I've Been Framed!

A "framing device" is something used in books, TV, and movies as a way to anchor and provide context for the rest of the story.  It can also provide familiarity to a reader or viewer if it's used in multiple stories/episodes.  Think of The Twilight Zone, where Rod Serling as the narrator framed every episode.  It provided familiarity for the viewer and also reminded us that we were watching a story.  You wouldn't want people to freak out like the Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast.  Remakes of the series and similar shows like Tales From the Crypt used a similar device.

Another good example is the book and movie The Princess Bride.  The movie features an old man (Peter Falk) telling the story of the princess bride to his grandson (Fred Savage).  This provides the anchor for viewers and again lets us know that we're watching a story.

Since I've been watching it a bit in the last 6 months, Mystery Science Theater 3000 used the framing device of a guy being trapped in space and building robots to watch bad movies with him.  Over the 10-year run the framing device had to keep changing as the cast changed.  The first six seasons featured a human guy on the Satellite of Love and his robot pals Tom Servo, Crow T Robot, Gypsy, and Cambot.  Most of the first four seasons featured original show creator Joel Hodgson but after he left the show they brought in head writer Michael J Nelson for the rest of the show's run.  The first season featured the evil Dr. Forrester and a henchman named Larry, but for the next five years or so the henchman was TV's Frank.  Then TV's Frank left and for a season it was Dr. Forrester and his mother.  When the show moved to Sci-Fi Channel and Trace Beaulieu (who was Dr. Forrester and the voice of Crow) left, the framing device went through a few incarnations featuring a descendant of Dr. Forrester named Pearl, a telepathic alien, and a super-intelligent monkey.  You can always tell which season it is just by watching the opening song because they had to keep changing the words to fit the new story.  Similar shows like Elvira, Svengoolie, and Monstervision all had their own framing devices revolving around a host and often a supporting cast of colorful characters.

Like MST3K I created a framing device that evolved over time, though not because of cast changes.  It's not something I really had ever used before in writing.  When I started writing the 24 Hour Gender Swap series, I created a framing device in the character of Mrs. Vantu, the mysterious sorta-Gypsy woman who provides the gender swap potions and charms for each story.  So the first story--24 Hour Woman--starts out in first-person with a woman talking about her terrible sexist boss.  And then Mrs. Vantu sells her a potion.

In that first story there were a couple of details then that would carry forward.  Basically her entire house is frozen in time in the early 60s.  And that includes the woman herself.  And for whatever reason she has a lot of Elvis stuff around:  an ashtray, pictures, a pink Cadillac in the driveway, and even a Basset hound named Aaron.  (You know, a hound dog?  And Aaron is Elvis's middle name.)

In the second story a young girl named Margot buys a potion to turn her sister's ex into a bimbo.  At the end, Mrs. Vantu agrees to train Margot in the mystic arts--in exchange for Margot running errands and walking the dog.

In the third story a cop goes to Mrs. Vantu to buy a potion that turns him into a young woman so he can go undercover as a hooker in the hope of flushing out a serial killer.  At the end, Mrs. Vantu gets a portion of the reward for the killer's capture and a mention in the newspaper about her assistance, though nothing is said about gender swapping.

So then in the fourth story a burglar decides to break into her place now that she's flush with cash.  But he knocks over a potion that turns him into a little girl.

The world of the framing device was evolving, but the sixth book, 24 Hour Goth Girl kicked it up a notch.  It begins with an overly religious boy named Raleigh coming to Mrs. Vantu's house to stop her from practicing "black magic."  Mrs. Vantu in turn tricks Raleigh into drinking one of her potions.  It turns him into his polar opposite--a Goth girl.  (What a shock from the title, right?)

Mrs. Vantu sends Raleigh home with Margot, but after they're accosted on a bus, they wind up in a graveyard at night.  They meet another Goth girl named Eva, who takes them to a mausoleum owned by Mrs. Vantu.  Inside the mausoleum is a crypt for her brother, Ezra.  Raleigh and Eva start to hit it off, even making out.  Then later Eva reveals that she is actually Mrs. Vantu!

