Freedom of expression and self-publishing: The Mail's manufactured crisis and dinosaur porn

I nearly missed this story last week: Kobo, the e-book reader manufacturer and publisher, went through an exercise of weeding out “offensive” books and removing them from its catalog. Of course, “offensive” means books about some forms of sex. Apparently, books that glorify stock market manipulation or various forms of fraud against the middle class, or books that use religion to justify oppression of women, for example, are okay.

It seems to have started with an “investigation” by the UK newspaper The Mail into WHSmith’s website. On October 11, The Mail Online reported:

Typing the word ‘daddy’ into the search box, for instance, brings up disturbing fictional accounts of bondage and sexual humiliation, as well as collections of bedtime stories for youngsters.

After The Mail on Sunday alerted WHSmith to the appalling content freely available on its website, executives took the unprecedented decision to take the whole site offline while the explicit ebooks were removed from sale.

‘We will tighten our processes to ensure that this error can never happen again and sincerely apologise to our customers for any offence caused,’ the company said in a statement.

The Mail on Sunday investigation found that pornographic ebooks – the majority of which are self-published by their authors – are also available through Amazon, Waterstones and Barnes & Noble.

By Sunday, October 13, WHSmith’s website was down as executives and staff went through the catalog to remove offending titles. The crisis then spilled over to Kobo, which has a partnership deal with WHSmith to supply e-books. According to the much more credible and professional newspaper, the Telegraph, Kobo shut down its UK website by October 17 while its people went through its catalog, as well, and reviewed its self-publishing system to ensure that authors comply with its policies.

Erotic book lovers, meanwhile, sent a petition to online book sellers demand they “LEAVE OUR EROTICA ALONE!”

Executives from both Kobo and WHSmith stated that they’re concerned about books that glorify rape, incest and bestiality, among other subjects.

I’m sure you’ll all be relieved to learn that all my books have passed muster on Kobo.com, including my unabashed erotic novel, One Shade ofRed.

One series of books is apparently not available on Kobo anymore: Christie Sims’ dinosaur erotica books, like Taken by the T-Rex and Mounted by the Gryphon. I have no way of telling whether those books ever were available on Kobo, but they are available on Amazon, Barnes+Noble.com and iBooks.

Image source: The Mary Sue 

Kobo still sells erotica, including “tentacle erotica” titles like Taken by Tentacles and Tentacle Alien’s Breeding Pet. Apparently, sex with dinosaurs is too disgusting for Kobo and WHSmith’s executives, but sex with aliens with tentacles is okay.

The power of the written word

This was a crisis manufactured by the Mail newspaper. Apparently, they have reporters with nothing better to do than to surf the Internet for sources of porn that can be embarrassed. Then, they can find people to make self-righteous condemnations of pornography.

John Whittingdale, chairman of the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee said: ‘It is disgusting that WHSmith, one of the country’s most respected retailers, is selling hardcore pornography alongside children’s books.

Why does the Mail toy with evoking the forces of censorship and repression of freedom of expression? Because it sells newspapers.

No matter how Kobo and WHSmith try to discriminate between “legitimate” literature and that which is offensive according to standards, however widely they may be accepted, removing books is censoring some content.

And the Mail depends on the premise of freedom of expression for its existence.

Thankfully, this crisis has sunk back into the swamp without causing much interest anywhere.

I’m just pleased to have found something as ludicrously funny as the idea of dinosaur erotica. I don’t intend to read any, but you have to admit, it has to be the most ridiculous idea in fiction.

Father's day sample: Advice

For Father's Day, I present a fatherly excerpt from my latest book, One Shade of Red.

Picture: Wikipedia Commons

Sunday dinner with my parents followed a routine that varied only with the seasons. I’d usually show up after 6, when my Dad would have almost finished barbequing the steaks to black shoe-sole consistency. But since I had come early this time, I had to help out like I had when I was 14.


I entered the kitchen from the back yard at the same moment that Dad came in from the hallway. “Hey, big guy!” he boomed, as usual, while opening the fridge and taking out a big, flat dish. Four big, red steaks marinated in a thick, red sauce. “Came early to help out?”

“Helping” Dad meant starting the barbeque — no propane for him. He insisted on charcoal, and that meant starting an hour before you wanted to eat, pouring briquettes into the ball-shaped bottom of the barbeque, dousing it with some liquid that smelled suspiciously like gasoline and trying to touch a lit match to the fluid while standing as far back as you could. After that, “helping” would involve fetching barbeque utensils, barbeque sauce, another bottle of beer and anything else that came to his mind.

“Sure,” I said, reaching for the tray. That brought me close to him, and I realized for the first time that day how reluctant I was to stand next to him, now that I was taller than him. I had outgrown Dad in height a couple of years ago, but being able to look down on him did not make me feel any stronger than him, not with his wide shoulders and forearms like wrestling anacondas. But for how long had I been so loathe to stand close enough that my height superiority was obvious?

“It’s too soon to take the steaks out, son. You can start the briquets burning.”

My heart sank.

While we waited for the briquettes to turn gray, I sat on a patio chair and chatted with my Mom. I was guiltily aware that I didn’t do this much, and she loved it. “So, how’s the book?”

“Exciting. Lots of action, and I can really see eye-to-eye with the character. Sometimes, I’d like to do the things he does.”

“It doesn’t seem like your usual reading material.”

“I’ve read everything by Bulgakov and Nabokov and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I thought I would try some of these new writers for a change.”

At supper, my little sister and I dutifully chewed through the steaks and kidded Dad about his complete lack of barbequing ability, as usual.

