding in a a dark corner under a rusted metal work table.

So many questions. First, why is this door not guarded, if it butts up to a big old field that just anybody could wander across. Second, why didn’t the soldier smell Rory? In the field she says she falls “Facedown, palms down, flat on my belly in mud and cow crap.” So, she’s covered in manure. I don’t care how long you’ve smoked, you’re going to notice the smell of treated fertilizer if it’s standing right behind you. Third, dark corner? I thought the place was “lit up like Christmas?”

Rory recognizes that maybe she’s acted a little rashly, and has no idea how to get out of the facility now that she’s in it. She hears voices down the hall and decides to disguise herself by pulling off her vest and sweater and putting on a lab coat over her tank top, which is also soaked. So, basically this disguise hinges on people seeing the lab coat and thinking, “Ah, yes, just a scientist. Who is dripping wet and smells like manure,” but really that’s no worse a disguise than when people usually break into government buildings in books.

Walking slowly down the hall and exercising caution, I checked the rooms I passed, all while trying to keep my teeth from chattering and my wet boots from squeaking or squashing with every step.

Okay, but…this is a warehouse. That’s like, a big giant building full of open space in which to store large quantities of stuff. They’re not generally divided up with long halls and many rooms.

It’s a good thing there are rooms, though, because someone comes along and Rory has to hide:

One of the men wore black leather combat boots. The other wore crocodile skin boots with gray slacks. Hideous.

Let’s not get on our high horse here, Rory. We’ve heard some of your outfits described in fanfiction level detail.

“Sir, he’s not talking,” the soldier said. “Tennison wants to put him on the chopper and fly him out to headquarters. We don’t have the experts here to question him.

“Ten minutes, Sergeant,” Crocodile said. “Give me ten minutes with him, and then Tennison can take him to Disney World for all I care.”

Because if you don’t, this will happen.

Rory tells Cy that Dr. Z isn’t home and that soldiers have already been to his house. Cy says he had a chance to upload the final data to Dr. Z and delete the stuff on the lab computers before the soldiers took him. Dr. Z is the only person who knows where the space rock data is stored, and they have to get it right away, so they start walking back to town.

We still have no idea what the space rock does, why it’s so important, and why the CIA didn’t just seize the lab computers and figure out where the data was uploaded to, anyway, but  at least there wasn’t any more love triangle nonsense in this chapter.

Little Fish Swimming In A Big Fish’s Wake

This isn’t a call out post, though in some cases you’ll be able to read between the lines. That’s not the purpose. Two of the few individuals I’ll single out by name are John Green and E.L. James, and they are largely passive players in the current online dramas their names keep surfacing in. This post is neither a condemnation of them or an endorsement. I bring them up here as examples of authors who have recently been made, perhaps unwillingly, into banners for much larger crusades.

With that in mind, I have to address something that has been bothering me ever since the #AskELJames hashtag last week. For anyone unaware, an individual who is either woefully out of touch or disastrously optimistic thought it would be a great idea for E.L. James to do a Twitter Q & A, in which fans would be able to ask questions and hashtag them with #AskELJames in the hopes of getting their queries answered. A domestic violence prevention group that has protested Fifty Shades of Grey many times in the past came up with the idea that critics of the violence, rape, misogyny, homophobia and racism in the books should flood the tag with questions about all of these issues, to see if James, who is notorious for hostile responses to criticism, would address any of them. But in the hours leading up to the event, some of the questions became, well, mean. People insulted her weight, her intelligence, her appearance, all the standard issue internet hate one would expect to get from just, you know. Being on the internet.

People felt sympathy for her, and that sympathy turned into statements like, “You have to feel bad for her,” which seems harmless in the rhetorical. But then it became an order, “You have to feel bad for her. Nobody would like to hear those things said about them,” before finally throwing in the b-word: “You have to feel bad for her. Nobody would like to hear those things said about them. This is bullying.”

One author came to James’s defense with a blog post imploring us to all be nice, and categorizing the event as a mean-spirited free-for-all in which an innocent author was attacked for no reason and with no means of protecting herself. People online are, after all, people in real life. Comparisons to Cersei’s walk of shame on Game of Thrones were made. E.L. James was, truly, a martyr to the irredeemable beast that is social media.

One thing everyone seemed to overlook was the fact that James herself famously said that criticism would be easier to take “with a nice fat paycheck,” and that she has behaved atrociously toward people on-line since her days in the Twilight fandom. But what goes around comes around is no longer fair, it seems; you should be able to have your cake and shit on everyone else’s without criticism or retaliation.

