Chelsea Gaither's Blog, page 69

City of Bones chapter 3

So to recap City of Bones so far:

Apparently there are clubs in New York City that will let minors, and by minors I mean "Under eighteen", dance indoors, Clary met the Murder Trio and witnessed a murder only she could see, and she apparently has the same "Shiny object shiny!" ADD that Bella Swan has re: Hot guys and murder, because the only thing she cares about is the color of Murder Trio boy Jace's eyes. Does this get better? Does it?

In a word? No.

Clary and Simon go to their friend's poetry reading. A girl hits on Simon, who doesn't care. Simon hits on Clary, who not only doesn't care, she suggests other girls that Simon is most definately Not Interested in, because he's got serious hots for Clary. Her mom is still frantically calling, which in any normal universe ever would be your signal that something is SERIOUSLY wrong back home, but Clary is ignoring her mother in favor of seriously bad poetry. How bad?

“Sorry about that, guys!” he yelled. “All right. I’m Eric, and this is my homeboy Matt on the drums. My first poem is called ‘Untitled.’” He screwed up his face as if in pain, and wailed into the mike. “Come, my faux juggernaut, my nefarious loins! Slather every protuberance with arid zeal!”

It's a little too much like Zogon poetry, though, and a little too pretension free.

Simon tries desperately to tell her how hot he is for her, and she desperately tries to pretend he isn't--trust me. You don't not notice a boy drooling on your lap--and then Jace from the Murder Trio shows up.

 He was wearing the same dark clothes he’d had on the night before in the club. His arms were bare and covered with faint white lines like old scars. His wrists bore wide metal cuffs; she could see the bone handle of a knife protruding from the left one. He was looking right at her, the side of his narrow mouth quirked in amusement. Worse than the feeling of being laughed at was Clary’s absolute conviction that he hadn’t been sitting there five minutes ago.

So, boys and girls, let's play "Human decision making Multiple Choice" one more time. You are a young woman who witnessed a murder only you could see last night. Now one of the murderers, who once more only you can see, has stalked you and your best friend through New York City. He is very visibly still armed with his prefered weapon. Do you:

1. Get up, call police and leave building.

2. Ask your friend to please take you home, and start running if stranger danger here starts following you home

3. Get up, go over to the VISIBLY ARMED MURDERER and strike up a conversation.

4. ANY OTHER POSSIBLE THING OTHER THAN NUMBER THREE.

If you answer one, two, or four, congradulations! You are smarter than Clary!

“I don’t care about Eric’s poetry.” Clary was furious. “I want to know why you’re following me.” 

“Who said I was following you?”

Uh, the fact that you're here at the poetry slam the night after SHE SAW YOU STAB ANOTHER BOY IN THE THROAT.

After a quick exam, Jace decides that Clary isn't a Shadowhunter, which is what he is. He shows Clary his tattoos, which were apparently made with Acme Disappearing, Reappearing Ink, because they blink in and out of existance like freaking neon. Now, he has to take her to Hodge, his tutor.

Let me repeat this. Clary, our heroine, has followed a strange boy out into the street precissely because she saw him murder someone, he shows off his dangerous tattoos, talks about magic and fairies, and then states his intention of kidnapping her and taking her to another man.

And she doesn't run away.

Jace then explains that he is a "Shadowhunter" and his job is to hunt demons AKA "Downworlders."

“Downworlders?”

 “The Night Children. Warlocks. The fey. The magical folk of this dimension.”

And I really can't ignore this any more. The entire purpose of Jace and the rest of the Murder Trio are to hunt down and kill demons. Out of hand. Without anything resembling a trial. Because they are evil demon things and deserve to die. And mundane humans also have to be protected against this because we are mundane humans. No better reason is ever given.



Not to invoke Godwin's here, but you know who else did blanket discrimination against an entire population group, with total extermination as their goal? (I just invoked Godwin's. You know exactly who I'm talking about) And I think this is why City Of Bones fails to deliver on its concept. Jace is Draco, "Shadowhunters" are Death Eaters, and what made sense in Harry Potter makes no sense in City of Bones because the negative nature of these actions--again, Jace murdered a man in front of Clary--is never addressed. No qualms are given. The motives for many of these characters makes no sense at all in this book, mostly because those motives came from many other books. 

The circumstances and situations in this world are never explored. Characters go from one scene to another without suffering any consequences for the last scene, unless those concequences serve the plot. You feel no connection to anything whatsoever, and to me the reason is most clearly seen in this: the Shadowhunters are a lot like the Nazis, in almost every imaginable way, and the author never acknowledges this blanket hatred as a negative trait. Shadowhunters hate Downworlders. The freaking end.

So while Jace is trying to convince Clary to let him kidnap her, he allows her to answer her cell phone.

Please read that sentence a second time.

It is her Mom. Calling in a panic, so Clary, freaked out by having a murderer state his intentions to kidnap her, decides she'll go home.

“No!” Terror scraped Jocelyn’s voice raw. “Don’t come home! Do you understand me, Clary? Don’t you dare come home...Go to Simon’s and call Luke— tell him that he’s found me—” Her words were drowned out by a heavy crash like splintering wood.

Naturally, Clary yanks herself away from Jace--who does offer to help her--and goes running off for home, all by her sweet little self.

Jace, you are the worst kidnapper ever. 

 End of chapter. TOMORROW: What happened to Mom? And how long will we have to wait to find out?

A while, blog readers. A while.

City of Bones chapter 2

In the spirit of "pot, meet kettle" I'm going to point something out. Chapter two opens with this paragraph:

The dark prince sat astride his black steed, his sable cape flowing behind him. A golden circlet bound his blond locks, his handsome face was cold with the rage of battle, and . . .“And his arm looked like an eggplant,” Clary muttered to herself in exasperation. The drawing just wasn’t working.

Think of adjectives as trailers and nouns as cars. Sometimes--like when you're driving a Ford F350--you can hitch the two together without doing too much damage to the car. Other times--it's a H2 hummer--you can't. My point? You don't have to give every fucking car a trailer. Dark prince, black steed, sable cape, golden circlet, blond locks, handsome face, which is also cold. Every adjective added to a noun dilutes the previous...even when its added to a new noun. Also? I get it. I get it. The fucking prince is fucking dressed in fucking black. 

That said, the concept in chapter two's opening paragraph is something I get. See, Clary is an artist. Clary's mother is also an artist, but Clary sees Mom's art as being effortless, and her own as being a lot of work. I had the same relationship with my mother's art. I didn't draw anything seriously until I was sixteen years old and somehow understood that, when you're learning how to draw, it is okay to suck. You get better at it. IMHO the best thing that ever happened to me was working on the Comic Genesis, then Keenspace forums. Because the other artists NAILED me man. They taught me that this shit is never effortless. Now mom swears our roles are reversed. I don't think so. I still need to use the transform tool to make faces look right.

All this would be great, if the previous chapter hadn't ended with Clary wittnessing a murder and then lying about it. 

I re-read the end of the last chapter and I kind of glossed over how unbelievably quickly Clary lies about what she saw. Jace and the other members of the Murder Trio killed a boy--they claimed he was a demon, but he looked human enough--right in front of her, fucking whipped her, and when somebody says "Hey, you said people  came in here with knives," she said "Hey, I guess I was wrong" while the people with the knives were in the room grinning at her. 

She's got no reason to cover for the Murder Trio. Clare tries desperately hard to give Clary a reason, but none of it works. The fact is that the plot demands that Clary not be an idiot by screaming her head off, when that's exactly what a normal human being would do, and the "plot" my friends, requires we give our all. Or whatever.

So now Clary is practicing her drawing after watching a boy get violently killed, right in front of her.