“What are you talking about? They’re perfect!” he argued, as usual.

At least I could wash it down with beer. Diana, my sister, wasn’t old enough, yet, but Dad let her drink some of Mom’s wine.

Supper over, Dad said he had to work on a contract and went upstairs to my old bedroom, which he had converted into an office. After Diana and I cleaned up the kitchen, I went up to my old room, too.

“Dad, I need some advice.”

I have never seen anyone simultaneously look so surprised, gratified and thoughtful. He put down his mechanical pencil and took off his bifocals. “About?” Without glasses, his hazel eyes squinted a little.

I sat down in the “guest” chair in his office — an antique foreman’s chair, made of solid oak or something. It weighed a ton and was as comfortable as sitting on stone. I had always wondered where he had found it. It was as far removed from his desk chair as a feather bed from a Catholic altar.

“You know I hired Tyler to help with cleaning pools. And I set him up with a bunch of clients.”

“I’ve never found it wise to hire your friends. It never works out,” Dad said.

“What? But you’re friends with John Andrienos, and he’s your foreman on half the jobs!”

“I hired him and then made friends with him,” Dad answered. “That’s okay. That works: you work alongside someone, come to respect them, become friends. It’s natural. But when you hire a friend to work for you, they seem to think your friendship is a free pass or something.”

“You’re right. Tyler isn’t working out.”

“What do you mean, specifically?”

“He’s always late. Half the time, he doesn’t show up at customers’ places. When he does, he never does a full job. The customers are getting pissed off.”

“Have you spoken to him about this?” Dad leaned back in his comfortable, ergonomic chair and swung his glasses between his fingers.

Dad loved being asked for advice.

Photo from Noel Kingsley's blog.

“Yah, I told him the issues. I even gave him a warning.”

Dad looked out the window, where the setting sun made the sky pink and orange. He pushed his thick grey hair back from his forehead before answering. “I’ve heard he’s had some employment problems, already.”

“He’s been fired three times already this year.”

“Hmm. Sounds like Tyler has a problem. Three employers already have had enough of him, and now, you.”

“Yah.”

“So, what do you want advice with?”

This was hard. Dad had this annoying habit of making you voice exactly what you mean. Using real words.

“What should I do?”

Dad looked at me with his unnerving look. “What do you want?” he asked finally.

“Huh?” God, you can be lame, said my brain.

“What do you want for your pool-cleaning business?”

“Geez, Dad, why do you always have to make these talks a lesson? I want it to succeed.”

“Good. And what does that mean?”

I knew this answer from years of business lessons from the city’s most philosophical contractor. “Profits.”

“Let’s cut to the chase, son,” Dad said. “You have a problem: your employee is causing customers to complain. What is the outcome you want from this?”

“I want my customers to like me again.”

“So, what do you need for that to happen?”

Dad: always making me confront reality. “I need ... to get rid of Tyler.”

“Not necessarily. Do you think that Tyler can change? Can he behave differently, so that he doesn’t make your customers leave?

“I don’t know. Anyway, I’ve decided I don’t need to worry about that anymore. I need someone to replace Tyler. I just can’t take back all his clients — there aren’t enough hours in the day.”

“So, you’ve decided to let Tyler go?”

I took a deep breath. This was still hard to say. “Yes. But who can I get to take his place?”

“You want a recommendation?”

I nodded. “You know a lot of people.”

Dad looked at the sunset again. “You know, the construction business has slowed down a lot, lately. I haven’t had enough work to give out to my usual crew.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault, son. You know, I’m glad you’ve found a new way to make money this summer. It’s taken a lot of pressure off my shoulders.”

“So, do you know anyone that could help me?”

He looked out the window again. “You know Philip Lamontaigne? Bob and Maureen’s son? He’s a bit older than you, but he’s a good worker. I have not had enough work this year to be able to hire him, and he’s been looking for work.”

I remembered Philip. One of those skinny guys with a skanky beard. He always had weed on him, always had a new girlfriend and a next girlfriend. “Phil is a good worker?”

“I had him on-call last summer. He never failed to show up on time, always did more than asked of him.”

Note to self, by S@Z, creative commons license

Wow. Phil Lamontaigne, professional dirtbag, was a good worker. “So, you think he’d be a good pool cleaner?”

“Can you show him the ropes?”

“No problem.”

Dad flipped through screens on his laptop and wrote a phone number on a post-it note. Dad has always loved post-it notes.


One Shade of Red is an erotic comedy e-book, available from Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, the iTunes bookstore and other e-retailers.

Sample Sunday: The heat is on

The heat is on. Summer is here in Ottawa. Even though I'm spending a lot of this weekend in cold water, the air is heavy and thick with moisture.
This week's sample is from my erotic romantic comedy, One Shade of Red. Most of you already know that it's a spoof of the biggest bestseller, 50 Shades ... you know the one I mean.

In this excerpt, the hero, Damian, is working outdoors during the hottest summer in Toronto's history. And this is before the mayoral-crack scandal.

Seeing a man working in the hot sun does something to some women ... at least, we men in the hot sun hope so.


By the end of the third week, I had Mrs. Casales’ pool and deck looking much better. In fact, they looked great.

For no reason I could define, I had gone well beyond pool cleaning. I had cleaned the inside of the pool and scraped out all the slime and goop, vacuumed the accumulated dust out of the bottom and cleared the skimmers until they looked new.

Every time I had come, I had scrubbed the concrete pool deck. I even went to far as to bring clippers from my parents’ tool shed and hack back the overgrown hedges so that they would not drop so many leaves into the pool. I told myself that I was only making my work easier for myself in the long run, but my brain did not believe me.

