I keep having this hysterical dialogue within myself as I work on Underground Guy. It's just an erotic novel with a bit of meaning. Why are you slathering so much effort on it? The guys and girls who read this won't care about your grammar; only if it something that's really glaring, and even then they'll toss it off.
At the same time, another voice...or voices...scream back, Why're you minimizing your work? Why are you even thinking of dissing your characters? They trust you to do your best for them; that's why they've revealed their stories to you. Who cares that there's sex in the book? It's there for a purpose and is used to reveal story and character. If it offends people, so fucking what? It's good and right to be there.
I am working like crazy to make UG as solid a work as I can...and it's got a lot of very positive aspects to it. Devlin goes from being a serial rapist to a man tied into an imperfect relationship that makes him so happy, he never wants to hurt anyone ever again. Tawfi and Reg also have character arcs, albeit much smaller ones, and there's a solid critique of America's judicial system in it, showing how it favors the rich and sometimes the only path to justice is through illegal means.
That's a running thread in my work -- how broken our judicial system is...how it always has been. If you're white with money, you can all but get away with raping a woman or molesting underage girls or stealing funds from widows and orphans. If you're black, brown or poor, you're screwed.
One perfect example of this is how two different women were treated for wrongful voting. A black woman who thought she could vote did so and got sent to jail for 2 years. A white woman who deliberately voted twice got a scolding, nothing more. Or, to keep it in line with my story, a white frat president got probation and didn't have to register as a sex offender after raping and strangling several women while a black woman who was being used as a sex slave was sent to prison for 51 years because she killed her abuser.
Nothing new about it. When Stanford White was murdered by Harry Thaw in 1906 (as depicted in the movie Ragtime) Thaw's wealth kept him from being hanged or even being sent to prison, though he was put in a mental institution where his money let him live a comfortable life. And after the Johnstown flood, the owners of the dam that collapsed where able to keep themselves from being held responsible for the deaths of 2200 people because they were wealthy and knew the judges hearing the cases, even though modifications they had ordered on the dam were the cause of its collapse.
I guess it's always going to be this way...
At the same time, another voice...or voices...scream back, Why're you minimizing your work? Why are you even thinking of dissing your characters? They trust you to do your best for them; that's why they've revealed their stories to you. Who cares that there's sex in the book? It's there for a purpose and is used to reveal story and character. If it offends people, so fucking what? It's good and right to be there.
I am working like crazy to make UG as solid a work as I can...and it's got a lot of very positive aspects to it. Devlin goes from being a serial rapist to a man tied into an imperfect relationship that makes him so happy, he never wants to hurt anyone ever again. Tawfi and Reg also have character arcs, albeit much smaller ones, and there's a solid critique of America's judicial system in it, showing how it favors the rich and sometimes the only path to justice is through illegal means.
That's a running thread in my work -- how broken our judicial system is...how it always has been. If you're white with money, you can all but get away with raping a woman or molesting underage girls or stealing funds from widows and orphans. If you're black, brown or poor, you're screwed.
One perfect example of this is how two different women were treated for wrongful voting. A black woman who thought she could vote did so and got sent to jail for 2 years. A white woman who deliberately voted twice got a scolding, nothing more. Or, to keep it in line with my story, a white frat president got probation and didn't have to register as a sex offender after raping and strangling several women while a black woman who was being used as a sex slave was sent to prison for 51 years because she killed her abuser.
Nothing new about it. When Stanford White was murdered by Harry Thaw in 1906 (as depicted in the movie Ragtime) Thaw's wealth kept him from being hanged or even being sent to prison, though he was put in a mental institution where his money let him live a comfortable life. And after the Johnstown flood, the owners of the dam that collapsed where able to keep themselves from being held responsible for the deaths of 2200 people because they were wealthy and knew the judges hearing the cases, even though modifications they had ordered on the dam were the cause of its collapse.
I guess it's always going to be this way...
No comments:
Post a Comment