BLUE GHOSTS IS LIVE!

We're live on Smashwords!

And Amazon has come through too!

But we made it! WE! ARE! LIVE!

And DAMN that cover looks good. Doesn't that look good? In fact...



Gotta love Will Smith

(PS expect Gor sometime midafternoon tomorrow. My brother is here and I am a lil drunk and I do not have the heart for Strawchick stupid tonight)

Captive of Gor, Chapter 6

The opening paragraph of this chapter is pretty fitting:

I awoke in the morning, near dawn. It was very cold, and gray and damp. I was terribly hungry. My body was stiff, and ached. I wept. I sucked dew from the long grass. I was alone. My clothes were wet. I was miserable. I was alone. I was alone. I was frightened. I was hungry. I wept.

Why is this apt? It is exactly how I feel reviewing this book tonight. I am tired, I am buzzed from working the floor at the J-word tonight (WAITRESSING SUCKS FYI) I desperately want a drink and cannot have one, and holy fuck does this book suck. Why am I doing this again?

Because I want to. Right.

 For the next six pages or so, we...okay, what the fuck is it with male writers and Disney Princesses? Seriously, I thought this was supposed to be BDSM nastiness well seasoned with non-con, but so far we've had Strawchick be chased and wake up in a field to this:

That's Gor, boys and girls. That's how it's presented in the book. Oh, you don't believe me?

When the sun was overhead I found some more berries and, this time, I ate my fill. Not far away, in another outcropping of rock, I found another pool of trapped rain water. It was a large pool, and I drank as much as I wanted. And I washed my face... It seemed to me not impossible that I might be able to live on this world. It was beautiful. I ran for a little way, my hair flying behind me, laughing...I had not done that since I had been a little girl.

Tell me that does not just reek of an incoming "I Want" number and much flocking of the birdies around her dainty little wrists.  And she is lonely, my lovely blog-readers. So very very lonely. She could live on this world but she is so bleeding lonely, and while I cannot believe I'm bringing this out so early in the game:

Thank you, Pooh-bear.

And then she sees random people.

Now, let's have another game of Space/fantasy Opera Trivia. You are a young woman, professional model, who has been abducted and branded by intersteller slavers before being dropped off when their ship crashlands. You have escaped obvious restraints somehow. You have been alone for less than twenty fucking hours, do not give me that look, Strawchick. I know better than that. And now you come across two men, a wagon, and about twenty butt-naked girls being restrained by something you can only describe as a "harness", who appear to be pulling the goddamned wagon. DO YOU:

1. Turn around and go back to your space-berry patch

2. Turn around and RUN back to your space-berry patch

3. Shout "STOP! STOP!" from the side of the road, then scream your name in English while flailing like a moron.

4. DO ANY SINGLE THING OTHER THAN NUMBER THREE WHILE RUNNING BACK TO THE AFOREMENTIONED SPACE-BERRY PATCH

What does Strawchick do?

“I’m Elinor Brinton,” I told the men who had come to meet me. “I live in New York City. I’m lost.”

Ellie, dear, at this point I would not only cheerfully assist in restraining you, I would make my only compensation for dragging you to the space-slave auction block be your immediate sterilization because SWEET BLUE BABY JESUS you are too stupid to fucking breed. You reproduce and the entire universe loses IQ points.

One of her ...do I really have to pretend they rescued her? REALLY, book? I REALLY have to? Fine. Her...sigh...."rescuers" lead her over to the slave chain while she prattles on about how glad she is to be rescued. Meanwhile the naked girls at the wagon look on apprehensively. I am choosing to interprete this as WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT? repeated about twenty times. Also, one of the slavers' names is Targo.

Targo. We are one letter away from him being this:

There is no way out of Gor. It will be dark soon. There is no way out of Gor.

And now I get to imagine a Katness/Torgo/Tarl Cabot three way and it can only end badly for two of them.

So Torgo..sorry. Targo spends the next few minutes trying to get this windfall of a hot blond to shut the fuck up, and Strawchick spends the same amount of time thinking that if she speaks LOUDLY and SLOWLY these strangers from another world will magically understand English. HAS SHE NOT TRAVELED TO OTHER COUNTRIES BEFORE?

Strawchick looks around at her rescuers and realizes that these are simple barbarians, and so she'll be able to buy her way back to Earth! Sterilization, John! A full on hysterectomy! That's all I ask! I will hold her down for you, just please ensure this broad never breeds!

And oh, we must be introduced to the theme to the next hundred pages or so:

On Earth I had never met a woman, personally, whom I had regarded as my superior in beauty. Here, incomprehensibly, but obviously, there were at least eleven. I was puzzled how there could be so many in this one small place. I was shaken. But, I told myself, I am more than their equal in intelligence, and in riches, and in taste, and sophistication. They were doubtless simple barbarians. I felt pity for them. I hated them! I hated them!...The haughty bitches! I was superior to them all!

I'd add a lobotomy to that wish-list of mine, but for Strawchick that'll be a lateral move. So after monologuing about how much better Strawchick is than the other slave girls--because she is rich and beautiful and rich and rich and I think John Norman has issues with moneyed women, don't you?--she gets stripped down, and they find the brand on her thigh. So long, freedom! What? You didn't think that had any meaning at all, Strawchick?

So they hold her down and whip her. And this chapter isn't over yet. Why isn't this chapter over yet? We've done the prerequisite shift from Disney Princess to Bondage Fiend, can we move on please? Please? No?

Fuck.

And then she kisses Torgo's feet. And fuck it, if I have to read this book much more this guy is fucking Torgo. Torgo puts her into the harness with the other girls and makes her pull the wagon. At the same time, she notices that--gasp!--they've all been branded too. And this happens:

I was dismayed. If someone saw us, as we were, they might think that I was no different from the others, that I was the same as they!

No, Strawchick. They are not the same as you. They've got two braincells to share between them.

 Also...why are they making the girls pull the wagon? This is a legitimate question. An animal would be better at it, and...uh, it's not good excercise. This is more likely to break the innocent little flowers than it is keep them in the sexy-sexy, you know? Bad use of slave labor, gents. Bad form.

And then...oh, my fucking God. Really?

But I was Elinor Brinton, of Park Avenue, of Earth! She had been rich, beautiful, smartly attired, tasteful, sophisticated; she had been well educated and traveled; she had been decisive, confident; she had carried her wealth and her beauty with élan; and she had deserved her position in society; it had been rightfully hers, for she had been a gifted, high-order, superbly intelligent individual, an altogether superior person! She deserved everything that she had had! Whatever she had had she should have had, for she was that kind of person! That was the kind of person she was!

I got that back at the beginning of the book, sweetheart. And bullshit on the highly intelligent part. You literally ran into their arms. And then...you really have to be kidding me.

I would not be permitted to shirk. 

I had always had my way before...

Here I did not have my way. 

Here I would not be permitted to shirk...I would be expected, I realized, to my fury, for the first time, to do my share.

Yeah, because everybody knows women don't really work. Waitresses? They're just there to fill shoes. Not like anybody's cracking the whip over them. Modeling can't be hard work. All you need to do is file your nails. No woman has ever had to work hard to get through college, to succeed, to be something other than a male's arm-jewelry. Lil tip, John-boy? Just because a woman's success isn't immediatly benefiting you, does not mean her success is either easy or a non-thing.

End of chapter. Thank you god. Goodnight all.

...and the counter just clicked over to zero. BOOK RELEASE COMES SOON. I am not excited yet, but I am looking forward to it. BOOK COMES OUT ON MONDAY, KIDS! MONDAY! MONDAY!

YAY!

And the "OH F**K" Meter hits defcon one...

I just realized something.

See that counter, there? It's set to tick down to zero on Monday. Midnight on Monday. Midnight, October first.

As in this thing? Will have to start going through the smashwords/amazon processing masher sometime well before midnight on Sunday, 'cause it takes about six hours for Amazon to finish processing Things and I now know that Amazon is all you (wonderful, awesome) people care about. Except for you. And you know who you are. And I love you to little bitty pieces.

ANYWAY! Problem here? THIS IS THE WEEKEND. And I am a waitress. And weekends? ARE CRAZY. And I promised family I would do the family thing during my free time. I WILL MAKE THIS DEADLINE MY FRIENDS. I PROMISE.

In other news...I MADE MY GOAL FOR THIS MONTH re:BOOK SALES. Admittedly it was a small goal BUT IT WAS A GOAL AND IT WAS MADE. BY YOU GUYS! YOU WONDERFUL, WONDERFUL GUYS! You are why I am going to work my ass off this weekend to get Self Imposed Deadline met and past met.