Mrs. Casales obliged me by exclaiming how much better her whole back yard looked every time I finished. Occasionally, her two little kids, a boy and girl, both under 10 years old, would scamper in and wait impatiently when I told them they had to wait after I poured in the chlorine. “The water’s not good for swimming yet,” I said every time. “You’ll have to wait at least an hour.” They would stand at the side of the pool, bouncing on the balls of their feet, until one would think of something else to do and they’d chase each other across the yard or into the house.

Mrs. Casales always came out with iced tea or lemonade when I was done, and we’d sit at her patio set and chat about the pool-cleaning business, or the upcoming university year, or sometimes about her kids.

She seemed cheerful enough when we talked, but she never mentioned a husband. I remembered what Alexis had said about her marriage breaking up, but I did not know how to ask her about that without risking spoiling her mood.

At the end of the third week, the sixth time I had cleaned the pool, deck and the back yard in general, I took a deep breath and surveyed my handiwork. Part of my brain demanded to know why I had gone so far beyond pool cleaning, and another part of my brain refused to admit why.

Mrs. Casales came out of the kitchen with two bottles of Heineken. No children were in sight. “The water is perfectly balanced today, Mrs. Casales, so the kids can come swimming right away,” I said as I took a bottle from her hand.

“The kids are at their cousin’s this afternoon. We’re alone today,” she said and took a sip of her beer. “And call me Leda.”

On that hot afternoon, cold beer went down like salvation. I could feel heat radiating off my skin. I pressed the cold bottle against my hot forehead, relishing the ache it caused.

We sat at her squeaky, unsteady patio table. I stretched my legs in front of me. Mrs. Casales’ — Leda’s — pool was the last on my itinerary, and the day seemed to be going in an excellent direction.

I looked at her; she was wearing a thin cover-up over a two-piece bathing suit. I watched her neck pulse as she drank more beer. She had tied her crazy hair with one of those scrunchie things that girls like. “Thanks for the beer.”

She wasn’t bad looking, I thought. A little overweight, but that gave her nice curves. She was no Alexis, but to borrow Patrick’s tired joke, I wouldn’t kick her out of bed for eating cookies.

“Thank you, Damian, for doing such a great job. I appreciate how you’ve gone well beyond the pool cleaner’s job description. I did notice the way you trimmed the bushes and neatened up the whole yard.” She patted my knee and moved a little closer toward me.

“It was just to keep so many leaves and branches from falling into the pool,” I said. “So it made my own job a little easier.”

“Nonsense. You were trying to make me happier. And I truly appreciate that, Damian. Really, I do. And I should pay you back. One good turn deserves another.”

“No, no, the payment is what it is. We agreed. A deal is a deal.”

“Then, I should pay you back in some other way.” She looked right into my eyes.

My mouth felt dry, and pouring more beer into it did not help.

“Do you always work with your shirt off?” she said, and I suddenly felt conscious of my bare chest.

“Just when it’s this hot...”

I could not finish answering her because her mouth pressed against mine.   One Shade of Red is an erotic comedy e-book, available from Amazon, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, the iTunes bookstore and other e-retailers.

Sample Sunday: An argument with the girlfriend

Despite the weather, summer is coming fast. So for this week's Sample Sunday, here's an excerpt from my hot summer novel, One Shade of Red. This one introduces the reader to the hero's long-time girlfriend, the girl next door: Kristen.
 

Image: Angry Girlfriend by jasonippolitoLicensed under Creative Commons

Argument with Kristen

“Well, look who’s here. Hello, stranger.” Kristen’s voice had that clipped sneer in it. She folded her arms across her chest.

I put on my best smile and held out the flowers from the grocery store. “I finally got the bank account straightened out. Wanna have something to eat and hang out?”

It had taken a week of text messages, emails and a fax between me, Nick and the bank before the bank would give me access to the Pool Geeks account. I could deposit the cheques as well as take money out. So, finally, I wasn’t paying for the privilege of working. The first thing I did with the access was take out a hundred bucks to take my girlfriend out.

Kristen couldn’t suppress her smile when I held the flowers under her nose, although she tried to. Finally, she took the bunch and sniffed. “Well, since you brought flowers ... Where are we going?” She looked up at me, blue eyes shining through the flowers. Her mouth slowly spread into a smile.

“Why not Mama Toni’s? And my parents are away for the weekend, so I got a DVD.”

Kristen pretended to think about it for about two seconds. “Let me put these in some water.”

I stepped inside her house — her parents’ house — and waited like I had so many times before. Mrs. Petri came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a towel. “Oh, hello Damian,” she said. “Why don’t you sit down?”

My breath caught whenever I saw Mrs. Petri — even after all these years. She was the neighbourhood beauty: tall and fit with bright blue eyes that she had passed on to her daughter. Her hair was done up high, exposing her long neck, and she wore a sleeveless t-shirt and short pants. I wondered why she always showed more skin than her teenaged daughter.

I followed her to the kitchen and sat at the table; I knew from experience not to sit on the “good furniture” in the living room. Mrs. Petri poured me a cup of tea from the pot that was always filled. “Would you like a cookie?”

I took one from the plate in the middle of the table. Mrs. Petri baked regularly, and I loved her cookies. That’s how I first made friends with Kristen. When I was five, I was in a bunch of kids who came over to the Petris’ to play. I went back for the cookies. Through school, Kristen and I alternated coming over to each other’s houses for homework and other activities. I preferred being at her place, sitting at her mother’s kitchen table and munching on cookies. Those cookies were all that got me through long division in Grade 3 and A Separate Peace in high school.

