Month: April 2014

Merlin club is a weekly feature in which Jessica Jarman, Bronwyn Green, and myself gather at 8pm EST to watch an episode of the amazing BBC series Merlin, starring Colin Morgan and literally nobody else I care about except Colin Morgan.

Okay, I lie. A lot of other really cool people are in it, too.

Anyway, we watch the show, we tweet to the hashtag #MerlinClub, and on Fridays we share our thoughts about the episode we watched earlier in the week.

Hi, this is Jen’s snark voice! Did you miss me?! I missed you. I missed you so much that I decided to scrap my earlier secret plans for a read-a-long of Beautiful Disaster in the fall in order to start this recap of Anna Todd’s After right now.

A few things are going to be different this time around. I will probably not be as hateful and mentally destroyed, for a few reasons:

1. I believe there is a difference between RPF and fanfic, a difference we’ll discuss at length throughout these recaps.
2. Ms. Todd isn’t as obnoxious as E.L. “worship my expertise in shit I know nothing about” James.
3. I’ll be listening to One Direction exclusively while working on these recaps, and they’re pretty good, right? Everybody likes them, so what could go wrong?

Now, before we get started, you need to understand the author’s warning:

This book contains detailed sexual scenes and tons of explicit language. If that isn’t your thing, you shouldn’t continue on, but if it is then you’ll enjoy. 🙂

This book is being touted as “the next 50 Shades” by a lot of people, so keep that in mind when considering the words “detailed sexual scenes.” We probably don’t have any problem with the explicit language, right? So we should be good.

Also, yes there are loads and loads of typos, be easy on me, this was an amazing and fun time for me and no one was reading it, I am fully aware of all the mistakes 🙂 Thank you for reading 🙂

Don’t thank me just yet, Ms. Todd. Because as a long time fanfic devotee, I have a real issue with the “this was just for fun” defense. If it was just for fun, it would still be on your hard drive. And a lot of activities that are fun require some amount of attention to detail– go karting, tennis, rock climbing, trap shooting, that knife-between-the-fingers game pirates play when they’re bored, I guess– so that isn’t an excuse for not putting your fic’s best face out to the world. I am probably the least demanding person when it comes to typos and stuff like that, because I’m dyslexic and I understand. But if there are enough, I say nay. And this author has admitted to not editing her work for fear of ruining it. So we’ll see how this goes.

The good news is, this will give me more of a chance to point out to you guys stuff that will help you in your own writing. So everything here is paved with good intentions! I don’t remember how that saying goes, but I’m pretty sure it meant great stuff would happen.

So, let’s do this!

Hey everybody! This week’s Wednesday blog is about sharing one of our works in progress. Which is awesome, because I have one I really want to share with you! Except I have this whole cover reveal shizz set up for the first week of May…

So, while I can’t reveal the cover or the blurb, I can definitely tell you what it’s about! The book is called A Choice Fit for a Queen, and it’s in the If Ever I Would Leave You anthology. Which, by the by, is an Arthurian mythology themed collection of New Adult… I don’t know. Novels or novellas, depending on how you classify 50 – 60k stories. I’m not a bookseller and everyone classifies that shit differently. Anyway, the antho is written by me and my #MerlinClub friends, Jessica Jarman and Bronwyn Green. I’m the odd duck out, because I’m the only person who’s not contributing something paranormal to the mix.

Okay, the story is about Madison Lane:

an English literature major taking a summer course studying Arthurian mythology in Wales. Her instructor is a totally gorgeous failed novelist who intended to write the next The Once and Future King, but ended up writing the Arthurian equivalent of 50 Shades of Grey, minus the financial success. He’s hot, in that whole down-on-his-luck, doesn’t-give-a-fuck, nothing-to-lose way. Also, in this way:

But Madison also meets good-boy hottie Rhys, a friend and former student of Mr. Professor there, and a stand-up guy.

And he’s like, such a nice guy that while he’s pretty into Madison, he worries about betraying his friend or potentially hurting Madison. Ultimately, Madison has to make the titular choice, and believe me, she sees the parallels between what she’s studying and what she’s living.

So, there you have it. A sneak peek at one of my current works in progress. If you’re a blogger interested in being a part of the cover reveal, here’s the sign-up!

For  a look at what my Wednesday Blogging buddies are working on right now, check out the links!

