The Hate You Love

I don't consider myself a negative person. In fact, I'm usually quite the optimist. And I'm generally nice. When friends of mine have something wonderful to tell me about their lives, I'm sincerely happy for them. I do that with strangers too. Your life is going swell? Kudos to you! But unbeknownst to some, I have a dark side. You see, there are two terrible things I'm quite fond of.

Negative reviews and snark.

They're like tea and crumpets to me. The first thing I do with any movie, TV show, or book is to seek out the one star reviews. I also enjoy a bit of controversy, so when there's something delightfully awful about something, you can be sure I'm all up in that shizz.

Recently I found something wonderfully terrible, which brought my gleeful wickedness to light - a young adult novel entitled Handbook for Mortals. For the two of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, this book was written by music manager and self-proclaimed "Rock and Roll Gypsy" Lani Sarem, who used a buy-in-bulk scam to get her young adult novel directly to #1 on the NY Times Best Seller list. She was found out quickly, thanks to some quick detective work by people in the biz, but also because nobody ever heard of the book or its author and it wasn't even available in stores. Other authors work hard, toil over their novels and try to create a fan base, but that was a bit too much work for Lani - who was seemly only trying to get a movie deal out of the whole thing, so she decided to take the escalator instead of the stairs. Luckily, it got off on the wrong floor.

If you want to know the whole story, read this article. It's pretty damn interesting.

I saw the whole thing unfold on Twitter, how bulk purchases were made solely in stores that report to the bestseller list, how there was a promise of a movie deal that seemed solely to exist in the author's imagination. And how, upon hearing about the scam, the NY Times Bestseller List rightly returned The Hate U Give back to first place - a book which has received so much praise for its beautiful writing and developed characters that this jaded bitter grown-up chick might actually break down and read a young adult novel.

Yes, I saw it all and I wanted more. The con behind the book itself, the author's scams and excuses -  it all made for the juiciest drama series I'd ever seen. It was like Melrose Place but with modern drunk Heather Locklear. Truth be told, I probably wouldn't have cared if the book had been good, but luckily for my evil self that was not the case. Handbook for Mortals is the "Mary Sue Special" - you get an entrée of pure self-insert with a side of wish fulfillment, sprinkled heavily with typos and served with your choice of cliches all wrapped up in a plagiarized cover. And if you've read anything about the book, or the free excerpts online, you know what I'm talking about.

I'm not going to get into explicit details about the book itself.except that a 25 year-old adult woman does not belong as the heroine of a young adult (teen) novel. Heck, I know this and I usually don't read the genre. But on the other hand, Handbook for Mortals did give me hours of free entertainment in the form of wonderfully negative reviews and a healthy does of snark. Some bloggers even did a chapter by chapter review of this atrocity, the best of which can be found on Jenny Trout's site. Thank you Jenny, for making me laugh at awfulness. Again.

But hating on this book isn't me just dinging someone for bad writing. It's about greed, pure and simple, and the fact that the author has learned absolutely nothing from what should have been a humiliating experience makes it even more delicious. She's keeps on refusing to acknowledge the scam, changed her story during every interview and at every convention and even tried to lay the blame at the feet of Angie Thomas - the author of The Hate U Give. For her part, Angie took the whole thing with grace and dignity and told Lani to own her scam instead of involving her. Angie darling, you are a queen in every sense of the word.

Like all controversies, the hubbub would have eventually died down, except Lani Sarem is the goddamn gift that keeps on giving. She's blamed the young adult community for not letting new authors in. She's copied and pasted a form post on several Facebook writing sites begging for sympathy and stating that all book sales should count, even when you bought them yourself. And recently, a ton of 5 star reviews suddenly appeared on Goodreads, all within a day or two -  all posted by people with no avatar and who gave no other reviews, the majority of them hailing from Bangladesh. Now it may have just been that Handbook for Mortals appealed to faceless Bangadesh bookreaders who all opened a Goodreads account on the same day, but that seems like an EXTREMELY specific niche market. (Eventually, all the Goodreads reviews were taken down and noted as fake, but there are still some very suspicious ones on Amazon as of this writing.)

