Here we go again; the denegration of women's reading

To be clear; I have not read 50 Shades of Grey yet. I have been too busy getting Dracula Unleashed (Book Three of the Blood Wings series) into some kind of order. But naturally, I have an opinion about the nasty, denigrating comments about books that women like to read.

I have touched on these themes before in my Defense of Twilight posts, (here, here, here, here, here), but they bear repeating.

In no particular order, I want to point out the following things.

1. Women are not stupid.  
 Some critics think that the people who read 50 Shades are going to jump right in and start doing unsafe sexual practices, such as untutored BDSM. There are millions and millions of people tying each other up and spanking like crazy without having been to a single workshop at a leather conference and somehow they survive. Guess what. We do know how to do research.

2. Women are able to separate fantasy from reality.  
 Teenagers who watched the Batman series in the late 1960s did not try climbing up buildings crouched over with a single rope.

3. Women are not illiterate.
50 Shades is considered to be horribly written, with cliches and redundant phrasing. Here's a little rebuttal from Joanna Russ' How to Suppress Women's Writing, pg. 129:

Women always write in the vernacular....

In the vernacular, it is...hard to be "classic", to be smooth, to be perfect. The Sacred Canon of Literature quite often pretends that some works can be not only atemporal and universal (that is, outside of history, a religious claim) but without flaw and without perceptible limitations. It's hard, in the vernacular, to pretend this, to paper over the cracks. It's also hard to read the vernacular as Holy Writ...

Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art.

4. Women's sexual fantasies and arousal are important.
Portnoy's Complaint is considered Great Literature. Susie Bright gets told to shut up. Say no more.

5. Ultimately, it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS what a woman reads.
Adult men can read comic books, war novels, spy novels - anything they want, really. Because it is none of our business what they read. Same for women.

Will I read 50 Shades of Grey? After I meet my deadline, for sure. I'm sure parts of it will annoy me and others will get my motor runnin'.

Just like any other novel.
 

I admit it. I love James Bond.

And there is a new trailer for Skyfall!

And did you all know I used Daniel Craig as my inspiration for Lance Soleil?

Dracula's Desires is available for pre-sale!

The second book in the Blood Wings Series, Dracula's Desires, is now up on Amazon and other e-retailers for pre-order. It will be released September 20th!

Isn't it a gorgeous, sexy cover?

My very weird brain.

There is a downside to growing up in a family of clowns. Today was a great example.

This afternoon, I treated myself to lunch at the yummy Davis Street Tavern. To my left, a gentleman was interviewing a lady for some kind of tech/design position.

(first off, can I just say "Euuuwww" to interviewing someone while they are trying to eat? In public, where strangers can listen in? Isn't the lunch portion of an interview supposed to be a break so the interviewee can relax and let their personality emerge?? Sheesh)

The gentleman (who looked like he was about to mow the lawn - I mean, come on, dude! She's interviewing you, too) said something that went a little something like this:

"You are in a meeting with a client. You've done your research and come up with what you think is the best proposal. I come to the meeting and I completely disagree with you. My proposal is the exact opposite of yours. What do you do?"

I had to clap my hand over my mouth because I wanted to answer that question for her. And I wanted to say, "Well, naturally you stand up and scream:

'WRONG! YOU ARE WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, WRONG. WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN SMOKING???'"



Lord, I crack myself up.

Character Creation, part two

(Previous post here)

Now you have have some (more or less) randomly generated numbers. You are ready to start building your character's basic attributes.

More or less random numbers

Get another piece of paper and right down these  six TLAs:

Weird three letter acronyms

STR  (Strenght) This denotes how much your character can carry and (obviously) how much physical strength they have.

DEX (Dexterity) refers to reflexes, balance, and flexibility. A Cirque du Soliel performer would have a DEX of 18 (the highest number you can get). An average person would be around 9.

CON (Constitution) tells you how much stamina this imaginary person has. It includes their ability to recover from stress or injury.

INT (Intelligence) is a measure of learning and reasoning skill. An example of intelligence in action is how quickly this character learns languages.

WIS (Wisdom) is different from intelligence in that it denotes a person's willpower, awareness, common sense, and intuition.

CHA (Charisma) refers to the ability to lead, their personality, appearance, and skill at diplomacy.


Then place those random numbers randomly on your characteristics.

This character is moderately strong, pretty flexible, smart enough to get into trouble, and likes to lead.

For a person with this kind of dexterity, I would most likely make them a cat-burglar in training, or perhaps a business owner who likes to tumble in their free time.

See how you can get a wide variety of ideas from six simple attributes?

Roll some dice and have some fun! That's why we write, after all. :)

Re-order news!

If you pre-ordered Dracula's Secret back in January (when it was available the first time), you will need to re-order.

From my editor:
"The reason the pre-orders for the original listing of DRACULA’S SECRET didn’t carry over is because the ISBN was changed (I suspected that might be the case).  Normally people wouldn’t have to re-order but a new ISBN makes for an entirely different product."

Fortunately, you aren't charged until the book ships, so re-ordering shouldn't be too big of a problem. Sorry for any inconvenience.