Jessica Jarman • Bronwyn Green • Tess Grant • Gwendolyn Cease

Kris Norris • Leigh Jones • Kellie St. James

The latest fanfic sensation sweeping the internet is After, a One Direction RPF written by a twenty-five year old named Anna Todd. Ms. Todd’s fanfic is getting a lot of attention due to its:

1. staggeringly high page view count on the serialized fiction platform, Wattpad
2. sexually explicit content
3. depiction of 1D member Harry Styles as an emotionally abusive boyfriend
4. recent representation of film rights by United Talent

As you may remember from my 50 Shades of Grey recaps and various other long-winded rants, I am not a fan of P2P or fanfic properties garnering a profit. But I feel there’s a bit of a murky line when it’s literally just the names of famous people inserted into original fanfic. After all, lots of authors (myself included) base our characters of the appearance and speech patterns of celebrities. The only difference I can see with RPF is the fact that those celebrities are depicted as actual representations of themselves through the use of their names.

In the case of a fic like After, I can understand why that would be problematic. I’m sure Harry Styles is probably not over the moon about being depicted as a total dickhead in a book that has millions of readers. But I don’t think it’s quite the same as what we saw with 50 Shades of Grey. There’s a difference between taking someone’s name and building a character around it and taking someone’s character and changing their name.

Still, I am intrigued to the point of recap by the author of After openly admitting that she doesn’t edit her work because it might ruin it (clearly laboring under the delusion that all first drafts are pure gold and the touch of an editor’s hand is like some reverse philosopher’s stone), as well as the abusive boyfriend content that we’ve all come to crave now that our wet, wanton holes have been filled to maximum capacity by the 50 Shades of Grey media glut. Oh. We are so ready.

It will also give us a chance to discuss how our media culture exploits the sexuality of teen girls while simultaneously dismissing the same sexuality. Even the Jezebel article linked above makes a snarky jab at the fact that After has a large audience of female teens. Material marketed toward teen girls– packaged supergroup One Direction among those materials– rake in tons of cash, but are mocked as lacking value. I’m not going to argue that all of those things have some underrated artistic value, just that the near universal hatred of these franchises is disproportionate to the derision our culture holds for fads traditionally marketed toward teen boys.

Marvel movies, for example.

So, beginning this week, expect to see recaps of After in two to three chapter chunks. The chapters are quite short, especially in comparison to the forty-pages-of-absolutely-nothing-going-on monstrosities in 50 Shades. Keeping the recaps shorter enables me to stick to my other blogging features like Merlin Club, The Big Damn Buffy Rewatch, and Wednesday Blogging.

Look for the first recap later in the week, and if you haven’t had a chance to read After or you’d like to read along, you can find it– and its sequels– here.

Hey guys! Due to my boob getting sliced up for a biopsy last week, and then the strep throat I that is so magnanimously gracing me this week, I’ve had to pull out of my Ransom Library appearance on the 17th. I’m really sorry for disappointing those who were planning to attend. Those of you who have mailed books to the venue to be signed, you’ll still be getting them signed, just probably the next week. Again, sorry everybody, but after my boob thing… let’s just say I understand why flaying is torture.

At 5:23 a.m. this morning,  I shot straight up in bed and screamed, “GODDAMN YOU BRON!”

Last night, I had what had the potential to be an awesome dream. I’m not generally a fan of  listening to other people’s dreams sharing my dreams, but I’m gonna do this because it’s my blog and you are powerless to stop me. Other than just not reading it, I guess. In which case, I guess I am utterly powerless and shouldn’t have come at you so antagonistic right out of the gate. But anyway.

To follow this story, you’re going to have to be aware of several things. Which you probably already know from other posts but probably did not retain due to remembering stuff that’s actually important, but I’ll bring everyone up to speed.

1. I am the president of a small NFPO called the Grand Rapids Region Writers Group, a professional organization dedicated to helping writers in all fields achieve their goals. We usually meet at a restaurant so we can all have lunch.
2. My friend Bronwyn Green is also involved in this group.
3. I wrote a book called Such Sweet Sorrow for a guy named Nick Harris and his company The Story Foundation.
4. I have a very slight, very minor crush on a celebrity I may or may not have mentioned in the past: 
   
5. I am a Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones fanatic. As in, I know the geography of Westeros better than the geography of my own country, which one prompted my husband to interrupt my excruciatingly detailed description of the location of Pentos with, “Jen, what’s the capitol of Wisconsin.”
6. The capitol of Wisconsin is not Cheesebaywaulkee.

So, now that we’re all caught up, here’s what happened in the dream: