49 search results for "handbook"

Howdy, readers! Did you know that you can listen to these recaps as audiobooks? Beneath The Hat is producing an ongoing audio serial of these recaps, complete with dramatic readings of the excerpts. You can listen to Handbook For Mortals AND Fifty Shades Of Grey here! She also writes Paranormal Contemporary Romance as Kate Davidson, and her first novel, Animal Instinct is out now!

The chapter lengths in this book are all over the place, and this one was really long, so I’ve split it up in two parts so that we don’t have to wait a week without a recap and also so you don’t have to read a recap that’s roughly 14,000 words long.

The Handbook For Mortals publicity melt-down train seems to have finally derailed, sliding sideways into the station where it shall rest until the next big convention. Which means we can jump into the recap with both feet!

Trains have feet, right? VICTORY, MY METAPHOR WORKED!

The Lani Sarem “Sorry Not Sorry” tour has rolled right on into Vulture. Now, after the attack on readers and authors of color in YA that Vulture published earlier this year, I could give less than half a fart what they have to say about anything. But a lot of people who knew this story was being written promised it would be a good one. Writer Lila Shapiro doesn’t disappoint. Because the recap chapter this week is so short, allow me to pick out some choice quotes for you (although many of you have already skewered it in the comments on the last recap).

Her father died when she was a baby. She and her mother moved often, ten different states in Sarem’s first 19 years. Wherever they went, Sarem tried out for local theater productions and TV commercials, but all the best roles went to other girls. She realized that if she wanted to be a star, she’d have to write the script herself.

This explains so much, not just about the self-insert character she plans to play in the movie, but about her attitude toward other women who are performers. Women like Sofia prevented her from attaining the stardom she wanted, so they are obviously evil (as outlined in today’s chapter).

For about a decade, Sarem paid the bills by taking on entertainment gigs in Vegas and on the road. She worked at David Copperfield’s theater for a while.

So, for all those who’ve wondered in the comments, yes, she had practical experience working at a theater for a real live magic show. And somehow, none of that practical experience made it into her book.

“When I started writing, I really wanted all the things that I couldn’t have at that moment,” she said. “I wanted somebody’s love story to work out. I wanted this character to have all the things I was lacking, and then live vicariously through her.”

I suppose it’s refreshing to have someone admit that their character is 100% self-insert, rather than insisting everyone is reading too much into and they’re like, oh my gosh, so different. But this is more or less the same reason everyone writes fiction; they want to see something happen that didn’t happen, whether it’s a bullied high school girl using telekinesis to kill her classmates at the prom or a single-minded sea captain steering his whaling ship and crew to their doom. So, it’s not so much she wanted this stuff to happen to the character and she would live vicariously through the character. It’s that she wrote a wishful-thinking autobiography.

Thomas Ian Nicholas was also interviewed for this story:

Later, I spoke to Nicholas as well and asked what drew him to the script. He mostly spoke about himself, saying he was from Vegas and that his great-uncle was John Scarne, a Vegas magician who served as Paul Newman’s hand double in The Sting.

This more or less confirms, in my mind, that what we’re dealing with at the heart of this con job are two people who’ve lived in proximity to fame but never actually breached the barrier to it, thinking they have far more potential and cachet than they actually do.

The entire article is a gem and provides some dismayed chuckles from second-hand embarrassment as Sarem and Nicholas claim to have sold an impossible number of books at comic conventions, compare their scam to women’s suffrage (yes, really), state that three different editors worked on the manuscript, and insist that Nicholas’s star power has been the driving force behind the book’s overwhelming and totally valid success. But it all ends on a sour note; Wizard World has invited Sarem and Nicholas to all seventeen of their conventions in the coming year. Though they may have become infamous rather than famous, they’re still profiting, while legitimate authors couldn’t buy the type of welcome that’s being rolled out for them.

In Handbook For Mortals news this week, I visited my local Barnes & Noble, hoping to get a glimpse of the twenty-three-hour #1 New York Times Bestseller in the wild.

I started in Teen Fiction, but I couldn’t find anything between Sáenz and St. Claire:

But obviously, a bestselling YA phenomenon with a major motion picture in the works wouldn’t be on the same shelves as just any old YA. I decided to check the endcap.