This month? If I make the goal this month? (It is not the tattoo goal. The tattoo goal is 100 copies of one title sold in one day, and I am 100% sure that my hide is safe from ever getting shot by a tattoo gun. October's goal is significantly smaller.) we will have to do A Thing to celebrate. I do not know what this goal will be, but it will be A Thing. Ideas for how you'd like me to celebrate Goal Reaching? These would be helpful. I'll also provide wallpapers of artworks.

Now I have to go finish final proofreading and formatting before I have to go work. BECAUSE WORK IS AN IMPORTANT THING TOO.

And OMG PEOPLE! OMG! I just found out! Something that could potentially be awesome! Remember Chloe the "kitten"?

We took her to the vet because she's been drooling a lot. Turns out, she's got gum disease and is not a kitten. Just a very very small, year old cat.

And she might be pregnant. THERE MAY BE KITTENS IN OUR FUTURE! YAY! MY KITTEN CRAVING MAY FINALLY BE SATED! and yeah, finding homes and fixings and other things lie in the future as well and there may not be kittens at all BUT THERE MIGHT BE! I will keep you posted.

KITTENS! YAY!

Captive of Gor chapter 5

And now we're on Alt-Earth. As in Strawchick just wakes up there. Does this transition seem strange to you? Because I'm getting freaking whiplash.

Hey, Strawchick, what's it look like here on Gor?

...In the distance, away from the forest, I could see a yellowish thicket, it, too, of trees, but not green, but bright and yellow...In the distance, near the yellowish thicket, I saw a small, yellowish animal moving, delicately. It was far off and I could not see it well.

...so, like a dehydrated man's urine, then. I gotcha.

The spaceship has crashlanded, and apparently it flung Strawchick several hundred feet, stripped her of her chains, got her out of the stasis tube, and deposited her on the grass without her getting one scratch. Gor's got some pretty good roll bars in their spaceships is all I can say.

 And then we get to the next example of Author Just Does Not Get It:

On Earth I had not feared men. I had despised them. I had held them in contempt. They were so eager to please, so manipulable, so pliant, so meaningless, weak and docile. But these men, those in black tunics, and those who had been instrumental in my capture, I had learned to fear. They were the first men I had learned to fear. They would not be the last.

Time for a quickie education in your psyche, boys and girls. You project how you feel into other people's heads. And I do not mean you make them think thoughts. I mean that you decide what they are thinking. You are afraid of someone, so you decide that they KNOW you are afraid and they are making you feel that way on purpose. You feel you are weak. You assume everyone else thinks you are weak. I mean, it's so blatently obvious to you!

In this book, CONSTANTLY, John Norman projects his own emotional attitude into women. Because he feels manipulated, pliant, meaningless, ect, in the presence of women, he projects the cause into the women he writes. Strawchick knows she's doing this to men, and when she's robbed of that power she is the one unmanned. Which, boys and girls, is bullshit of the first caliber AND why this series fails at its own goal.

You cannot control how someone else feels. You can manipulate them into doing things, but the ultimate choice is theirs. If a dude wants to rape you? It's not your fault. He'd do it if you're in a tank top or a turtleneck. Same thing with the roles reversed. The entire Gor series is the author fucking screaming STOP MAKING ME FEEL THIS WAY at the top of his lungs, when it's his own psyche he's fighting with and not the women. And most chicks in my experiance are not walking across a quad luxuriating in making men pant. They're thinking about how not to fail their final, and that's all.

Moving on.

Strawchick explores the ship, steals food from an animal that scares the shit out of her, that sounds about as scary as a stray dog, and then leaves. She watches another spaceship, complete with bug-alien, destroy the first one. I know kind of why, but we're just going to forget about it and pretend the spaceships never happened. Norman had to explain how Alt-Earth is here, and Spaceship was the scrabble tile he pulled out of the bag that day. Moving on.

Everything that is anything attacks Strawchick. She describes fighting with a toothy vine that sounds an awful lot like a snake to me, either implying that vines have teeth or Strawchick failed the "Identifying poisonous things" part of girlscout training. And then the moons come out, and on this planet where everything that is anything has tried to eat her, she curls up in the grass and falls asleep. In the grass. That is probably out to murder her too.

I can't help but think about that scene in Hunger Games where Katness tied herself into a tree before she slept, and...

...you know? You know? You know? Wouldn't it be fucking awesome if the bug-aliens had screwed up and kidnapped Katness Everdeen instead of Strawchikc here? Katness Everdeen on Gor. Think about it. There would be arrows and there would be much shouting and many dead slavers in front of the Cornucopia, and she would probably find Alt-Peeta and Alt-Gale and manage to unbarbarianize them by getting a sponsor and Haymich to send her soap, and there would be much posing by said muscled un-barbarians and many plates of food porn, Cinna would produce awesome costumes out of white dancing silks that would be totally modest and yet make all the other dancing silks in red look fucking stupid in comparison and then everyone would be like, "Dance, bound slut" and Katness would be all "What the fuck is this shit?" before she drops a nest of Tracker Jackers in the middle of the slave camp and watches the halucinations and the face-melting begin, Beetee would help her set up a trap involving white and red silk and nightlock berries, she and Rue would eat a Tarn together and in the end, she'd overturn the whole Gorian regime with a rose and one single arrow to the heart.

She would make Tarl Cabbot kneel on a muttation-skin rug while Alt-Peeta helps her fake a pregnancy. It would be awesome.

Somebody do this. Please, somebody do this. The universe is incomplete without Gor/Hunger Games fanfic. We must rectify this. Now.

Oh, yeah. The chapter ended. With Strawchick asleep in the murder grass. Because she is not Katness and this is not Hunger Games and therefore not awesome in the slightest.

TOMORROW: A half-naked, lost Earth woman wanders around on a planet most famous for enslaving lost, half-naked Earth women. And this one is an idiot. Wanna guess what happens next?

Captive of Gor chapter 4

In which absolutely nothing happens. It is time, boys and girls, for EXPOSITION. We are about to find out what's going on. Because KIDNAPPING isn't clear enough at this point.

So Strawchick is taken into a clearing where men are loading other drugged girls onto a UFO. Because Elinor Brinton is SO VERY NOT SPECIAL she gets the drug-free kidnapping treatment. You know. Because when we're reading about girls kidnapped and sold into slavery on alt-Earth we want the alt-earth stuff to start five chapters in. Why am I reading this again?

...because I wanted to. Right.

The dude removes the collar Elinor was given. Why? Fuck if I know. Why was she given one in the first place? Again, how the fuck should I know. At this point it's just psychological torture porn. She attempts to bribe her way out, they laugh--

--wait a second. Remember that part in chapter one?

Yet on this world I am a fifteen-gold piece girl, more lovely than many, yet far excelled by many whose stunning beauty I can only envy.

Yeah. That part. If she's worth so little on the slave block, and she's handing over oodles and oodles of gold and diamonds...why not take her up on the offer? I'm pretty sure they've made their quota, and I'm pretty sure they could find her again if they need to squeeze more cash out of her. "Pay us or we'll sell you into alien slavery" is a pretty good blackmail tactic when you can back it up with your space ship. If she talks about aliens she's just another space-brained blond. Nobody's going to listen to her...and again, you can back the threat up with a space ship. And maybe earth-cash ain't worth much but as far as I can tell, gold on alt-Earth is still fucking gold. She's a fucking millionare, boys, and she could probably hook you up with a couple nice slaves a month via fake jobs for less experianced models. The girls dissapear, hey, it's NYC baby. AND you've just made your case for women being horrible, horrible creatures who should be locked up and punished, sexily.

Anyway, they laugh, take her money anyway, and she fights them with the knife she's still got in her purse.

Again: WORST. SLAVERS. EVER.

They disarm her, which I need to point out would not be necessary if they'd drugged her in the first place, then try to fix the damage they she has done to her face by resisting and making them hit her, which also wouldn't be necessary IF THEY HAD DRUGGED HER IN THE FIRST PLACE, then elaborately showed her how they tracked her with their space ship. Bug in the purse. Which I pretty much guessed.

Again. Awful lot of technology there when they could have just DRUGGED THE IDIOT IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Yeah. These guys and this chick totally deserve each other.

Oh, hey, I think these sentences are too long. Do you think these sentences are too long? Let's let John Norman show us how it's done:

“The light,” I said, “it couldn’t catch me.” 

