There are times.
There are times when I want to be a part of the crowd, and times when all I want is to be away from it completely. There are times I feel I cannot write what is in my heart, and my lips are sewn shut by what can be said and shared in the context of online stores.
I speak of keywords, secret words, and other ways writers have of sneaking around the rules for kinky topics which are legal and allowed but still yet frowned upon in polite bookstore shelf company. In my first reviews, I used to see those tricks in a negative light until the porn-apocalypse hit and books were 'cleaned up' and their store pages sanitized so those not knowing the secret code-words would not be offended. Now I see them as 'what else can you do?'
The readers of these genres know better, so they search for the keywords. There have been times I saw certain code words banned, and then everyone moved on to another set, only to see those banned. I haven't been back in the review game recently, so I am not sure if this has abated, or the universe has settled down to an agreeable (for now) set of code words used to avoid offending people and letting people find what they want to read.
I am sure the next time someone knows the code, gets offended, and speaks out there shall be another round of secret code shuffling and a new term shall be invented by those writers desperately trying to tell people the contents of their works.
There is a commercial side to what we do, writing books for the fans of different turn-ons and legal kinks and genres, while still yet trying to hide the fact we write about it on the book seller's shelf. BSM, latex, transgender, and that sort of stuff, and you know how it goes. If these types of books were out on the shelves in a real brick-and-mortar book store they would either have to be in the back of the store in a room somewhere or have their covers obscured in some way to avoid offending people in there looking for cook books and cat calendars.
Such is the way of the store, be it online or in the real world. Sell to everyone yet offend no one.
I have real concerns about the edgier genres as well, especially these days when the skin grows thinner and the outrage louder. Non-con. Monsters and shifters, such as werewolves or vampires. I can see a day where the outrage consumes books edgier than these, and it comes to the front doors of most genres. These sorts of books...well, they just aren't for today's world. Not after what happened. Let's be sensitive. Right?
Two thoughts:
I am a writer, thus I am one of the most insensitive people in the world. My characters shall say the same of me and use every word I give them to curse me up and down. My readers expect this of me, because I value honesty and I write about life.
And:
I feel when people's lives are so consumed by fantasy they cannot tell the difference between that and reality these days.
It is all around us, this equating fantasy with reality. People who argue politics with the events in fantasy books. People who hold up a Hollywood movie made for entertainment as proving a point. People so consumed by hobbies and games that they have little else in their life to relate to. I like my hobbies and games, but there is a point when too much of a good thing becomes an unhealthy obsession.
And then there is this part of me that wonders if the world is in so much pain we become addicted to the things which take us away. I watch the opioid crisis destroy lives, people slowly drowning in a gray sea of blissfully numb death. Forget. Tune out. Take a pill. Waste away.
I wonder at times if this is due to all of the worry injected into our lives by an era of instant communication, sudden terror at any moment, shocking images, and information that comes at us with the speed of an extra-terrestrial comet hurtling towards our carefully crafted glass menageries of reality.
And so we become obsessed with outrage, and outraged at fantasy itself - because the lines are blurred. I remember a day when if you screamed about a bad word in a book or something you didn't agree with people would look you up and down and ask you if you were crazy.
"It is just a book. You know that, right?"
"Then why are you reading it?"
"Don't you have something real to worry about?"
Today? I laugh. Not today. To Kill a Mockingbird is being banned in some curriculums, and we have lists of other books which have been banned all the same. People get upset by books and we see them pulled from store shelves. It is cool and trendy to be upset on social media. Booksellers get upset by selling erotica and hide it in plain sight.
Outrage, precious outrage that should be directed at real injustices and problems, is wasted on arguing about fantasy and nonsense. Well, I digress, since a lot of the news these days is fantasy itself, it all blurs together in a mess of information, misinformation, facts, lies, and propaganda meant to get us to think a certain way...scratch that...to pay the bills because they are giving the suckers what they want.
You are not paying for news, you are paying for confirmation bias. To be told you are right. To have your feathers puffed and our ego inflated. You are right and they are wrong. Did you hear about our paid subscription service, you smart and wonderful person?
Our blending of fantasy and reality is one thing, and then our closeness is another. The world feels overcrowded, and everyone's elbows are bumping into each other. The slightest discomfort becomes an insult, and any insult becomes an attack. Once upon a time I read a book called Future Shock that warned us of this moment, but somewhere that has probably been banned by someone and I doubt you have ever heard of it.
PT Barnum used to say a sucker was born every minute. In today's overpopulated world it feels like there are millions of suckers born every second.
As I said, there are times.
There are times which I wonder where this is all going.