I ate three cookies before Kristen returned from upstairs, dressed in her going-out-for-cheap-dinner clothes: khaki pants, a scoop-neck blouse and sensible shoes. She had tied her long, straight brown hair into a pony-tail. Kristen resembled her mother in her blue eyes and symmetrical, delicate features, but she was smaller, shorter. She was like a pretty doll: perfect and fragile. The prettiest girl in my grade, she was more for looking at than holding.

“Thanks for the cookies, Mrs. Petri,” I said as Kristen pulled me to the front door.

Mr. Petri came in from the garage at that point. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“I’m taking your daughter out for dinner and a movie,” I answered as cheerfully as I could, but I dreaded the response I knew was coming.

“You know you’ll never save money for university if you keep eating in restaurants,” he said. “A boy your age who lives on his own should know how to cook for himself.”

“Oh, Daddy,” Kristen said, pulling me out the front door.

“It’s alright, Mr. Petri,” I said, trying to sound casual and relaxed. Short but with broad shoulders and muscles that rippled in his lower arms, Mr. Petri always made me feel nervous and inadequate. Come to think of it, so did his daughter.
“I just got paid by three different customers.”

I knew what he was going to say next: “You should save that money in a bank. You never know what you might need tomorrow.”

“Oh, Daddy,” Kristen repeated and pulled me out the door.

“Be sure to have her home by midnight!” Mr. Petri called after us. And of course, it took three attempts to get my car started as Kristen’s father watched us from his front porch. By the time I could pull away from the curb, my face was burning.

Kristen and I could never agree on Mama Toni’s restaurant : I thought it was expensive; she thought it was cheap. Of course, she never paid for the food. She thought it was a quaint little place with mementos and pictures from Italy and New York on the walls; I pointed out that it was part of a chain and was owned by a foodservice corporation in Philadelphia. But we both liked the food and I liked to show off just a little by drinking Italian beer — which cost over seven bucks a bottle.

Hell with it: I felt the pool-cleaning cash burning a hole in my pocket.

Kristen ate about a quarter of her plate of pasta; she refused wine on principle and sneered at me every time I took a sip of my Moretti.

“So where are your parents tonight?” she asked while we waited for the bill.

“Up at the cottage for the weekend.”

“Why didn’t you go with them?”

“I don’t live with them anymore, Kristen. I’m a grown-up now. So are you. Besides, this way we have their whole house to ourselves.”

She narrowed her eyes at me. “I thought you said you didn’t live with them anymore.” She sipped her water delicately. Even though she could be judgemental and fucking annoying, she was very pretty in a delicate, little-girl way. A little too thin, maybe. She’d like it if I said that. She worked hard to keep her weight down.

“I do have a key to the front door. So we can watch the 50-inch plasma in full theatre-surround sound.”

She dabbed her lips with her napkin, then folded it carefully to cover the food left on her plate, as if she couldn’t bear to look at it anymore. “What DVD did you get?”

“Fight Club.”

“What? Why?”

“Hey, it’s the perfect couples movie.” I had been waiting all day to say this. “For the ladies, Brad Pitt gets naked. For the men, big, fat, ugly guys beat him up. What more could you ask for?”

I thought it was pretty funny. I still do.

What did you think? Leave a comment!

One Shade of Red is available on 

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Smashwords

iTunes

Progress report: One Shade of Red



Image: Creative Commons

 I have learned a few things in the year since I published my first novel, The Bones of the Earth — even some things about publishing books. I tried to apply them when publishing my second book, One Shade of Red.

I’ve known the importance of promotion and advertising any product for a long time. Even as a kid, I saw ads promoting the power of advertising. I knew that if I wanted my book to sell well, I’d have to figure out some way to promote it.

The problem, however, is that advertising costs money. Money I don’t necessarily have, money that I need for my other indulgences, like food and heat and gas. And taxes.

In the past year, though, I have also learned about some promotion and advertising I could afford.

And I learned is that results of promotion are not always what you expect.

What I did

After I released The Bones of the Earth at the end of 2011, sales were not what I had hoped. So I read, I researched, I spoke and corresponded with a lot of people who know, or who said they knew, about how to promote a book. I listened and I planned to take as much of their advice as I could for the release of my second novel.

I ramped up my participation on Twitter and joined some great, fun groups on Facebook. I was invited into the Guild of Dreams fantasy authors’ group and corresponded more frequently with other writers. And as you faithful readers have noticed (thanks, by the way, for coming back here every day!), I increased the amount of blogging I do, and wrote guest blog posts for others.

Even before I was finished with the first draft of One Shade of Red, I started talking about the book in person and on the Net. I put little teasers on my blog and tweeted things like “Coming soon: a sexy spoof of 50 Shades of Grey.”

I put samples on my blog for Six Sentence Sunday, too, until that fun site closed.

I solicited and received some excellent and very encouraging advice from an excellent writer, one known for both erotica and other writing, too: Charity Parkerson. Thanks, Charity!

One of my most important decisions was involving the amazing members of Independent Authors International. As I’ve blogged before, Gary Henry and Cinta Garcia de la Rosa were invaluable editors and reviewers. Ben Wretlind and Bruce Blake contributed excellent copy-editing and proofreading. Thanks, all — I really could not have produced as good a book without you.

Another iAi member, David C. Cassidy, designed a fantastic cover. I can’t say how happy I am with it! Thank you again, David.