That’s when I saw the table full of “must read” books for teens:

Well…maybe it was on the other side?

As I did another perusal of the Teen section, I realized I’d checked in the wrong spot, originally. Clearly, Handbook For Mortals belonged in Teen Fantasy & SciFi. I took a look.

Obviously, what had happened was Handbook For Mortals had sold out completely. I went to the info desk to see if they could tell me where all their copies had gone. The guy there had never heard of the book.

Someone working at Barnes & Noble had never heard of the #1 New York Times Bestselling novel Handbook For Mortals? But what about any publicity being good publicity? This employee had no idea about the controversy making this book so talked about, and said no one had ever come in looking for Handbook For Mortals, at least, not while he was working. He told me he could order it and showed me his computer screen, where about 2,500 copies were available from Ingram warehouses. For a New York Times bestseller, Handbook For Mortals doesn’t seem to have that many extant copies.

Let’s head into this chapter, which is going to actively try to gaslight you before the end.

It’s the Handbook For Mortals Twitter Round Up, y’all! YEEEEE-HAW!

Twitter user @TheSubliminator actually went to Lani Sarem and Paul Ian Nicholas Thomas Eric John James or whoever’s author event. Highlights include Sarem declaring “It’s not MY fault Angie is a black writer,” in regards to fraudulently knocking Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give from its #1 spot, and straight up plagiarizing Roald Dahl when she signs the damn book. Check out #23HourBS for details.

Why that hashtag name? Well, because Ms. Sarem and Mr. John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt are now advertising this book as a #1 New York Times Bestseller for twenty-three hours. Author L.L. McKinney made a Twitter moment about it.

If all of that wasn’t pathetic and enraging enough for you, definitely check out this thread by Jeremy West, in which he calls out another laughably bad attempt by Sarem and the Rookie Of The Year to make the book appear successful. Yes, they are absolutely still trying to claim that this book is a pop culture phenomenon.

If you need something to get the god awful taste of all of this out of your mouth, Snarksquad member and BookTuber @MyNameIsMarines is reading the book on the hashtag #SnarkForMortals. I highly encourage you to check her out.

Meanwhile, I apologize that this recap was delayed. Computer troubles. Namely, me absentmindedly drenching my keyboard with Windex while I tried to clean my desk. Thank you big time to everyone who donated via Kofi in the wake of this senseless tragedy.

So, in Handbook For Mortals news, brace yourselves, because there is a lot. If you need a break, I encourage you to visit author Claribel Ortega’s Tumblr, where she’s writing an excellent Handbook For Mortals fanfic.

So, remember when Lani Sarem insisted that no one gamed the system, that her books weren’t bulk-ordered, that she played by the rules and was viciously robbed of her legitimate success by jealous haters? She hasn’t exactly changed her tune, but she’s definitely singing her sad song of lies in a different key. In an op-ed for Billboard.com, she writes:

If I had purchased the books directly from my distributor, Itasca Books, they would not count as sales for purposes of the New York Times list. If they were purchased from booksellers — brick and mortar or online — they would count. While I didn’t limit my purchases to only those booksellers involved in the Times list, I did purchase books in bulk from booksellers to resell them later at events.

But it’s not a scam, she argues. It’s publishing’s antiquated model that constrains artists that’s at fault for her con game:

What I have chosen to do is to build a community of interrelated fans at these 3D, real-time events. This is part of what I believe is an innovative strategy — one that is aimed at building an entire new franchise in the Hunger Games and Game of Thrones mold, yet without having to give up creative control and a huge cut of the revenue to some synergistic studio giant a la Disney or Fox.

What Sarem is describing here is indie publishing and indie film. It isn’t new or innovative to bring your book to a convention. Self-pub authors do it all the time. And it isn’t new or innovative to make a movie without a studio.

Sarem concludes by saying that she hopes the New York Times will return her book to its rightful #1 slot on their list, albeit with their bulk-sales indicator. But perhaps the most delusional part of her piece is that despite the laughably bad writing, lack of any major star attached to the project, and the total bungling of her brilliant con, Sarem still appears to believe that she’ll be starring in a major film franchise:

That is why we published the book with the film rights already in place, set to produce the first of up to five “Handbook for Mortals” films that will star, in the lead role, yours truly, alongside my producer and co-star, Thomas Ian Nicholas. If all goes well.

