Yes, the next novella (and the last one for this year) now has a cover! I’m really pleased with how this one turned out, and had a lot of fun writing the novella. It’s coming soon–November 1! GET READY!
Okay, so a thing happened: WH Smith has taken their site offline after discovering that there’s some grody self-published erotica in its catalog. As of this time, they’re still offline. WH Smith apparently partners with Kobo. Oh and, from the WH Smith holding page:
Our website will become live again once all self published eBooks have been removed and we are totally sure that there are no offending titles available. When our website goes back online it will not display any self published material until we are completely confident that inappropriate books can never be shown again.
Now, obviously the UK and US have very different laws in regards to porn, and I honestly have no idea what those differences are. (Though apparently, this isn’t an issue of things being legal or not even? Great.) Nor am I at all interested in writing a bombastic American defense of porn that makes people vomit into their mouths because first amendment and stuff. Not really the topic up for debate here.
What has my attention is that apparently, Kobo has pulled all of their self-published books for now. Not just the erotica ones. No regard for genre. See this post on the Digital Reader. And in the splash zone has been titles by my the small publisher I’m with–so possibly others as well.
I’m currently in the UK, so I get the UK kobo site by default even when I click through on my American Kobo links. Time for fun with screenshots! So here’s The Ugly Tin Orrery;
And I don’t currently exist in general as a searchable author. (Full disclosure: I have never had a reason to look for myself on the Kobo UK site before, so I can’t tell you with 100% certainty that I was searchable before… but the existence of the above “currently unavailable” book is a thing that makes me go hmmmm.)
And while I’m posting screenshots, just for the record I did once exist on the WH Smith site. (Google cache is a magical thing.)
So we’ll see if I’m still around after they bring their website back up.
Anyone in the US want to check and see if I still exist on Kobo there? I’m curious due to some comments on the Digital Reader post. ETA: A couple people have let me know that I’m still available on Kobo in the US, so that’s a relief. Thank you!
I don’t write rapey incest bestiality erotica. I don’t write erotica at all. I write Steampunk, and the steamiest that’s ever gotten is two women kissing. (Shock! Scandal!) No, really. I’m also not self-published. All of my ebooks are published through Musa Publishing. (Always time for a little self-promotion, eh?)
Now, if I’ve ever gotten any sales from Kobo UK or WH Smith isn’t something I can tell you, since I think those go under the Smashwords umbrella on my statements. But frankly, it’s in the interest of any writer to want their titles available in as many places as humanly possible, just in case some reader will stumble across them and fall in love. Will the “non-objectionable” books get brought back eventually? I hope so. But there’s been no word from Kobo thus far. And why is “self-published” in general being equated with incestuous dog-raping erotica?
(And of course this doesn’t even touch on the idea of books that are “objectionable” being blanket removed from catalogs and how deeply it disturbs my little American soul.)
One of the reasons I find this all really disturbing is that it’s a reminder of one of the creepier major drawbacks of ebooks: It’s laughably easy to make them vanish. And to do so in a massive blanket that drags up a ton of people who are unrelated to whatever “problem” this supposedly will fix. Particularly for ebooks (we can’t even get dead tree copies of our own work to hump around in a suitcase and sell if it comes to that) we are incredibly dependent on these websites, and have no defense at all when it comes to our titles being removed.
And apparently being with a publisher isn’t an automatic defense either. So that’s fun.
I wanted to get this out there because I think it’s important, and I hadn’t even heard of the issue until someone mentioned it on a mailing list of which I’m a member. I think this is a thing that really deserves more attention, because there are so many issues to be unpacked in it and I’m just not capable right now because it’s three in the morning and seriously I only got up to pee and that was like an hour again and fuck my life, hahaha, etc. But anyway. I swear I’m going back to bed for real now. BELIEVE ME.
I’m in New York City to go to NYCC. Despite this, I have not actually gone to NYCC at all. So, there’s that.
Instead I ran a 5k this morning, the Terry Fox Run. Which is a charity run for cancer research. I like doing charity events, but I didn’t really go out raising money for this one because I decided to participate, spontaneously, yesterday. Because a friend of mine was going and I decided to go with her. I haven’t actually run that long before… the furthest I’ve gone is 2.75 miles and it kind of killed me. But I did it! Full 5k. My time was 37:43, which isn’t great, but I RAN A 5K OKAY.