I saw a cat get run over by a car once. Right in front of me. The thing I remember the most was how he didn't die right away. This big old red truck rolled him, and the cat kept running. He actually picked up speed and ran right past me into our flower bushes. I felt relieved. One, that I hadn't seen the cat get killed, and two, that the cat hadn't died. I started screaming at the truck. Only the cat fell into the bushes and started...I guess it was a seizure, but it looked more like the cat was fighting with some imaginary thorn-vine demon for its right to keep living, and losing. My dad realized that the cat was dead, was more than dead, and he tried to keep me from looking at it after that. But I remember looking back as he picked up the pieces, and seeing just a little bit of blood running out of the cat's nose and mouth. His name was Tux, for tuxido, because he had tuxido style markings. We used to throw rocks at him because he was a mean old thing. When Dad was done cleaning up, he realized he needed to do something with me, fast, so he took me to Dairy Queen and bought me a caramel sundae. I couldn't eat it. I don't think I did much more than shiver for the rest of that afternoon. It was that little bit of blood. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Clary? Sees more than a little bit of blood. And Clary? Doesn't seem to give a fuck.

After failing at drawing for a while, her friend Simon makes a prank call that isn't all that funny:

“Hi, I’m one of the knife-carrying hooligans you met last night in Pandemonium? I’m afraid I made a bad impression and was hoping you’d give me a chance to make it up to—”

Also, Clary's full name is "Clarissa".

Boys and girls, I'd like for you to take one moment to consider the following trend:

Bella=Isabella
Ana=Anastasia
Clary=Clarissa

WHY THE FUCK CAN'T A WOMAN KEEP ALL OF HER NAME IN A MODERN NOVEL?

I'll spot you one Katness but I'll raise you a PrimOkay. I'm better now.

Clary decides to meet her BFF Simon somewhere, and then wanders around her own home so we can see what it's like. Also, we find out that she's never met her father, a honorable decorated soldier who died overseas. His name was Jonathan.

Her Uncle Luke shows up! Hey, cool. You want to talk to him about the murder you witnessed yesterday? No? What are you going to talk about, then?

...The Golden Bough. Because a fifteen year old girl who goes clubbing and covers up a murder would totally read really old fashioned fairy tale magic stuff.

And then...oh, my freaking God, given how much the murder thing bothers me, this exchange is kind of incredible:

"What would you do if you saw something nobody else could see?"

The tape gun fell out of Luke’s hand, and hit the tiled hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. “You mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of thing?” 

“No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you were the only one who could see something. As if it were invisible to everyone but you.”

Clary. Honey. YOU ARE THE ONLY WITNESS TO A CRIME. Yes. In the universe of the Murder Trio what they did was justifiable. YOU DO NOT KNOW THIS. And you have decided to completely IGNORE a murder because the guy doing it was kind of hot. Google "Karla Homolka" to find out how this usually ends, okay angel cakes?

Then Mom shows up and we find out that Mom is gorgeous and Clary is short and everybody says she looks like Mom but that's not true because Mom is pretty and Clary can't be pretty and blah blahMarySuefreaking blah. She's hot, okay? She just doesn't know it. 

One of my favorite books as a kid was Jennifer Murdly's Toad, by Bruce Corville. Jennifer was not pretty. By the end of the book she has a chance to become pretty and chooses not to. It was probably one of my favorite books because Jennifer wasn't pretty.

There is a really ugly irony here, and I feel like a bitch for point it out, but I kind of, you know, am, so I'm going to do it anyway. The author is not skinny. Personally I think she looks cute, but she's definately not, to directly quote the book she wrote, "willowy and tall". For some reason, western culture has a "thing" where women have value when they are eye candy, and have little value when they are not. The author, who definately has a horse in the "conventional beauty" race, had a chance to do something interesting with beauty standards, and instead chose to go all Glenda the Good Witch, "Only Bad Witches Are Ugly" and hey, let's pile MORE image issues onto YA audiences. And this is a running theme in the book. It's not even Good Guys are Beautiful, Bad Guys are Not, it's more...only pretty people are worth even getting cast in the book, let alone being given a supporting role that doesn't make you want to eat your shorts. The only primary cast member who has any imperfection at all is Simon (Glasses) and as I've already established, he is this book's Ute. He deserves all the things and he will not get one of them.

It's not a huge deal, but if your character is going to aingst about not being pretty, don't make them pretty. It gives them a little depth, and depth is something this book needs. Badly.

Moving on.

So because of what happened last night--which, remember, Clary has lied about, repeatedly. BECAUSE IT WAS A MURDER--Mom has decided to move everybody out of town for the rest of the summer. And Clary, who witnessed a murder and thus has a VERY good reason to get the fuck out of dodge, is all like BUT MY FRIENDS!!!! ALL SUMMER???? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (/darth vader) 

So Mom--whose real name is Joicelyn--and Luke have a stage whispered conversation about how somebody is out of town, and what's Mom going to do, she can't keep Clary locked up all the time, and Luke reminds her how Clary isn't Jonathan. And then Simon shows up and Joycelyn lets her daughter run off with him without putting up much of a fight.

If I pulled half that shit with my parents at fifteen, my ass would have been grounded.

Hey, how much family does Clary have?

Clary sucked in air to cool her burning mouth. “I mean, she never talks about herself. I don’t know anything about her early life, or her family, or much about how she met my dad. She doesn’t even have wedding photos. It’s like her life started when she had me. That’s what she always says when I ask her about it.”

Yeah. We're totally not hiding anything from our daughters, now are we?

Also, Clary sees a random cat dude and does nothing at all about it. Her mom tries to get her to come home, but Clary decides to do things with her friends instead. We're now losing television privleges in my home. They discuss band names for Simon's band, and I would totally love a band called Lawn Chair Crisis, but apparently that's not "Cool" enough for a world where clubs and murders happen in church basements.

And then Simon pressures Clary to become his girlfriend.

“Which means,” Simon continued, “that I am the last member of the band not to have a girlfriend. Which, you know, is the whole point of being in a band. To get girls.”

 “I thought it was all about the music.” A man with a cane cut across her path, heading for Berkeley Street. She glanced away, afraid that if she looked at anyone for too long they would sprout wings, extra arms, or long forked tongues like snakes. “Who cares if you have a girlfriend, anyway?”

One, she's leaving. She'll say no. Two...IF YOU ARE AFRAID YOU ARE HALUCINATING YOU NEED TO GO SEE A DOCTOR.

Contrived plot is fucking contrived, folks.

After ignoring her mother's calls yet again, (At this point, my father would institute a point card system if I ever wanted to see the outside again) Clary goes off to a poetry reading (REALLY?) and the chapter ends.

TOMORROW: Bella Swan ain't got nothin' on Clary in the bitch department.

Book Bitch: City of Bones chapter one

I've had this book on my "to bitch" list for a while. It rose to the top because I found it again yesterday (My books are filed in "fuck it" order, so just because I have a book doesn't mean I can find the book.

Anyway, City of Bones by Cassandra Clare.

This book has a...uh, interesting history. Interesting in that "HOLY FUCK TRAIN WRECK" kind of way that I love so much. Cassandra Clare is the pen name of Cassandra Claire, which in turn is the pen name for Judith Rumelt. Cassie got famous for writing Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fan fiction.

And then she got infamous for straight up pasting published authors words into her books. Here is the whole story, but to summerize, at some point she read The Secret Country and The Hidden Land, found several scenes much to her liking, and just pasted them into her work wholesale with just a couple changes. She also had a long, long, fucking long history of using quotes from famous TV shows (Buffy, Angel, Blackadder) as jokes in her stories. Most readers found them funny, quite a few thought they were a game (Guess the Show) and more than one person was HIGHLY disturbed that almost none of these additions were properly referenced until LONG after she'd been caught doing copypasta.

And when I say she got famous for doing this, I mean that several Harry Potter conventions happened purely because she would be there. Several popular Harry Potter websites exist because she got kicked off FanFiction.net for the aforementioned plagerism, and when somebody stole her laptop her fans bought her a new one. Given how competative publishing is...well, I'm not going to say she only got published because she already had a ravening fan base, but it definately gave her a leg up over her competition.