However, one amazing thing has come to light in the wake of allegations that Sarem wrote the infamous troll fic My Immortal. It has brought the actual author of My Immortal out of the shadows, and she has a memoir in the works. Because the story is too fascinating to be believed, I won’t say too much here, except that rarely has an internet mystery had such a satisfying and heart-wrenching conclusion.

As Sarem continues to name-drop her connection to various celebrities, especially her former ties to the band Blues Traveler (who fired her), let’s all sing a beautiful ode in her honor, to the tune of the band’s hit, “The Hook”:
It doesn’t matter what you sell
So long as you sell at conventions
It’s such a freakin’ unique way
To make the headlines through deception

And it’s not fair that you lost face
To all those nasty trolls and haters’ campaign
The New York Times should apologize
You’ll take that asterisk and tout it without shame
‘Cause the book brings you fame
From a spot you had to buy
The book brings you fame
You got caught because you lied

The YA world is gonna miss
The stellar prose you tried to bring them
Who wouldn’t want to read another teen witch
Who’s old enough to rent a car

You could have just written a screenplay
And shopped it around to your famous friends
When your biggest names are ’90s stars
Maybe a scam was the way to go

‘Cause the film won’t get made
With the guy from American Pie
The film won’t get made
Here’s a camera you can buy

Con and win, con and win, con and win
That’s the position that you are in
If they find out all the ways you sinned
There’s always blame to pin on the community
At least you get publicity
“A lot of folks are jealous of me”
You’ll just project your problems on the trolls
Go ahead and take somebody’s art all for yourself
Stage pictures of your books up on some shelves
You tried
Now change your name and hide
From the critics who deride and all the deceptions that you tried. Your career is fried,
it died, you killed it with your lies
And all the claims that we won’t buy
about the bullies at the New York Times
You said fuck all the rules
they don’t apply to Lani
That shit might fly in music
It’s much harder to sleaze your way into YA
You’re pissed that none of us wanna kiss your ass,
we pass
And we don’t want to read you
Act innocent and victimized
To try to make a buck
With names to drop, like Mall Cop
You’re delusional please stop because we’re

Not buying your crap
It’s embarrassing to watch
You fail
Please don’t bother to try

My apologies to John Popper for mangling his rhyme scheme.

Now, on to the recap!

Before we get to the recap proper, I want to warn some readers about potentially sensitive content. That is, I want to warn you that if you’ve ever worked in the theater in any capacity, you will be fully outraged through this entire chapter, to the point that you might want to throw your phone or laptop or tablet or however else you’re reading this. So, read this only a soft surface to prevent damage to your device, and try not to fling it too hard.

In other news, Kayleigh Donaldson’s piece at Pajiba has been updated to include a response from Gill de Mace’s agent about the cover art controversy, as well as what might be the most bizarre aspect of this entire drama: the author of the infamous My Immortal has spoken. You can read her full statement at Pajiba, but this is the highlight:

Because I’ve received several messages asking this, and predict I may receive more, I’ll answer it here. No, I am not Lani Sarem. Really bad fiction simply tends to read the same.

Imagine if the writer of My Immortal, the most notoriously horrible fanfic of all time, called your work “bad fiction”? How could you ever possibly recover from that? You’d have to change your identity and start fresh with a new life. I mean, really, imagine that the author of My Immortal wanted to distance herself from your work.

Another rumor I’ve seen going around is that Handbook For Mortals: Book 1 Of The Series sold 7,000 ebook copies in the week following the controversy. I’m calling bullshit until someone can offer definitive proof. The only platform the book seems to be available on is Amazon, and even there it hasn’t broken the top 1,000 sales rank. During that week, when I was keeping occasional tabs on it, I never saw it rise above 10,000 in overall Kindle sales. In short: this claim of astronomical e-book sales is just as believable as the book’s claim to the #1 New York Times spot.

And in catty gossip news, an industry acquaintance on Facebook staunchly defended Lani Sarem, to which I responded in my usual Trout way, and Lani Sarem responded. I do not have screenshots, as I care so little about what a con-artist has to say that I didn’t bother reading the replies and muted the thread altogether. That’s not important news, but I know for a fact some of you will like hearing that story.