“You think it was simply your misfortune, a mere coincidence, that you stumbled into our camp?” he asked.

 I nodded, miserably.

 He laughed. 

I looked at him, with horror.

 “The light,” he said. “You ran always to avoid it.”

 I moaned. 

“You were herded here,” he said.

 I cried out with misery.

Like we didn't figure that one out six fucking pages ago. One paragraph, John, that's all I'm asking.

So the dude, whose sole job is apparently to get Strawchick used to being a slave, gently urges her up into the spaceship, instead of IDK hauling her up by her hair OR DRUGGING HER (WHY IS SHE NOT DRUGGED LIKE THE OTHERS?) and then...John Norman does something that's actually kind of cool:

I saw the sun’s rim at the edge of my world, rising, touching it. In the east there was dawn. It was the first dawn I had ever seen. It was not that I had not stayed up all night, even many times. It was only that I had never watched a sunrise.

This perplexes me, and not in a bad way. Why is her first dawn on Earth also her last? This has some kind of umph to it, like rebirth or something else metaphysical. Like an inkling that this experience (being sold into slavery) is the start of her new, true life. Which is oh, so very ick, but let's not go messin' with the zen thing, man (/Jeff Bridges FTW) While the first sentence can go die on a piling (what touched what? Earth touched the sun, sun touched the earth? Elvis touched Miranda? What?) but the concept here is actually kind of awesome.

Does it go anywhere? No. Instead we get Strawchick's description of the slave holding area, where she is dragged kicking and screaming which, may I needlessly point out for the nine billionth time, would be a whole lot easier IF THEY HAD DRUGGED HER FIRST. They lock her in for the voyage, give her air, and we get today's contender for MOST OBVIOUS STATEMENT EVER:

The rich, clever, vain, insolent, proud Elinor Brinton, it was clear, had not escaped.

It took you two pages to described being locked into a vacuum-sealed tube. No shit, Sherlock.

TOMORROW: Alt-Earth, aka GOR, the world of a thousand raging hormones without soap.  Be there. Bring gas masks.

Humility

one day we will invent an emotion that we cannot express via lol-cat. This is when the universe will end. 

I think the thing I keep coming back to with writing is, well, how very much I suck at it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. Last thing you guys want to hear me say, last thing I should say three days before I self pub another book. But...well, it's true. It totally is. Today was the best damn day I've had on Amazon so far...and it was, by the rules of the road, pretty goddamn pathetic, if you hold it up to anybody else's standards.

In my head, down deep inside, I do think I'm a good writer. Maybe not the best, maybe not professional best-seller material. But I do think I'm good. Otherwise I wouldn't be writing at all. But the evidence I see? Stack of rejection letters eight miles long, The Incident last April (I still cry over that) the, um, less than steller way The Great Publishing Experiment has gone (You guys are great, you guys are awesome, I heart you guys forever and I expected nothing more than what you've given) and I kind of realize that what my heart says? Is not what the reality is.

I think the thing that made me decide to self publish was realizing that the big boys didn't want me anyway, and never would. Ever. That's...amazingly freeing, knowing that you've got absolutely nothing to lose. And that's the dead honest truth. I do have nothing to lose by self-publishing. I am a non-entity, a cypher. A sucky writer. However much I trash Hubbard and the Gor novels they are writing gods compared to what I put out. And before you say "HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT, CW!" I want to point out one small, not incidental fact:

They are published. I am not. And this is never, ever, ever, ever EVER going to change.

I read things that tell me I've thrown everything away by self-publishing my stuff, and oh God does it hurt. It makes me want to scream or cry or throw things or do all of that all at once, together...right up until I realize that in the long run it never really mattered. It doesn't matter how clean I keep my career. I never had a career to keep clean in the first place. Which means I can try whatever I want, fail however hard it is I'm going to fail. I had nothing to lose. It was never going to be a reality, so why not knuckle down and start doing the heavy lifting? It's just as effective as giving up, and what was I going to do with that writing time anyway? Play Minecraft? (Not that Minecraft isn't cool. I Just need something to do after a creeper explosion blasts through into Lava and I not only die, I lose my diamond armor, sword, enchanted pickaxe and full stack of Emeralds. Why do creepers explode? Because FUCK YOU, that's why!)

And I denigrate the Self-Publishing Experiment, but in reality? What I wanted to see was not how many copies of Book X or Book Y I could sell right off the bat. I wanted to see if I could grow an audience. Build something that will make selling my "real" work (AKA full sized novels) worth it. And I am seeing growth. I am seeing something that could turn into something else, something really, really cool. Do I have any idea what the hell I'm doing? Fuck no. But one thing I do know is, next month is gonna tell me how much of a prayer I do have. If it does really well, I'll know it's time to start getting excited. If it does what pretty much everything else has done...eh, we're having fun anyway, right? And the point of this is not to make six million dollars and sell six million copies and get the movie deal and the TV interviews and the soundtrack of my dreams. It's to get to nerd out with you guys over how awesome that story is that incidentally also is mine (But we'll forget about that part).

So you know what, guys? I could be wrong. Maybe I don't suck. Maybe you guys aren't just here because I rip into bad authors. Maybe I can write on, say, a Twilight quality level. Maybe you wonderful, crazy, insane people actually like reading the things that I write.

So I'll make you a deal.

I succeed? And let's define success as I sell 100 copies of one book, in one day. Meaning 100 of you buy, for real money, a copy of a single book. Like, 100 Starbleached or 100 Silver Bullet copies in one twenty-four hour period. I do this? I will get a tattoo.

Given what I've seen? I think my skin is safe, forever. (not that i don't love you guys. I do. I totally do. I just...think I kind of know you lot pretty damn well) But you can prove me wrong. Go ahead, kids. I dare you.

100 books=CW gets a tattoo.

Captive of Gor chapter 2-3

So when we last left this "delightful" book, Norman had introduced us to his Strawchick puppet, who looks about as much like a woman as this:

looks like an actual man. She's rich, spoiled, a student at a university who gets good grades because she has lady bits instead of a brain (Hey, that's what the book says) and last night, somebody snuck into her bedroom and branded her. Yes. She's about to be kidnapped and taken to alt-earth as a slave.

Ready to see the plot go off the rails?

Okay, my biggest problem with Mission Earth, other than it being L. Ron Hubbard at the wheel, were the one-sentence action paragraphs. Apparently this was a pulp thing, not a Hubbard thing. Otherwise LRH and Norman got together every saturday for drinkies, because DAMN:

I rose to my hands and knees on the rug and looked at myself in the mirror.

I screamed. 

I was going mad!

 I threw my hands to my head, and shook my head.

 I locked my fingers in the band at my throat, trying to tear it from my neck. It had been placed on me while I was unconscious! About my throat, snugly, there was a graceful, gleaming band of steel.

 Reproduced exactly as written. As published, folks.

Also? If a dude sneaks into my bedroom while I am unconsious for the second time in twelve fucking hours, and locks a fucking collar around my neck? I am not thinking graceful. I am thinking blowtorch. I am thinking Barrett fifty cal.

Strawchick explores her collar for a moment, then realizes, DUH, the guy who branded her and locked a collar around her neck MIGHT STILL BE IN THE BUILDING! OH. EMM. GEE. We might want to do something about this!

To her credit, she tries. And to their credit, the space slavers have done everything they can short of tying her up to make sure she can't get help. Her phones are cut, her handgun is now a melted down lump, and when someone shows up claiming to be the cops, Strawchick wisely decides that getting the fuck out of her apartment might be smarter than answering the door, because she sure as fuck didn't call them. She ties a bunch of bedsheets together and goes out her bedroom window.

She climbs down, and it is almost exciting...right up until the slavers in the apartment below her (how did they get there?) catch her, drug her, and drag her back into her bedroom. They tie her to the bed, drug her and talk to her.

“You aren’t the cold, inert little thing you pretend to be, are you, bound slut,” he said. “I wonder what you will be like, when you are accommodated to your new condition.”

Yeah. No. "Accommodated to your new condition"=SUFFERING FROM STOCKHOLM SYNDROME.

Guys, this kind of attitude is why this shit happened, and why it took the girl in question years to report the son of a bitch for kidnapping her and keeping her locked under his bed for seven years. THIS. IS. NOT. OKAY.

Moving on.

The drugs wear off after a couple hours, and Strawchick realizes...hey! She's alone! Still tied to the bed, but alone! The slavers have left her alone and unguarded with drugs that don't last. 

And she remembers there is a knife under her pillow.

