Who Wrote This?

by Giselle Renarde

When the "What Are You Reading?" topic comes up, I usually I tell you about a book I'm enjoying. Today I'm going to tell you about a book I abandoned, which is much more fun.

Last year I might have mentioned reading V.C. Andrews for the first time and being shocked. I might also have told you about being in the younger cohort of a Grade 5/6 split. That wasn't last year--that was closer to the heyday of V.C. Andrews' fame. All the Grade 6 girls were reading Flowers in the Attic. They went through V.C. Andrews books like you wouldn't believe.

So last year, when I picked up an old V.C. Andrews and found it culminated in incestuous child rape, I couldn't believe this is what the kids in my class were reading back in the day.

That said, when I spotted another V.C. Andrews novel in the library, I didn't exactly walk on by.

Something got me curious, though. The dedication to this book reads: For Gene Andrews, who so wanted to keep his sister's work alive.

That's a weird dedication.

So I read the fine print on the copyright page and found this:

Following the death of Virginia Andrews, the Andrews family worked with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Virginia Andrews's stories and to create additional novels, of which this is one, inspired by her storytelling genius.

Things that make you go hmmm, am I right?

Maybe this is all common knowledge. V.C. Andrews died in 1986. But it's news to me because apparently I'm 30 years behind the times.

I gave this book a chance (it's called Sage's Eyes, if you're curious) because the blurb seemed intriguing. I hate giving up on a book, so I worked my way through half of it before deciding life's too short. This novel is repetitive as fuck and focuses on minutia that might possibly be interesting to preteens but not to adult readers. The characters are supposed to be contemporary teenagers but they all talk like it's the 50s--the 1850s. heh

Anyway, tastes vary. I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. But it did get me thinking about author estate planning and literary wills.

As an author, do you care what's written in your name after you die? Do you want someone else to pick up where you left off? Complete your works in progress? Do you want your devoted readers picking up a book by someone else and thinking it's by you?

Maybe you don't care. After all, you'll be dead. But if you're beginning to wonder what measures you should be taking now to protect your interests after your death, have a listen to this episode of The Creative Penn: What Happens When An Author Dies. Estate Planning With Kathryn Goldman.

It's a start.

Giselle Renarde is an award-winning queer Canadian writer. Nominated Toronto’s Best Author in NOW Magazine’s 2015 Readers’ Choice Awards, her fiction has appeared in nearly 200 short story anthologies, including prestigious collections like Best Lesbian Romance, Best Women’s Erotica, and the Lambda Award-winning collection Take Me There, edited by Tristan Taormino. Giselle's juicy novels include Anonymous, In Shadow, Seven Kisses, and The Other Side of Ruth.

What I'm Reading -- Some Good Books, Some Blah Books

I find that I read like I write — I balance multiple books/stories, dipping into each of them when time and interest allows.  I’m currently writing six books/stories for various pen names, with another seven in the pre-writing stage.  Similarly with reading, I’m in the middle of three books right now (and I had taken a break from these to read a fourth book last week).

Might as well start this off the same way I start off every “What I’m Reading” post.  Yep, I’m reading a Star Trek book.  This time, it’s Star Trek: Prey: Book 1: Hell’s Heart by John Jackson Miller.  It’s okay.  It’s Klingon-focussed and I seem to be one of the few Star Trek fans that’s never really liked the Klingon storylines.  Miller’s writing ability is far superior in this book compared to his previous Star Trek book, but overall it's fairly decent.  I'm having a little trouble keeping all the Klingon names straight as half of them start with K.

The second book I’m reading is Abaddon’s Gate by James S.A. Corey, which is the third book in The Expanse series.  (This is the book series that The Expanse tv series is based on.)  The Expanse is planned as a nine-book epic and what I particularly enjoy about it is that each book seems to be greatly different than the one before it — so the reader doesn’t get much of the same-old-same-old feeling that can come with some ongoing series.

In The Expanse, an alien protomolecule from who-knows-where has started infecting humanity and doing strange things.  Book one (Leviathan Wakes) featured the protomolecule seemingly breaking down human bodies and reshaping the organic matter for some strange purpose.  Book two (Caliban’s War) was about how a company was trying to use the protomolecule to create supersoldiers, while the on Venus, the protomolecule was reshaping the inorganic material on the planet for some strange purpose.  In Abbadon’s Gate, the work that the protomolecule had undertaken on Venus led to the creation of a “ring” that it launched and set in place in the outer solar system.  The ring leads somewhere, but that hasn’t yet been revealed to me.  (The characters are all travelling to the ring right now.)

Corey writes engaging chapters that are nicely-sized.  I generally read a chapter a day before bed.  What I find particularly interesting about the future that Corey has created is that religion and faith are still very strongly present.  In most sci-fi stories, humanity has mostly become atheist, with religion only showing up as either a human cult or the backwards practices of a primitive alien culture.  So, to read how faith is navigating the future has been an interesting journey.

For the third book, I felt a strange need to pick up a hetero romance from the grocery store.  I’m reading Lycan Unleashed by Shannon Curtis (which is bundled with The Immortal’s Hunger by Kelli Ireland).  It’s okay so far.  I'm only a few chapters in.  As I’m reading it, I get the feeling that this is a sequel to a previous story, but the “other books by” list indicates this is Curtis’s first publication with Harlequin.  It’s pretty decent so far.  In retrospect, I probably shouldn’t have picked up a werewolf romance if I’m not into paranormal stuff.  (But at this grocery store it seemed to be either regency, western, or paranormal — none of which really caught my interest.)  Plus, I was taken by the cover model.

And I mentioned that last week I paused these three books to read another.  I had a quick read through Frances Caballo’s very short ebook The Author's Guide to Goodreads.  I was hoping to learn something I didn’t already know, but it was essentially a primer to Goodreads and didn’t go too in depth.  Might be helpful for some, but wasn’t anything new to me.



Cameron D. James is a writer of gay erotica and M/M erotic romance; his latest release is Seduced by My Best Friend’s Dad (co-written with Sandra Claire). He is also the publisher and co-founder of Deep Desires Press  a publisher of erotica and high-heat-level erotic romance. He lives in Canada, is always crushing on Starbucks baristas, and has two rescue cats. To learn more about Cameron, visit http://www.camerondjames.com.