At the same time, a storm that had been raging for weeks seemed to have been blowing over. It concerned YA author John Green and a tumblr post made by a fan who criticized Green’s interaction with teens. Weeks ago, Green posted a rebuttal to defend himself from allegations of child sexual abuse that were never made. To be frank, I can see why he leapt to that ardent defense, as being an adult man with unfettered digital access to many teenage girls is a position that requires extreme caution. But when YA bloggers and readers pointed out exactly that, authors came out in droves to defend Green from allegations which, again, were never made. The Tumblr user was driven off the site by fans angry that Green had announced he would limit his use of social media. One author stated they “genuinely had reason to distrust male authority figures,” and were “ill” over the controversy, implying that teens who disagreed with them did not have a good enough reason to discuss the issue or their instincts when it comes to adult men.

A teen writer, Camryn Garret, wrote an op ed for The Huffington Post in which she pointed out the connection between silencing teens and fostering rape culture. And yet again, authors rode to John Green’s defense, with one of them calling Garret’s piece an “attack,” as though a teen writer openly acknowledging the power imbalance between bestselling authors with broad social media platforms and their largely anonymous readers put Green in very real danger.

Yesterday, news broke that another YA author, this one much further down the food chain than the others, had announced their resignation from the young adult genre entirely. They would no longer write YA due to the toxic culture that had formed on social media, and their decision was made not in defense of John Green, but in defense of one of the midlist names defending John Green. And of course, the merry-go-round began spinning again, with authors and readers lamenting the loss of this valuable voice and vowing to buy and promote their books.

So it would seem that the tide is turning back toward the Be Nice culture of yore, where readers stayed silent and were happy for the crumbs authors threw to them, and authors with smaller distribution gazed lovingly up at those who had made it. Interestingly enough, the only people who haven’t been weighing in on this subject are Green and James themselves. They haven’t defended themselves half so ardently as the handful of midlisters and bestsellers who stepped up to the plate to decry public response. So I have to wonder…

Is Be Nice the new marketing tool?

One of the easiest ways of garnering sympathy on the internet is to invoke the word “bully.” That accusation has so much power for a word whose meaning has largely been erased through misuse. Bullying implies a power dynamic, the strong preying upon the weak. In what conceivable way was James, arguably the most successful author of all time, disempowered by the voices of dissent in her social media Q&A? At what point was Green brutally oppressed by a larger discussion of concerns that had long gone unexamined with regards to YA authors and their access to teens through the internet, a discussion in which he was no longer the subject but merely the catalyst? More puzzling still is the “abuse” some of the authors defending them believe they’ve been unfairly subjected to when others have disagreed with them, even mildly.

Make no mistake: some comments made about both Green and James were inappropriate and mean for the sake of meanness. Lines were crossed. But that doesn’t mean they were bullied, any more than a handful of pebbles could bully a mountain. Neither of them are known to be silent in the face of criticism, so why the endless posts and tweets and arguments to support them?

Because if you care hard enough and loud enough, you’ll get a prize.

And that’s really all it is. If you call upon others to Be Nice, you appear positive and constructive, regardless of who or what you’re trying to silence with that attitude. If you flounce loudly from your own genre, you’re making the ultimate sacrifice to positivity because you’re just too Nice to handle all that negativity. If you can call enough attention to your niceness, the big fish might notice you. They might tell all the minnows in their pond about you. One day, you might even leap from your tidal pool into the vast ocean of their popularity, because you did them a solid by defending them.

Is this cynical of me? Maybe. But consider all of the authors out there who don’t put up Fifty Shades or The Fault In Our Stars numbers, many of whom are people of color, GLBTQA+ authors, young women writers (including Camryn Garret), who face hatred on social media and their blogs every day while they’re just out there trying to make their voices heard. Do they receive this kind of impassioned defense? Do they merit pages long blog posts, a series of tweets spread out over weeks, a rallying cry that this is the final straw, all of this meanness must be stopped?

No. They don’t get that. Because there’s nothing in it for a little fish to defend another little fish. And if they sit back and watch that other little fish get eaten? Less fish in the pond means more chance of getting the fish food.

John Green and E.L. James have always been very good at supporting their fellow authors and seem eager to do it, but I’ve never seen an indication that they do this as a reward for their faithful legions of white knights alone. So what do authors seek to gain from shutting down valuable discussion about real issues, and lumping legitimate criticism in with insults and personal attacks?

If it’s an attempt to gain readers, count me out. I’ve been turned off by a lot of authors in the past two weeks. The “haters” didn’t alter my personal opinions of John Green or E.L. James, but I certainly see the defenders in a new light, and it’s not positive.