I’ve been saying I want to run a 5K ever since I started running. I guess I just realized that I’d never feel prepared enough if I didn’t just do it. So I just did it. And it was rough, but I finished! Woohoo!
Then the rest of the day was divided between trying to get to and from the hotel so I could shower, and then being at Lincoln Center to see Only Lovers Left Alive. Which was amazing. Tilda Swinton is just too cute and I can’t even with her. There is a lot more I’d like to say about the movie but I’m kind of drunk right now and we’re playing Cards Against Humanity so there you go. So let’s just say it was awesome and everything you’ve heard about it is true.
And then I went to a diner and had sweet potato fries and ricotta pancakes with Kate and we talked a bunch. I can’t wait to see her again next week because she’s awesome.
Anyway, nowhere in there did I make it to NYCC, and I’m okay with that to be honest. I’m not big into waiting in lines. I could have done without all the mass transit fuckery, but this was all about hanging out with people and seeing my friends! And I’d rather do that any time.
And now we’re playing Cards Against Humanity and drinking Jardonnay, which is wine in hilarious tiny plastic jars. I love my friends. This alone has made the trip one of the best I’ve had.
Tomorrow–London! I can’t wait. Which is good, because I have to be up in like three hours to go to the airport I hate my life. Except not really. JARDONNAY.
(PS I’m sleepy and drunk so please forgive all errors.)
So, I’m not sure how I feel about this episode, to be honest.
First all, of course, all the yay for the snark. And Melinda-senpai. And Coulson is always wandering around in unlikely spaces with his suit. And to be honest, I rather like the cheesiness of the gravity effects.
But… hmph. (Summary, spoilers of course)
Once again I want to apologize to everyone who attended the Tao and Again panel at FenCon. I had no idea I was going to be moderator and thus was woefully unprepared. (And it didn’t help there were only two of us on the panel, so I didn’t even have a big group of other panelists to cower behind!) As promised, here are some recommendations of places to get started on research for modern Japanese history/culture. This list is in no way definitive or exhaustive, particularly considering “modern Japan” is a giant subject in and of itself, but hopefully it’ll help bring up questions and ideas that will lead to both research and stories!
If I think of anything else, I’ll be sure to add it to the list! (And please, drop any recommendations you might have in the comments.) For the most part I tried to grab books that are fairly easy to find in libraries or bookstores.
Factual
Shinohata – Ronald P Dore
Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II – John Dower
A Modern History of Japan (second edition) – Andrew Gordon
The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman – Kaneko Fumiko [Memoir]
Gendering Modern Japanese History – Barbara Molony (ed)
Office Ladies and Salaried Men – Ogasawara Yuko
A Man With No Talents – Oyama Shiro [This is a memoir]
The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Tasuko and the Meiji Restoration – Anne Walthall
Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration – George M. Wilson
Fiction
Rashomon and Other Stories – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
Black Rain – Ibuse Masuji
The Scarlet Gang of Asakusa – Kawabata Yasunari
Barefoot Gen – Nakazawa Keiji
Kokoro – Souseki Natsume
I Am a Cat – Souseki Natsume
So, I saw three movies this weekend because we’re finally back to having movies I actually want to see in the theaters woohoo! I don’t have a problem shut up no you have the problem That made for an excellent weekend. There is seriously nothing I love more in the world than sitting down to watch a movie with popcorn and maybe a beer if I’ve got enough room in my calories for the day.
That meant I also got to see a lot of previews this weekend. And yay, there are more movies coming that I want to see! But I noticed something else… of all the previews I saw this weekend–for eight different movies!–literally only one of them had a female main character. And that one would be Gravity, with a trailer that prominently featured Sandra Bullock. (Way more than the previous trailers, actually.) I’m already just geeked to see this movie, and I’m sure it’s going to scare the shit out of me.
But all of the other trailers for new movies were basically one or two or three male characters, and at some point you’d get to see a woman briefly so you’d know she was the love interest for the hero. Oh, and quite a few women in bikinis in the background of some of the movies, of course. I’m… really disappointed.