She tells Raleigh a bizarre story:  every new moon, the spirits at the cemetery come out and so Mrs. Vantu uses a potion to make herself young again, about the same age she was when her brother died.  And we finally give Mrs. Vantu's tragic origin story.  She grew up in "the Old Country" in Eastern Europe.  But in the late 30s the Nazis rounded up her family--except her and her brother, who sought shelter in the mountains.  Ezra helped Eva get to southern France to escape to America.  Ezra could have gone with her, but he decided to stay and fight the Nazis, though he died in the attempt.  So there's no body in the crypt, just an old doll that Ezra played with when he was little, which Mrs. Vantu uses as a totem to contact his spirit.

After learning all this, Raleigh doesn't want to be with Eva anymore since tomorrow she'll turn back into a middle-aged woman who's actually about 85 years old.  Raleigh makes nice with Margot to the point that when the potion is going to wear off, Raleigh decides she wants to be a girl forever.  She goes back to Mrs. Vantu's house, but she's still young Eva.  And while Mrs. Vantu is a wise, mature woman, Eva is a bit of a spiteful bitch.  She gives Raleigh a potion to make her a girl permanently, but instead of a Goth girl she turns out to be a nerd who has to go back to middle school.

In the next couple of stories, Mrs. Vantu's dog Aaron is dying and Raleigh becomes his caretaker.  At the end of the eighth book, Mrs. Vantu decides that while reality is being bent by a bickering middle-aged couple becoming young Japanese girls, she might as well save her dog and so Aaron is regnerated as a puppy.

At the start of the ninth book, a guy named Jack is driving in Mrs. Vantu's neighborhood when little Aaron gets out and Jack crashes his car to avoid hitting the dog.  He's badly injured from not wearing his seatbelt, but Raleigh gives him a potion to save his life.  Unfortunately she grabbed the wrong bottle and turns Jack into a little girl she calls Jackie.  As the day goes on, Jackie keeps getting younger.  When Mrs. Vantu finally returns home, she tells them that Raleigh administered the potion too late; Jack was supposed to be dead and so the potion is going to end up killing him so nature can correct itself.

There is a way to save Jack--a really dangerous way.  It's called "guided reincarnation."  Using a potion, Mrs. Vantu could get Raleigh pregnant and then just as Jackie dies, Mrs. Vantu would use a special charm to channel his dying spirit into the fetus.  Months later the baby would be born.  Using a different potion, Mrs. Vantu could age the child at an accelerated rate, so that after about a year Jackie would be the same as before the car accident.

There's just one hitch:  Raleigh uses a different potion to swap bodies with Jackie, not wanting to risk his life.  So now Jackie is a nerdy teenage girl who's impregnated with the fetus that becomes Raleigh.  Pretty fucked up, huh?

Over the next couple of books, Raleigh starts growing up again.  Jackie was kicked out by Raleigh's parents and so she and the baby are living at Mrs. Vantu's house.  Having a baby around--and a puppy and two teenage girls--really cramps Mrs. Vantu's style, especially since she can't smoke inside.

So there you go, the framing device has become a world of its own!  There's another story I've thought of but haven't really gotten around to writing.  The idea would be in the last days of Elvis, Mrs. Vantu sneaks him out of Graceland by turning him into a woman.  Ultimately the King is reborn as a baby girl similar to how Raleigh was reborn.  Part of the reason I haven't tried writing it is I can't really think of a good title.  24 Hours With Elvis?  24 Hours From Graceland?

Anyway, all of the books in the series haven't been released yet so I guess this counts as spoilers.  Not that anyone here will read those.

So, have you ever used a framing device?  Anyone?  Anyone?  Bueller?

Happy Fourth of July!  And belated Canada Day.

The Good & Bad of a Chromebook

Last Black Friday I bought a Chromebook to replace my ancient netbook.  There are some good things and some bad things about this so far.

