I am getting a late start today because of real life. Because of that, I checked a couple of my regular resources for a topic. Politics is too easy, especially with the midterms less than a week away. Besides, I’ve done more than my share of politics here recently. I wanted something different and I found it. . . and I might never be the same again.
As you know if you’ve been reading this blog for long or if you followed me over on Mad Genius Club, I’m a big fan of The Passive Voice. Anyone who is interested in the publishing industry should be following this blog, among others. Anyway, I checked to see if PG had anything of interest this morning and came across a link to this article over on HuffPo. I’m the first to admit, I usually cringe at anything the HuffPo posts because of their bias but this was a whole new cringe. It was a cringe for the publishing industry.
These are real books and their authors, so-called celebs–got paid really good money for “their” books. I’ll leave you to read the entire article, but here are a couple of gems (and I use that term loosely) I just had to share.
The first is a quote from Star, by Pamela Anderson of Baywatch fame and Tommy Lee infamy.
Her breasts came on suddenly and tenaciously, as if trying to make up for lost time. The hard bump turned out to be one of a pair of unruly and self-willed nipples.
No, this isn’t science fiction and the breasts aren’t part of some android or alien creature. Even so, when I read this quote for the first time, my mind went to very strange places with flashing (as in lights) boobs and nipples doing their own thing. . . including possibly levitating away fro the rest of the breast to fly around the room on their own.
Worse, she got paid for this and probably paid much more than most non-celeb authors will ever see as an advance.
But she’s not alone in the WTF?!? department.
Hilary Duff’s Elixir makes the list with this quote:
I felt dizzy and hot and floaty, like every cliche . . . but it was true. I couldn’t feel my feet. I finally felt like I was where my soul belonged.
I don’t know about you guys, but if I feel dizzy and hot and floaty, I tend to check my temperature because that’s just not normal. Now I can’t feel my feet? Mmmm, maybe time to call 9-1-1? Without additional detail about why she’s (he’s?) feeling this way, I see a hospitalization in the near future for this poor character. As for feeling like she is finally where her soul belongs? Ewwwww. Would you want to spend eternity feeling like she described? I certainly wouldn’t.
And, again, she got paid money and this book took a slot a non-celebrity author could have had and all because the publisher thought the celebrity name would sell books in the short term without looking at long term continued profit. Oh, there’s that law of unintended consequences I’ve been talking about.
Now that I’ve shared some of the misery with you guys, I’m going to get to work. I have books to write–hopefully, not with any prose like the above in them–and things to do before the weekend gets here. Take care and stay tuned. I might just have another post later today with a bit of a surprise in it.
When a Politician (with the D after their name) gets a big publishing deal, I assume that it’s a campaign donation (even when the Politician isn’t running). 😈
Or kickback. Kickback is always a possibility.
Oh yeah, especially with all the mergers in the process or being talked about right now.
Yep. Why else would we have been “blessed” with so many posts from a failed presidential candidate over the last decade?
The sad part is, I can think back on my own writing back when I was a teen and I had some seriously cringe worthy elements myself. (Forever lost on 3.25 inch floppies.) If they’re serious about the writing, how do you grow as a writer if you START too big to edit? Secondly: if these are ghost written, um wouldn’t these people be able to afford a better quality ghost writer?
The same here and thank goodness those old efforts are forever missing. As for the ghost writers, they probably got bottom dollar and put in exactly that much work. Then there’s the point they also had to write what the celeb wanted.
That first one reminds me of an OVA about otaku culture, in which a rather excessively endowed animated female comes through the TV “top” first.
That probably was not the image the author was aiming for, but that certainly is what they got.
LOL, yeah. I was thrown back to an old Dr. Goldfoot (iirc) movie where the female robots had guns in their boobs.
The advantage to not ever reading a book by a celebrity is that I never have to read this stuff until someone quotes it.
Which is why I never read such books, at least not unless I get paid to do so. Or I’m blogging about it and have free rein to mock as much as I want.
These make Snoopy look like a master of eloquence.
Absolutely!