She is out of there, ladies and gentlemen, running fast as her little girlish legs will allow, which is pretty fucking fast. And then this happens:

Did he know that there was a mark on my thigh? Did he sense that? Did that mark make me somehow subtly different than I had been? Did it, somehow, set me apart from other women on this world? Could I no longer drive men away? And if I could no longer drive them away, what did that mean? What had that small mark done to me?

It's a functional, effective and accurate rape analogy. From John. fucking. Norman. Victims of sexual assault do feel marked. Many people don't talk about what happened to them because they don't want to go into the details. I remember reading There Will Be Dragons, by John Ringo, and in one of the more OH, JOHN RINGO, NO! passages, that I really appreciate now, a rape victim comments that the worst part of her flashback dreams is, sometimes she orgasms. I remember thinking that was weird at the time. Now I think how devistating that would be, to spend all your time thinking "Maybe I did really want it. Maybe I did deserve it." You spend all your time questioning yourself, over every little thing, while your brain is waiting behind you ready to mousetrap you with memory. This, right here, is actually pretty damn good.

Of course, you know he's going to fuck it up:

I felt suddenly helpless, and somehow, suddenly, for the first time in my life, vulnerably and radically female.

Female=violated. Nice one, John.

See, the thing here? Is not that she has been hurt. It's that she's returning to her natural state. She's becoming what she was supposed to be all along. A rape victim. Kleenex for men.

Back to the book.

Let's imagine for a second that you are a space slaver. Do you:

1. Pull up beside your future captive in a van, drag her into it, drug her and take her to your space ship for holding?

2. Ask your prey out on a date, drug her drink, stuff her into your trunk and take her to your space ship for holding?

3. Sneak into your prey's bedroom at night, give her the best fucking painkillers in the history of things, brand her, draw on her mirror, leave, come back and discover her fainted on the ground, put a collar on her and leave, come back disguised as the police AND GO TO THE OTHER APARTMENT because you know she's climbing down a bedsheet ladder, tie her up, drug her again, leave, return to find her missing, FOLLOW HER THROUGH THE CITY, let her check into a random motel, sneak into her motel room so you can write on her mirror again, leave, come back and CHASE HER WITH A GODDAMNED SPACE SHIP until she reaches your landing strip, at which point you spend about thirty minutes talking with her before you FINALLY stick her in a stasis tube?

4. DO ANY FUCKING THING ON THE PLANET OTHER THAN NUMBER THREE???

Jesus. Jesus Jesus Jesus. This makes no sense. At all. 

She gets in her Maserati (Fuck you, Strawchick) and goes driving off...only to realize that she is being followed. OH NOES! The slavers have found her again. And she drives away from the police station in our first offical moment of TSTL. Yes, the other guys were disguised as cops. They probably did not rent an entire fucking police station. She has a collar and drugs in her system and a burn on her thigh. There is ample evidence that Something Bad Has Happened To Her. She SHOULD go in and report it, proving that this is a girl with a BRAIN. If John wants his story to continue, the cops should tell her "tough shit, here's a form" and then go on with their lives. Because sometimes they do that. Not all the time, but sometimes.

But he doesn't. 

She evades her perusers and goes to a backwoods motel for sleep and dinner. And we get more characterization fail:

In the bathroom I examined the mark on my thigh. It infuriated me. But, as I regarded it, in fury, I could not help but be taken by its cursive, graceful insolence. I clenched my fists. The arrogance, that it had been placed on my body! The arrogance, the arrogance! It marked me. But beautifully. I regarded myself in the mirror. I regarded the mark. There was no doubt about it. That mark, somehow, insolently, whether I wished it or not, incredibly enhanced my beauty. I was furious. 

Also, incomprehensibly I found that I was curious about the touch of a man. I had never much cared for men. I put the thought angrily from me. I was Elinor Brinton!

Looking back on my notes for this passage, I wrote "Rape is beautiful, and the rape brand has incredible mind-control powers". I don't get this. I really don't comprehend the mindset that says "IF I SHOW THEM WHAT THEY DON'T WANT, THEY WILL WANT IT LATER." First, it shows HUGE lack of understanding re: victims of violent crime, and it shows an even bigger misunderstanding about what rape and crimes like it are all about. It's like somebody thinks they can control your mind by forcing their bullshit down your throat. That once you experiance it you'll actively want it, and because you're saying you don't want it now, you have to be forced to take it. I don't even feel offended by this shit, really. Just kind of sad and incomprehending, that anybody could be that utterly fucking stupid.

So after fantasizing about being raped (naturally) Strawchick Elinor discovers more lipstick on her mirror, in that oh-so-mysterious brand, and goes running out of the motel.

And the bad guys? Chase. her. with. their. space. ship. And catch her, so it's effective, but...They chase her. With a space ship.

After she went out of her way to tell you at the beginning, she ain't that hot folks. WOW.

And the best part? Can I spoil the best part for you? In chapter four? This truck pulls up? And they start unloading girls out of its trunk. So EVERYBODY ELSE got drugged unconsious before they were kidnapped, but not Elinor. Strawchick is speshul, boys and girls.

Jesus. Worst. Slavers. Ever.

Commenting on this blog...

I've turned anonymous commenting on for a lil while. Because since when were Captchas a bleeding IQ test? We'll see how it goes. IF YOU GUYS WILL USE IT (HINT HINT HINT) and we don't get a spam overload we'll keep it around.

If it turns into an absolute flustercluck we'll put things back the way they were before.

Also-also? just for the pure bitchery of it? Dear person who is SPAMMING THE FUCK OUT OF MY BLOG REFERRAL LINKS? Please knock that shit off. I'd like to be proud of my exceptionally good days, not pissed off because you can't play fair. I don't spam. Neither should you.

Captive of Gor chapter one

Oh, my God, guys, I have wanted to get to this for a WHILE.

But first, a little background. John Norman is a professior of philosophy at a real college in New York City, today. His real name is the first thing you see in his Wiki article, so you can run right over right now and maybe even sign up for one of his classes! And his principal focus of study? Morality.

Yes, folks. This is not a fun book--I mean, it is a fun book, but not the way Norman intended it. This is an issue book. As explained here, an issue book is a book built around an Idea, rather than an Idea being inserted into a story. Everything is subserviant to the Idea in an Issue book, so unless you are a fan-fucking-tastic writer, this usually turns into a mess.

And Norman isn't going for something light like the cause of communism or the end of the world here, boys and girls. He's going straight to the heart of society. Morality. Ethics. He's going to solve all our soil erosion problems. How?

BY PUTTING WOMEN IN THEIR PLACE.

Yes, children! The cause of all this trouble in our world is women. Women are doing it. Women have too much to do. Too much freedom. Too much...too much everything. Yes. Our society will only be happy when women accept their correct place.

This is the premise of the whole series. Subservience to men is good and right, and women will be happy if they just give up and go back to the kitchen.

The problem? These books fail at proving their own point so hard there are cracks in the pavement. But enough from me! Let's get right to this.

Our heroine is a "woman" named Elinor Brinton, and I put woman in quotes there because she's less woman and more, well, stuffed bra. We will call her Strawchick, because that's basically all she is. A strawman John Norman built to showcase how evil-murder-evil-evil the free woman is. And she's so far removed from flesh-and-blood reality that she's not a threat to me. Norman demeans her right off the bat:

Yet on this world I am a fifteen-gold piece girl, more lovely than many, yet far excelled by many whose stunning beauty I can only envy.

By the way? That's one of the cleaner sentences in this book. It's gonna be brutal. Anyhoo, when you introduce a character it's usually a bad idea to grind her negative traits into the ground. Sadly for us, Strawchick has no positive traits.

Ellie goes to college, where she takes advantage of the magical powers of vagina, ladies and gents, manipulating all her male college prof--

...yeah. Remember when I said that John Norman is a real college professor? In a real college somewhere in this country? Right now? I am praying to God that this story is not revenge fic. I am praying, but I do not think these prayers will be answered.

Anyhoo, Strawchick gets good grades through all of college because she has a va-jay-jay. Aww, you think I'm kidding?

My intelligence, it seems to me, was good, but even when my work seemed to me inferior, it was rated highly, as, indeed, was that of my sorority sisters. Our parents were wealthy and substantial grants to the schools and colleges were often made following our graduations. Also, I had never found men, and many of my instructors were such, hard to please.

It turns out that the only bad grade Strawchick ever gets in college is in French, because her female instructor is a woman. And holy shit, I don't think I've ever seen a book swivel around and shoot itself in the face so damn fast before. I mean, even Mission Earth waited until the last hundred pages or so to kill itself.