The thing I don't like the most is that it doesn't use a traditional operating system like Windows or UNIX.  It basically runs a more robust version of Google Chrome.  So imagine if your whole computer system were just Internet Explorer or Firefox.  It's fine for websites but you can't install any actual programs.  So you can't install, say MS Office or any games.  Which is mostly fine because I'm just using it to write for the most part.

Because I can't install Word, I've been using Google's word processor.  It's OK but doesn't have all the features I'm used to.  The one I miss the most is the smart hyphens for em-dashes.  Before I upload a file to Amazon I have to make one smart dash in Word and then find & replace the rest.

The other most common hassle is this Chromebook doesn't have a right mouse button or keys like "End" or "Pg Down" so to get to the end of the document is somewhat annoying.  I have to scroll down, though first I have to wait until it brings up all the pages.  I mean in Word you just hit Control-End, which also works on normal keyboards in Google Chrome.  There's also no delete key, so you have to backspace everything.  It can be a little annoying.

You can save files in Chrome as Word but I didn't like how it turned out when I was trying to format for Amazon.  The headers are all messed up which makes it hard to make a table of contents.  So I just copy and then paste.  For some bizarre reason you can't right-click to copy; it pops up something to tell you to use control-C instead.  If you can program that text to pop up why not just create the code to right click?  Anyway, there's a slight bit more formatting in Word that way but it's not too difficult.

Though it is designed to pretty much live on the Internet, connecting to WiFi can still be iffy if the WiFi has a login page like most retail places or motels these days.  It's not quite as bad as my phone but still you think it could automatically connect you to the screen instead of having to clink a message saying "it may require you to sign in."  Like I said, pretty much every public WiFi has a login screen anymore so you think designers could make it easier for something that just about requires the Internet to be of any use.

The best thing about using Google Docs is that it saves automatically, pretty much whenever you stop typing.  So long as you have a WiFi connection it'll save to the Cloud.  Or you can set it up to save offline, which is somewhat of a process.  But that pretty much eliminates the need to save and back up.  If you've ever written a few paragraphs or few pages and then had the computer crash without saving, you'll know how annoying that is.  And if it's saving to the Cloud then I don't have to email it to myself or save to a USB drive or anything; I can just open Google Documents or Google drive and access the file from whatever computer I'm using.  So if I type something on my Chromebook, I can instantly bring it up on my desktop.  Or if I write something at work, it'll be available when I open my Chromebook or desktop at home.  That's really convenient. 

Small Enough to Jail: A David vs Goliath Story

The Oscar-nominated PBS documentary Abacus: Small Enough to Jail reveals this Fun Fact:  since the 2008 financial crisis the government has only prosecuted one bank.  Not Chase, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, or Goldman Sachs.  Nope, it was Abacus Federal Savings Bank, a bank that has 6 branches centered around New York City's Chinatown.

Abacus is a family-owned bank founded by Thomas Sung back in the 60s.  The day-to-day control mostly passed down to his daughters Jill and Vera.  It mostly provides banking services to the Chinese immigrants in the Chinatown area.  Besides, deposits, withdrawals, and safe deposit boxes, they also provide loans.  The loans can be problematic because a lot of the people applying work mainly in cash.

In 2012 the government brought charges against the bank for falsifying documents, larceny, conspiracy, and so forth.  It took until 2015 though for the trial to actually begin.  And then the prosecution's case seemed sort of laughable.  Their star witness was this guy named Ken Yu who was actually the perpetrator of most of the falsified mortgages.  On the cross-exam he was caught in several lies by a recording made by the prosecution itself!  It's no surprise then that his plea deal was later revoked and he did six months.

The other problem was they charged the bank with larceny and all that but of 3000 mortgages in the time period covered, a mere 9 defaulted.  There was really no financial damage done to Fannie Mae or the general public.  Certainly nothing on the scale of the 2008 meltdown.

It's kind of hard to see the prosecution as the good guys when they pulled stunts like chaining 15 of the accused Chinese people together and dragging them into the courtroom.  As someone said, could you imagine the furor if it had been 15 black people they were doing that to?