Also? This book is going to become a movie. SOON. As in, they're signing casting contracts as we speak.

So how's the actual book? Let me put it this way. You know how Eragon was Star Wars with a heavy seasoning of Pern, Lord of the Rings and  a touch of Harry Potter? City of Bones is Harry Potter with a heavy seasoning of Bleach, Star Wars and a little Twilight.

Here's hoping the movie is just as good as Eragon's. 

Our story opens with a fifteen year old girl standing in line to get into a club. An all ages club. In New York City. On a Sunday.

...yeah. NO.

Okay, I don't know if "all ages clubs" are a thing. But I DO know that if it is an "all ages club" there is no way in HELL they have a liquor license. I cannot imagine that place having the kind of staff it would take to police drink distribution in that mess. Also...the club is busy espeically on a Sunday.

I just checked. New York State, like Texas, has what are called "Blue Laws", laws regulating what can and cannot be done on a Sunday. In Texas, we cannot sell booze of any sort until ten AM, with food, or until noon without food. Also, establishments where booze is the primary item of sale have to close. In New York, this was amended to a once a week closure, so if you don't shut down on Sunday you have to close some other day of the week.

Sundays and Mondays are the two worst days in food service/entertainment. The restaurant I work at is only open Sunday night if the following Monday is a holiday. If by law, you have to close your business? You're closing on Sunday. You'll lose less money that way.

Thirdly, a club is going to make most of their money on ALCOHOL. Which you cannot sell to a fifteen year old. There are no mentions of special wrist bands or stamps on the hands--you know that fancy ass x punk rockers sometimes have tattooed on the back of their hands? Straight Edge? That came because bouncers would put an X on the hands of anyone who is underage so the servers would know not to give them a drink. You can get arrested for serving a minor alcohol. Your place of business can be striaght up shut the fuck down for serving a minor alcohol. This WHOLE STORY requires a fifteen year old girl to be in a club she has no business being in for another three years.
Now, a place like this might exist. Maybe. I can't imagine it turning a profit, unless the cover charge is HUGE. And if the cover charge is HUGE the kids--including the under-age with the fake IDs--are going to go to a club where the charge isn't so big. And so I have this question for the author: why not just have the main character sneak into a club with a fake ID? Sure, she's breaking the law, but your universe is collapsing and we aren't even on page two.

Our main character's name is Clary Frey.

...As written by Cassandra Clare. 

Alright, it's not her real name. But the weird thing about pen/screen names is, they do tend to take on a life of their own. First, because it's your carefully chosen and crafted "This says everything there is to say about me" name. Second, because everyone you meet online is going to go, for example, "CHRISTWRITER" and not "CHELSEA!" when they meet you. Cassandra Clare has been Cassandra Clare for her audience for years. An audience that includes, I assume (given what I know about her history, it's a safe assumption) a large subset of her friends. She is introduced as Cassandra Clare at every public apperance.

So this would be like me naming a character "Kelsey" or "CW" Or...

...wait. My own main character's name is Casey Winter, right?

...MOVING ON!

Clary and her best friend Simon get into a club. So does this other boy, who managed to use magic to get a knife into the club. Murder boy is looking for a victim to kill.

See, this is why you don't let MINORS run around UNSUPERVISED in a freaking dance club in NEW YORK CITY.

Murder Boy follows Hot Girl With Suspiciously Expensive Bauble into a storage room. Cut back to Clary. The club scene here is like every other club scene, except the Ecstasy being handed out is herbal. Is this a thing? (google search)...yes it is. And it's apparently just natural ephedrine. Okay. Because everybody in this under age rave is going to follow the rules.

You know what I think? I think this "club" is actually a church basement. Only way this makes sense.

Hey, how's the writing in this book?

Clary wasn’t paying much attention to their immediate surroundings— her eyes were on the blue-haired boy who’d talked his way into the club. He was prowling through the crowd as if he were looking for something. There was something about the way he moved that reminded her of something . . .

Something tells me the word "Something" is going to stop looking like a word before this book is over.

Clary, from her vantage point on a balcony, I guess, sees that Murder Boy is going off after Girl with Bauble, and that two other boys are following him, far enough back that Clary...well, let's quote the book again:

She couldn’t have said how she knew that they were following the other boy, but she did. She could see it in the way they paced him, their careful watchfulness, the slinking grace of their movements. A small flower of apprehension began to open inside her chest.

1. Clary's powers of description need a little help.

2. Way to contradict yourself in the same paragraph. She can't say how she knew they were following him, except, hey, she just did. 

3. A little weed killer will clear that all right up.

Anyway, she sees the boys following Murder boy have knives, and decides to drag her friend Simon, who has been muttering things like, "I'm cross dressing and sleeping with your mom" to see if she's paying attention to him. Obviously, she's the same kind of "friend" that Bella Swan is. Off they go, to rescue a total stranger from other total strangers with knives.

Instead of, you know, going to the bouncer whose JOB it is, breaking these things up.

So then Murder Boy discovers that Isabelle AKA Girl with Bauble and her two friends are here to murder him...and they do exactly that, revealing in the process that he isn't human, and neither are they. Even though the new Murder Trio totally are.

Clary goes into the room, and Murder boy/Murder Trio have Expositional Dialogue to clue Clary and the rest of us in. Murder Boy is a demon, Murder Trio are Shadowhunters, and nobody's being very careful about making noise because Clary sees and hears all of this from the door. Behind which is a club full of people. Anyway, after revealing the Murder Trio's names (Jace, Alec, Isabelle) Jace asks Demon Boy if he knows where Voldemort Valentine is.

Honest to God. The Big Bad in this book, based off Harry Potter fan fic, is named Valentine. I have no problem with derivative works (given that I'm no cleaner than anybody else) but for fuck's sake, when you file the serial numbers off make sure you get all the numbers. Even Fifty Shades of Gray managed to get all the letters off Edward and Bella when they turned them into Christian and Ana.

(Also, is it just me, or is there something demeaning about the fact that, in both pairings, the man gets to use his full name and the girl has to cut half of hers off? Christian/Edward is no easier to say than Anastasia/Isabella, you know.)

At this point, Jace decides to kill Demon Boy. Clary, being a pre-established Heroic Idiot, decides to intervene and save Demon Boy. Jace tries to educate her in human/demon relations, Demon Boy breaks free and he is murdered.

With a grimace Jace stood up. His black shirt was blacker now in some places, wet with blood. He looked down at the twitching form at his feet, reached down, and yanked out the knife. The hilt was slick with black fluid. The blue-haired boy’s eyes flickered open. His eyes, fixed on Jace, seemed to burn. Between his teeth, he hissed, “So be it. The Forsaken will take you all.”

So we can't have drugs or underage drinking in this YA novel, but we can straight up have our protagonists fucking murder an individual in a storage closet without reprocussions. WOW.

Yes, Demon Boy intended to kill a human tonight, but there really isn't any way the Murder trio could have known that, and there sure as fuck isn't any way that Clary could have known that. But we need killing this thing to be Justified and for the Murder Trio to be Good Guys, so we're given lots of information no character other than Demon Boy would have.

I probably should point out at this point that the most famous fan work by Cassandra Clare/Claire were three novel leingth works known as the Draco Trilogy, where Draco Malfoy became the hero and there was a love triangle involving Ginny Weasley and an original character. Draco Malfoy. The Draco Trilogy, according to most of the reviews I've read, is what City of Bones is based on. So every time the Murder Trio appears in the books, replace them with Death Eaters, and you've got their general attitude. They even call Clary a "mundie" which, like "Valentine" has the same first letter and number of letters as a major Harry Potter word, "muggle".

And not to spoil a major event later in the book, but Clare/Claire also wrote a fan fic called "The Mortal Instruments", which is the umbrella name for this series.

It was a Ron/Ginny incest fic. No bullshit.

