50 Shad3s: Chapter 14

I'm a little bit like a shark with this, I think. Got to keep moving. If I don't, I'll probably stop again, and if I stop again, who knows how long it will take me to start again? Or if I'd even be able to start again?

Basically all of my regular readers noticed my last post, even without me telling anyone to, and I am pleased. Just goes to show that my numbers are great in the venn-diagram overlap between "my friends" and "people who use RSS readers." In hollywood, they talk about "quadrants" of popularity. Pretty much just different kinds of white guys. "This blockbuster is huge with all four quadrants! Young white guys, middle-aged white guys, old white guys, and 'other'!" I think that's how they do it anyway. Friends with RSS readers is not a quadrant. Something much smaller than a quadrant. That's ok.

So yeah Chapter 14!

So where were we? 

50 Shad3s: Chapter 13

Ok so here's the thing:

I kinda quit this, obviously. And part of me is sorry, of course, because there were literally several of you reading it. But also I kinda couldn't take any more of this book, and a lot of that is about how this chapter here that I'm going to write about just kinda breaks the informal contract that a book has with its readers. The contract goes something like this: "Ok so I might not be a good book but I am going to kinda like keep talking about the same stuff and totally not go off on any dumb tangents for no reason."

Yeah so this chapter is just a dumb tangent for no reason. Let's talk more about it!

But seriously tho: this all started as a procrastination project, and yeah, I'm procrastinating again. I was doing this to procrastinate from writing fiction and then at a certain point I somehow ended up in a band and started writing songs as an even more involved act of procrastination, and I still do that, but in the meantime I've put certain efforts into writing fiction again, and that has been a rough process, so I say, "Hey let's do this again! Maybe catching up with 50 Shades will be like catching up with an old friend! Or at the very least, like catching up with a weird kid you kinda sorta remember from elementary school, who's now a billionaire but used to eat glue. And maybe still eats glue."

The thing about being in a band is this: if I write a song, my band has to listen to it! And even help me with it! You just cannot buy that type of gratification! It's basically unpossible! Blogging is solitary work that you just kinda shove out into the aether and hope that maybe someone notices other than Russian spam bots but you know that probably it's only going to be the spam bots. And even this is far, far more rewarding than trying to write fiction when you don't have anything established. When you're basically unpublished and you're seeing your peers get book deals and do stuff and things and you're like, "I could do that, maybe, if I could." But I don't know how and I don't know how anyone knows how so then I'm like, "Maybe I'll try to figure out that song about how drivers are jerks, because at least my friends in my band will have to listen!"

Here are the songs I'm working on:

1. This one is about cars and the only lyric I know so far is, "Honk your horn and we'll all go faster." That's a joke because obvs honking your horn doesn't make anyone go faster. IRONY!
2. Here's this one about how the internet is full of garbage monsters: "Don't read the comments! If you read the comments, you'll vomit!" That's a great rhyme and you know it! Hey and if any of you Russian spam bots have bands? Well. If you do, you're probably working in some super obscure sub-genre of EDM, I expect. But if any of you are in any kind of band that has lyrics don't you steal my sweet rhyme! It's a good rhyme, and worthy of being stolen. But don't!

Ok. Let's do this thing. 

WHERE WERE WE:

Shit I dunno. I think Aspen? I think this is like a side-quest or something? 

The Complainist Sings!

So, there are a few reasons my posts have been so sporadic. I used to work less than I do. And I used to not be so burnt out on this book. So here's to a more productive 2016, somehow.

But one other little reason is the time spent working on these ditties. Please. Enjoy.

We're really not that sweary of a band, but when an album [Editor's note: we'd be very generous if we called this an EP. It's certainly not an album.] has "Fuck you!" right in the title, I suppose I don't need to tell you that this isn't safe for work. The other songs are not likely to, I dunno, get you an extra holiday bonus or whatever if you play them at work, but they are decidedly lower in swears.

Anyway. Now you know.

And hey. Merry Christmas or whatever.

50 Shad3s: Chapter 12

So lots of writers--most obviously on tv--will have a couple of stories going so that they can build tension in one by switching over to the other. Pretty effective! EL tries to do a similar thing sometimes only she doesn't have two plots. Barely one. So instead what she does is just have the characters go do some pointless shit for a while in a section that really feels like fanfic inside fanfic because after a bunch of moping around, Ana and CG are going to fly out to Aspen for an unrelated adventure.

Yay.