What? You don't see it?

Well, the book is about how women are the evil ones. Women are the ones whose submission is required to bring society to a safe and even keel. But...well, it looks like the men are the problem here. Elinor gets a passing grade in the same class when the teacher is a man. Yes, it could be because she just retook the class, which is what you normally do when you fail, but the book specifically says it is sex related. Boy=girl pass, girl=girl fail.

Way to destroy your own argument, John.

Moving on. Strawchick describes more of her life. Then we get this paragraph:

I do not know when I was noticed. It may have been on a street in New York, on a sidewalk in London, at a cafe in Paris. It may have been while sun-bathing on the Riviera. It may even have been on the campus of my college. Somewhere. Unknown to me, I was noted, and would be acquired.

Two things on the bolded part, kids. First off...random period FTW. Second...Jesus christ that is so very, very rapey.

She decribes more of her life. Her rich, beautiful life. Her rich beautiful life with her father who treat both her and her mother like property (implying that this is why Elinor is the way she is. WOW. That's like, twice in as many pages! John, I thought you wanted to prove women were bad.) and her mother, who straight up fucking poisoned Elinor's pet dog. And I cannot tell you how unbelievably random this is:

I recall my mother entertaining in our home. This she often did. I recall my father once mentioning to me that she was his most valuable asset. He had meant this to be a compliment. I recall that she was beautiful. She poisoned a poodle I had once had.

Literally: My mom was pretty. She poisoned a poodle. HOW DO THESE THOUGHTS FOLLOW EACH OTHER?

 Then Daddy dies and Elinor gets money and...yeah, I finally hate her. I don't hate her for being manipulative, I don't hate her for being a rich white beautiful model in New York, who is successful without having to work at it. But this?

Whether my fortune on a given day was something over a half million dollars or something over three quarters of a million dollars did not much interest me.

Fuck you, Strawchick. Fuck you.

And then we finally get to the actual story.

Strawchick wakes up in bed, having dismissed her maid (Who Norman takes care to point out is "colored". Thank you, seventies era racism) and cook for the day, and contemplates being a model while writhing in satin sheets.

I once had satin sheets. They were shiny, and they felt very nice the first night. And maybe the second night. By the third? I went back to cotton. Satin is nice to wear when it is 60F (50, if there are sleeves) and you are getting back out of it in an hour. Sweat, heat, and wrinkles make it very uncomfortable. It looks good in a porn movie, but it doesn't work on a normal bed. Feather comforters? Yes, please.

So she's writhing in fantasy bed, not real bed,  and we get a loooooooong erotic description of her waking process, a looooooooooooooooooong erotic description of her getting into the shower, a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG erotic description of her soaping herself up, and then...

This happens. This is my favorite passage in the WHOLE FUCKING BOOK, kids. It is reproduced exactly as written. Check it:

There was now a mark on my thigh. It was high on the thigh. The mark itself was about an inch and a half high. It was a graceful, cursive mark. In its way lovely. I knew it could not have been the result of a natural wound. It was in its way perfect, rather deep and clean. It was a deliberately, and precisely inflicted mark.

There was a MARK on my THIGH
               It was HIGH on the THIGH
The mark was about an inch and a half HIGH.

Way to get your Dr. Seuss on, John. I mean, seriously. LOOK AT THAT PARAGRAPH AND TELL ME YOU COULD NOT C&P IT INTO A CHILDREN'S BOOK! This is the fucking Hop on Pop of the BDSM world. This is supposed to be a dangerous erotic book about abuse and suffering and slavery and the sexy-sexy is introduced with all the literay pizzazz of One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. 

Look, I know I'm supposed to be going on about PLOT fail here, but...*looks at the paragraph* I WANTED TO CRY! AND NOW WHY SHOULD I CRY? THE MARK, IT WENT ALL THE WAY UP TO THE SKY! Jesus Christ, take three seconds to make sure your description of burn-rape and torture doesn't rhyme like Green Eggs and Ham.

No shit, guys? If SOMEBODY can find a Dr Seuss illustration that'll match those three sentences, or can DRAW a Dr. Seuss-ish thing with that rhyme in it? Free art poster, your choice. It'll make my fucking day. Please do it. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do it. It will go on my wall forever.

Ahem. SO anyhoo, Strawchick FREAKS THE FUCK OUT and I don't blame her, because in her sleep somebody came in and attacked her perfect thigh (...*sporfle*) with a branding iron. She RUNS out into her bedroom and:

There, again I gasped, and again the room seemed to reel about me. On the mirror, which I had not noticed before, there was another mark. It had been drawn in my most scarlet lipstick on the surface of the mirror. It was more than a foot high, but it was the same mark that I wore on my thigh, that same graceful, cursive mark.

Yeah. There goes the happy fluffy writer fail. Now we're on to plot fail, boys and girls, and it's not nearly as delightful as the Thigh High rhyme.

See, this is where my Suspension of Disbelief dies. I believe that aliens from Alt-Earth would kidnap a random rich chick for fun and sell her into slavery to get their rocks off. It's the basic premise of the series, and if I can't buy that I might as well throw in the towel and stop reading now. What I don't buy is the sadism inherit in fucking with the future slave like this.

First, it lets her know you're still chasing her, the downside of which will become VERY clear in the next few chapters. Second...Norman is not trying to present us with a scared woman. He's trying to present us with an alternate lifestyle. And this? This right here? Indicates a sadistic fuckwit. Our first encounter with his alternate reality is a sadistic fuckwit. This does not sell us on his alt-earth bastion of female slavery. For these dudes, this should be no different than catching a wild horse. Fucking with her like this? The drawing, the secret branding and collaring? Giving her time to run? That's sadism. If Norman wants to present his ideas as normal, natural and right, Sadism and Hatred should be Kryptonite in his book (hah).

The other thing that bothers me? How Strawchick describes the mark as beautiful. Consistantly. It's a lovely mark. It's graceful. She's got no idea what the fuck it means, but it's in cursive.

Do me a favor? The most beautiful written language I know of is Arabic. Make a branding iron with some of the prettier letters, jam it on your thigh, and then describe this wound to me, will you? Is beautiful a word you'd use?  Or would you say something more like:

HOLY FUCK SOMEBODY BRANDED ME AND IT HURTS GET IT OFF GETITOFFGETITOFF SOMEBODY GET ME THE ALOE AND GAUZE AND JESUS I HAVE BEEN BURNED HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think it'd be more that second one there. I get what Norman wants to do with this book. I really do. I don't agree with it, but I get it. But the problem here is...nobody human would react this way. I don't care if you're burned with the most beautiful shape in the whole fucking universe, you're not going to see your own goddamned burn scar as pretty until after it's healed, and after your brain has accepted that it's here to stay. I mean...her modeling career is pretty much over, she's got about an inch and a half square of burned skin demanding medical attention, and oh, yeah, SOMEBODY CAME INTO HER BEDROOM AT NIGHT AND BRANDED HER WHILE SHE WAS SLEEPING AND SHE DID NOT EVEN WAKE UP.

Write your story about a slave accepting her lot in life. I'm mildly kinked in that direction already. I'd probably dig it a little bit. But for the love of all things good and right and holy, don't insult my intelligance by having her coo over her fresh burn scar first thing in the morning.

Sigh.

So what does our heroine do? In a book that is about proving the weakness of women and our need to be dominated by a strong male maley man? After discovering that she has been home invaded and burned and hurt and all? Do you think you can guess?

...and if this is a surprise, I disown you as my readers.

Come back tomorrow, in which we find out why our heroine is just too stupid to live!

THE. COVER. IS. DONE!!!

The cover for Blue Ghosts, the next Exiles story, due out October 2012. IT IS FINISHED.

It at my lunch guys and girls. IT SO VERY MUCH ATE MY LUNCH. My working method with painting is usually a lot smoother. Though it didn't help that the day after I posted that WIP? THE COMPUTER ATE THE MASTER FILE. And I had to start over. THANK GOD I POSTED THE WIP is all I can say.

So here you are. Look upon it. Feast your eyes upon this glorious cover. And be ready for Blue Ghosts in October! First week of October, boys and girls, very first week!

(BTW her name is Abbey. Just FYI.)

This is gonna be SO MUCH FUN!

Mission Earth One AND DONE

You know you just have those days when the very LAST thing you want to do is look at garbage? Yeah, this weekend was kind of shot for me. Anyhoo...

