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Month: May 2020

Jealous Haters Book Club: Crave introduction and Chapter 0, “If You’re Not Living on the Edge, You’re Taking Up Too Much Space”/Chapter 1, “Landing Is Just Throwing Yourself at the Ground and Hoping You Don’t Miss”

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All right, all right, all right. I just lost 2,000 words of a manuscript and basically that’s four weeks of work on my fiction at this point because I’m so freaking stressed and blocked, so I’m going to get into this right away. If you’re not sure why there’s a new selection for JHBC, you can find the answer here. But why have I chosen this book, out of the blue? What is it about this book that made me skip past all the requests I’ve had so far?

I first learned about Tracy Wolff’s Crave when the story of Universal’s pre-empt of the screen rights rolled across my Twitter timeline. I hadn’t heard any buzz about the book at all until then and suddenly it was everywhere, touted as “your next vampire obsession” and “the next Twilight.” I like vampires. I like Twilight. I’m so gonna check this story out, right?

And that’s when I see who published the book: Entangled. And who was interviewed for the story? Not Wolff, the actual writer. Liz Pelletier, the book’s editor and the publisher at Entangled.

Let me give you some backstory on my relationship with Pelletier and Entangled, so nobody can be like, “BIAS! BIIIIIAAAS! You didn’t disclose that you had a personal beef with the publisher!” Well, I don’t. I have professional beef. I’ll disclose that so you can read my critique of this particular title with that in mind and decide whether or not my bias has affected my analysis of the text. So, here’s the beef:

Entangled bought my book, Such Sweet Sorrow, with a film/TV development deal already in place. It was work-for-hire, meaning my agent connected with an awesome, supportive, much-missed guy out in Hollywood who came up with the idea, brainstormed it with me, and got it representation at a major entertainment agency. Meanwhile, I wrote the book and its sequel and the series proposal and bible for the eventual television show. I sent book two off to Pelletier, my editor, about two weeks before my partner in crime died. I was devastated.

I was even more devastated when months went by with no word from Pelletier on the second book. The book that Nick and I had worked so hard to mold and shape. More months. Then a year. Then two years. Since the television show was off the table–and very likely since she does not like “controversial” authors, which I was quickly becoming in the wake of the Anne Rice dust up–my book was abandoned. A year of my work will never see the light of day. A year of work with someone who, five days before he died, was still sending me notes on the project and was pursuing a graphic novel adaptation. This was a project that both of us cared about and poured a lot of work into. And it was just out there, in a void of unreturned calls and emails.

During the waiting time, I expressed my frustration to another Entangled author at Literary Love Savannah. The author rolled her eyes, laughed, and said,  “She is always chasing the next Twilight. Or the next something. She wants a movie. If you can’t give it to her, she loses interest.”

Back to a few years before. Pelletier had contracted an author to write Pelletier’s idea for a series she once described to me as “Twilight with aliens.” The series was a big success for Pelletier and the author who wrote it. But it wasn’t enough; though the film rights were optioned, the studio let the option expire and revert back. Pelletier didn’t get her movie, no matter how many times she tried to repackage and relaunch the series over and over again. Now, Pelletier has played it safe, going for “Twilight with vampires.”

But not just Twilight with vampires.” This one…has a twist. From PopBuzz:

There’s one key detail that looks set to set Crave apart from Twilight though. Liz states that it will be told from a “decidedly feminist perspective.” Given that Twilight was panned by many feminist critics for Bella’s storyline, it will be interesting to see how Crave compares.

I agree, PopBuzz. Because the thing is, Twilight was over a decade ago. Its success has waned and its esteem in the eyes of readers–even its most ardent fans at the time–has somewhat lessened, judging by how many people expressed dismay that Midnight Sun will finally be released. Authors wouldn’t dare use Twilight as a comp in their query letters, lest they get roasted behind their backs by slush pile sorters who like to mock rubes living ten years behind the times. But Liz Pelletier seems to be the only publisher who doesn’t realize that. So, I’m absolutely dying to see how this pans out from that perspective.

So, you can see where this might end up with accusations of a personal vendetta against Pelletier or Entangled. I don’t have a vendetta. I have a grudge. Vendettas require a lot of effort and frankly, I don’t have the time to ruin anyone. I’d still be looking into this book even if it didn’t come with my personal baggage; “feminist Twilight” is just as enticing a lure for me had it come from any other publisher.