But maybe that’s just me, not being Nice.

FIRST TIME review copies

Hey there everybody! I’m setting up my low-key book release for First Time and I’m offering review copies for people with book review blogs. Wanna review either Ian’s book, or Penny’s book, or both books? Fill out the form below. But please, only fill it out if you blog book reviews. This is a bloggers-only ARC giveaway.

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PS. The release date is in August, but I know you guys have tight schedules. Don’t sweat it if you can’t fit a review in until later down the road.

Happy Independence Day

“I pray Heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it. May none but honest and wise men ever rule under this roof.” –John Adams, writing about the White House.

This 4th of July, I just want to say that I support Bernie Sanders in his run for President of The United States of America, and I think there are a lot of good reasons to. If you’re inclined to check out his campaign, please visit BernieSanders.com.

Happy Independence Day!

THE BOSS audiobook giveaway and news!

Hey everybody! I got great news this week! Tantor Media have acquired the rights to The Ex and The Baby, the fourth and upcoming fifth books in the Boss series. The Boss and The Girlfriend are both available now from them, and The Bride will be out next Tuesday.

So, funny thing, when you sell the audio rights to your novel, the company (in this case, Tantor Media) gives you some free copies. But what I am going to do with a bunch of copies of the same audiobook, right? So I’m going to give three copies away. Just enter, and then I’ll contact the winners after the 10th. I’ll even buy a silver Sharpie and sign these bad boys for you, and I’ll probably throw in some swag, as well, because I’m like that. Then I’ll kick back and sniff that Sharpie, and we’ll all have a good time.

P.S. I realize it’s a pain in the ass to do a giveaway thing where you have tweet or use social media or whatever, but Rafflecopter is all I got. So, if you do enter, thank you for jumping through that hoop to do so, I appreciate it.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Jenny Reads 50 Shades of Midnight Sun: Saturday, May 14, 2011 or “Lack of situational awareness makes our hero look like a serial killer.”

I have internet again. Our long national nightmare is over.

Here are some interesting things relating to E.L. James and the travesties she commits against humanity and the English language:

Everyone thinks Christian Grey is a serial killer
Surprise beyond surprise, James will be rewriting Fifty Shades Darker from Christian’s perspective. 
The world is basically doomed.
But this guest reviewer at Smart Bitches knows what’s up.
And if you’re looking to hire a social media consult, I’m pretty sure James’s is looking for a job.

Also, several people emailed me to point this out, and I’m rolling:

But perhaps my favorite of the bunch from this week is Janet Maslin’s review of Grey for The New York Times. Maslin writes:

Speaking of cries for help, Ms. James leaves herself badly exposed by this book’s flagrant air of desperation. Her own fans write better stories about Christian Grey than she does. The fact that hers is the hidebound, trademarked and much-copied version doesn’t make it the important one. She has let time stand still in order to capitalize on one big hit, but she’s working in such a fast-moving medium that her failure of imagination is dangerous. She didn’t exactly invent these characters in the first place: She was a “Twilight” fan who appropriated them, tweaked them and made them hugely salable for a while.

Someone please send Ms. James a whole bouquet of aloe plants for that sick burn.

On to the recap!

For added context, here’s the link to my recap of chapter two of Fifty Shades of Grey.

This Day In History:   Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund and potential candidate for president of France, was charged with sexually assaulting a Manhattan hotel maid. (He later resigned from the IMF; the charges against him were dropped.) (source)

This chapter begins with the background check on Anastasia Rose Steele, including her address, cell number, social security number, banking info with account number and balance ($683.16, not shabby for an American college student), SAT score (2150, putting Ana in the top 97% of test takers because she’s so bright), where she works, who her father was, who her mother is (including all of her husbands), but nothing about Ana’s sexual orientation, relationships, politics, or religion.

I pore over the executive summary for the hundredth time since I received it two days ago, looking for some insight into the enigmatic Miss Anastasia Rose Steele.

Here’s a revolutionary and completely unconventional idea: talk to her. Don’t order a freaking background check on her. Half the things listed here are things they advise against talking about on a first date, for Christ’s sake.

I’m also confused about “executive summary,” and I think Christian is, too. An executive summary is a part of your business plan where you take all the businessy stuff like your mission statement and what your company does and projected future growth and all sorts of stuff that I don’t understand, and you put it in an outline so people can see that you know what you’re doing. And then, hopefully, they give you money.  It’s not a background check.

You’d think that the biggest and most important business guy ever in the whole wide entire world would know what that term meant. Like, if he’d watched even one episode of Dragon’s Den, he would know.