There are times when I want to be a part of the crowd, and times when all I want is to be away from it completely. There are times I feel I cannot write what is in my heart, and my lips are sewn shut by what can be said and shared in the context of online stores.
I speak of keywords, secret words, and other ways writers have of sneaking around the rules for kinky topics which are legal and allowed but still yet frowned upon in polite bookstore shelf company. In my first reviews, I used to see those tricks in a negative light until the porn-apocalypse hit and books were 'cleaned up' and their store pages sanitized so those not knowing the secret code-words would not be offended. Now I see them as 'what else can you do?'
The readers of these genres know better, so they search for the keywords. There have been times I saw certain code words banned, and then everyone moved on to another set, only to see those banned. I haven't been back in the review game recently, so I am not sure if this has abated, or the universe has settled down to an agreeable (for now) set of code words used to avoid offending people and letting people find what they want to read.
I am sure the next time someone knows the code, gets offended, and speaks out there shall be another round of secret code shuffling and a new term shall be invented by those writers desperately trying to tell people the contents of their works.
There is a commercial side to what we do, writing books for the fans of different turn-ons and legal kinks and genres, while still yet trying to hide the fact we write about it on the book seller's shelf. BSM, latex, transgender, and that sort of stuff, and you know how it goes. If these types of books were out on the shelves in a real brick-and-mortar book store they would either have to be in the back of the store in a room somewhere or have their covers obscured in some way to avoid offending people in there looking for cook books and cat calendars.
Such is the way of the store, be it online or in the real world. Sell to everyone yet offend no one.
I have real concerns about the edgier genres as well, especially these days when the skin grows thinner and the outrage louder. Non-con. Monsters and shifters, such as werewolves or vampires. I can see a day where the outrage consumes books edgier than these, and it comes to the front doors of most genres. These sorts of books...well, they just aren't for today's world. Not after what happened. Let's be sensitive. Right?
Two thoughts:
I am a writer, thus I am one of the most insensitive people in the world. My characters shall say the same of me and use every word I give them to curse me up and down. My readers expect this of me, because I value honesty and I write about life.
And:
I feel when people's lives are so consumed by fantasy they cannot tell the difference between that and reality these days.
It is all around us, this equating fantasy with reality. People who argue politics with the events in fantasy books. People who hold up a Hollywood movie made for entertainment as proving a point. People so consumed by hobbies and games that they have little else in their life to relate to. I like my hobbies and games, but there is a point when too much of a good thing becomes an unhealthy obsession.
And then there is this part of me that wonders if the world is in so much pain we become addicted to the things which take us away. I watch the opioid crisis destroy lives, people slowly drowning in a gray sea of blissfully numb death. Forget. Tune out. Take a pill. Waste away.
I wonder at times if this is due to all of the worry injected into our lives by an era of instant communication, sudden terror at any moment, shocking images, and information that comes at us with the speed of an extra-terrestrial comet hurtling towards our carefully crafted glass menageries of reality.
And so we become obsessed with outrage, and outraged at fantasy itself - because the lines are blurred. I remember a day when if you screamed about a bad word in a book or something you didn't agree with people would look you up and down and ask you if you were crazy.
"It is just a book. You know that, right?"
"Then why are you reading it?"
"Don't you have something real to worry about?"
Today? I laugh. Not today. To Kill a Mockingbird is being banned in some curriculums, and we have lists of other books which have been banned all the same. People get upset by books and we see them pulled from store shelves. It is cool and trendy to be upset on social media. Booksellers get upset by selling erotica and hide it in plain sight.
Outrage, precious outrage that should be directed at real injustices and problems, is wasted on arguing about fantasy and nonsense. Well, I digress, since a lot of the news these days is fantasy itself, it all blurs together in a mess of information, misinformation, facts, lies, and propaganda meant to get us to think a certain way...scratch that...to pay the bills because they are giving the suckers what they want.
You are not paying for news, you are paying for confirmation bias. To be told you are right. To have your feathers puffed and our ego inflated. You are right and they are wrong. Did you hear about our paid subscription service, you smart and wonderful person?
Our blending of fantasy and reality is one thing, and then our closeness is another. The world feels overcrowded, and everyone's elbows are bumping into each other. The slightest discomfort becomes an insult, and any insult becomes an attack. Once upon a time I read a book called Future Shock that warned us of this moment, but somewhere that has probably been banned by someone and I doubt you have ever heard of it.
PT Barnum used to say a sucker was born every minute. In today's overpopulated world it feels like there are millions of suckers born every second.
As I said, there are times.
There are times which I wonder where this is all going.
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