Once I had a fully edited version, I sent advance review copies to some good friends who are known for good book reviews. Their response was very positive — and I made sure to tell them I wanted honest reviews, and not to spare my feelings. I am very gratified to read their responses, which you can find on Goodreads and Amazon.

Blog tours

By February, I knew I was getting close. I set a deadline of the end of March to launch One Shade of Red as an e-book. When I realized that was the Easter long weekend, and the April Fools Day followed immediately, I chose April 2 as the official publishing date.

Taking a cue from Bruce Blake, I organized two blog tours. First was a cover reveal a couple of weeks before my launch day. Thanks to everyone who posted that stunning cover:

- CR Hiatt

- Rachel Thompson

- Christine Nolfi

- Bruce A. Blake

- Wodke Hawkinson

- Doug Dorow

- Linze Brandon

- Lisa Jey Davis

- David C. Cassidy

- Jesi Lea Ryan



Next, I set up advertising on Wodke Hawkinson’s Find a Good Book to Read and on Rachel Thompson’s two book promotional sites, the Indie Book Promo and the related but more specific Romance Promo Central and the Erotic Promo. [

The launch

Launch day was April 2, as I said. For one week before and one week after, I organized a blog tour. (I did not realize until it started that the blog tour coincided with Passover.) Ten generous bloggers agreed to post an excerpt from the book; each person got a different excerpt. Thanks to everyone who participated:

- Alan McDermott

- Siggy Buckley

- Charity Parkerson

- CR Hiatt

- Dawn Torrens

- Bruce Blake

- Cinta Garcia de la Rosa

- Doug Dorow

- Frederick Lee Brooke

- and Shannon Mayer.

Also, Joyce Strand agreed to feature the my guest post about why I wrote a book like One Shade of Red, which is such a departure from my earlier work.
It’s amazing how many people will say “yes” when you ask a favour.

For launch day, I set the price at 99 cents, and for my first book, too. Opening special!

The results

Sales that first day were gratifying — not huge, but it seemed that the market at least noticed that my new book was available.

After that, sales dropped off.

However, starting that day, sales of The Bones of the Earth started to surge on Amazon’s UK site. I don’t know why, but sales have been steady there ever since, and now the full edition and Part 1: Initiation Rites, a stand-alone novella which is also available as an e-book, are in the top 100 of the Historical Fantasy category — depending on the day, sometimes ahead of some major titles like Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Mists of Avalon and Guy Gavriel Kay’s Tigana.

I had heard of this phenomenon before: the best way to sell more books is to publish more books. But this is the first time it has happened to me.

It’s curious that this sales spike is restricted to the UK. Come on, Americans — are you going to let the Brits outdo you in buying The Bones of the Earth?

You can still beat them in buying One Shade of Red!

A sexy excerpt from ONE SHADE OF RED

My second novel, One Shade of Red, launches April 2. What's it about?

With this novel, I turned Fifty Shades of Grey  — currently the fastest-selling book ever  — on its head. And then, I added more sex.

To give you a little taste, here's an encounter between the two main characters: Damian, the naive twenty-year-old virgin, and the only client of his pool-cleaning business, the slightly older Alexis Rosse. This starts in a slightly run-down tavern on the Danforth in Toronto. 

Chapter 3: Emergency pick-up

Tyler stabbed a button and held the phone to his ear. I realized he had pressed “Call.”


“Who are you calling?” I asked, alarmed.

“Your girlfrien’,” he answered, grinning. Try as I might, I couldn’t get the phone out of his grasp. Kristen answered on what I figured must have been the third ring. “Hey, baby, it’s me, Damian,” Tyler said, trying to impersonate me. It didn’t convince me, but it seemed to convince Kristen. “Listen, you and me been wasting enough time, already. It’s time to get naked and get it together! I’m comin’ over for some booty, right now.”

“Are you crazy?” I yelled, hoping my voice could overcome the noise in the bar and make it through the cell phone, somehow, to tell Kristen it wasn’t me. She was going to be so mad.

I grabbed at my phone again, but Tyler twisted away. Patrick came around the table and grabbed my hands as Tyler said “I’m at the bar with my best buds, Tyler and Patrick. Don’t pretend you don’t know who we — they are.

“At the bar,” he continued. “The Red Fox. Yah, that’s the one.” Another pause. “No, no, I’ll ... awright, awright, come on over! Yah, it’s on the Danforth. You been there! Okay, see ya.” He handed me the phone. “Good news, buddy: she’s comin’ to get you.”

“What?” Patrick and I said simultaneously. “Kristen is coming to pick you up for a booty call? Oh man, I never even had that much luck!” Patrick added.

Luck had nothing to do with it, I thought. At least not good luck. “Shit, shit, shit,” I said. “Kristen hates it when I’m drinking.”

“How many beers you had?” Patrick asked.

I had to think about it. “Three. Maybe four,” I answered. “Shit.”

“Like I said, more of a wife than a girlfriend,” Tyler said and drank more beer.

I stood to brush peanut crumbs off my clothes and headed for the door. It would be better, a little, to meet Kristen outside than in the bar.

It wasn’t such a bad place. The Red Fox was also a restaurant that catered to families at suppertime. But Kristen felt — I knew this because she told me several times — that sitting in a bar drinking beer with my “dumb buddies” was a waste of time and money, something done by low-lives only. Not by respectable university students who hoped one day to be respectable professional members of the community.

I could hear her voice telling me this as I stood on the curb, looking eastward for her car. Or actually, her father’s car. One part of my brain could not believe she would actually agree to come and get me at — I felt shocked when I looked at my watch — quarter past midnight. Her father let her come out this late?