Do I feel bad about snarking on a first-time author? I would usually. I know how difficult it is to write and I applaud anyone for trying. In this case, no. The best thing she could have done was to admit that this wasn't the optimal route to writing success and maybe work on a better novel. But she hasn't and so the snark is earned.

What do you love to hate? Do you feel bad about it or do you just embrace the evil?

National Novel Writing Month or Shut Up and Write

"It's the second most wonderful time of the year...🎶" - Me singing about Nano

What is Nano you may ask? It's National Writing Month which takes place every November during which a crazed group of writers risk carpel tunnel and even worse, writer's block, to create 50,000 words of a novel that they may or may not do something with eventually. It's scary, it's crazy, it's exhausting. At times it's humiliating. I love it.

I first heard about Nano when I saw someone scribbling furiously at the counter when I used to work weekends at a bookstore. His brow was furrowed, his face intense and his eyes looked like he hadn't slept in 3 days.

"What choo doing?" I asked.
"National Novel Writing Month. Gotta write 50,000 words", he replied, not looking up.
"Why?" I inquired innocently.
He blinked and then looked up from his sheet. "To write a novel."
DUH.

A couple of years later I finally decided to take the plunge (I couldn't remember the month it started so I had missed it before). During my first attempt I wrote 3000 words, then quit. The next year I discovered the social element of Nano and started attending write-ins which helped me since I'm one of those weird writers who likes having people around (yeah I know, no hate mail please). 

I wrote 50,000 words. It sucked.

What did I write about? Well I decided to "pants" it which means I had no idea or plot going into it so I started out with a story about a young girl who could draw images that would come to life, then I changed it to a haunted house and by the middle of the month, the whole thing had become about half-vampires. The plot got so bad that I pretty much reveled in making horrible things happen to each and every character. By the end of the novel I realized that a 12-year old character had gotten off scot-free without being punished for my poor writing. So I made her eat a cat.

In my defense, she was half vampire. Also that part was the best written scene in my book.

After that untitled fiasco, I deleted my entire Nano account and started again. The year after I fared much better by having at least some vague idea going in and had a book that eventually I might edit and do something with (what a concept).

Every year since then I look forward to National Novel Writing Month with a sense of glee because it does the impossible and actually forces me to sit still and write. And I have fun. I enjoy reading the forums, I enjoy talking to other people about their stories. And yes, when I can make them, I love the write-ins (although the 'I like people' part of me probably irritates those who actually wish I would stop talking so they can write).

The other cool thing about Nano is there's so many different types of stories. Mine lean towards the speculative/horror, but there's fantasy, there's sci-fi, there's drama and romance. It doesn't matter what you write as long as you're writing it. And there's a certain sense of accomplishment that comes from knowing you wrote 50,000 words you hadn't before. Even if you hate them, you wrote them.

What's my novel this year? A college-age girl and a Mormon man who decide they need to deviate from their goody-two shoes behavior and do bad things. I think I'm throwing a demon in there too, because why not? I've entitled this masterpiece "Eva and Evan Decide to be Evil" because at least with that title, you know what you're in for.

Do you Nano? Drop a comment below and let me know what you're writing this year. You can also find me on the Nano site: https://nanowrimo.org/participants/cheryl-z.

And if you don't Nano, what's stopping you? 

My Defective Muse

I need a muse.

I used to write more. Honestly. But lately, I've been spiritually bereft and devoid of ideas. I couldn't even come up with a decent blog post idea. Don't I deserve a muse? Haven't they served some of the greatest authors in history and inspired some of the best literature known to man? Hey, if it was good enough for Byron and Keats, then surely it's good enough for me.

I was thinking about this the other night as I started writing a story about a sentient chair that starts talking back to people when they sit on it. Oddly enough it just wasn't coming together, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. Clasping my hands upwards in prayer, I cried out, "Sweet Muse, dear Muse. Please come and bestow your gifts upon me. Shower me with your golden prose and words of wisdom."