The other thing is the Sung family really didn't seem like a bunch of con artists.  They're a tightly-knit family and I really hoped they wouldn't be convicted because they seemed like good people who were trying to help their community.  Because really the big banks weren't exactly lining up to offer Abacus's customers loans.  The documentary does a good job of presenting them as a fairly normal family with their own squabbles and quirks.

Between that and really a lack of compelling evidence, it was surprising it took a week to come to a verdict.  Mostly there were 4 jurors who were holding out.  Finally even they relented and the bank was found not guilty on all charges.  To which one of the prosecutors groused that being found not guilty doesn't mean they're exonerated.  I dunno, it kinda does, doesn't it?

The sad thing is it cost the bank millions of dollars and damaged their reputation for nothing really.  Meanwhile all the big banks are right back to screwing the economy over, only calling it by a different name.  The whole thing came off as expensive grandstanding that wasted time and money, harmed people who weren't guilty, and accomplished nothing.  Sometimes even when David wins, it's not really a very satisfying win.

The documentary is free on Amazon Prime if you want to check it out.

Toxic Fandom: A Review of Slash

"Internet Rule 34: If it's on the Internet there's porn for it."

It's probably something we don't want to think about, but there's erotic fan fiction for pretty much everything.  Name a TV show, movie, book series, or celebrity and there's probably someone writing porn for it:  Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and I'm sure even Transformers.

Slash is an indie movie about a 15-year-old boy named Neil who writes erotic fan fiction for a fictitious book/movie series called Vanguard.  The titular character of that is sort of like Boba Fett with the body armor and cape and spaceship.

Neil is just writing this for himself until someone steals his notebook and the story starts getting around school.  But one girl named Julia actually likes the story and befriends Neil.  She also writes erotic fan fiction, only about something involving female elves.  She encourages him to post the story to a site called Rabbithole where there's erotic fan fiction of all types.

After he posts his story, Neil is chatted up by a member of the site and claims he's 18.  This comes into play when there's a contest for writers on the site to read their stories out loud at a convention.  Neil's story is picked over Julia's and so he goes to Houston with Julia for the convention.  After popping some Ecstasy at the convention, Neil and Julia have a fling in their motel room.

The next day Julia goes to see a comic book writer to appraise her work and he says she's not really that good but as an attractive woman she can probably get some work.  Which obviously is not what she wants to hear.  Meanwhile Neil meets with the guy who chatted him up, who turns out to be the site moderator.  Neil kisses him but then fesses up to only being 15.  Which disqualifies him from reading, though he tries to anyway.

With his hopes dashed, Neil returns home, a little wiser about the world.  He writes a new story that's what the moderator guy referred to as something like "curtain fic."  It's like if instead of having Gandalf and Dumbledore have sex they just go shopping for curtains at Pottery Barn.  I guess it's to appeal to older, domestic gay guys.  Makes me wonder if there are stories like that on Amazon; I could probably get into that pretty easily.  Anyway, he writes his story about Vanguard and his nemesis buying curtain together.  Ha.

This certainly had a lot of interesting things for me:  erotica, fan fiction, geek properties, and so on.  I thought it was a good movie despite the low budget and lack of any recognizable actors except comedian Michael Ian Black.  It mixes a coming-of-age story with a look at a part of geek culture most of us don't really want to imagine exists.  It's not the typical teen comedy or dramedy I guess.  Even if you're not a geek there's probably some good writing-related stuff in there:  don't use flowery prose, avoid alliteration, and so on.

I did write a gender swap story sort of like Transformers and sort of like GI JOE but never any actual erotic fan fiction.  All the fan fiction I wrote was strictly PG-13 at most.

You can watch Slash on Amazon's Prime Video (free with an Amazon Prime subscription) or they show it on the "Gravitas Channel" on Pluto TV, which is where I first heard of it.  That channel has a lot of interesting indie films all made by Gravitas Pictures, most of which are also on Amazon Prime.

Shameless Non-Self-Promotion

Recently some of my online "friends" have released new books, so I thought I'd take some time and highlight them.