Anyway, Mr. Executive Summary is sitting in his car outside of Clayton’s hardware, where Ana works.

You’re a fool, Grey. Why are you here?

Because you’re a stalker. (Remember, the underlines aren’t in the text, I just can’t figure out italics in the quote function).

I’ve never pursued a woman before.

Because they fling themselves at him so often that he’s had to buy a protective suit, apparently.

Come get it, ladies.

The women I’ve had understood what I expected of them. My fear now is that Miss Steele is just too young and that she won’t be interested in what I have to offer.

Wasn’t Leela or Layla or Lila or Lily or who the fuck ever it was pretty young? She was still in college.

Will she even make a good submissive?

This is one of the main problems I have with these books, and with a lot of other BDSM romances. The assumption is that since the hero enjoys BDSM, every woman he sees is a potential sub. It’s not, “This woman seems interesting and I would like to get to know her.” It’s not even, “This woman is sexually attractive and I would like to have sex with her.” Just, “This woman will make a good sub. I can tell without speaking to her,” or “Will this woman make a good sub?” Like, are you interested in these women beyond what she can do for you, sexually, buddy?

Okay, so I know in Christian Grey’s case, that’s exactly what’s going on. He seems to view all women as either obnoxious and dripping for him, or possibly someone he can beat on to get a woody. Nothing in between.

If you’re looking for a book that calls out this trope, by the way, check out Fit by Rebekah Weatherspoon. When the hero tries to pull the instasub bullshit on the heroine, she reacts realistically. I almost stood up and cheered when I read it, but I was on a plane at the time and I didn’t feel like getting shot by an air marshal.

Her background check has produced nothing remarkable–except for the last fact, which has been at the forefront of my mind. It’s the reason I’m here. Why no boyfriend, Miss Steele? Sexual orientation unknown–perhaps she’s gay. I snort, thinking that unlikely.

Seriously? What is up with the “Well, s/he can’t possibly be gay” thing in this entire franchise? I feel like James equates heterosexuality with sexual attractiveness; “This person can’t possibly be gay, for I find them fuckable.”

I haven’t mentioned her to Flynn, and I’m glad because I’m now behaving like a stalker.

Really? You think so? You think now you’re acting like a stalker?

YOU ORDERED A BACKGROUND CHECK ON HER WITHIN A MINUTE AND A HALF OF HER LEAVING YOUR OFFICE.

My favorite part of this paragraph, though, is that he goes on to say that he doesn’t want to mention his stalking of Ana to his therapist is because Chedward feels he just needs a distraction. But, uh, the distraction he’s chosen is the very stalking he feels like he shouldn’t mention to the aforementioned therapist. Yeah, I know I’m stalking this girl, but all I need to keep from stalking this girl is to stalk this girl. Okay, sure.  Also, beyond mentioning “solution-based-therapy shit,” Chedward never refers to Flynn as his therapist. This book makes the mistake of assuming that readers will have read Fifty Shades of Grey. A POV-swap retelling has to stand alone. A reader should be able to pick up either Grey or Fifty Shades of Grey and go, “Oh, I understand the whole story now,” (yes, even though it’s a cultural phenomenon), but instead this reads like a fanfic in a particularly ardent fandom that doesn’t need it pointed out to them that Harry Potter is a wizard.

You’ve come all this way. Let’s see if little Miss Steele is as appealing as you remember.

Showtime, Grey.

Close your eyes, Dexter.

I hang up before she senses my excitement and how pleased I am. Leaning back in my chair, I gaze at the darkening skyline and run both my hands through my hair.

How the hell am I going to close this deal?

I guess it’s a good thing you have all those kidnapping supplies, huh?

That’s all for this chapter. Stay tuned for further recaps, and recaps of Jamie McGuire’s Apolonia, which no, I have not abandoned in favor of this mess. I can handle more than one mess at a time.

How I reacted to the news of Hannibal’s cancellation.

During my writing retreat up north last week, we actually did have a teensy bit of 4G at times. And during one of those times, Bronwyn Green found the most distressing news:

NBC had cancelled Hannibal.

I’m die hard fangurl of Thomas Harris’s novels and the movies of them, but Hannibal is some next level slash-fanfic and I can’t get enough of it. And while Netflix and Amazon are apparently both courting the idea of picking up the show, in those first dark hours, I did not take the news of the cancellation well at all:

FOR THE RECORD my feet were only that dirty because I’d just been outside shoeless, walking in pine sap.

After a while, my friends became concerned about me. They possibly also wanted me to wash my feet, which smelled strongly of Christmas tree.