Conversations are had between Clary and the Murder Trio, who seem very perplexed that a "mundie" can see them. The reason is revealed a moment later, when Friendly Simon comes in to find Clary. He obviously cannot see Murder Trio, and Murder Trio is highly amused by this. Clary looks at them, looks at the bouncer that Simon went to get (I feel so very, very sorry for Simon. He is the Ute for this series. And a dead ringer for Harry Potter) and then literally says "Whoops, my bad."

No. Seriously. The Murder Trio are gearing up to kill her, Simon comes in, says "Who are you talking to?" and she does this:

“I thought they went in here,” she said lamely. “But I guess they didn’t. I’m sorry.”

And then everybody goes home. Murder trio leaves club, Clary and Simon leave club. You know, at least in HP the muggle/wizard divide was kept in check by memory spells. How do Murder Trio know that Clary isn't going to blab to the whole world?

Nevermind. It's much more interesting to watch Simon try and fail to call a cab.

Sports fans, this one is gonna be FUN.

Halloween

One thing that bothers me about my faith is Halloween.

Specifically, our response to halloween. That it is an evil thing to be avoided at all costs. Because, ew, there are dead things and ghosties and things that are "ungodly" and must be avoided. Because darkness cannot be of God.

As I've been editing Prince of the Gray Keep  I am reminded of the two things I'd have had in front of The Book, if it were a real book and not a self published thing. The first is, of course, something from C.S Lewis:

"The fine flower of unholiness can grow only in the close neighborhood of the Holy. Nowhere do we tempt so successfully as on the very steps of the altar."

IMHO, this cuts to the very heart of The Book. I once sat down and committed the great sin of Literacy, where I tried to find the deep meaning of my own book. Naturally, because I am a Christian, I decided it was Spiritual Warfare of the deepest kind. Because I find my faith so deeply woven into my own work, I find myself forced to balance the scale. If I do this right, you'll find the evils of religion balanced with its goodness. Or, as my personal theology would have it (And God am I about to jump off the deep end here:) the theology of God, and of goodness, splayed against the theology of Oroborous, the closed system, something I define as evil. Evil exists in its purest form when it masquerades as goodness. It appeared in Jonestown, in Waco, in the darkest moments of history.

The second quote, however, is what I think of every year at Halloween.

It is a paraphrase of G.K. Chesterton, but I believe the paraphrase should stand on its own. It is a defense, I feel, of everything I've ever stood for:

"Fairy Tales don't teach children that Dragons exist. Children already know that Dragons exist. Fairy tales teach children that Dragons can be killed."

I think the greatest sin Christianity has ever committed is its choice to avoid any dialogue of evil. Of what it is, of what it might be. We are afraid of it. We fear what Satan might be, so rather than calling it by name, we decide that it is this kind of music, that kind of behavior. So we hedge ourselves around and decide that We Won't Talk About This (Caps required). And because We Won't Talk About This, we lose the greatest defense we ever had against evil itself.

I grew up in a "safe" home. I was educated about drug abuse, so I haven't become a drug addict. I was educated against alcohol abuse. God willing, I will not be an alcoholic. I was taught about anorexia. Bulemia. Codependancy. I know the catch phrases. I know what a twelve step program is.

No one taught me about self harming. It was the unspeakable sin. It was the thing no one could tell me about, because it was too crazy to be mentioned. Surely I was safe. Surely I would avoid that.

I had defenses against everything else. Self injury was what got me.

Evil gains power only when you don't talk about it openly. When it is a secret thing, it gains a terrible power.

Halloween is our chance to take the secret thing into the light. Our cultural haunts, our shadow ideas of evil. We bring them out and show them to each other. In doing so, we see them as the shams they truely are. There is no danger in these things to us, if they are silly costumes we put on and then take off again. And by doing so we distill evil into its truest form. We distill it. We identify it. We open a dialogue about it.

And in doing so, we build our defenses against it.

Gor: My retrospective.

Okay, I can't just let Gor go without one final post summing the whole thing up. Admittedly, it's really easy to sum the whole thing up...

But I need to explain why.

The problem I have with the Gor books is, what they try to be (interesting discussion of morality and philosophy) is not what they actually are (...porn.)

No, no parentheses. It's fucking porn. That's the whole basis of its appeal. The people who read Gor, who imulate its characters, who hold it up as something good, are people who are kinked that way. I know exactly how this feels, because I have my kinks too, and most of what can feed it is trash.

John Norman? Does not see his work as porn. He sees it as a vehicle for his ideals, and that's where the book fails. First, because the only people who will take his ideas seriously are the people who have that kink. Second, because the books do not present an arguement for the rest of us. 

I had the same problem with Anthem. I have the same problem with most Christian fiction, and that's my freaking camp. The author doesn't just assume that they're right. They assume that they're so obviously right that the rest of us must be freaking blind to have an alternate opinion. With Christian fiction, it fails because your religion is your baby, and you get offended when someone takes a shit on it. Anthem failed because unmoderated selfishness is wrong, just as unmoderated selflessness is wrong. Gor fails because John Norman isn't looking any further than the tip of his own nose. Or some other organ.

Here is how I know that Norman's got it completely wrong. I am female. I have a huge submissive streak. And by submissive I don't mean "bring out the whips and chains." I mean that when I face opposition to something I want, I am more likely to back down than not. If Norman were right, I should have found happiness in this submission.

I do not.

Instead, I become so psychotically miserable that I either have to remove myself from the situation RIGHT NOW, or else become medicated.

If Norman were right, I should be happy in my job. I am not.

If Norman were right, I should have been...yeah, I was going to draw a paralelle with the assault in my past, but that episode fucked me up so bad that I can't even go there. I cannot imagine that situation ever making me happy or fulfilled.

When am I happy? When I am acknowledged as a person. When my goals are lauded, when my needs are met, and when I can curl up in bed and not have to worry about being abused on any level. Some people do not consider BDSM abuse, and if you're kinked that way, it's not. These books are about rebooting women who are not kinked that way. 

No human being, EVER, would be happy in this society. Not Tarl Cabot, not Strawchick, not Tarl's girlfriend, nobody.  

The saddest thing is, the other examples I cited as Issue book fail are actually trying to accomplish something real. Ayn Rand survived communist Russia, probably wittnessed the Holodomar on some level, and decided the whole world needed to change so that never happens again. She went too far in the extreme, but that's what she was trying to do. Christian Fiction authors believe that if they don't motivate the world to get saved, every one of you will perish, and they'd rather get spit on than risk losing the world. Sure, they do a terrible job most of the time, but, and this is the key, there is usually some level of alturistic motivation behind it, and I cannot fucking believe I just applied the word "altruistic" to Ayn Rand, but there you go.

Gor? Popular culture promises every guy a hot girl as a door prize for being born (Girls are promised a hot guy as a reward for being pretty). This rarely happens. Most people process this, accept it as part of growing up, and cope.

Gor is John Norman's attempt to rewrite the whole world so that he, specifically, can get the door prize. There is wish fulfillment fiction and then there is...this.

To close this up? There is an author named John Ringo. He writes sci fi books...and more often than not these turn into BDSM porn books. There's the episode in Princess of Wands where the friend of the main character runs off with the Black Rose society and Bad (GOOD!) things happen. There's the second Council Wars book that goes from The best interstice warfare ever to sex in a techno-magic harem. And then there is Ghost.

Let me acknowledge that I have read Ghost, and leave it there.

Ringo isn't pretending that his books are anything more than escapist fantasy. He's not trying to rewrite reality's code to make it more in tune with his ego. Even he admits Ghost is fucked up. REALLY fucked up.

And he makes John Norman's points better than John Norman ever could.

State of the CW--the Great Self Publishing Exparament

Last April and May my ambitions took a gut shot. I realized that it didn't matter how perfect conditions seemed or how hard I worked, how close I got to being "good enough" for professional publishing or what, it wasn't going to happen with this book. And that if I did the "smart" thing and wrote another book to sell, it'd be two years to write and perfect the book, another two-three years submitting to agents, and another six years submitting to publishers, all without a gaurentee of any success at all.