First up, Heart of the Nexus by Nigel G Mitchell, the continuation of the Nexus Trilogy.  You can get part 1 here.

Four people have been taken from Earth to the interplanetary maze known as Nexus where they've survived their first journey to a dangerous world, but the trip home is far from over. It isn't long before they discover the brutal alien Kraghs have returned, and they don't plan to leave them empty-handed. When one of the four is threatened, the other three must fight to save them but they discover the Kraghs have a plan that could threaten the Universe.

Get it for $2.99 or FREE With Kindle Unlimited!

Next up is Jersey Ghouls by A.L. Sirois

Former cop Lafferty “Hoff” Hof f man, now on disability, is contacted when the body of a local woman, Gerry St. John, is discovered. Something has eaten her alive from the inside. The little river community of Sherwood’s Landing, NJ is being invaded by huge, venomous Central American centipedes. Hoff and Gerry’s sister, his ex-girlfriend Beatrice St. John, are swept into terror as their neighbors are enslaved by the centipedes’ group mind. Hoff, Beat, and the others remaining free must band together to survive the onslaught of ravenous ghouls.

Get it for $6.99 or FREE With Kindle Unlimited!

And finally from my frenemy Tony Laplume, Monkey Flip!

In 2018 Alex Helton's wrestling name Alex Dane, and he's the biggest star in WPW, but in 2013, he's still just Alex Helton and trying to convince himself that his career in NOVA isn't over before it's really begun. Follow Alex as his career blossoms, he learns hard truths about professional wrestling and life in general. There's more to sports entertainment than just learning the ropes. Sometimes it takes a leap of logic to appreciate what it's all about. Sometimes it takes, well, a monkey flip.

Get it for $2.99 or FREE With Kindle Unlimited!

(The latter two books are also in paperback if you still prefer paper books.)

So now you should have plenty to read this weekend!

And remember to support your local indie author by not only reading the book, but reviewing it too!

Here's How You Know Franchises Rule Hollywood Now

Here's a good way to tell that franchises, not big names, now rule Hollywood:

• Disney fires the directors of the Han Solo movies and taps Oscar winning director Ron Howard
• Quentin Tarantino is working with JJ Abrams on a Star Trek movie
• Martin Scorsese is working with DC/WB on a non-continuity Joker movie
• Steven Spielberg announces he will adapt DC's Blackhawks series for his next big movie

So you have four big-time directors slumming with franchise pictures.  The Ron Howard one was especially weird because when do you tap an Oscar-winning director to come out of the bullpen to take over your troubled movie?  When it's Disney and Star Wars and after your last four or five pictures made less combined than The Last Jedi.  Really, do think 15 years ago Ron Howard even picks up the phone if George Lucas calls and wants him to direct Episode III?

Except for Spielberg--and maybe even him to some extent--I think a lot of this is driven by the fact that these guys haven't had any really big hits in a while and if you want relevance these days, you need to connect yourself with a franchise.  Even if it's non-continuity or a one-shot like Solo or the Joker movie, it's still connecting to a franchised character.  Thus it's a good way to make some money and get back in the game.

The usual way with franchises is to find some up-and-comer and give him the reins like Spielberg with Jaws, Richard Donner with Superman, Tim Burton with Batman, Christopher Nolan with Batman Begins, Jon Favreau with Iron Man, Colin Trevorrow with Jurassic World, Rian Johnson with The Last Jedi...OK, it doesn't always work out so well.  The reasons are first that they're younger, they're hungrier, and (probably more important) they're cheaper than a big-time established director.  I mean if you wanted Francis Ford Coppola to direct Batman Begins, he might have demanded full creative control, a $500 million budget, and a bunch of weird changes to the source material and if he doesn't get that, he can walk and go back to making weird art movies and selling wine and living off Godfather royalties.  Someone who doesn't have a big-time track record is more likely not to make a huge fuss (Josh Trank excepted) and if he does, you can fire him and no one will care.