Another part of my brain kept predicting what she would say. I could hear her clipped voice in my head: the way she bit off her words when she was pissed, the way she would emphasize every sentence with a “Hmmm?” that was more of an accusation than a question.

And there was yet another part of my brain that kept asking pesky questions. “Why does she need her father’s permission to go out late at night when she’s over 18?” “Why does she get to dictate when and how often I go out with my friends?”

“Just why does she get to decide what ‘respectable’ professionals do in their own time? Or what constitutes ‘respectability’?”

And “Why is it taking her so long to get down to the Danforth from her house? She should have been here a long time ago.”

“Dude, you owe me thirty bucks,” said someone beside me. I jumped, literally jumped, before I saw it was just Patrick. Tyler was behind him. “You left without paying for your beer. The waitress was pissed — she thought you had burned her. So I hadda pay her.”

“Can I get you tomorrow?” I asked. I really didn’t want Kristen to see me giving Patrick money. She’d have something else to lecture me about: “Given how little money you make, should you be paying your dumb buddy for beer from a bar? And what if someone had seen you handing over money on the street like that? They’d think you were buying drugs! Yes, Patrick does look like a drug dealer.”

I looked down the street, expecting to see Kristen’s father’s car any minute, but even though traffic was light, I couldn’t see the familiar shape of the minivan anywhere. When headlights lit up the asphalt at my feet from behind me, I was confused.

A grey Jaguar pulled up the curb, pointing the wrong way. The driver’s window slid down silently and a musical voice said “Well, do you want booty, or not?”

I bent down to see the long wavy hair and deep brown eyes of my employer. My only customer. I looked at my friends, and they were staring at me and the car with their jaws hanging loose. “Mrs. Rosse? What are you doing here?”

“You called me, remember? You wanted to get naked. What’s a girl supposed to do when she gets a call like that? Now get in.”

I flashed my friends a grin as I walked around the car to get into the passenger seat. They still had their mouths open. Mrs. Rosse gunned the engine, cutting off a hatchback coming the other way — the right way down the Danforth. Before I could say anything, she said “Boy, you have dumb friends.”

“I was just going to say, that wasn’t me. That was Tyler,” I stammered. “He thinks he’s funny.”

“I know what your voice sounds like, Damian. We have spoken on the phone.”

“Sorry if he offended you.”

Mrs. Rosse laughed. “Offended me? Maybe disappointed me!”

“How?”

“That it wasn’t actually you making that phone call.” She looked at me and I swear I saw her eye sparkle.

“Where are we going?”

“My place. You said you wanted to get naked with me. Or your friend said it, but anyway, I’m turned on now.”

I decided not to bother trying to explain that both Tyler and I thought he had dialled Kristen’s number. I was so glad he had made a mistake.

My mouth suddenly was very dry. Did she really say she was turned on? “So, uh, sorry to drag you out this late.”

She laughed again. I was really starting to love that laugh. I squirmed in my seat, hoping to hide my sudden erection. “I wasn’t doing anything, just reading a really bad book and feeling horny. Your friend’s call was the excuse I needed to get out and scare up some action.”

I was sure she could hear my heart pounding, because that’s all I could hear at that point. I hadn’t noticed what she was wearing when I got in the car. As we passed under streetlamps, I could see that she was wearing a pink jogging jacket, but her legs were bare.

She noticed me looking at her. “That’s right, Damian. This jacket is all I have on.”

With that, she swung the car into her driveway. I sat there, staring as she walked, bare-assed, to her front door, the flip-flops of her sandals echoing down the street. She turned to me from the step, smiled and pulled off the jacket. She posed for a second, nude, and tossed the jacket into the house, then stepped inside.


Like that? You can find out what happened to Damian on April 2, when One Shade of Red goes on sale on Amazon, Smashwords, iTunes iBookstore and other quality e-book retailers!

Come back to this blog for links. And leave a comment — tell me whether you loved this, hated it, or said “meh.”

Launch date: April 2, 2013

One Shade of Red

It’s nearly done! My spoof of Fifty Shades of Grey is nearly out.

What began as a lark for National Novel Writing Month in November is nearing the final stages of publishing. I’ve written, re-written and edited it myself, shown portions to established authors in the field, and had it edited by a very skilled writer, Gary Henry (author of American Goddesses and some excellent short stories and poems).

After taking Gary’s advice, I asked another gifted author and editor, Cinta Garcia de la Rosa (The Funny Adventures of Little Nani) to copy-edit it. After making the corrections she pointed out, I turned the manuscript over to my wife, Roxanne, a skilled editor in her own right. Then I asked one more colleague to act as the last set of eyes on the result.

Gary, Cinta, and cover designer David C. Cassidy are all members of Independent Authors International, a cooperative publishing group who share services like reading, editing, design and promotion. In short, all the functions that a traditional publisher performs, while leaving control and revenue in the author's hands. This process is a great example of the vision behind iAi.

Improving quality

I have to admit, One Shade of Red grown in the writing. I thought I would do a straight spoof by taking the concept (if you can call it that) of Fifty Shades and turning it upside-down: instead of an innocent girl being seduced by a slightly older and irresistible man, I have a naive young man being initiated into adulthood by an older, irresistible and sexually voracious woman.

But the characters grew deeper and more complex as I told the story. They took on some life of their own. And then some complications entered the story. So it's a little more than what I started with.

Now, as I try to get some advance publicity and marketing going, I have to pause to say “thank you” to a lot of people who have helped along the way.