That, more than the thing that happened in April and May, is what made me decide to self publish my books. Yes. It's a career killer. But the thing is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, I don't have a career as a writer. I don't consider myself an author. I consider myself a writer the way I consider myself a knitter. It's a cool hobby and it's awesome that I get to make money at it, and it's even more awesome that people are buying my books and reading them. Would I have liked to have been a professional? Fuck yes. But I'm not going to shoot for the moon anymore. It's unhealthy. It takes me to a really dark place that I just don't want to visit anymore.

So in June, I sat down and wrote out "the Plan". Here, in a nutshell, is what The Plan was:

Write many small things, some directly related to The Book (Exiles) and some that are not (Starbleached)

Publish one a month

Double sales every month

Publish The Book when number of people buying the new books indicates publication of The Book would be successful.

I've spent part of this month assessing my sales and what they mean. And I'm about to post some numbers, some terrifying small numbers, I know, but some numbers nonetheless. Because from here on out? My success is ENTIRELY dependent on YOU.  And if you're going to spend money buying my books? You deserve to be in on this part, too.



July: 1 book

August: 3 books

September: 15 books

October (so far): 28 books

Step three? Is happening so far. Yes. Those numbers are pathetically small, compared to lots of other people...but the growth I wanted to see is there. And it means that some of you guys are totally buying my books. And that there are probably a couple of you who are here because you bought my books and liked them (I hope).

This is awesome and you all deserve a huge and wonderful hip-hip hooray for being this cool.

However, I'm at the point where, if I want to push things any further, I kind of need your help to pull this off.  Not a lot of help! Just a little. Two things, actually:

1. Amazon reviews

2. Participation in "Buy Day".

Amazon reviews are obvious, right? You bought the book there. Go back and review it. Why is this so important? Am I that desperate to go have my ego stroked? No. There are a few websites that will help me market the books that won't touch them unless they've got X number of reviews.

But "Buy Day?" what is this, you ask?

It's either stupidity incarnate and a bad idea, or a pretty good idea and I have no idea which, but I'm going to go with it because my well of options is pretty much dry.

It's something you only need to do if you plan on buying the next book, Prince of the Gray Keep. It's epic fantasy and a direct continuation of Rise of the Winterlord. About three or four days after it is released, go to Amazon and buy it. Everybody on the same day. Then you can go back to your regularly scheduled programming until the next month.

If we can keep this momentum going, I'll celebrate the one year anniversary of the Great Self-Publishing Experiment by publishing Project:Dragon on July 4th, 2013, a second full length novel that December, and The Book, the one Exiles is leading up to, July 4th, 2014.

Sound cool? Yay or Nay?

Third point: Mailing list. Everybody hates being on a mailing list unless it is about something they actively want. So this is what the mailing list would be for:

Organization of "Buy Day" for those of you who want to support me with money.

Notification of upcoming Kindle Free days.

Sneak Peaks of upcoming books and artwork.

Actively talking to me and/or everybody else on the list. Hell, maybe we'd turn this thing into a Yahoo group or something, if ya'll are interested in that sort of thing.

So please. If you do nothing else, SIGN UP FOR THE LIST. Send me an e-mail. Also? If enough people sign up for the list? I'LL STOP TALKING ABOUT THIS SORT OF THING ON THE BLOG. Sound good?

Captive of Gor chapter seventeen

Two chapters left. Come on, it's almost over with...

Strawchick assures us that this past weeks have been THE BEST WEEKS OF HER LIFE, right as we're reading about Rask selling her. I guess Rask just didn't like having girlfriend hanging around.

No, actually he sold her because he was getting too attached, and being attached to a woman is like, tres bad or something.

And John Norman continues to fail at everything.

In the beginning, following my total conquest by Rask of Treve, I had been summoned night after night to his tent. I had served him in a delicious variety of ways, to our mutual pleasure, for I had been well trained.

Yeah. Because if a woman doesn't enjoy the sex, it's her fault.

Inge and Rena were not in the basket with me. They had been given to the huntsmen, Raf and Pron. In the fashion of Gorean huntsmen, both girls had then been freed and given a head start of four Ahn, that they might escape, if it were in their power. After four Ahn, Raf and Pron, running lightly, carrying snare rope, left the camp. The next morning they had returned, leading Inge and Rena. The thighs of both girls had been bloodied.

I found I was now the victim, the prisoner, of “slave needs.” I now understood how girls could weep and scratch at the walls of their kennels, how they could squirm, moaning, shackled in their pens, how they could press their face and flesh against the cruel bars that confined them in their tiny cages, moistening the obdurate, grasped steel with their tears. How can a free woman even understand this?

It's called Stockholm Syndrome, and if you get the right medications and therapy, we can clear that all right up.

On Earth millions of women live empty, unrewarding lives. They are sexually deprived, denied their femininity’s right to be so powerfully desired, so lusted for, that they are taken in hand and made slaves.

This, this right here, is the part that is just fucking disgusting about these books. My life is empty and unrewarding, not because I work in a shit job, but because I don't have slave-sex in it. Hell, let's be more specific: because I haven't been raped. My life is "unrewarding" because men don't lust after my boobs and coochie enough to violate my rights as an individual and take my freedom of choice away. No. I must be "taken in hand" like I'm fucking six years old and disobediant.


This makes it sound like I'm a prisoner of my boobs and sex drive. And it's all projection. Because he wants to rape me, he assumes I want to be rape. He is unable to even concieve that somebody might not want the same things he does. This is the single most offensive thing in the whole boat, and I now want to go wash my brain out with soap.

But Strawchick does one thing right:

I had asked one thing of Rask of Treve, before, stripped, I had entered the tarn basket. “Free Ute,” I had asked him.

SHE GETS OUT OF THIS BOOK! THE ONE GOOD CHARACTER SO FAR GETS TO LEAVE THIS STINKING BOOK!

So Strawchick gets sold and works at a tavern. What kind of work does she do?

The men I served, Targo’s men, and others, who might have me for the price of a cup of paga, I gave much pleasure, and from them, too, I received much pleasure.

Did you expect anything better?

Then the creepy guy with the talking monster buys her, drags her to a warehouse, and demands that she serve him. She refuses, bravely, and then there is a great reveal!

The man lifted his head, and shook it, clearing his vision. “El-in-or?” he said. “Master!” I wept. I pressed myself to him. He regarded them. Then he said to me, “I am of Treve. Do not stain my honor.” By the hair I was dragged from the presence of Rask of Treve, and his head, again, fell forward on his chest.

Oh, noes! What will they have Strawchick do?

Well, do you remember pages back when they revealed the dastardly purpose for which she'd been brought from Earth? No? Well, they want her to assassinate Tarl Cabot! AKA Bosk of Port Kar!

...you have no idea who that is? You are so lucky.

So she gets to the point where she is about to give Tarl the poison, and then decides that she'd be better off telling the truth she wouldn't dare smear Rask's precious honor. She tells Tarl that she was ordered to poison him at the last possible second, and they go haring off to punish the evil doers and rescue Rask, only to discover he escaped! OH NOES!

Oh, and Rask only came to Port Kar to find her! But sadly, Tarl will only sell her for twenty gold pieces and Rask never buys his women. Strawchick and her One True Wub Master will be parted forever! Even though she now has reason to believe he loves her too!

And then...ugh.

but I was content in the knowledge that he, whom I loved, lived.

That, right there? Is my personal definition of unconditional love. Love is something you feel outside of yourself. You'd rather see your loved one happy than own them. Think the Rose and the Nightengale. 

Norman needs to get his nasty paws off genuine feeling.

Now the sad, sad narrative is winding down and Strawchick is whining and whinging about how much she misses Rask

And then, the last chapter! WE'RE GOING TO FINISH THIS BOOK TODAY! YAY!

Tarl/Bosk is now our narrator. NO MORE WOMAN FAIL GUYS! And Strawchick has told him that Talena is alive and in Verna's hands! WHY SHOULD WE CARE? And he watches her wander his halls mooning over her lost love-love-love, and then...