But I wouldn’t get up. I just laid there, softly weeping at the unfairness of a world that would cancel not just Hannibal, but Covington Cross, The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr., The Mindy Project, and Futurama that one time.

Eventually they thought they could tempt me off the floor with promises of cookies and milk…

But they had to build a special straw to get me to go for it.

It is my hope that eventually, Hannibal will also be given cookies and milk on the floor, in the form of a new life on Amazon or Netflix.

Stay tuned this week for another Grey recap and probably more about my upper peninsula adventures.

Jenny Reads 50 Shades of Midnight Sun: Grey, Monday, May 9, 2011, or, “Return of The Chedward”

You guys didn’t really think I would leave, for a week, right after Grey hit the stands, and NOT do a recap before I left? Are you high? Why did you fall for that?

So, while I’m in Gay, MI, which I have renamed it in honor of A Concerned Home Owner, relentlessly Gay, MI, please enjoy this recap until I return.

What’s their home so concerned about?

This way, my silence on the subject doesn’t lead people to believe that I’m actually dead.

If you haven’t read my recaps of the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy, here’s chapter one.

There are no chapters in this book, just dates. In recognition of this, here’s a new feature:

THIS DAY IN HISTORY: On May 9, 2011, while Christian Grey was meeting Anastasia Rose Steele, beloved Belgian cyclist Wouter Weylandt was killed an horrific (look it up) cycling crash.

So, you’re going to learn a little bit about 2011, I think, with every chapter. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll learn a little something about ourselves. You’re welcome.

The book opens with Christian dreaming of his childhood. But you don’t know right away that it’s a dream, because it’s not in italics and its offset margin isn’t clear due to it taking up the whole first page. So, when I started reading:

I have three cars. They go fast across the floor. So fast. One is red. One is green. One is yellow.

I thought this was just Christian Grey’s internal monologue and I was like, ohhhhhh shit.  I have like eight hundred pages of this left.

Luckily, he starts dreaming about his mommy, and how his car goes under the couch and she won’t help him get it (because she’s too stoned, I assume, because we learned in the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy that she is a “crack whore”).

Not now, Maggot. Not now,  she says.

As always, I can’t figure out how to do italics in this blog’s quotes, so just roll with underlines as italics.

Anyway, she calls him maggot. Wait. Maggot? Maggot…worm…grey…maggot…grey…

Why are you bringing this poor guy into this?

Baby Christian laments the loss of his car, which he will never get to play with again. Then:

I open my eyes and my dream fades in the early-morning light.

Ah, starting a story with a character waking up. How Not To Write A Book Unless You Are Douglas Adams and Then You Get A Pass 101.

Christian–pardon me, Chedward–gets out of bed, puts on a sweatsuit, and contemplates a run in the rain, a la the opening credits of the 50 Shades of Grey movie. Instead, he opts to run inside, on a treadmill, and he doesn’t even have the decency to listen to Annie Lennox’s version of “I Put A Spell On You” while he does it. The ingratitude. As he runs, he thinks about all the meetings he has coming up, that Bastille his trainer would be coming by, and that maybe he should have dinner with Elena, a.k.a. Mrs. Robinson.

I stop the treadmill, breathless, and head down to the shower to start another monotonous day.

This is how you always want to start your books, by the way. I mean, some people like to start their stories in the scene where the break in monotony that will propel the protagonist on their journey happens, but she goes a boldly different route, giving us an incomprehensible dream sequence and a guy talking about how boring his life is while we read about him being boring.

After a section break, we’re at the office, where Claude Bastille, the champion kickboxer who kickboxes so good he won an Olympic medal for it even though it’s not an Olympic sport, is just leaving.

I scowl at him as he turns and leaves. His parting words rub salt into my wounds because, despite my heroic attempts during our workout today, my personal trainer has kicked my ass. Bastille is the only one who can beat me, and now he wants another pound of flesh on the golf course.

I got so much shit for calling Ana a “Mary Sue” by people who dislike that term, because “you never hear of male characters getting called a Mary Sue!” Well, here’s your chance, and I hope it thrills you. Because Chedward is a Mary Sue. A Gary Stu. You know what? From now on and henceforth, all male Mary Sue characters will be known as Chedward Sue.

As I stare out the window at the Seattle skyline, the familiar ennui seeps unwelcome into my consciousness. My mood is as flat and gray as the weather.

Chedward is in a depressive episode wherein his entire life has become same. Nothing thrills him–except for a couple of cargo ships he’s sent to Sudan. Woe, but will anything in his life rattle him from his bleak, gray (grey?) Grey prison?