And she appeared. My Muse, my very own Muse, gliding delicately down from the ceiling. A misty blue light surrounded her, illuminating her pink taffeta dress and halo of blonde curls. Her soft features seemed to radiate with warmth and beauty. I was awestruck. I was beyond myself with anticipation.  I was enraptured.  I was…

"What the hell do you want?" she croaked in a raspy voice.

I was in trouble.

"You're my muse! I need inspiration!" I could already tell this wasn't going to go well.

"Oh, they all want inspiration." My Muse sighed wearily and flung herself onto the sofa. She unhooked the clasp on a pink purse and brought a couple of cans of Coors Light. Of course they were warm. "Here ya go sweetie", she said brightly, handing me one. "You need a good idea, huh?" She cracked open her beer with a loud pop.

"Well I have a good ide - yeah....I need a good idea."

"Well, I got a couple for you, I think." She opened up her purse again, took out a pack of Marlboro Reds, and shook one from its carton. "Whatcha ya got so far?"

I showed her my screen.

"What the hell is that?" My Muse laughed and exhaled a stream of smoke from one nostril. "A fucking talking chair? Boy do you suck!" 

"W-Well, " I stuttered defensively, "You're my muse. It's your fault I'm in this mess." The Muse rolled her eyes and flicked ashes onto my leather sofa. "Look," I pleaded, "Don't you have anything for me? A glimpse of inspiration? A crumb of wit? Anything?" 

"Well, I have something you could write about…" My Muse sighed and leaned back into the sofa cushions, one hand in her pink waistband.

"OK!" I put my fingers on the keyboard, ready to type.   

"But what's in it for me?" She sniffed her armpit and winced slightly. 

There are those who believe that muses are divine deities whose sole existence rests on their ability to arouse passion and inspire prose. The daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, they are goddesses that spout words; jewels that fall from the sky and land upon their chosen vessels, like dew atop a gilded lily. She wasn't wasn't one of those muses.

.
"There's not supposed to be anything in it for you!" I screamed. "You're my GODDAMN MUSE!"

"Relax, Jesus Christ!" My Muse grinned and picked her nose with one perfectly manicured fingernail. "Don't get your Calvin Klein's all in a bunch."  

This wasn't working. Maybe I was just imagining her wrong. "Aren't there any, like, guy muses?" I asked. "You know, gorgeous hunky men with long flowing hair, deep booming masculine voices, strongly chiseled features and the bodies of Greek gods…"

My Muse sighed and blinked sleepily. "Oh, there are guy muses", she said, casually smashing a empty beer can on her forehead and tossing it behind the couch, "But they look nothing like Greek gods, I assure you. I've met a few. Fat little guys with thick glasses and no girlfriends. Live in their parent's basements. Guy muses are a dime a dozen sweetie." She paused and sucked thoughtfully on her cigarette. "But they only work on certain assignments mind you; sci-fi, really bad fan fiction, stuff like that." She threw the cigarette onto the carpet and stepped on it with one pink satin-clad heel.

"That's all they work on?"

"Well, it's a full time job isn't it?" My Muse countered. "I mean terrible fan fiction is all over the internet nowadays and somebody needs to inspire it. Do you even realize how difficult it is to write a sex scene between Harry Potter and Draco and make it sound believable?"

I let out an involuntary shiver.  The scary thing was, I think I did know. 

"Listen honey," My Muse said, pausing long enough to spit over her shoulder, "Why don't you just write about me. I mean, I'm an interesting person. I've got hobbies…"

"You?"

"I collect beanie babies." the Muse continued, oblivious to my interruption. "Turn-ons include tattoos and sunsets. Turn-offs; guys who cry and…"

"Why on earth would I want to write about YOU?!" I asked. This was getting ridiculous. 

My Muse leaned forward and smiled. "Look at it this way", she said, blowing a cloud of smoke in my face."Ya got nothing else. Either you write about me, or continue with your talking chair shit."

Then she belched.  

Inspiration struck.