First, my wife, Roxanne, and the rest of my family, too, for support and for putting up with distraction, bad moods, anxiety and self-doubt as I worked on the manuscript.

Charity Parkerson, for insight, advice and encouragement at the early stages of the writing process.

Gary Henry, the first author colleague to review the manuscript for pointing out all the little errors not just in grammar or punctuation, but for forcing me to write better.

Cinta Garcia and again my wife, Roxanne, for eagle-eyed copy editing.

David C. Cassidy for an absolutely fantastic cover.

Bruce A. Blake for a final proofread.

Everyone who agreed to participate in the cover reveal over the next two weeks:

CR Hiatt
Rachel Thompson
Cinta Garcia Rosa

Christine Nolfi
Bruce A. Blake
Wodke Hawkinson
Doug Dorow
Linze Brandon

Lisa Jey Davis
David C. Cassidy
Jesi Lea Ryan

I’ll be tweeting and blogging all the links to their blogs over the next couple of weeks, but in the meantime, check them all out today — you’ll be glad you did!

Writing about sex is not easy

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It should be. It should be the easiest thing in the world to write about. But it's not. Last month in the New Republic magazine, commercially published author Sam Lipsyte wrote about the challenges he faces when confronting a sex scene in a novel:

We might have the tendency to quickly cover up from the embarrassment of seeing our characters in the buff or else take on the role of salacious puppeteer. The prose can suffer from these reactions, as well as from overly clinical description, or, in some notorious cases, overcooked metaphor. Being caught with your aesthetic pants down can be a writer's worst fear.

Maybe the headline should be: “Writing well about sex is not easy.” If you’re not careful, it’s easy to slip into pornographic depictions of sexual positions, moans and gasps and twitching body parts.

I try to write truthfully, to show readers what I and my characters think and feel in every situation. I try to be original by examining the naked basis of every movement, sensation and intention. Then I have to edit to make sure I’m not over-writing it. Readers are smart; they can figure things out.

Getting into the swing

To prepare for writing my erotic satire, One Shade of Red, I thought I should see how other writers wrote about sex. Not just writers of erotica, because I wanted OSOR to be about sex and other things, too. I turned to an anthology, a compendium of excerpts of the “best erotic writing in modern fiction” called The Good Parts, edited by J.H. Blair.

Among the writers sampled in this anthology are Don DeLillo, described as “a stylist without peer”; Amanda Filipacchi: “uniquely original”; and the “unique voice” of EL Doctorow.

All well known, all excellent writers. But their work all reads as if … as if it were edited by the same person.

Part of the genius of writers like Joyce Carol Oates and John Updike and William Styron, part of Philip Roth’s breakthrough was their ability to depict the most intimate, sensual and human activity honestly, recognizably and enjoyably. Their ability to write descriptions that we can all agree with. Yes, exactly.



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 And yet, all these serious writers, the cream of the literati, take a similar approach to writing about sex. They often employ a breathless stream of linked, long sentences, and somehow avoid naming the most important body parts involved. Here’s a typical example from Steven Erickson’s “ARC d’X”:

For a moment he was confused, wondering where she was in the dark, until he realized she was on the bed that he stood alongside. Lying at its edge, she unbuttoned his pants and freed him and put him in her mouth. …

Erickson’s stringing of clauses echoes EL Doctorow’s sex scene in Billy Bathgate:

We lay in the dark cellar of dust and ash, and I was passive and on my back and Rebecca lay on top of me and cleaved herself on me letting herself down with a long intake of her breath which I felt as a cool flute of air on my neck, and slowly awkwardly she learned her rhythm upon me as I was patient to allow her to do so.

It seems that the accepted way to describe sexual act in “serious” fiction (as opposed to porn) is either to link those breathless clauses like Doctorow, or just to hint at it, like Joyce Carol Oates in Last Days:

Now she felt the kiss deepen, and a feathery-light sensation ran through her body, her belly, her loins, a sensation familiar enough but always in a way new, and reassuring, and impersonal; and in another second or two the tenor of the kiss would change and become more serious: the man would part her lips, his tongue would prod at hers, his teeth grind lightly against hers, they would still be smiling but the kiss would have become serious, and Marianne’s plans for the rest of day — was this Saturday? — might have to be substantially altered.

Or like Joan Mellen in Natural Tendencies: “she opened herself to him” and Susanna Moore in The Whiteness of Bones: “He opened her gently.”

Using frank language tends to get one relegated to the “erotica” or “porn” categories. But aside from any prurient interest (none of us have that, right?), just from the style, I prefer a writer who can deal honestly with the one subject that unites all of humanity.

Charity Parkerson is an independent author who has written erotica as well as paranormal fiction and stories that are just plain about people. Here’s an example of her writing about sex honestly and openly in The Society of Sinner — I’m just putting a small sample here to preserve this blog’s PG rating:

He moved a step closer, and she allowed her knees to fall open. Running a hand over the smooth planes of her belly, she made a downward descent. She kept her eyes locked on his as she brushed her finger over her own core. Her eyes fell closed on a moan. She never heard him move, but her hand was pushed away as he licked a path through her curls. Taylor’s mind froze at the feel of his strong tongue. By the time her mind thawed enough to recognize that he was no fantasy, his tongue was being replaced by a much larger organ, and she felt herself being stretched wide. She let out a small squeak as she realized this was indeed a real man [not a fantasy-ed] but he covered her mouth with his own, swallowing the sound.

To me, calling a vagina “herself” seems childish, prudish, embarrassed — as if the writer wanted to be explicit but just didn’t have the guts.