Just… sigh. I’m still excited for some of the new movies and I’m sure I’ll go see quite a few of them. But would it cause the world to spin out of control and threaten all of humanity if women got to be in the lead and not have to take their shirts off occasionally?
Could be worse, I suppose. I could have been hoping for a queer main character to pop up. HAHAHA RIGHT. And keep in mind, I didn’t set out this weekend to count boobs versus penises in the previews. It just got to be so glaring I couldn’t not notice.
Also, I saw the preview for the new Robocop. I’m kind of interested sort of maybe, I think there’s a good chance I’ll see it, particularly if nothing more exciting is out that weekend. But I will note, I had about thirty seconds where I thought oh holy shit is the black guy that just got shot going to be Robocop oh no wait never mind. Because that would have been unexpected. (Please note, not that well acquainted with the original film; I was only 7 when it came out. But if I do end up seeing this new version I’ll make sure to give the old one a full watch.)
Anyway. Looking forward to the next round of movies, just… not as much as I could.
(Alternate title in honor of the US Congress.)
There are a lot of tits in this movie. And no, I don’t mean the birds.
Look, the tit overload getting on my nerves might not be +1‘s fault when you come down to it. I saw it at 10PM on Sunday, after I’d already seen Don Jon on Saturday and Rush earlier on Sunday. And both of those movies? A lot of tits in those too. I mean sure, Don Jon had a good excuse because porn was actually quite integral to the plot and points the movie made. And Rush? Well, I guess at least it gave us Chris Hemsworth’s bottom as kind of a well look I know there are a lot of tits but here’s some fan service from the other end of the gender spectrum apology.
But the point is, by the time I’d gotten to Rush, I was already spending a lot of time asking myself, …are these tits really necessary? And then with +1 it just became sigh was there a four for two sale on tits or something?
And +1 was not nearly so generous to potential hetero female viewers as Rush. Look, I get it. +1 was probably trying to play off of the teen party movie tropes, which always involve a ridiculous party where everyone under the age of 24 in the immediate area is drunk, high, and fucking, and of course all the women are dressed in bikinis and flashing their tits with abandon. But by the time I got to it, that just didn’t feel like a joke any more.
It felt tired. There wasn’t enough winking to go with the tits to make it feel at all clever. Maybe if there had been a “more than just meat” moment like Don Jon gave us, it wouldn’t have felt pointless and exploitative and well gosh hopefully we’ll make our money back because we’ve shown enough skin to get young men to want to watch a small scifi film. (I doubt it works that way.)
Which is sad, because the actual plot of +1 has some pretty good moments, and the movie says some delightfully dark things about humanity.
The basic plot is that a MacGuffin from outer space does a thing to the power grid, which somehow causes our universe and what seems to be a parallel universe where the same ridiculous party is happening intersect briefly, with a slight temporal delay that shortens every time the McGuffin goes off. And people from both universes can see and interact with each other and know something is seriously wrong.
So long as you buy the MacGuffin (and you kind of have to, because the point here isn’t how it all works but rather how people react) they actually played it off as very interesting. The characters in the movie interact with their alternate selves in an array of ways, and you see both groups reacting in predictable and horrible ways to the nebulous threat of “what will happen when we all occupy the same time and space?”
But there was actually a really excellent but subtle bit of horror in there I want to talk about, one that really does play off the teen movie/teen romance tropes brilliantly. That’s going to require spoilers, so I’ll put it behind this cut.
Categories
[Liveblog] Sleepy Hollow episode 3
This has been fun so far, so I’m doing it again!
Later: Hrmph. This episode was really not as much fun as the first two. But I guess they can’t all be winners.
Categories
[Movie] Rush
This is one of those movies that pretty much delivers what the trailer promises. In fact, if you watch the trailer, you will know all of the plot points for the movie.
It’s about Hunt, James Hunt (Chris Hemsworth), and Niki Lauda (Daniel Brühl), who are best frenemies and drive around in circles really fast in Formula One. They both want the same thing: the championship title.
Or do they?