...right. back to the garbage. And actually, it's not gonna be much of a review. 'Cause this book and this reviewer have both run out of steam.

So Soltan wastes a little time making sure that he can hear/see everything that Jet hears/sees via the bugs he had surgically implanted into Jet-boy. And I have decided that Jettero Heller is, no shit? The best spy ever. Because there is no way anybody on any planet could be that much boyscout and yet still manage to fuck with our delightful emo narrator quite so much.

Then he goes to meet with his boss, where he is given:

1. enough info to make his boss disappear for good, thus saving everybody from the next nine terrible books. Sadly, Soltan does not do this.

and

2. a bottle of meth. Which Soltan does most emphatically do.

See, he's tired and in dread of the party and stressed out because HOLY SHIT, SECRET MISSION GOING AWAY PARTY GOING ON THE NEWS, so he does half a tab of meth.

Having never done any amphetimine at all.

And you know that scene in Transformers 2 (I only read about this. I know better than to watch most Micheal Bay movies) where the Beef's mom eats a pot brownie? That's the end of the book. Only with fireworks and camera crews and Jet naming his tug boat Prince Calcasia after his racist fairy tale, and that's the end of the story.

And it's time for me to make a confession: I don't get these books at all.

Seriously. I don't. Half the time I am positive that we have an unreliable narrator, that Soltan is the embodiment of every aspect of humanity that Hubbard hates, thus making his misogyny, homophobia and racism a commentary on the negative power of the human race, and if this were true I'd have to say these books are, no shit, brilliant and almost beautiful. And then he fucks it up, and I consider that maybe he's dead serious in all this nonsense, except that Soltan is the villian of this series, not the hero, and it wouldn't make sense to have your bad guy agree with you.

But I knew Hubbard had to have a point with all this. I knew that he couldn't just be pulling random shit out of his ass and throwing it at a typewriter. He's a major religious leader. He's writing these books to edify mankind, right? There's a point to this beyond evil-murder-evil-evil psychology and racism and random homophobic slurs? right?

Then we get to Earth and every female name is a joke. There is a mob boss named "Babe Corleone", a prostitute name Harlotta and Soltan gets a dancing girl named Utanc, which I thought was a sane name until I unscrambled the letter and got "a cunt" out of it, which pretty much describes Utanc.

But weirdly, I still had some kind of faith in Hubbard as a writer. Because even Twilight had something at its core. Something Mormon, but something. Even Fifty Shades of Gray  (Yes. I read it. No. I'm not doing it on the blog) had a heart, mind and soul to build the porn around. And Hubbard had things that neither S. Meyer nor E.L. James had (other than a common story, because 50=fanfic) like a sense of plot and timing and when to make things happen so we're not CAMPING IN THE FUCKING WOODS AGAIN (sorry. Old Harry Potter scars)
 
And then in the fifth book (yes. I've read that far.) Hubbard gives Soltan a ten inch penis.

And has him rape two lesbians into straightness with it. While Jet boy is winning out every casino in Atlantic city and snogging out with a smuggled in Countess Krak. 

 Also? He states that homosexuality is "Psychiatric Birth Control" because gay people don't make babies. Got that guys? Gay people don't make babies. 

Right?

 So at this point, I think he was just writing books, and he legitimately thought throwing all that shit at the reader was a good plan. That it was entertaining, that everyone agreed with him, that rape could work as a comedic device (this is a thing in these books) that plot threads could dangle unresolved (I have NO PLANS on reading further, so as far as I'm concerned all the threads in the universe are dangling in the abyss that is Jettero Heller) and that screaming PSYCHIATRY at the reader would make the villians look like A Thing and not A WIMP.

All that said, Mission Earth: The Invaders Plan is not the worst book I've ever read, or the worst PUBLISHED book I've ever read...hell. It's not even the worst book in the series. And even if you take the whole series as one book, It's not even the worst Hubbard book I've ever read. What is?

Taken from here

In his defense, the movie is much, much better.

And stay tuned boys and girls, because we start Captive of Gor NEXT WEEK. Is it worse? Oh god, yes. Is it better written? Oh, God, yes! WILL WE HAVE FUN? I think so, my children. I really think so.

Also, do not forget the "review my books" CONTEST that is still going on, and last but CERTAINLY not least, Blue Ghosts comes out first week in October, so BE HERE WHEN IT DOES.

Peace. Out.

Book Bitch Mission Earth END PART ONE

Okay, I'm going to blow through the rest of this book in two big chunks. But first...BUSINESS, boys and girls. BUSINESS.

ITEM THE FIRST: CONTEST! Yes, this is still going until October first. PLEASE guys. I know at least SOME of you have either purchased/...you know, I just realized there is no match word for "getting something for free"...anyway, SOME of you have either read one of my little books because it's ALL I TALK ABOUT on the blog, or you're here because I've been giving books away on Amazon (Um, yeah. I've given away over three hundred copies of things in the last five days) and you want to know who I am. ANYWAY! REVIEW MY BOOK AND WIN AN ART POSTER! OF ART! YES! I do not expect there to be more than ten entries (Okay, I expect there to be ONE entry, maybe, and you know who you are). If there are more than ten entries I will do something so that everybody gets a thing anyway. It'll probably be a wallpaper of something. Maybe even non-book related art. Because my jaw, boys and girls, my jaw will be on the FLOOR if there are more than ten entries.

ENTER THE CONTEST! REVIEW ONE OF MY DUMB LITTLE BOOKS! INSULT IT IF YOU HAVE TO! JUST PUT SOMETHING THERE PLEASE FOR MY SANITY'S SAKE!

Okay, got that out of the way.

ITEM THE SECOND: The Next Book I Bitch. Right now I have a vote for Captive of Gor. Let me remind you that this is the book John Norman wrote from the female perspective. Which means we will most likely be doing that one, as it has been sitting on my harddrive FOR MONTHS, along with copious copious notes on the fail that is the Gor series.

But there are still other options! There is still time to turn the tide if you do not want to drown in a myre of mysogyny and purple prose! Remember, these are the options:

1. Captive of Gor
2. City of Bones, by Cassandra Clare
3. Eternal Prey, Nina Bangs (Yes, indeed it is a blissful vacation of stupid)
4. Mission Earth: Black Genesis. By the way? My love of teh stupid has me reading the third book because it is there and I am frequently bored. I got to a point where I literally shouted "What the FUCK am I reading?" in the living room. My stepfather gave me a very bizzare look.

VOTE, my loyal blog readers! Vote!

ITEM! THE! THIRD!: You know what would really make my day, loyal blog-readers? More than reviews on my books or votes for the next book I tear into? Comments. Talk to me, sports fans. I'm all ears. Make comments. It will put me on the MOON, guys and girls. the very MOON.

And last, but not least:

THE END OF MISSION EARTH! PART ONE!

Oh, god this is going to suck.  Where were we?

Right about... Here. The drug macguffins. So after revealing the dastardly dastardly plan of the dastards (I just managed to make that stop looking like a word) in the dastardly CIA, Soltan Gris commits random murder of side character we never really gave a fuck about. Right. He then picks up the bug he's going to have *snicker* Prahd Bittlestiffender (WHO WILL BE IN THE THIRD BOOK TOO! YAY!) implant into Jettero Heller. And then he murders the clerk who gives him the bug. And crashes an air car into a hospital because bugs, I guess. I don't know. It's great that our narrator finally grew a spine after five hundred pages, but it is a murder spine, and after the first three that kind of gets a little boring.

Then he checks in on Prahd and the Widow Tayl.

They're having post-surgery post-sex cookies. Meaning that Prahd and the fine madam Tayl had surgery to remove such terrible disfigurements as warts (in a futuristic society) and saggy boobs (Because this is a sign of evil in women, according to Hubbard). And then had sex.

Wait. scratch the parentheses for a second. Having read three books in this series I think I can say the following without shaming his good name. First, the books? Do not get better. Oh god do they not get better. I am now reading the ones published after he died. GOOD. FUCKING. GOD. Second, Jet-boy and Soltan are equally shit-stains, in my book. Third: SATIRE. WHY DO YOU USE THIS WORD? I DO NOT THINK IT MEANS WHAT YOU THINK IT MEANS. Fourth: Hubbard does not have a Virgin/Whore complex. He has a Virgin AND Whore complex. As in the evil women? Are whores. And the good women? Are virginal whores. It makes no sense, but that's the only way I can explain this "I am the Madonna sans child, so let's go fuck in that corner" attitude every girl has in this book.  Hubbard makes a BIG DEAL out of how horny the Widow Tayl is, but honestly? I don't see a difference between her and every other woman in these books.