That’s why I will write honestly about sex, and try to put the intentions, sensations and movements into as clear terms as I can.

Leave a comment below — how do you feel about depicting sex in a book that's not solely concerned with sex?

An independent guest review: 50 Shades

Fifty Shades of the worst book I ever read

by Evan Zenobia

Evan Zenobia is editor of the Eclipse News blog and a close friend. He has graciously given Written Words permission to reprint this independent review of the bestselling Fifty Shades of Grey.

A meaningless setting. A cast of thoroughly unbelievable, unrelatable, one-dimensional characters. Add some poorly written dialogue and boring sex, and what do you get? The inexplicably popular jumble of words and paper that E.L. James has somehow managed to pass off as literature.

I’m referring, of course, to Fifty Shades of Grey, which I’ve spent the last two and half weeks subjecting myself to in tolerable doses. Now that I am finally done, I have no quandaries about calling it the worst book I have ever read. There are poorly written books that still contain good stories, or at least carry a good message. And there are well written books that may still follow a bad story arc. But Fifty Shades is poorly written and a bad story. It has literally no redeeming qualities.

The “plot,” if it can be fairly called that, revolves around utterly boring literature student/graduate Anastasia Steele and her “erotic” adventures with the mysterious and wildly handsome young billionaire Christian Grey. The motor that drives the dilapidated hull of a storyline along is fuelled by Steele’s attempts to reconcile her sexual inexperience and romantic longing with Grey’s “kinky” sexual habits.

But really, for a 514-page erotic novel, I have never read anything so dull. And on top of the dullness, almost every aspect of the story is irritating.

Consider the setting. James sets her novel in Washington State, in the United States. Which is strange, considering that most of the characters speak as if they’re well-read 19th century British aristocrats, using words like “profligate” and “taciturn” in everyday conversation. Excepting, of course, Steele’s token Latino friend, José, who throws colloquial Spanish into his speech with the frequency of Speedy Gonzales.

Also irritating is that James has chosen to write her book in first-person present tense. That alone is not the problem. Chuck Palahniuk wrote Fight Club the same way. But in Fight Club, the protagonist is crazy and also represents a social critique. In Fifty Shades, the protagonist is insufferable, stupid and boring. As such, the audience is forced to endure every stupid and pretentious thought that comes into her mind, whether it’s expressing her distaste for rap music before a BDSM romp or this gem on page 28, “I feel the color in my cheeks rising again. I must be color of The Communist Manifesto” (because, of course, Communist Manifesto is a shade of red you can find in any box of crayons or on paint swatches at Home Depot, and the Manifesto isn’t printed in black on white like every other book).

Meanwhile, the characters are almost all props leading up to the sex scenes, including Steele herself. Anastasia Steele apparently has three settings: blushing (sometimes the colour of communism), biting her lip (which arouses Grey), and drinking tea (again, mimicking the landed gentry of 19th century England rather than a young woman in Seattle, home of Starbucks). By her own admission, her favourite activity is reading old British novels by herself, and, at the age of 21, has never been drunk until Chapter 4 after finishing her final exams. (Newsflash to Steele: if you’re a literature student, and you’re not drunk until after your semester, you’re doing it wrong). She’s clumsy, and her hair never cooperates. Oh yes, and she’s a virgin.

Though this dull, sober virgin is pursued by José and her boss’s son, she is only attracted to the young, gorgeous billionaire with the personality of an anal-retentive Jack Donaghy/Gordon Gecko hybrid… only less interesting. Christian Grey is just a creepy guy. He’s arrogant. When Steele drunk-dials him, he tracks her phone, drives to find her, holds her hair while she pukes, then drives her unconscious body to his hotel room where he tucks her into bed and removes her vomit-stained pants before sleeping with (but not banging) her. Then he sends his personal assistant to buy her sexy underwear.

In what world is stalking, kidnapping, and partially undressing someone without their consent not creepy?

Oh, and speaking of consent. A huge part of Grey’s kink is that he doesn’t have sex without written consent. In fact, he’s got a pile of paperwork to sign before sex can begin. Now, personally, I can’t think of anything less arousing than paperwork. Filing taxes and writing incident reports never got my blood going. But for super virgin bookworm Anastasia Steele, it’s just the right thing. And even though Grey is an emotionally distant, creepy, stalker jerk, she is so desperate to be with him that she puts up with it all.

The only other character that needs mention is Steele’s beautiful blonde roommate, Katherine Kavanagh. She begins a deep relationship with Grey’s brother Elliot. What doesn’t make sense, however, is that she maintains it even as she develops a fierce hostility towards Christian Grey. The character is not at all developed, so her behaviour comes off as shallow and irrational.

Aside from all that, the book is just bad. The writing is awkward and clunky. James pretentiously jams her book full of obscure synonyms, obviously hoping it will make the story appear to be a fine work of literature rather than boring mommy porn. Meanwhile, she takes more than one occasion to remind the audience of the supremacy of the British, especially in terms of literature, and the unbearability of the French and others. While offensive, it fits in with the rest of the book’s undeserved pretentious snobbishness.

Further, the book appears longer than it actually is. A good chunk of the paper is wasted in blank space representing an excessively long chain of email correspondence between Steele and Grey. Apparently they never heard of texting.

I don’t want to spoil too much, so I’ll leave it at that. This is the worst book I have ever read. I can only award it negative stars.

Oh, and the sex is all really, really boring.

Evan Zenobia is the pen name of the blogger of Eclipse News, which regularly holds Sun Media to account. Visit the blog and leave your comments!