I have to endure an interview with the persistent Miss Kavanagh for the WSU student newspaper.Why the hell did I agree to this? I loathe interviews–inane questions from ill-informed, envious people intent on probing my private life. And she’s a student.

Whoa ho ho, let’s come down from our high horse there a little bit, buddy. She’s a student who’s about to graduate. You’re looking down on her? You dropped out of Harvard. Look, I don’t have a problem with people who don’t go to school (I didn’t finish college), but this dick was accepted at Harvard and quit because it was beneath him, but Kate is actually working hard to get an education. Also, “envious” people? Kate Kavanagh was, if I remember correctly, just trying to do a good job for the school newspaper to which she’d devoted a lot of effort during her lowly college student years.

“Miss Anastasia Steele is here to see you, Mr. Grey.”

“Steele? I was expecting Katherine Kavanagh.”

“It’s Miss Anastasia Steele who’s here, sir.”

I hate the unexpected.

Don’t worry, we hate her, too.

Well, well…Miss Kavanagh is unavailable. I know her father, Eamon, the owner of Kavanagh Media. We’ve done business together, and he seems like a shrewd operator and a rational human being. This interview is a favor to him–one that I mean to cash in on later when it suits me. And I have to admit I was vaguely curious about his daughter, interested to see if the apple has fallen far from the tree.

Not a lot of love for Kate, already. Jesus. I’m picturing E.L. at home, using a brunette Barbie like a hammer against a blond Barbie, screaming, “HE DOESN’T LOVE YOU! HE’LL NEVER LOVE YOU!”

A commotion at the door bring me to my feet as a whirl of long chestnut hair, pale limbs, and brown boots dives headfirst into my office.

Because of the use of “whirl” in this sentence, now all I see is Ana spiraling into Chedward’s office like a poorly styled football.

Repressing my natural annoyance at such clumsiness, I hurry over to the girl who has landed on her hands and knees on the floor.

Yeah, it’s totally natural to be annoyed when someone else falls. Like, if you’re doing pairs figure skating, for example.

One of the things I was hoping this book would clear up is the mystery of why Ana fell in the first place. I thought maybe, “She trips over the very expensive hole where the very expensive thing on my door latches into the floor…or something.” Anything. But all we get is that she’s falling for no reason, exactly as she was in the first book.

Now we’re going to need the floor’s POV on this.

Clear, embarrassed eyes meet mine and halt me in my tracks. They are the most extraordinary color, powder blue, and guileless, and for one awful moment, I think she can see right through me and I’m left…exposed. The thought is unnerving, so I dismiss it immediately.

She has a small, sweet face that is blushing now, an innocent, pale rose. I wonder briefly if all her skin is like that–flawless–and what it would look like pink and warmed from the bite of a cane.

Spoiler alert: he never finds out, because even though everyone talks a big game about canes in this series, nobody has ever gotten caned.

I stop my wayward thoughts, alarmed at their direction. What the hell are you thinking, Grey? This girl is much too young.

Let’s remember that at this point in the books, Ana is twenty-one, and he’s twenty-seven. You know, just so you can grapple with the obstacle of their impossible age gap as we read along.

She gapes at me, and I resist rolling my eyes.

My palm twitches.

Christian pretends that he doesn’t know she’s not Kate, because he’s trying to deliberately make her stop finding him hot. He’s good at what he does, because I’ve been dryer than sixty year old wallpaper since page one. Oh, and at this point, Ana has now blushed twice.

She’s quite attractive–slight, pale, with a mane of dark hair barely contained by a hair tie.

A brunette.

Just in case you weren’t aware of the definition of “brunette.”

“Miss Kavanagh is indisposed, so she sent me. I hope you don’t mind, Mr. Grey.” Her voice is quiet with a hesitant musicality, and she blinks erratically, long lashes fluttering.

So…

She explains who she is, and that she studies literature.

A bashful, bookish type, eh? She looks it: poorly dressed, her slight frame hidden beneath a shapeless sweater, an A-line brown skirt, and utilitarian boots. Does she have any sense of style at all?

Seriously, E.L.? Do you even know what medium you’re working in right now? You’re going to basically insult every reader everywhere by having the “romantic hero” they love viewing bookishness as a bad thing? You realize that many of the women, like the ones who fawn over you at signings and appearances, actually consider themselves “bookish” due to their love of reading, right? You just had the man you want their panties to get wet over equate reading with ugliness and a lack of style.

And you’re doing this? Look, I’m not normally one to attack others for their physical appearances (outside of my head…in there, I’m a real judgmental bitch), but you have $95 million or whatever. Get your bangs out of your damn eyes and stop insulting your readers.