The other common method is to pick someone who's had some success but maybe not for a while like Bryan Singer with X-Men or Sam Raimi with Spider-Man or Zack Snyder with Man of Steel or Joss Whedon with Avengers.  They might not be as young, but they've got something to prove and again you can probably fire them if they get too rowdy without much of a problem.

But generally you're not talking about Oscar-winning filmmakers taking these jobs.  Because up until recently they would be too expensive and you probably can't count on any commitment past one movie.

What's changed?  Well, just look at the top movies for the last 10 years or so.  It's pretty much all Star Wars and superheroes.  And most were directed by up-and-comers or retreads, not big names.  So if you're Martin Scorsese and you want $200 million for some new epic, the studio execs might say, "What have you done for me lately?"  I mean I can get some kid who just directed a well-respected indie film to do a Man-Thing movie and make a half-billion dollars.  Why risk $200 million on someone who hasn't had a big hit since 2006?  But hey, you do a Joker movie, it makes some money, and then maybe it'll prove I'm still relevant and I can go back to doing stuff I really want to do.

It is selling out, pretty much by definition.  But at this point it's probably also the nature of the beast, even for big-time directors in Hollywood.  I think as with actors, directors are finding more and more that studios are back in control thanks to franchises being more important than names.

But then I'm also wrong on stuff a lot, so who knows?

Purely Bad Characters Are Better Than Wishy-Washy Bad Characters

NBC's "Superstore" is like the TV equivalent of the Union Station books by EM Foner I've read over the last year or so.  I don't really love those books but they're often amusing and usually free, so I keep reading them.  In this case the workplace comedy is often amusing and free over the air or "free" on demand or on Hulu, so why not?

For two seasons the worst part of the show is the cliche "will they-won't they" relationship between floor manager Amy and liberal elite employee Jonah.  In the pilot episode Jonah was a new hire and befriended Amy.  He was hoping for something more, but then he finds out she's married and  has a teenage daughter.  But that doesn't stop her from engaging in a middle school romance with Jonah that culminated in a passionate kiss at the end of season 2 when they thought they were going to die in a tornado.

This season Amy divorces her husband, which leaves her free to pursue Jonah, right?  No, of course not, because he gets involved with a new employee, the bubbly bimbo Kelly.  Except of course he can't just let Amy go.  So he winds up cheating on Kelly with Amy, who by this time is pregnant with her ex-husband's baby.  Holy soap opera, Batman!  The end of the season has Amy and Jonah fucking on a hidden webcam that broadcasts the act to stores all over the world.

By that point Amy and Jonah have pretty much entirely ceded the moral high ground.  I mean, she cheated on her husband and he cheated on his girlfriend.  She then goes back to her ex-hubby for a one-night stand that produces a baby.  Meanwhile, Jonah just casts Kelly aside even though she wasn't unfaithful to him.  Yet strangely the writers seem to want us to think these are the "good guys."

The final episode revolves around a town hall company meeting in the superstore that's being broadcast all over the world.  When Amy and Jonah find out that the company has been canning its elderly employees by writing up false performance reports, they decide to set up a sting to expose the crime during the meeting.  The hidden webcam is part of this so the company can't just turn off the cameras.

Which is all well and good...except you have the two worst people on the show launching this moral crusade.  You have essentially an adulterer and a guy who crushed his girlfriend's feelings like an empty beer can sitting in judgment of Corporate America?  Who the fuck are these assholes to judge anyone?

This was the overriding problem with this third season.  You're asking me to care and root for these shitheads, who are also unfortunately the stars of your show.  The only thing I'm rooting for is for them to get fired and disappear at the start of next season.  That is extremely unlikely as America Ferrera is a producer and sometimes director of the show, so unless it gets canceled (unfortunately NBC is not listening...) these assholes are likely to continue sucking up air time that could be better spent on characters who aren't the worst.

The thing is, I don't mind if characters are amoral assholes.  A good example of this is the show that for the second half of the year followed Superstore:  AP Bio.  It stars Glenn Howerton (Dennis of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) as a complete asshole who gets thrown out of Harvard and is reduced to teaching high school biology.  Except he has no interest in actually teaching biology.  Instead, he enlists his nerdy students in destroying his British rival, who got a prestigious job chairing the philosophy department at Stanford.