It takes a well done movie to get me to give even half a shit about race car drivers. This one managed it. And I think it’s entirely because both Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Brühl were excellent. And honestly, I feel like Hemsworth kind of got put more in the forefront for this movie, but Daniel Brühl is really the one who made it. Niki Lauda came across as a much more intense and complex character because he wasn’t the typical death-chasing party boy that is normally presented as the race car driver “type.” Plus, Brühl just convinced me solidly that there was a lot more going on beneath the brusque surface, and it was all very subtly done. I don’t know if Chris Hemsworth didn’t have enough to work with, or if he just didn’t get to go that deep, but Hunt was much less compelling.
The movie was very much set up and conducted as a comparison of the two men, up to and including their marriages. It’s about their rivalry and seems to sketch a journey from enemies to a surprisingly supportive friendship, though I think it comes across as far simpler than it deserves. Even if Hunt came across as less complex as a character, he provided an excellent foil for Lauda. Rush builds them up as equally determined and driven men with very, very different personalities, goals, and needs. Niki Lauda was definitely the one I was with at the end of the movie. Even more interesting, apparently Lauda was very involved in the making of the movie.
Big personalities and fast cars. There you go. Also, the movie is gorgeous.
And I suppose I would be remiss in my red-blooded woman duties if I didn’t note that there’s a healthy whack of nudity, and some of it involves Chris Hemsworth’s bottom. Just in case you wanted to know. But even without Chris Hemsworth’s bottom, it’s a gorgeous movie.
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[Movie] Don Jon
There is a beautiful moment about a third of the way in to Don Jon that shows a commercial on the television that’s always on during Jon’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) meals with his amazing caricature of a New Jersey Italian family. The commercial is for a fish sandwich (I want to say cod) and involves a woman who is naked except for her underwear and appears to be about to orgasm over this fish sandwich; the parallels to the crazy amounts of porn Jon watches are very thickly drawn. The commercial ends with the message: More than just a piece of meat.
This was the moment I started taking notes. Because I realized for all Don Jon is hilarious, this movie was really not fucking around.
There is a lot of porn in this movie. And a lot of sex. And a lot of porn. And yet somehow, it doesn’t end up being at all exploitative, I think because the movie is so conscious of how it uses those images. Just as when the camera takes a good look at a woman’s bottom in a night club, it’s because it’s standing in for Jon’s eyes, and you hear him and his “boys” baldly rating women with numbers. Why yes, he is treating women like objects, he does see the world this way, isn’t it a bit pathetic and empty?
I’ve seen Don Jon described as a romantic comedy. I don’t think I quite buy that, since it ignores or actively mocks the tropes of the genre, which I appreciated greatly. It’s more a comedy about false expectations, particularly as they relate to romantic and sexual relationships, selfishness, authenticity and hypocrisy. And it’s hilarious. It was even funnier than I expected to be.
“The shit I watch on here, they’re not pretending.”
“Of course they are.”
In the movie, a parallel gets drawn between romance movies and pornography multiple times, implying both are fake, unrealistic, and ultimately set up one-sided expectations. Now, I don’t entirely buy that parallel or the idea that both are equally harmful, but it’s a powerful statement. Jon whines about “real pussy” not being as good as porn, because real women won’t do the same things porn actresses do. Barbara (Scarlet Johansen) has several wonderfully cringe-inducing rants about how in a relationship, the woman should be all the man needs and he should do everything for her, and also what “real men” do or don’t do. (Jon is apparently not a real man because he takes pleasure in keeping his apartment clean.) Both of them seem addicted to their poison of choice, and constantly trying to reshape the world around them into that very processed vision, then very disappointed when their efforts fail.
It’s a movie about incredibly artificial and self-centered people.
“You’re a real winner. You respect people. You listen to people.”
And then Don Jon becomes, at its heart, a movie about people attempting to honestly connect.
So there’s a lot here, and it’s also hilarious. I definitely want to see this one again; it’s rare for me to get this thinky about a comedy. And I do not want to spoil it, because I really enjoyed the ending and felt like it sailed in to a good spot and resisted the urge to get schmaltzy.
But I will say one more thing. My favorite character in the entire movie is Jon’s little sister Monica (Brie Larson); she speaks only once, but the rest of the time she doesn’t have to. Her constant, wonderful I cannot fucking believe the bullshit soap opera that surrounds me looks just make every scene involving Jon’s family a treat.