And here’s where things get really interesting: I’ve never read Tracey Wolff. At all. Ever. And this is shocking to me because she’s written a lot of books, most of them romance or erotic romance. Like, how did I miss her? Especially since she wrote for Harlequin Desire back in the day and that imprint was an auto-buy addiction for me before I started shopping at a grocery store that doesn’t carry them. I should have read at least something of hers before. Since I haven’t, I get to walk into this thing fresh as a daisy. And I’ve never heard anything bad about her that would have put me off reading this book. Everything seems pretty above-board with this one, ethically.

Plus, I actually did love Twilight, despite a brief period of insisting I only liked it “ironically” or I downright hated it because it’s what all the cool kids were doing at the time and I was furious with Breaking Dawn.

Seriously. That is how you wrap this conflict up? Really?

Anyway, I’m going into this with a brand-new-to-me author, in a book that seems to be part of a burgeoning vampire renaissance, masterminded by the woman who thought signing Alexa Riley was a great idea. What could go wrong?

Honestly, though, I’m hoping it goes right. And I haven’t really heard anything from anyone to suggest that it won’t. So let’s dive in.

October 2019 Patron Appreciation Video

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Welcome, to this extremely late Patreon reward video! Thanks as always to all my readers and supporters and people who pass links along or say, “You should check out Jenny’s blog!” 1,000x thank you. Thank you 5,000.

 

EDIT: I guess I should tell you what the video is about. It is about me, wearing Lewis Capaldi’s face like some kind of demented celebrity stalker/serial killer. No Capaldis were harmed in the making of this video.

Jamie McGuire, You Cupid Stunt

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Note: This is an incredibly image-heavy post. Rather than filling out the alt-text for screen readers, I started putting, “This is a Facebook post, text to follow” or whatever in the alt-text and then I was like, “Jenny, just put a note at the top of the page explaining that every image is a screencap of Jamie McGuire’s Facebook post and comment threads.” So, ta-da! Every image is of a Jamie McGuire Facebook post or comment thread and all of the comments are presented as-is in the body of this blog post.

Oh, and speaking of “as-is,” please keep in mind that these are emotionally charged Facebook comments flying back and forth and putting [sic] everywhere someone mistyped or made an error would have been akin to one of the labors of Hercules, so I didn’t do that.

Now, these screenshots don’t show everything. These were taken by people and either they gave me permission to use them or they sent them to me. I don’t creep Jamie McGuire’s Facebook page because I value my fleeting time on this plane of existence. So, if it seems choppy or something is missing or doesn’t make sense, it’s because I’m just working with what I’ve got.

Believe me, it’s enough.

CW: Racism, discussion of Ahmaudd Arbery’s death.

Look at my dog

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I’m on edibles, y’all.

Look at this dog:

A gray pit bull about the same size as the striped house cat it's sleeping beside. The dog has one leg thrown over the sleeping cat.

Cat included for size comparison. That pit bull you’re looking at? The one beside the normal-sized house cat? She’s full grown. We call her a teacup pit bull as a joke. She can fit under the overhang of our lower kitchen cupboards to snuggle up against the heating vent. She can also fit in your lap, which is handy for a breed that does sit in your lap regardless of their size. Her feetsers are itty-bitty. She’s just the smallest damn pit bull I’ve ever seen. Until about two months ago, I could put her in a shoebox.

Let me tell you about this dog. My Baba decided that she loved our pit bulls so much, she was going to get one of her own. She went down to the shelter where they had an adult pit bull but the shelter workers were concerned that he was probably too large and strong for an eighty-year-old to walk and they encouraged her to look at others so she wouldn’t die from being dragged six miles by a galloping pit bull.

Since we’re basically a broken record about our belief that there are no bad dogs, just bad training, Baba got a better idea. She would buy a pit bull puppy from the step-son of one of my father’s friends and train it herself.

You see that on step one, we’re already off track here, right?

The person who bred the puppies insisted that they needed to be rehomed right away. They had already been weened and were eight weeks old.

A puppy that is very clearly not eight weeks old.