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my sad duty to inform you that, beneath my bitch-craft exterior, I am a sopping romantic. My favorite movies include Pride and Prejudice, Kate and Leopold, and there is even a place in my cold, withered heart for Breaking Dawn. I've also been watching My Little Pony and enjoying it. I mention this because I want you to understand. It takes a lot of cutsie to make me upchuck. And the ending of this book? Man the vomit buckets. It's gonna get bad.

The tarn strike was sudden. I had been waiting for days for it to happen.

Gee, I wonder what woman raping warrior of Treve this could be?

The tarn’s talons struck the delta wall, and, wings beating, it clung there, and put back its head and screamed. I saw, for one moment, the helmet of the warrior, and his hand extended downward. I heard the girl cry out and run to the saddle, and seize the hand. “No!” I said to Thurnock, putting my hand on the arrow, thrusting it to one side. He looked at me wildly. “No!” I said, sternly.

Because Tarl Cabbot can never stand between a chick stealing rapist True Love

Thurnock fetched it, and brought it to me. It was heavy, and leather. It was a purse, and it was filled with gold. In the light of a torch I counted the coins. There were a hundred of them, and they were of gold. Each bore the sign of the city of Treve.

See? Get it? Get it? Rask, who never paid for a woman before, has paid for this one. He really, truely loves Strawchick! HE LOVES HER! HE LOVES HER!

How do I feel about this ending?








But the good news is...it's DONE. I do not have to read this awful awful book anymore. NO MORE GOR! NO MORE GOR! YAY!

...but now I have to pick a new, terrible book, don't I? What was the list for the last one?

2. City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
3. Eternal Prey, Nina Bangs (Yes, indeed it is a blissful vacation of stupid)
4. Mission Earth: Black Genesis.

Yeah, there we go.

I'll be accepting imput all week, and we'll start up the next book on Sunday!

Captive of Gor 16

I am reviewing this because editing is giving me a headache. That is the only reason. This book sucks this bad. I do not remembering it being that goddamn awful.

Okay. It'll be okay. I can have booze when I'm done. Everything is good. And Strawchick and Rask have just had sex. Things will get better from here.

“Let her be chained under the moons of Gor,” had said Verna. Rask of Treve had laughed.

Or...not.

First of all...why could Strawchick's new humiliation not be onscreen? And if this conversation couldn't be on screen, why couldn't we just skip it? Do you know what the title of this chapter is? I am chained beneath the Moons of Gor. It's not like we expected Strawchick to be having a tea party back on Park Avenue.

...oh, we're going to find out about all this. As a flashback. Whoop-de-fucking-do. I'm so excited. (/sarcasm)

So Strawchick is happy after her adventures in Rask's sleeping furs. She even apologizes to Ute! Isn't she a wonderful person!

No. No she isn't.

As I could, during the day, I had made it my business to pass near the tent of Rask of Treve, that he might see me. But he had scarcely seemed to notice me. 

Last night it had been different! 

He had noticed me then!

About a month ago I confessed that I had been assaulted under conditions that could have been consensual. The thing that haunts me about what happened? It's not what happened to me, or what I did before, during, or after the assault. it was the fact that I didn't matter. The things that happened were awful, but it was realizing and understanding that I was kleenex to this guy, that he cared so very little about me as a human being that destroyed me.

My point? Strawchick is a deluded idiot, and so is John Norman for the massive OOC character shift he's about to put Rask through. Men who use women for sex, in that fuck'em and leave 'em sense? DO NOT CARE ABOUT WOMEN. The words "NO FUCKING SHIT" cannot be written big enough on this passage.

Verna calls Strawchick on her shit, then demands she be chained out under the moons of Gor, naked, of course, and...uh, we get to listen to Strawchick moan about how great sex is, and how once a woman experiances it she basically becomes an animal.

Thank you, Norman. Fuck you too.

I wanted to seek the feet of Rask of Treve, on my belly, abjectly, as befits a slave; I wanted to cover them with soft, abundant cascades of hair, water them with salty, plentiful tears; I wanted to lick them, deferentially, lengthily, with a small, warm tongue; I wanted to kiss them, timidly, tenderly, again and again, over and over, pressing moist, hot, pleading, hopeful lips to them, not even daring to raise my eyes to his.

 After this GOES. FUCKING. ON, Verna comes out and humiliates Strawchick more, then leaves the camp with Talena. YAY, this will be the next Gor novel. Which I am not reading, and you can't make me. Also? Verna wants to "submit" to Marleanus.

Ten bucks says that happens in the next book.

The slave then, so alerted, instantly stood ready, cognizant, apprehensive, frightened, on her tether.

This is a PERFECT description of an abuse victim, and how they begin to behave towards their abuser. THIS IS NOT HOW A WOMAN BEHAVES TOWARDS A LOVER.

 Indeed, it is not unusual for a master and his slave to love one another with a richness and depth perhaps unknown, perhaps impossible, amongst free couples.

FUCK you, Norman, and FUCK the people who highlighted that passage as something worth repeating.

Sometimes, however, she may beg to be tied and whipped, for this reassures her that she is still of interest to, and important to, the master. Better the whip and his anger than his coldness or indifference. “Have I not been pleasing to my master? I fear I may have been insufficiently pleasing. I beg, therefore, that he will see fit to instruct me, to admonish me, to reprove me, that my many faults, those of an unworthy slave, may to some extent be rectified, that I may be more pleasing to him.

Let me point out that this, and the other passages quoted? Are nominally things that Strawchick is thinking while she is chained to the ground. WOW.

The one good thing about this? It gave me a beautiful idea for revisions in the first half of Prince of the Gray Keep. I probably shouldn't do it, but I am just that pissed off with the concepts of this story.

How does her chaining end?

With Rask having sex with her, still chained. Because this is romantic. I'm going to puke.

And we are now moving into the part of the book that is so cutesy wootsy fluffy it would make the characters from MLP:FIM vomit in your lap.

“What are you now?” he asked. “Only your slave,” I whispered, looking up at him, “only your humbled, helpless slave, Master.” He laughed. I smiled. “I have heard,” he said, “that there is an insolent female slave in camp, a proud, unconquered girl.” I shook my head. “No longer, Master,” I said. “Did she escape?” he asked. “No, Master,” I smiled, “she did not escape.”

This goes on, my loyal blog-readers. It goes on. And on. and on. And then he sends her away, and Ute gives her a roll, and she goes off to work, and the chapter ends.

Not very entertaining, I know.  But I've had enough of being annoyed by Strawchick tonight. You wanna know what's less annoying than Strawchick?

This is.



Let's hope that gets the bad taste out of your mouth.

Captive of Gor chapter 15

Oh, hey, Ute's back!

The guard, by the hair, threw me to her feet. I looked up at her with horror. The left side of her forehead was still discolored where I had struck her with a rock.

Yes. Strawchick aka Elinor Brinton, our protagonist, is at the mercy of the slave girl she betrayed to slavers, beat over the head with a rock and then left for dead rapening. This will not end well for her. For the rest of us, we will get our vicarious pleasure from this. And it is all the pleasure we will ever get, because I re-read the ending and, uh...

By the way, the google image search for "unicorn puke" is surprisingly unsatisfactory.It's that bad.

Anyway, the Ute and Strawchick reunion (/kickass Paul Simon reference)

It becomes apparent via bullshit clothing references that Ute is second-in-command, or thereabouts, in Rask's camp. And Strawchick cost Ute her freedom by bashing her in the head with a rock. Ute proves she is the better human being by not immediately doing that to Strawchick. She does, however, immediately figure out Strawchick's plan to get Ute's parents to adopt Strawchick out of gratitude, proving that Strawchick is still dumber than a bag of gravel.

We then copy and paste the conversation Strawchick's had with just about everybody else since the start of this book...