Also? In the third book? There is heavily implied pedophilia. And that was still not the part that made me scream what the fuck am I reading. At some point Hubbard went way, way past OH, JOHN RINGO, NO! and right into face-melting territory. All the hugs in the world will not make it okay.

Okay, back to book.

So first Soltan scares the shit out of Prahd. Which is okay, the dude doesn't have much of a spine. And then Soltan and the Widow Tayl have an "interview." And by interview I mean this:

(Widow Tayl) was saying "And Prahd and I had the most wonderful night. In fact we had the most wonderful...wonderful...wonderful...wonderful..." The cupid was really rocking! (MM:TIV pg 521)

But there is one great quote in this chapter:

There is nothing quite so discouraging as going through this sort of thing with a woman telling you how great another man is. Wearing.

One: Best. Writer. Ever. Second: Ron, it's one word. Three letters. Sex. If you're going to use the voices you can describe the actual act. Also, I am beginning to think you are permanently thirteen.

Next chapter! Lombar inspects the ship! And he finds what Jettero is planning to do on Earth! And he disables it! And it is exactly as exciting as it sounds!

However, in trying to get Lombar out of the ship without Jet-boy noticing, Soltan agrees to Jettero's going away party. It will have:

-rainbow booze (aka "yellow, pink and purple bubblebrew")
-flowers
-blue skinned party favors ("blue skinned dancing girls for the contractors and their crews." Thanks a fucking million, Ron. The cause of feminism is set back thirty years every time you touched a pen)
-Dance bands
-Dancing bears
-fireworks (TO SEE OFF A TOP-SECRET MISSION SHIP)

And will, frankly, be the best part of all time, forever. You know that Katy Perry video? Last Friday Night? Yeah. It's that party.

To see off a top secret mission. That should have already left over a month ago.

Then he manages to get Jettero to the Widow's secret hospital, where Prahd sees to implanting the bug, and the Widow Tayl sees Jet!

"When I first saw him...I thought he was some woods God. So strong, so powerful." The lamp in her ceiling began to swing and the music took on a throb. "he stepped out of the airbus so smoothly...so smoothly...so smoothly..." A huge multipetaled blossom by the door seemed to get larger. "Oh. Oh. Oh. OH!" Cried (Tayl) and the blossom burst like an explosion!

Two things I want to point out. Apparently if you orgasm on Voltar things randomly explode. Also, you'll note the (Tayl) I put in a couple of places. This is because, like the Countess, Widow Tayl has spontaneously developed a non-insulting name: Pratia. Right around the time that she becomes attracted to Jet.

Jet can purify women. With his penis.

This happens three more times, and Soltan is stunned. She isn't even touching him. Honest-to-God, this book does not imply masturbation. It implies that The Widow Tayl is having spontaneous orgasms just by repeating Jet's name. And this drives Soltan to swear more eternal vengeance against Heller, that EVIL man lying unconscious in the hospital under the care of the doctor Soltan basically conned out of life. 

Our hero, boys and girls.

Come back tomorrow to see the party, AND BE DONE WITH THIS FUCKING TERRIBLE BOOK!

Book Bitch: Mission Earth One

Almost there. Almost there. THE END IS IN SIGHT. WE ARE ALMOST DONE WITH THIS TERRIBLE TERRIBLE BOOK.

Soltan, having conned a doctor and knocked boots with a woman named the Widow Tayl, Soltan checks the tug boat. Jettero is now zooming along, because his future bride's freedom is hanging in the balance. All is good here. Soltan moves on to his TRUE purpose in life: Graft.

He needs medical supplies for the clandestine operation on Jet-boy. So he goes to a medical supply depo and buys it. ALL OF IT. He begins inventing things to buy...and then for some reason he says to double the order and send most of the doubled cash to Lombar, because...cops? I don't know. Why things must be done this way is never very clear. But Soltan takes some of the money and mails stuff to Lombar to prove that he's giving Lombar money.

Am I giving you the impression that this plot is moving? Oh, I'm sorry. This whole thing is done item by item. We get a full list of everything Soltan is buying.

Also? He lets Lombar know he's stolen half a mil from the government through the most transparent code possible. This might shock you this deep in the book, but these guys SUCK at being spies.

Soltan does do something smart, though. He goes to the metal yards and buys as much gold as he possibly can. Apparently the value of gold is compounded on Earth--you know, America uses a gold standard and no other country really exists--so once Soltan gets to Earth, he'll be an all powerful millionare, Jettero will be poor and abandoned, and...Yeah. I'm just going to bring this out again and get it over with:

Moving on. Soltan goes BACK to the hanger, sees that Jet is redoing the paint coat on the tug boat and...

...oh boy. OOOOOOOOOOOH GUYS! WE ARE AT THIS PART! YAY!

If you can't tell by now (unless this is the first time you've been at my blog, in which case, sorry and fair warning and welcome, I hope you'll stick around a while) I'm a bitch. And nothing warms my bitchy little heart as much as watching somebody's plot swivel around and shoot the whole story in the face. It takes a lot of work, a lot of stupid, and a pretty good amount of talent to make this happen, and when it does, it is a thing of beauty.

Soltan goes over to a ship that has just arrived from Earth. We are about to find out why Jettero has to go to earth and fail to save it, why Lombar hit the fucking roof when Jet-boy's report came in. We are about to find out how Lombar is going to become Emperor of the Voltarian Empire. We are about to find out why Earth is so goddamned important. 

It is because Lombar and Soltan are importing drugs and alcohol.


The dasterdly plan of the dasterdly evil murder evil evil CIA is to import drugs and alcohol from Earth to Voltan. They're going to first addict the entire population to heroin, meth and scotch, and then control the supply, undermining the Empire's sanity and allowing Lombar to seize the throne.

Meth. Heroin. And Johnny Walker Gold Label Scotch.

Hubbard is serious. He seriously thinks this is a good plot. Aliens are using unaltered Earth drugs to control their own population. And scotch! Don't forget the scotch!

Guys, there are a few things that I like to think I know a lot about, due to my upbringing. Collective works of C.S. Lewis, basic theology, the large number of ways one can discover scorpions upon one's person (long story) and drugs. See, my dad? He's a drug and alcohol abuse counselor. I know how these things work. I know how they're developed. I know that heroin>morphene>opium, and that the more technology you have? The bigger, badder and nastier drugs you start to develop. Part of it is you have a greater facility for creating new chemicals, and part of it is you have access to things like lithium batteries and matchheads (two prime ingredients in meth. Part of the reason why I've never done drugs is, I know where they come from)

Now, this is not a drug-and-booze-less society. Earlier we had a scene where Soltan Gris tries to talk logic into Lombar, and Lombar replies with:

"Have a chank-pop." 

And the effect of a chank-pop? Is not something earth drugs can do easy. There's another scene not too long ago, after the nightclub, where Soltan is sitting and being miserable because he is hungover as fuck.

Hubbard seriously wants me to believe that, in a universe where trailer trash can make methamphetamine in a two liter coke bottle out of batteries, matches and cold medicine (among other things. You're better off drinking the battery acid, kids. Trust me) the Voltarians haven't come up with something worse for you? With a stronger high?

Or let me put it another way. This is like your local drug dealer discovering a magical portal back to the era of vikings, and bringing back mead and unrefined opium to addict the modern world to. These things are, I am sure, very nice, very addictive, and not something you ought to abuse. But we have Everclear and Vicodin. It's not like we need it.

THIS is what the whole book is resting on. THIS CONCEPT. RIGHT HERE. That the drugs a primitive society (this being ours) is capable of making are SO MUCH BETTER than the drugs a high-tech society is capable of making (and remember, kids, Voltan does have drugs to use) that people plotting to overthrow the empire can use them for leverage.

The plot of this book is all about scotch, smack and meth. THESE THINGS ARE THE MACGUFFINS DRIVING THE PLOT.

 I got nothin, guys. This is a level of stupid even I cannot compete with. See you tomorrow.

Oh, and hey? If you're enjoying this (Thirty people are visiting this page EVERY DAY right now. I KNOW YOU ARE THERE, PEOPLE) you can help me out.

I am pretty sure we're going to be finished with this book (oh god oh god we are almost done) in probably the next two days. SO! You lot can help me pick out the next one. Here are our options:

1. Mission Earth Two. (Honestly? You guys are gonna have to TELL ME you want this one, otherwise I am taking a break from El-Ron for a while)

2. Captive of Gor, John Norman. This is one of the books he wrote from a female perspective. You have no idea how bad it is.

