Hi Jenny,
I've been debating writing this for a couple of days. I don't want to come off as rude, or ignorant, but I think I might have to get this off my chest. Just, please know that this comes from a good place.
I first came across your blog when I was looking for other people who'd reacted as badly as I had to Fifty Shades, who could maybe be more eloquent in their phrasing than I could, who could articulate all that left me cringing without conscious reasoning, and bring it to the fore so that I could look deeper at my own issues with the book. Yours was the second blog I found, and although Cassandra Parkin was humorous, she only touched on a few of the issues that left me so unsettled. Then I found you, and your dry wit and brilliant way with words. Even better, you were from Michigan, which is where some of my favourite people have come from, over the years. I even started reading Das_Sporking through your blog, and a link you had put in the start, back when you still did those links.
I downloaded a few of your books onto my Kindle, as you were starting to blog The Boss. I read the Double Header series, though I don't know as much about baseball as I would like. They were good, a little on the short side but your characters were likeable, and there's a reason why you can critique an erotic storyline. You write it well, giving enough of the characters so that the reader can connect with them, and when they felt things … I can see the reader doing the same.
I read The Boss when it came onto Kindle (I'd gotten to chapter three on your blog before stopping, unable to keep up with your update rate while at my old job) and again, I saw it's merit. I liked Sophie, I loved her relationship with Holli. I liked how she handled Neil/Leif. I even loved the conflict of Emma, or where Sophie's loyalties lay in relation to her old boss versus Neil and his sweeping changes. I looked forward to the sequel, The Girlfriend.
And here's where it gets a little murky. You included cancer. I'm not of the school of thought that only idiots like Nicholas Sparks include cancer as a storyline - I've written it into my story also - and for what it's worth, I think you've been really sensitive to how cancer affects people, how traumatic it is, and how hard it is for the people around those with it. That's not my beef, at all.
My issue came in the scene where Neil and Sophie start connecting, and he stops, because he's exhausted from the Leukaemia. That was uncomfortable to read, as uncomfortable as most of the scenes in Fifty Shades. Like Ana's 'argh', it took me right out of the book and left me cringing.
And then Emir entered the picture. I'm not going to sit on a pedestal of self-righteousness and bleat about how it's wrong to cheat, or how threesomes aren't a good idea. You're writing kink as an antidote to Fifty, and that's certainly both kink and something Erika Leonard never attempted. But the scene - the one where they're in Neil's house, not in Amsterdam - it felt wrong to me. You often post on your blog about how much you hate abuse, how crass Fifty is for the levels of abuse that are hidden to those who don't read much and can't understand subtext. The Boss was meant to be a feminist response to Fifty, a way of empowering women and saying 'own your damn sexuality' and that was so refreshing. Not that it was revolutionary, but that a writer with the talent to prove it was going to take up the mantle. I still love you for that.
But the second scene that Emir is in felt like it contradicted all of that. I'm not trying to imply that you don't know what you're writing, or how to write (I've read enough of your work to know that's the antithesis of what you're about), or even how you come across. I think you were using powerful words for a reason, to make the scene as intense as possible. And you did, but for me it wasn't intense in the manner you intended. It left me really uncomfortable.
That might have been it, just me feeling uncomfortable but carrying on, if it weren't for one of the end moments of the scene. Now, I admit I'm not an erotic writer and I actually feel uncomfortable writing anything beyond an embrace, or a kiss - I try projects occasionally to push myself beyond the embarrassment, but I think because of personal reasons I can't connect in the right way to the notion - but I will try and express what led to me putting down The Girlfriend and admitting defeat, as crass as it may sound in my writing style. I just found it downright off-putting at the end of a scene that was already slightly traumatic for me, to have a girl (or even a man) turn around and make a comment about not swallowing semen because of the taste of the chemo in his system. I can't put my finger on why I've had such a reaction to the storyline, to that part in particular, but that was what pushed me. A threesome and cancer is not an erotic escape, not for me.
I'm not saying this so you know just where you went wrong, please correct it. I'm not saying this because I think you're a terrible person for daring to try and write such a risky piece. I guess I just wanted to express, in the most balanced way I know how, the exact reasons why I won't be continuing to read the series, and why I regret that. I know I'm one person, and that doesn't exactly matter at the end of the day. But I feel like somehow, I've done the disservice because I haven't enjoyed it, despite enjoying your other work. I feel like I'm letting down Trout Nation in some way, for not being a team player and reading it all so I can truly stick my middle finger up at Erika. Please know that I mentally flip her the birdie every day, regardless of my decision about continuing your work.
I guess, the entire summation of this letter is really 'I love your work Jenny, just not all of it', but that really doesn't begin to cover the intricacies of my feelings towards it. I did my best, I got so far, but there's only so much more I could take of the male protagonist suffering cancer. I know that probably makes me a bad person, or weak in some way, and a walking hypocrite to boot, but I'll take that. I just wanted to have the chance to explain.
Siobhan (I post under the name 'zee' on your blog).
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