By the hair, Ute, bending over me, yanked my head painfully up. 

“Who betrayed Ute?” she demanded. 

I shook my head. 

Ute’s fists were excruciating in my hair. “Who?” she demanded. 

I could not speak, so terrified I was. 

Please, Strawchick, for the love of God. Listen to Yoda. Don't imitate him.

She shook my head viciously. “Who!” she demanded. 

“I did,” I cried. “I did!”

“Speak as a slave!” demanded Ute.

 “El-in-or betrayed Ute!” I cried. “El-in-or betrayed Ute!”

 “Worthless slave,” I heard a voice behind me say.

Yes, Rask, Strawchick's owner and future penis, has heard what she did. Oh, dear, how humiliating! How terrible! How do I feel about this turn of events, given that Strawchick is suffering greatly?

Sadly for me, Ute is a good person. She treats Strawchick like she's just another slave, and not a terrible hell beast that destroys all she touches. Meanwhile Strawchick spends all her time whimpering in fear, so there is that. After a while, Strawchick becomes irritated with Ute.

Because Ute isn't treating Strawchick as a favorite.

Then Strawchick says that she's shirking her tasks as often as possible, because, you know, she's a lazy stupid stuffed shirt intended to prove all John Norman's arguements about women are valid, and...uh, then John Norman fucks up. Ute catches Strawchick not washing the dishes properly, and decides she needs an object lesson. She has Strawchick take the pan outside where there is a pole with chains on it, and this happens:

“The girl’s wrists,” said Ute, “are tied together, and then she is tied, suspended by the wrists, from the high pole. Her ankles are tied together and tied, some six inches from the ground, to the iron ring. That way she does not much swing.” 

I looked at her, holding the pan.

 “This is a whipping pole,” said Ute. “You may go now, El-in-or.”

Ute. Is. Bad. Ass. Awesome. OH. MY. GOD, why is this woman not the main character? She's betrayed by a bosom companion, she treats her fellow slaves with DIGNITY and RESPECT, she gets respect from ALL the things Men in this story, and she says things like that. This is not a threat to whip Strawchick. Oh, no. This is an acknowledgement that Strawchick isn't even fucking worth threatening. If this girl were the main character, in another ten pages she would have organized the slaves, male and female, into an absolute rebellion, the whole planet would have been thrown into revolt, a Final Stand would be made, and then Ute would retire with her Fully Equal boyfriend as a librarian in some backwater country, because fuck that leadership shit.

...actually, that's probably why she isn't the main character.

Moving on.

Life in the camp is described, and also Strawchick's misery at not being acknowledged as potential rape meat a dancing slave. She is SOOOOO conflicted. And Inge and Rana are dragged into the camp too! Because if we had fewer characters, THE PLOT MIGHT ACTUALLY GO SOMEWHERE!

Inge and Rana are sent to the same shed as Strawchick, and Ute first imposes her authority over the newcomers, and then demands that they not abuse Strawchick. Or else they will be beaten. She defends her betrayer. WHY IS THIS GIRL SUPPORT CAST?

Right. John Norman book.

Then Free And Noble Verna gets in on the action, too. Seriously, there are so many potentially awesome characters piling in at the last minute, I really don't get this. It's going to go nowhere, of course, but just...DAMN IT, I COULD BE READING A GOOD BOOK RIGHT NOW!

Of course, Verna was only freed to humiliate her captor, because Men Are All That Matter. Then they go through a party, where Strawchick shows the quality of her training, and is further humiliated by Verna and her master...who begins to remember that She Has Boobs...and Stuff from the first books are revealed. Without going into a lot of detail, John Norman's self insert primary main character, Tarl Cabot, has a girlfriend, and Rask captured that girlfriend and has her as a slave. This probably pays off later in the series, but I have no intention of reading Conan: The Knockoff any more than I already have.

Then Strawchick is finally allowed to serve in the main feasts, though she is told very strongly not to let herself be raped, as that would diminish her value as a slave.

I hate these books. Have I mentioned that yet? That I hate these books?

Anyway, she moans about being given the privelage she moaned about being denied, and then goes and picks berries with another girl. Only she steals most of them, is caught, lies about it, and then gets branded by her master. And one paragraph is really satisfying:

“It marks you as a traitress,” said Rask of Treve. He looked at me, with fury. “Be marked as a traitress,” he said. Then he pressed the third iron into my flesh. As it entered my flesh, biting and searing, I saw Ute watching, her face betraying no emotion. I screamed, and wept, and screamed.

Ute should be the main character, guys. Ute should win all the things.

Then Strawchick gets beaten. First, one lash for every letter in each word she's been branded for (Liar, theif, traitoress) and then however much Rask wants to beat her, and then...WOW, Norman. Just fucking WOW.

Ten more strokes he gave to the helpless slave girl, who twice more lost consciousness, and twice more was awakened to the drenching of cold water. And then, as she scarcely understood, hanging half conscious in the fires of her pain, she heard him say, “Cut her down.”

How the FUCK did you miss dropping out of First Person like that? There's a lot of excuses--bad editor, typing one handed--but...DAMN. That is some prime-grade writer fail right there. Look, I get that it's hard to maintain tense (Taker was an unholy bitch to edit, given there were whole paragraphs where I dropped out of present tense, and yeah yeah yeah I know, I probably left a lot of mistakes in there) and maybe perspective is just as hard (I dunno. For me, keeping the voice going is kinda, uh, natural) but DUDE, that's writing 101!

And if it's a style choice...it doesn't work. Mostly because the perspective change goes on for another paragraph. And it IS possible to do a torture scene without dropping perspective like an idol singer falling off key. See Endurance by S. L. Vehil for a good example. (...ya know, Cherijo sure gets the shit kicked out of her. It gets kind of satisfying after a while. Jarn, I liked. Cherijo is in the same category as Sookie Stackhouse. Book=good, character=SHOOT ON SIGHT)

...I have to keep reading this, don't I? Fuck.

So Strawchick gets locked in a box for her own stupidity, and...

The girl in the slave box was under no delusion as to who it was who owned her.

We drop out of first person AGAIN for another whole paragraph. Look, I will be the last person to accuse a professional writer of what "typing one-handed" implies, but...uh, this is happening an awful lot.

Also? After a couple of days, all they feed Strawchick are bugs and water. Then Strawchick is released, and...

Elinor Brinton heard the padlocks unlocked. She heard the flat, heavy bolts slide back. She saw the small door swing open. On her hands and knees, painfully, inch by inch, she crawled from the box. She then collapsed to the grass.

Look, are we having seizures or something? Are you just not reading this shit anymore? HOW DO YOU DROP PERSPECTIVE THIS MAY TIMES? I'm not going to bring this up again, but this is happening literally every other page. It's happened before in the book, but it came off as Strawchick feeling miserable for herself. It's not working anymore. It's reading like every other paragraph, Norman forgot who was talking. Oh, She's still feeling miserable for herself. Woe is me, I've been branded, and so forth, but the tense changes are far, far more interesting than her moping.

Oh, hey, we haven't brought up worldbuilding fail in a while.

It could perhaps be mentioned that such work, cooking, cleaning and laundering, and such, is commonly regarded as being beneath even free women, particularly those of high caste.

...then why do you have free women in this culture? And I'm dead serious. WHY. ARE THERE FREE WOMEN IF NONE OF THEM DO ANY WORK?

Equality of the sexes is not about avoiding work. It's the fucking opposite. It's about getting valuable work. In our modern culture, "women's" work has been devalued by technological advances. Spinning, weaving, basic cooking/baking/canning/preserving and clothing manufacture are done outside of the home due to advances in the textile and manufacturing industries, therefor women have less to do in the home and bring in a smaller income.

Okay, I'm about to go off on a tangent that will, again, break Norman's whole universe. My hobby? Is spinning yarn and knitting lace. I know a little about the history, a little about the traditions, and a LOT about the actual manufacture. And the one thing that is bleeding fucking obvious? Weaving and spinning are women's work. Because large scale thread production? Takes a while. A. LONG. WHILE.