Now, that? Is not an eight-week-old puppy. Even as the runt of the litter, that’s not an eight-week-old pit bull puppy. Her eyes were barely opened and very, very blue. That unicorn toy that’s roughly the same size as she is? That’s a Beanie Baby. When I saw this dog, my first thought was, “Oh my god, she’s adorable!” and then, “Oh, shit. Those scars tell me she’s not a learner.” This puppy had no bite inhibition at all. At her first vet appointment, the doctor was horrified that she’d already been weened and separated. She backed up my first assertion: “This is not an eight-week-old puppy.”

Worst of all, Baba named the dog Sophie.

Come on, family. Get it together.

You know what’s not a great combination? Pit bull puppies with no bite inhibition and paper-thin, eighty-year-old skin. It became quickly apparent that Baba could not keep the dog and all of her blood. She had to choose between the two. Because our daughter had already fallen in love with her and because we have pit bulls (the best thing you can do for your pit bull pup is to let it spend time with other well-behaved pit bulls), we took the dog. I quickly changed her name to Puppers because what kind of jerk off would have a dog named after the main character of their books?

Anyway, you know how I said that there are no bad dogs, just bad training? I stand by that and just assume that Puppers is the exception that proves the rule. I don’t know what the means, actually, because I’m not good at math. I’m not saying she’s a bad dog, per se, but she’s definitely a dog who does not give a fuck. About anything. She does what she wants and if that lines up with what I want, great! If not, too bad. She has absolutely no drive to please anyone.

We have managed to teach her some things. Not to bite, for example. First of all, we had to change any command we used with her because she’d been told “no” so often already that she didn’t even hear it anymore. “Gentle,” I would say in a soothing tone as I separated the jaws of serrated puppy teeth sawing through the flesh on my forearms, “I only like gentle dogs.” Eventually, that worked well enough to remind her to stop jumping up on people, too. I mean, at least forty percent of the time. And she doesn’t bite anymore, but she does start to bite. To correct this, I say sternly, “No pit bull face!” Pits can have a real scary looking face if they bare their teeth and they’re a breed of dog that just can’t get away with that nonsense.

One of the ways Puppers has devised on her own to curb her biting is to grab a toy, press it up against the person or other animal she wants to bite, then bite the toy. Which is pretty smart, I guess, and a great alternative to having to get the cat’s head out of her mouth. However, the cat does not appreciate having a toy jammed forcefully into her side or face, so this doesn’t always work out. Despite their perceived peacefulness in the photo above, their relationship is tumultuous at best. As a result, we often have to break up the fights resulting from Puppers’s enthusiastic, often humping-based, attempts at friendship. “Gentle!” and “She doesn’t like that!” tend to work more than the cat’s shrieking, hissing, and needle-sharp claws. Pain seems to be no behavioral deterrent at all, judging by the number of times she’s had run-ins with stinging insects, only to go back for more.

I really didn’t want another dog. At the time we adopted her, Puppers was our fourth dog, when we had just started preparing ourselves to be down to two. My seventeen-year-old beagle passed a few months after Puppers came to live with us and brought us back to three. Deep in mourning for the dog that was rarely found more than two feet from me at any time and fed up from trying to train a beast that still drew blood from me on a daily basis, I thought I was never going to love Puppers. But then, she got big enough to be allowed upstairs. Every morning, Mr. Jen would let her into the bedroom as I slept and she would attack me with love, burrowing under my head, frantically licking my face, then tunneling under the covers to snuggle, her tail thumping wildly. No matter where I go or what I do, when I get back, she’s thrilled to see me. She’s big enough now that she no longer sleeps in her crate and consistent learning/grudging acceptance of our silly rules has earned her the right to sleep in bed with me, snuggled up against my butt, so now I wake up to much calmer puppy snuggles. Then I remember how much I so didn’t want to take on another dog and how I was sure I would resent this one for being an ill-behaved little monster.

As I write this, Puppers had to be scolded for eating a tube of paint. She was remorseless.

This dog is naughty and terrible and I love her to bits. I hope hearing a little bit about her brightened your day because IDK about anyone else but my brain is flippin’ fried so this is about as high concept as I can be right now.

Puppers sleeping with her tongue out.