Chedward, of course, notices that Ana “doesn’t have an assertive bone in her body.” In the erotic romance industry, we like to call this, “Instasub,” wherein the Dom intuitively knows that the random woman he’s just met is a sexual submissive, without bothering to get to know more than her name.

Well, I don’t really know if we call it that. I made that up. But we remark upon this phenomenon enough, that’s what we should call it.

he intuitively guesses she’s appreciating the paintings in his office:

“They’re lovely. Raising the ordinary to extraordinary,” she says dreamily, lost in the exquisite, fine artistry of Trouton’s work. Her profile is delicate–an upturned nose, soft, full lips–and in her words she has captured my sentiments exactly. Raising the ordinary to extraordinary. It’s a keen observation. Miss Steele is bright.

In her acknowledgments, E.L. James thanks “The FP ladies for help with my Americanisms.” So I just wanted to let you know, FP ladies, that I’m sorry you wasted your time. No American man who isn’t a PhD in English thinks like this in his talk-head. It would be more like, “Her profile is pretty hot. I like her nose. Mouth’s good, too. And she totally gets what I like about Trouton, so she’s pretty smart.”

 As I sit down opposite her, I try to bridle my thoughts.

And now we’re in a historical romance!

It’s obvious she’s never done this before, but for some reason I can’t fathom, I find it amusing. Under normal circumstances her maladroitness would irritate the hell out of me, but now I hide my smile beneath my index finger and resist the urge to set it up for her myself.

Set what up? Your finger? Your smile? Her maladroitness? Normal circumstances? The reason you can’t fathom? Because those are all nouns that have come between her fumbling with the tape recorder and you deciding to set it up for her.

Since we already know that they have children at the end of the trilogy, this impatient thing is going to make him a great father.

As she fumbles and grows more and more flustered, it occurs to me that I could refine her motor skills with the aid of a riding crop. Adeptly used, it can bring even the most skittish to heel.

Okay, we’ve got bridle, riding crop, bringing skittish things to heel… I feel like there is a lot of pony play missing from the original trilogy.

Mr. Neigh will see you now.

“S-Sorry, I’m not used to this.”

I can tell, baby, but right now I don’t give a damn because I can’t take my eyes off your mouth.

Baby. She’s been in his office for like five minutes, and he’s mentally calling her baby.

I need another moment to marshal my thoughts.

Horses, marshals, we are in  a western, dear reader.

Ana asks if she can record Chedward’s answers, and he’s like, you’re asking me after you fumbled with that recorder all this time, etc. You remember the drill from the first book and the movie, right?

She blinks, her eyes large and lost for a moment, and I’m overcome by an unfamiliar twinge of guilt.

It is “unfamiliar” for him to feel guilty about being rude and condescending to people. Oh, swoon, where is my Christian Grey?

Ana asks Christian if Kate told him what the interview was for, and he tells her it’s about the commencement address he’ll be giving at WSU. He doesn’t actually want to do it, but it will bring more publicity to the school and might help them match the grant money they’ve given him. Ana looks surprised to learn this, and Chedward is insulted that she didn’t come to the interview prepared (didn’t I say just the exact same thing in the first chapter recap? DIDN’T I?)

Ana asks him the “to what do you owe your success” question, and this is his reaction:

I trot out my usual response about having exceptional people working for me. People I trust, insofar as I trust anyone, and pay well–blah, blah, blah… But Miss Steele, the simple fact is, I’m brilliant at what I do. For me it’s like falling off a log.

Ana asks him if he’s just lucky, and he is deeply insulted.

Flaunting my erudition, I quote the words of Andrew Carnegie, my favorite industrialist.

“Flaunting my erudition.” Someone please remove the thesaurus from Ms. James’s computer. Thank you.

Ana calls Christian a control freak.

I glare at her, hoping to intimidate her.

How are we supposed to buy Grey as this Master of The Universe type when he’s unnerved by someone he’s already dismissed as beneath him?

That attractive blush steals across her face, and she bites that lip again.

Oh man, this is like a trip down memory lane, but if memory lane was paved in broken glass and painful stupidity.

“Don’t you have a board to answer to?”

“I own my company. I don’t have to answer to a board.” She should know this.

Maybe she knows how real corporations run, and what CEO’s actually do? And that a corporation the size of Grey Holdings Industrial Blah Blah Blah I’m Special INC. would almost certainly have a board of directors or share holders?

As stupid and unbearable as Ana was, I’m like not even halfway through the first chapter and I would rather be re-reading 50 Shades of Grey.

She knows I’m pissed, and for some inexplicable reason this pleases me.

It’s not inexplicable. You’re an abusive piece of shit. This all makes perfect sense.