This guy is as I say a complete asshole and yet it's fine with me.  Why?  Because the show doesn't ask me to root for him or try to make him some moral authority.  It's more about the shenanigans that result from his Bad Teacher antics.  Then it's a nice bonus when he does something relatively nice like help one girl in his class impress a boy.

Ironically, though, this unrepentant asshole is actually less of an asshole than the assholes on the other show.  I mean, he doesn't cheat on a girlfriend or knock up an ex.  So he actually has more moral authority than those other two assholes.

As I say in the title of this entry, it's better to have a character who's purely bad than to be wishy-washy about it.  Don't make characters do bad things and then expect me as the viewer (or reader) to root for them to have a Happily Ever After or succeed in some moral crusade.  It was in an old Lawrence Block book I read a month or so ago where after a would-be Bonnie and Clyde ride off with a bunch of stolen money, he writes how terrible it would be for them to live Happily Ever After, because what would that say?  So they had to meet justice in the form of a police blockade.  By the same token, why should I want Amy and Jonah to live Happily Ever After?  They've lied, they've cheated, and they've been insensitive pricks.  If they get to live Happily Ever After, what does that say?  No, dumbass writers and producers of the show, I want them to meet karmic justice!  I demand karmic justice!  No happy endings for wishy-washy assholes.

Basically, I'm saying if you're going to make characters act like assholes, then go all in.

BTW, something else always bugged me about Superstore and I finally realized what was lacking.  In one episode our moral authority (lol) finds out that the corporation wants to make their store a "4A store" which means it would be open 24 hours and employees would be worked like dogs.  To avoid this fate, the employees work to drive sales down so they won't meet a sales quota.

This kind of slacker humor is what was missing from the show right from the start.  I mean if you watch Clerks, some of the funniest parts are where the slacker Randle dicks with customers or tells them off.  Some of the best parts of Office Space were when Peter was slacking off and when they steal an annoying printer to smash it.   Some of the funniest parts of the indie novel Sale Day at C-Mart (about a KMart type store) were how employees would scheme to slack off.  That's what this show should have been!  Employees trying to avoid doing more than the bare minimum vs. a clueless manager and draconian district manager.  Because as Homer Simpson said, "If you don't like your job, you don't quit.  You just go in every day and do it completely half-assed.  That's the American way!"

The problem with Superstore is they didn't want anyone to be "the bad guy" so they populate the show with wishy-washy characters.  I guess you can say that's more "real" but it's a sitcom so no one is expecting morally complex characters.

Maybe they can do that in a reboot 20 years from now.

Why Is It So Hard to Leave Feedback?

I'm not talking about book reviews--though this also applies to that.  I'm talking about EBay.  I've been selling stuff periodically on EBay for a few years now.  I've made about thirty sales I'd say.  Yet I've only gotten feedback from maybe a third of buyers.  Most of the feedback I have on my account is still from people I've bought from.

It's kind of frustrating because when you're selling on EBay, more positive feedback provides more credibility.  Yet because people are too lazy to provide feedback, my account still looks like a newb's.  I wouldn't be surprised if that hurts me when I'm trying to sell something.

And it's not that I'm doing a bad job.  I ship things out pretty much the next day.  I often lose money on shipping so I'm not overcharging people for that.  I think generally I provide enough protection that the item arrives in good shape.  So why can't these jackasses leave some feedback?

Unlike Amazon, EBay even sends reminders to leave feedback.  And it's just common courtesy.  I do it usually after I receive an item or once I've received payment for an item.  I'm doing my part.  Why can't other people do theirs?  Do they not realize how fucking important it is?

And yes, most of this also applies to books.  Reviews (good ones) are so important and it takes so little effort on Amazon or Goodreads, but people can't even do that!  Why are so many people so lazy?  Ugh, it's so annoying.