And while we're at it, let's take a second to really look at all those clothing descriptions Norman gives us. First off, they obviously have some large scale looms to justify giving even rough-spun fabrics to slaves as garments. And they can waste a lot of fabric, because the slaves are given peroidic changes of clothes. There is, at minimum, a weaver's caste that is NEVER FUCKING BROUGHT UP, but that does a shit load of work. Second, the dancing silks.

Oh, my God, the dancing silks.

Silk is not an easy fiber to work with. Silk fiber comes from moth cocoons. Fine silk thread is made by taking a whole bunch of cocoons and boiling them, then finding where the moth started making its fiber and unwinding the whole cocoon in one piece. You do several of these at once, adding just enough twist to the thread to keep the individual strands of caterpillar spit together.

This is what it looks like in Thailand:




This is how you get the diaphanous, thin, fine threads that you make things like silk gauze out of. Now, there's a couple other methods to getting silk thread out of cocoons. The first is you use tiny tiny pieces of silk, in a staple (aka individual hair) length similar to REALLY good wool, or you use silk caps, which are a stack of about sixty or so cocoons, cut open, spread over a board and allowed to dry. Neither of these methods produce really fine thread, so I assume that on Gor, their silkmoth-analogue cocoons are unwound strand by strand.

These are jobs that women do. That have high value, because they produce luxury items. And women in this type of culture DO these jobs because it makes them valuable. Just as men slay dragons because it makes them valuable to the village, women knit shawls and weave wedding veils.

When we got industry that could do these jobs for us? We dumped most of them on the industry, because HOLY FUCK, if you don't have an aptitude for it, spinning and knitting can be FUCKING BORING. If you like it, you are as sad and twisted as I am and a part of you knows it.

But again: GOR DOES NOT HAVE THESE INDUSTRIES. There IS a job for women to do here that has value, and it's not sitting pretty on Terl Cabot's arm. And because "Slave training" does not include "How to use a drop/supported spindle" (There is no way in FUCK Gor has a decent wheel. Otherwise the girls would be tripping over them every ninety minutes) I HAD assumed that the free women were doing it.

Apparently, they are not.

Also, also? Yo, John?

there are often public slaves who tend the central kitchens in cylinders, care for the children, but may not instruct them,

Yeah. They're gonna teach the children. You can't not teach children if you take care of them.

OH, and this is the VERY FIRST MENTION OF CHILDREN IN THIS SERIES. I think they've been keeping them in the textile mills, right next to the spinning wheels.

Thirdly?

Such girls, also, have a low use-rent, payable to the city, should young males wish to partake of their pleasures. Here again, the mere word of the free person, that he is not completely pleased, is enough to earn the miserable girl a severe beating.

Thank you for supporting state-financed prostitution. AND RAPE.

This whole passage SCREAMS "I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HOW WORK GETS DONE IN ANY SOCIETY", actually. Apparently the only people who do ANY real menial work are slaves.

And again, textile production and food production are MENIAL TASKS in this society level. SO WHY ARE THE SLAVES NOT TRAINED IN THIS? Jesus Christ, even a pleasure slave isn't going to be fucking all the live long day. They've got 'em ironing shirts and washing them. Give Strawchick a spindle and a set amount of shit to produce, and she'd stay in one room all day long with no danger of escape.

Oh, and ONE BEATING and ONE TRIP TO THE PENTALY BOX has cued Srawchick of her lying, her stealing and her pride. Right. Well, we needed a Psychology Fail merit badge to add to the collection, didn't we, John? Oh, wait. Strawchick is still proud to be a virgin.

...well, we haven't seen Rask around in a while, anyway.

So she's all dolled up, and of course she hates every minute of it, and forced to wear earrings, of all humiliating things, and shipped off to the master's tent, where she's forced to dance. And the whole dancing scene?

It's. Awesome.

The energy in it, the momentum, the internal monolouge in Strawchick's head, it all works. If the whole book were like this I'd be screaming READ THIS SHIT from the rooftops, even with the misogyny. WHY IS THE WHOLE BOOK NOT LIKE THIS SCENE?

Of course, Norman has to ruin it:

“Of course,” said Ute. “They are men. Too, do not fret. You will come to be pleased that they so strip you, and look forward to it. It is quite a compliment to a woman. She should be flattered.

Yeah. I should be flattered that somebody I don't know finds me pretty enough to assault me. No, thank you, John.

After the dance, Ute dolls her back up and she's sent off to Rask's tent. Strawchick warms up some wine, and there is this one sentence that stands out:

I saw my reflection in the redness, the blondness of my hair, dark in the wine, and the collar, with its bells, about my throat.

Syntax? Sucks. Structure? Double suck. Image expressed? I. LOVE. IT. Seriously, we've gone from UTTER FAIL to these momentary stepping stones of quality. Ute's character, the dancing scene, a couple descrptive sentences...it's like I've wandered off into a different book or something.

Oh, don't get me wrong. The suck is still there.

I did so, and he, spilling some from the broad rim of the crater, I feeling it on my chin, and throat, as it trickled under the collar, and body, poured the remainder of the wine down my throat.

WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

So there are sweet, seductive moments, and I'm actively enjoying this scene...and then Strawchick opens her mouth and, using about five hundred words, tells Rask what essentially boils down to "fuck you."

It does not end well.

END OF CHAPTER.

Hey? Guys? Got a minute? Read Blog. NOW.

First off, sports fans, check out the Publishing schedule. I've made tiny changes. Most noteably? I'm going to see if I can't push out Prince of the Gray Keep a little earlier than planned. I'm not 100% happy with the momentum I've gained this month (Okay, actually, I am, because it's doing what I wanted it to do from the beginning. It just kinda, uh, died last month) but I don't want to lose it. TENTATIVE release date is November 15th. We'll be doing all the fun promotional stuff in December.

That said...uh...can I be awfully self-centered for a minute? And discuss the actual buying of the book thing with you guys for a second? Oh, if you don't want to, that's fine. No hard feelings, I don't wanna pressure you or anything, and I'll let you know if/when Prince goes on a free promotion, which will happen. You can go over there and get comfortable and I'll bring a Gor review and cookies to you in about an hour. The dastardly plotting thing is going to happen after the cut. Now. If you do like reading my books and you do plan on buying a couple...



If no, it's perfectly fine. Go back to your regularly scheduled programming, Gor will be here in about an hour or so. But if yes...let me know. I don't expect it to make a big blip on rankings or anything, but I would rather like to take a census, for lack of a better term, so that I know what's up in the wild world of my scribblings.

If the answer is yes, I'll figure out some way to make it worth the time and effort. Ideas for this are totally welcome BTW, and if it's something wildly awful and you can't believe I'm asking it...well, that's fine. Like I said up there, I don't want you to buy it if you weren't planing on nabbing a copy anyway. I just figured if it was something you were already planning on doing, we could all make a 'thing' out of it.

Discuss in comments. And even if the answer is AW HELL NO, you guys are awesome and I love every one of you.

EDIT: And, uh, just FYI? By "Same day" I did not mean "TODAY." I meant "Someday in the future after Prince of the Gray Keep comes out and I've got it all clear with you guys that this is an okay project for us to work on."

Not that I MIND selling a whole lot of books. I just...uh...find it rather odd that there was a sudden upswing in sales right after I published this post.

(And if you guys really did suddenly start buying my books because I made the suggestion? YOU GUYS ARE THE AWESOMEST PEOPLE EVER EVER EVER PLUS ONE.) (If you did not you are still totally awesome and I am glad that you are here, you lovely person you.)


OH, and it occurs to me that maybe just maybe I ought to put together a mailing list. So I am. And if you want to be in on this Buy Day thing or you just wanna be on the mailing list, drop me a line at christwriter AT gmail DOT com (you know the drill...) and lemme know your opinion.

Okay. Gor will be here soon. Get ready.