But first! Remember that cliffhanger from the previous chapter? Where we learned that Jack Hyde and CG were both born in Detroit? And thus Maybe Jack Hyde is CG's dad? Or long-lost brother? Or just the guy who murdered CG's mom? Srsly. That's a thing now. EL has put a loaded gun onstage and it's going to go off before this book ends. Plus there's also the literal loaded gun. So there's going to be an intersection of the literal loaded gun and the metaphorical loaded gun and that is how this terrible book is going to end. The death of Jack Hyde will prove, once and for all, that Ana and CG are great for each other. Does this make any sense to you? No? Weird. I don't know why. It makes total sense to me. I know lots of couples who've been brought together by one of them shooting a third person. Really tends to help people through tough times.



But wait. Where were we?

50 Shad3s: Chapter 11

tldnr:
Ana and Christian kinda start having sex but more end up not because they're still in the middle of  a fight.

Good news, everyone! I bought every James Bond movie on itunes the other night so expect me to finally get back to that, about a year after I started it. Timely! Right? Yes v.

I'm sorry about the increasingly erratic publishing schedule. But hey. Better than nothing, right? Right? Kinda? A little bit, at least, huh? Sure. I'm just kind of determined to finish this, beyond any sense of logic. I should've quit a long time ago, but here I am!

It looks like this chapter is going to contain a few more nonsense revelations about CG's mysterious spooooooky past! So that's super exciting and all. Right? Yes. Also: there's some sex in this chapter. And a lot of just super boring food stuff and a lot of Ana being unable to follow the plot. Good times!


But wait. Where were we?

50 Shad3s: Chapter 10

tldnr: Christian is mad at Ana for making her own decisions like an adult. 

Look this is the worst chapter in the whole thing. One could so, so easily skip it entirely and just go on to 11. 10 could just be a little parenthetical note: (Christian haz a mad.) And then that's it! No reason to go into details, really. In fact, the more detail, the worst. My draft of this chapter is better than EL's and mine takes way way less time to read so that's something.

Let's keep this brief, shall we?

But wait. Where were we?

50 Shad3s: Chapter 9 part 2

We started this like, when? Ten years ago or something, right? Maybe longer? Seems like it. It literally seems like it. And it would be nice to say that we were closing in on the home stretch but we're not. We're so not. I'm getting slower. Each day that passes sees the average speed of this process decrease. Sadly, the limit of this equation is 0. Did I say that right? I think so.

It's like a blockbuster fantasy series where they split the last book into two movies. And then they see that last movie and they're like "ugh too long!" and split that in half. And keep doing that over and over and anyway here we are still on Chapter 9.

Have I been busy with other things? No. Yes. No. Mostly no but I've been procrastinating by working on music instead of writing which is a lot like when Michael Jordan was a baseball player only like an alternate version of that where instead of going from a thing where I'm an all-time great to a thing where I'm not that good at all, it's more like going from a thing where I'm just ok to a thing where I'm not that good at all. But hey maybe I'll post some here when some is post-able.

I had to remind myself what was going on in our story, because there wasn't much going on and that makes it harder to remember. But the good thing is that it doesn't really matter. This is one of those books you can pick up and start reading from any random page and then put it down again because it's terrible and what's the point and why don't you read a good book instead? That's my advice anyway.

Anyway. I don't know what's happening. Our heroes are still caught in a bad romance and Ana's ex boss is still trying to murder Christian and Christian is still legit spying on one of his ex gfs and Ana, in turn, is jealous that he might still like his ex.

Think about that right?

• CG is getting updates on Leila from her therapist, which is totes illegal
• He's probably paying her tuition just so he can keep track of her better
• He has her gun in his office, stolen from a crime scene.

Look: if I'm Ana, I'm less worried that my husband likes his ex better than he likes me, and more worried that my husband is plotting his ex's murder because CG looks like a full-on murderer. I mean he's so murdery! Everything he does pretty much always is so murdery!

Wow. This book might actually end with Ana's former boss getting shot by CG and probably we'll be expected to applaud that or whatever. I mean we've been told all this shit about how Ana is a gun expert which is fitting because she's so competent and outdoorsy and stuff. But this is mostly a book about Ana doing absolutely nothing, so my bet is that CG is the shooter, and Jack Hyde is the die-er. I know this is pretty obvious but I just put it together now because I've been paying almost no attention to this book this year. 

Anyway let's see if I'm right! And if I'm wrong, I'll go back later and edit this shit so that future generations will be tricked into thinking I was right all along. 

Wait so where were we?