Ana asks him what he does to “chill out.”

Sailing, flying, fucking…testing the limits of attractive brunettes like her, and bringing them to heel.

I feel like E.L. couldn’t take a harder stance against her own creation if she stood up at a podium and said she was writing all of this as a social experiment to bring abuse and rape culture to light in our society. That she’s doing this on accident is either horrifying or hilarious. Hilarifying. Hilorifying.

Ana continues the interview, and the questions are as boring this time around as they were the last time. There’s more Kate bashing:

“Because I’m a benefactor of the university, and for all intents and purposes, I couldn’t get Miss Kavanagh off my back. She badgered and badgered my PR people, and I admire that kind of tenacity.” But I’m glad it’s you who turned up and not her.

because it’s very important that the reader know that Kate is unworthy of Chedward’s attention.

Ana asks him why he’s interested in farming technologies, and he explains it’s because he cares about people getting enough food.

She regards me with a puzzled look, as if I’m a conundrum, but there’s no way I want her seeing into my dark soul.

His Tumblr bio is “Welcome to my twisted mind.”

Ana asks him if his end goal is to possess things, and she calls him “the ultimate consumer.”

She sounds like a rich kid who’s had all she ever wanted, but as I take a closer look at her clothes–she’s dressed in clothes from some cheap store like Old Navy or H&M–I know that isn’t it. She hasn’t grown up in an affluent household.

Look, I write some capitalist trash. Hardcore, wealth worshipping, brand-name dropping capitalist trash. But at least I try to not insult my readers who are spending their money on my books and giving me the privilege of buying those “cheap” clothes from Old Navy. It’s very difficult to read a statement like this, even from a fictional character’s point of view, and give E.L. James the benefit of the doubt about how she regards her readership, especially in light of comments she’s made regarding her “lifestyle” and her “perch” above other Twilight fans.

Ana asks him more questions about his personal life, the fact that he was adopted, that he has no family aside from his parents and siblings, and then:

“Are you gay, Mr. Grey?”

What the hell!

I cannot believe she’s said that out loud! Ironically, the question even my own family will not ask. How dare she! I have a sudden urge to drag her out of her seat, bend her over my knee, spank her, and then fuck her over my desk with her hands tied behind her back. That would answer her ridiculous question.

How fragile, the skin of Chedward’s masculinity, like a soap bubble adrift on the vast bathtub of his own homophobia. As a reader, I’m supposed to be turned on by his virility and iron-clad heterosexuality, that can only be proved by an act of violence and rape in retaliation for ever questioning it.

And of course, Ana apologizes for making such an unforgivable implication, and admits that she didn’t come up with the questions.

“Did you volunteer to do this interview?” I ask, and I’m rewarded with her submissive look: she’s nervous about my reaction. I like the effect I have on her.

He enjoys intimidating her and making her uncomfortable, and of course, more “Instasub” mentality.

Chedward’s secretary comes in, and he tells her to cancel his next meeting, so he can enjoy making Ana nervous and uncomfortable even more!

“You’re driving back to Vancouver?” I glance out the window. It’s one hell of a drive, and it’s raining. She shouldn’t be driving in this weather, but I can’t forbid her. The thought irritates me.

It irritates him that he can’t control the actions of a stranger. You know who he reminds me of?

She wants out of my office, and to my surprise, I don’t want her to go.

Well, just rape her, like you wanted to do earlier.

I can’t let her go like this. It’s obviously she’s desperate to leave.

I’m not entirely sure this could get creepier, but I know in my deepest, truest heart that it will.

As Christian walks Ana out, he asks her if she came in with a coat. When she says she did:

I give Olivia a pointed look and she immediately leaps up to retrieve a navy jacket, passing it to me with her usual simpering expression. Christ, Olivia is annoying–mooning over me all the time.

It must be terrible for you, Chedward, to believe yourself to be the paragon of manly perfection and to have people fall for it. Don’t worry, if Olivia were inside your head right now, she would not be simpering. You’re safe from her insatiable desires.

The jacket is worn and cheap. Miss Anastasia Steele should be better dressed.

Who are you, Mr. Blackwell?

Ana leaves, and Christian demands that Andrea get Welch on the phone.

As I sit at my desk and wait for the call, I look at the paintings on the wall of my office, and Miss Steele’s words drift back to me. “Raising the ordinary to extraordinary.” She could so easily have been describing herself.

My phone buzzes. “I have Mr. Welch on the line for you.”

“Put him through.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Welch, I need a background check.”

See, creepier already!

Stay tuned for the next recap, which really will be after the 27th.