I’m supposed to be on a blogging hiatus. Is it really too much to ask that 50 Shades related foolishness just pause for a minute? Yet, like the cop sidekick in an action movie, I was so close to going home and saying goodbye to this dangerous life, and then I got shot.
Shot in the face with the most absurdly staged news story in the history of all time.
In a twist unlike any that has ever happened to any other hotly anticipated retelling of a blockbuster novel, Grey, the retold 50 Shades of Grey, has been stolen and is in grave danger of being leaked to the general public.
Oh, how terrible it must feel when one rewrites the first novel of their series from the hero’s perspective, only to find it has cruelly been leaked ahead of release day! Probably not as bad as someone plagiarizing your entire series, then turning around and putting out their own version of the spin-off novel you wrote and shelved because it was leaked to the public, and claiming that their novel was also leaked, because they don’t just want to rip off your intellectual property, they want to absorb your entire life and become you.
Something like that.
Now, I’m not saying this was James’s idea. But I am saying that a publicist is at work on this one. What are the odds, really, that:
- Stephenie Meyer publishes the Twilight series.
- Stephenie Meyer begins work on Midnight Sun.
- Midnight Sun is leaked online
- Stephenie Meyer shelves Midnight Sun indefinitely.
and then
- E.L. James is “inspired” by Twilight and writes 50 Shades of Grey.
- E.L. James announces the publication of Grey.
- Grey is allegedly stolen from the printers.
Obviously there’s no chance of Grey being shelved or even postponed because God is dead, just like I am on the inside. But I’m sorry, it’s just too coincidental that a series plagiarizing Twilight just so happens to have a companion novel told from the hero’s perspective a la Midnight Sun, and it also just so happens to get stolen and possibly leaked, especially when the printing company is apparently not having it, either:
A spokeswoman for CPI UK confirmed it is printing the 50 Shades of Grey companion novel Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey As Told by Christian, but said: “I doubt it’s gone missing from one of our printworks seeing as I haven’t heard about it.”
Here’s hoping that James choses to rip off the rest of Meyers’s career arc, and vanish without fanfare.
Now it’s back to the hiatus hole for me.