So, let’s get to the dirty business.

While I was away on my fabulous vacation and only receiving internet contact from the outside world sporadically, shit. blew. up. Which is how it always happens. Stuff I want to be snarky and sassy about always seems to take place when I’m incommunicado, while the scary, serious shit goes down when I can’t escape it. But late last week, when I heard about Handbook for Mortals: Book 1 of the series (actual title), the literal overnight success that swept up to the very top of the New York Times Young Adult bestseller list to unseat the reigning YA phenomenon, The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas, I had to get the scoop. Because I, like pretty much everyone who watched the scandal unfold over a few dozen hours, knew in the very bottom of my heart that there was absolutely no way that a book no one had ever heard of, from an author no one had ever heard of, released by a publisher no one had ever heard of, had managed to knock a new American classic out of the #1 slot by playing fair. As the sordid details unraveled, I was glued to my phone.

Unfortunately, I had to do some extreme shit to get a signal.

But it was all worth it. Because there’s nothing I hate more than seeing someone game the system to get ahead of other authors who work far harder and deserve it so much more, and on this one, shining, rare occasion, that someone was exposed for their lazy, obvious fraud.

Writer Kayleigh Donaldson did an amazing job of reporting the story, which was broken by author and publisher Phil Stamper, who investigated the details with bookseller Jeremy West. You can read the whole sordid tale here, and I really hope that you do because it’s epic and so full of absurd twists and turns that it could have been a screenplay about a con gone wrong written by Danny DeVito. The basic run down is, bulk orders for Handbook for Mortals: Book 1 of the series started rolling in exclusively at bookstores that report to the NYT list. The book wasn’t available in any physical form at any bookstore, anywhere, and it was listed as out of stock and ranked lower than #100,000 on Amazon, but the bulk order stats boosted the title to the top of the NYT chart. The resulting scandal involved a veritable who’s who of late ’90s, early ’00s people you go, “Who?” about. Like…Blues Traveler is somehow involved, and the chick who played Glorificus on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, and culminated in the New York Times revising and printing a corrected list which returned The Hate U Give to its rightful place.

But that’s not all, friends. That is not all. Lani Sarem, clearly aware that a cute white author with quirky hair can usually get away with anything short of murder and win the support of racist garbage people, just so long as whatever the hell it is they’re doing can knock an author of color down a peg or two, decided she was going to play the “poor, attacked” author card. From The Hollywood Reporter:

She believes The Times caved to social media pressure. “My personal opinion: I’m a first time author; I did some great numbers,” Sarem says. “They put me on the list. The list is curated. They didn’t have to put me on the list despite how many books I sold. When these people made a big issue, they were like, ‘This is too much effort.’ ”

That’s right, everyone. The people who objected to lazy, transparent manipulation of the system in an attempted shortcut to literary fame and fortune are just, dare I say it, jealous haters?

“The last book that caused a lot of controversy was Fifty Shades of Grey,” Sarem points out. “And it was caused by the book community because it was nothing like what they’ve put out. Whether you like the book or hate it, you have to acknowledge it outsold everything.” She continues, “I remember seeing an article where someone in publishing said we had to stand up and look at this because there were people out there that wanted to read this and we would never have put it out. That’s what people forget. There’s a world out there of people that read books; they just don’t exist in this little pocket, in this niche.”

Lani. Honey. Sugar. Baby doll. You did not need to make this so easy for Mother Trout.

So, here we are, at the start of another Jealous Hater’s Book Club, skewering yet another con-artist author touting herself as the Lewis and Clarke of an entire genre. Because Handbook for Mortals isn’t just another badly written wish-fulfillment urban fantasy that makes the legendary My Immortal read like Tolstoy in comparison– Oh, wait, I’m sorry. That was a typo. It should have read, Handbook for Mortals is just another badly written wish-fulfillment urban fantasy that makes the legendary My Immortal read like Tolstoy in comparison. In fact, it started out on Wattpad, a site known for fanfic (although it does feature original works), so it has common internet roots with both My Immortal and Fifty Shades of Grey. At least this isn’t a blatant rip-off of someone else’s work, though.

Without further ado, let’s get into Handbook for Mortals!