3. Eternal Prey, Nina Bangs. First, it is a paranormal romance novel written by a woman named Nina Bangs. Second, it is a book about men who are posessed by the ghosts of dead dinosaurs. IT IS FULL OF STARS.

4. City of Bones, Cassandra Clare. I read it, it was boring as hell, but for some reason the author's history has been washing up on my internets a lot, and there will be a movie of it soon.

All of these, I have avoided doing because I could not think of how to summerize it.

My pick right now is City of Bones. Second choice, Captive of Gor. HOWEVER, If I find out one of you has a preference, I'll switch over to that one. But it will take more than one of you to get me to do Mission Earth Two. It sucks. It sucks in a way that I'll have trouble making it funny. It is Manos, the Hand of Books. 

 So COMMENT, my loyal blog readers. COMMENT! LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU WANT ME TO DO!  AND YES THIS DOES MEAN YOU.

Blue Ghosts Update (PICTURE!) + CONTEST!

EVERYTHING about this story has eaten my lunch. I think it's awesome, I think you guys are going to love the ever-loving crap out of it, and I will be very happy when it is all DONE.

I've handed it over to the proofreader/beta reader (...aka my mother. Because this is what she does for a living and she is good at it) and so the text itself should be TOTALLY DONE by this time next week.

I've begun working on the cover art. You'll see a WIP below. After we get a little more business out of the way.

I've been playing with Amazon's promotional options. I'm not in love with them, but they've been doing pretty well. And this means I'm going to make a tactical decision regarding how we'll release Blue Ghosts.

First I WILL release it on Smashwords, for free...for a week. After the week is over, I'm enrolling it in Kindle Select, which requires that it be exclusive. I am doing this first, just to see what will happen, and second...I know a few of you hate the Kindle cold, and I want you guys to have your copies of the book.

After that...we will see what happens.

Alright. Contest.

So what is the contest, you ask? Well, as some of you MIGHT know, I'm also an artist. I do all my own covers, I did a webcomic for a while, yadda yadda yadda. And through my Deviant art site, I sell PRINTS. Big pretty fluffy prints of my own work.

What does this have to do with Contests and books and whatnot? I want to hold a drawing, let's say, October 1st, in which I will use a random number generator to pick A Person. This Person will get their choice of print from my Deviant Art Gallery. How will this Person get picked?

Review one of my books. That's all. Review a book, link back to the review, let me see it and I'll give you a number and do the drawing on October 1st.

So. RULES FOR THE BLUE GHOSTS RELEASE CONTEST:

1. Review one of my Amazon titles. (Starbleached is on a promotional give away right now FYI if you want to pick up a copy)

2. BE HONEST. I don't want glory glory happy happy praise and worship here. I just want reviews. Four stars, two stars, three stars, one star, I don't care. I want to know your opinion of my books. If you say it's shit and you never want to read another one, that's fine. You'll still go in the drawing. There are no reprocussions on giving me a bad review. Trust me. I'm harder on me than you'll ever be.

3. LINK TO THE REVIEW in the comments section of this post.

4. PICK OUT YOUR PICTURE You'll get the largest approved size. Usually this is twenty inches by thirty. It won't be framed, but these are damned good quality prints.

I'll generate the number October 1st. You'll have about 24 hours to contact me with your mailing address, otherwise I pick somebody else.

Okay? Okay. PICTURE TIME:

This is gonna look awesome, trust me.

Book Bitch Mission Earth part one billion

This will never end. Never. Ever. Ever. Ever. I will be here forever. This book is slowly driving me insane.

Let's keep going! Why not! I don't need the braincells Ron's killing! What happened yesterday?

...right. Soltan now has an excuse for why he's been sitting on his ASS for three hundred pages. What will he do now?

Well, Doctor Cuttysmark here tries to blackmail Soltan, incidentally confirming that Jet's friends in Spiteos are dead (OUR PROTAGONIST, boys and girls. POISONS HELPLESS STARVING MEN AND RAPE VICTIMS). How does Soltan respond (and Ron show that his protagonist now has a spine?)

He straight up murders the doctor.

OUR PROTAGONIST. MURDERS PEOPLE WHO TRY TO HELP HIM.

We also get this gem of a quote from Soltan:

Hells have no demon as full of hate as a man covertly hypnotized. 

You know, I didn't think I'd get to use this so soon...

L. Ron Hubbard. Best selling novelist. Cliche butcherer.

So now Soltan has to get his REVENGE! (Pronounce it like Megamind, and you'd have the right mentality) And also get Jet off the planet in one piece. (And Hubbard has to fix the fact that ALL THE ACTION is going to be happening with JET, and not our Narrator. DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE? BECAUSE I SURE DO) HOW! WILL! HE! DO! IT!

Actually, by being smart for a change.

He goes and has a couple documents forged, as if coming from the EMPEROR HIMSELF, and then shows them to the Countess. One of them pulls Jet off front-line dangerous type stuff and sticks him on the Emperor's own staff. The other one gives the Countess a full pardon from the crimes she didn't commit, and permission to marry Space Elvis. Suddenly blissfully happy, she promises Soltan she'll get Jet moving as soon as humanly Voltarianly possible.

Why this could not be done THREE HUNDRED PAGES AGO I will never know. Also, Soltan moans some more about how terrible it was, being hypnotised by the Countess. Hey, Soltan?

Moving on...

Soltan goes and finds a stupid female clerk (I really need to stop expecting better of Ron. I really do) to tell him who the best "cellologist" on Voltan is. He's pointed to a young kid, desperate for work. He recurits this kid by disguising himself as the kid's idol and promising the kid a job with the Emperor. The kid promptly falls all over himself to do the job that Soltan wants done. Soltan has another victory! Wow! And even better...the plot is moving. 

 Now all he needs is the equiptment, a hosptial and some personal money. Where is he going to get that from?

Via RAMPANT MISOGYNY, of course! With a side dish of homophobia.

Oh, god guys. OOOOOOOOH God. I thought this was a few more chapters away. Soltan remembers a woman who killed her invalid husband, who he blackmailed for things, who he didn't really have to blackmail for anything because this woman would literally fuck a doorknob. As in, I'm pretty sure she does, in this book, on camera and more than once. Her name?

The Widow Tayl.

This is the second female name that I have to desperately pretend is not a direct reference to her butt. and it's a lot harder with this one.

What does he tell her about the top secret operation that will happen in her tiny hosptial room? A Lord bribed Soltan into providing operating space because he had a son that HATED women, and said son needs to be lobotomized so that said son will make babies. She agrees, of course, and then...

OH NOES! Hubbard has to write a sex scene. HUBBARD HAS TO WRITE A SEX SCENE! L RON HUBBARD IS ABOUT TO WRITE A SEX SCENE!

Tayl's robe hit the floor.

 My right boot hit the far wall and fell with a thud.

A standing lamp began to reel. 

A table of instruments was shaking, and every instrument on it clattered.

 The lamp crashed to the floor.

The double window blew open inward with a terrific blast of wind.

The outer door looked solid. I got to it and put my hand on it to steady myself. I was totally shot.

The sybarite (The hell if I know. CW) looked like he was laughing as he sprayed out water into the pool.

Thank you, Ron. Thank you SO MUCH for that image of a cherubic statue's ejaculate. I'll treasure it always. And for once, FOR ONCE, Hubbard has a long chapter. OH MY GOD, it's more than three pages! What happens next? Well, having helped the Widow Tayl scratch an itch, he now introduces himself to Dr...

Really, Ron? Really? You're really naming a character that? For reals, this is not some crude joke you're preforming with just my copy? You, a grown-ass man, actually thought naming a character this was a good idea?

Ladies and gentlemen, meet doctor Prahd Bittlestiffender. This is not a typo. This is his name in the book. Prahd Bittlestiffender.

PRAHD BITTLESTIFFENDER.
 
And the kid is hungry, depserate and absolutely WORSHIPS the guy Soltan is posing as. Yadda yadda, a repeat of before. I think the new, spine-filled Soltan kicks puppies, too. Chapter closes with Soltan gleefully wringing his hands, thinking of all the fun Widow Tayl and Prahd Bittlestiffender will be having together. Because ,you know. He's Bittle. Stiff. End. 'er.

Sadly, this picture is ten times funnier than Ron can ever hope to be.

See you tomorrow, kids.