I guess this is a country where 20% is considered "good turnout" for an election.  Unless it's a reality  TV show it seems impossible to get people off their asses to do anything.

Dear Reader: It's a Trap!

One of the most common complaints I receive is stories are too mean.  Waaaah, it doesn't end Happily Ever After!  To which I just usually roll my eyes.

I  know I've mentioned before this one person who left a good review for one story and then submitted a bunch of bad reviews on "mean" stories, many of which were obviously not cozy fare like Goth girl stories.

The height of this person's idiocy then came when she complained about a book going into "punishment land" and the first sentence of the description was:

When Harry Nelligan's wife finds out he's going to a website featuring videos of Asian girls, she decides on a unique way of revenge.

It says right in the first sentence it's a story about revenge!  So of course it goes to "punishment land" you fucking moron!  I mean, what, you thought she'd get revenge by sending him a strongly-worded letter? 

So then I decided to set a trap for morons like this.  I decided to write a new series called "Dark Gender Swap" that are not cozy, go to fucking "punishment land," and do not end Happily Ever After.  And if you have a problem with that, well, it's called DARK Gender Swap, so what the fuck did you think it meant?

The first of these stories is called "Simone Says."  It's a take on the old "Simon Says" game.  In this case, a cheating husband's wife puts a curse on him so whenever she says, "Simone Says..." he has to do whatever comes next.  If she says "Simone Says, you're a woman now" then he turns into a woman.  And it just snowballs from there.

I used an evil font and stuff so I think I did pretty much everything I could to spell out this isn't a fucking cozy story.  So far no one's bit on it or the second one.  Too bad.  But maybe someday someone will.

The first couple of days it was for sale it actually sold well enough to be a #1 New Release in both Transgender Erotica and Lesbian Erotica.  It sounds more impressive than it is sales-wise, but still, I'll take it.

 Hooray, #1 in a paid something category!

Amazon's Secret War Against Authors

Last March I noticed something weird:  a lot of my books still had rankings in subcategories but not an overall ranking.  It wasn't that they were so far over a million that they couldn't be ranked anymore; most of them were still between 150k-500k so there was no reason for them to disappear. 

I just assumed it was a system glitch or something.  But then I saw a Facebook post from Writer Beware that linked to this article.  Turns out there was a sinister reason for this:  Amazon was conducting a secret, undeclared war on erotica authors.

The idea is that Amazon wanted to make erotica titles harder to find but not ban them altogether.  Apparently part of this was concern about a "sex trafficking" law.  I actually find it pretty ridiculous to call erotica authors like me "sex workers."  I mean if someone is reading one of my books they're not out hiring real sex workers, aka prostitutes.  Really the powers that be should want more erotica authors because it'll help keep people from going out having actual sex, right?

Amazon wasn't the only one to overreact to this.  Microsoft declared it would have a PG only policy in Office 365 and XBox Live, which seems ridiculous and fascist.  I mean does that mean I can't type naughty words in MS Word or some goon will delete it?  Is someone going to stand by with an airhorn to bleep out cursing if I shout an f-bomb while playing Madden or HALO or something?  And I don't know how that fights sex trafficking. 

Anyway, the ridiculous thing with Amazon is that they wanted to try hiding erotica titles--but they continued profiting from them.  I mean even when they took down my overall rankings, they didn't stop taking their 30% from my books.  It's pretty cowardly really.  Either ban erotica or don't; this is just weaseling. 

The secret war was over by the end of the month, though.  As the article says, it wasn't because of authors like me so much as authors from the Big 5 they were carelessly hitting with these sanctions.  Amazon doesn't give a shit if Planet 99 Publishing complains about books becoming invisible, but if Random Penguin calls up, then they start to get worried.

I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they try it again.  Probably the next time they'll target it better.  Because another bit of hypocrisy is if I do something it can easily be quashed, but if a best-selling author does the same, hardly anyone will say boo about it.  I mean Amazon isn't going to pull EL James' books or even Lawrence Block's erotica titles from the 60s because they're more well-known authors, but people like me they can pick on.

But hey, all's fair in love and war, right?