Erotic Horror
Anarchist Bikers//Advice for Protesting//Goodreads//This Book is Not a Romance//Twists & Tricks//Writing Endings//The Lull Before a Publishing Storm//The Blues is for People with Broken Hearts
In This Issue: Anarchist Bikers//Advice for Protesting//Goodreads//This Book is Not a Romance//Twists & Tricks//Writing Endings//The Lull Before a Publishing Storm//The Blues is for People with Broken Hearts
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In 2020 I protested in D.C. during that initial unrest in the wake of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. At the time, I was in a situationship (mutual apathy)1 with an anarchist biker who had a “fuck nazi’s” tattoo on the inside of his arm that the Army made him black out. “I didn’t get it, it said fuck nazi’s!” he told me, twisting his bare arm out for me to see. In my memory he is overtop of me, naked, while saying this and that doesn’t make any sense at all, but there was also no other time we would talk, so maybe it does make sense. We both protested, but never crossed paths as he was the kind of anarchist in service to nobody and I was the kind who felt you must be in service to the community.
There is no time being a white female/femme body is more useful than during a protest. As a white mother, I am valuable to the state and it is a violation of white supremacy to be publically violent with me2. Not that it doesn’t happen-it does. But it’s just a higher threshold of violence in this context. If you are a white woman you can use this to its full power. Here are my rules (I’m already on their lists, fuck it):
Lemon’s Advice for Protesting
Dress like a straight white woman. Keep your hands up and your tone soft.
Find places to insert your physical body between cops and the front-line black or brown bodies. Literally just stand chest to chest with cops and back to chest with people who need to be heard. Stay quiet and keep your hands up around your chest. A cop has a much different level of escalation if it means crossing a quiet white mom to do it.
Put yourself in the way of cameras when necessary. Not all cameras are friendly and many people will be prosecuted later if they are identified in video. If you see someone filming that makes other, more vulnerable, protesters uncomfortable, channel your inner Momtok and make it about you until they get annoyed enough to move along.
Cops will shoot rubber bullets AT black and brown people, but they will shoot at your feet and legs. Be slow enough when running that you’re an easy target.
Never escalate! (unless you’re doing it as a distraction to save someone else).
Be prepared to go to jail—you’ll be processed quickly and what’ll it really do except be annoying? Bring just your ID and enough cash for bail in your area.
Bring face coverings like a handkerchief, water bottles with the squirt tops for rinsing, and don’t smoke a cigarette after being tear-gassed (worst pain of my life).
Wear long sleeves and pants, think twill and a very light button-up. You want your skin to be covered, and if you’re tear-gassed, undress outside and wash affected clothing seperately.
Leave your cell-phone at home, don’t text people, don’t post, and buy a burner with cash.
If possible, don’t fight back. Especially for white women, most men will hurt you less overall if you go limp. Fighting back does something to activate justification (at best) or a blood lust (at worst). YMMV.
As always, remember our patron saints.
If you missed it, the announcement for my next novel finally went live! It comes out next year APR/MAY and if you are a Goodreads librarian, it still needs added to Goodreads. (Does that matter these days?) There is so much I want to share about my journey with this book, but I think the most important thing is that:
THIS BOOK IS NOT A ROMANCE!!!!
This is not a case of “oh I don’t want my work associated with romance” but rather a warning to readers. I sincerely love romance, always have, always will. But it is very important to understand prior to reading that though this novel is dark and has a lot of sex in it, it is not a dark romance.
I began writing this back in 2020, before the “dark romance” or “romantasy” waves began to crest. At first, I made the mistake of writing it to “trick” the reader. I didn’t understand how to frame a narrative or play with reader expectations, and my lack of skill resulted in using cheap tricks.
At the time, I felt like the dark romance I was reading didn’t understand the erotic appeal of being with these type of characters and were too focused on their female characters beating the anti-feminist allegations. It can feel very powerful and sexy to be with a terrible, violent, or narcissistic man. The pain and pleasure cycle is addictive. When you are in their light, it feels like you are the most powerful, special woman alive; and when you are in their shadow it feels like you are being broken and remade into something stronger, if you can only survive it. Many people think of victims of intimate violence as “weak” but they are often quite powerful, their abusers drawn to the idea of possessing that power, and able to do so because the woman has been left vulnerable in some way. I wanted the reader to feel how compelling that is. How powerful even. I wanted them to understand how difficult a gravity that is to escape.
Somewhere in 2023, my skill (and my growth in accepting that I’ll never be a commercial artist, and that’s okay!) caught up with my work and I launched a revision. There’s a lot more to this story, but one of the things I had learned by then was that I needed to communicate with the audience along the way. For this story, the most important thing the audience needed to know was “This is not a romance. . .”
But what is it then?
A DARK AND WILD WOOD is a standard historical gothic fantasy. It also has a lot of sex. Some of it feels very sexy, even though it shouldn’t. Some of it feels repulsive, though it should feel sexy. It is ultimately erotic, because all of the sexual experiences are told inside out, from Salome’s interiority. And it is a horror, because dread and fear live alongside the feelings of arousal. This is Angela Carter on meth. We comped it to Anne Rice in submissions. One editor said it was more overwrought than Anne Rice, and I wish I could use that as a blurb.
If you’re reading this and you’re thinking, oh no not for me, that is why I’m sharing. I don’t want anyone to go into this book under false pretenses or wanting to win you over into loving it. You’ll know if this book is for you. I am not everyone’s cup of tea, and neither is my work. I set out to write the story of emotional and psychological abuse and how a woman claims her power. Truthfully, I have never been more proud of my work.
Also, it has A romance!
It’s sapphic and it’s a HEA. <3
Twists & Tricks
As I mentioned above, when I began this project, my immaturity as a writer made me approach the narrative as a “trick”. I never thought of it was a trick (most immature writer’s don’t), I thought of it as a twist. I wanted to trick the reader into thinking the book was a dark romance, when it was really a book about abuse.
I mean, it wasn’t quite that bad, lol. But close!
A twist is a reversal of reader expectations.
A trick is a betrayal of reader expectations.
Or, a twist is about reversal of story, and a trick is a betrayal of the story. If I begin a romance, and it ends in tragedy, that is a story betrayal. If I begin a romance and it ends with a different partner, that is a story reversal. You can only reverse story expectations if you maintain the trust of the reader and the integrity of the story. The strength of your twist depends on the strength of reader trust.
But that actually wasn’t enough for this book! I had to go one step further. Since I was playing with familiar tropes in dark romance, the reader would expect the story to be dark romance, no matter my intentions or context clues or warning signs. I had to tell the reader, right away, what kind of story this was. At first, I was afraid to be so direct and have it feel like “bad” writing? But it was just the opposite. Once I addressed the reader, the story opened up for me. Once I understood how to build an audience’s trust by meeting expectations, I could finally understand how to subvert them.
I handed in edits on A DARK AND WILD WOOD at the very beginning of June. But I find this section of the publishing process one of the hardest to navigate. There’s always a big emotional drop when you finish a project or a big revision. Compounded by the book now entering a new phase of the process: one where you are no longer involved.
There is not much you can do as an author to move the needle on your book, except get lucky. There’s something to be said for “you can’t win the lottery unless you buy a ticket”, but you must remember—it is still a lottery. There’s something to be said for the hustle, but the hustle is a lifestyle not an outcome. there’s something to be said for being rich and beautiful and having “a platform”, but rich and beautiful and having a platform can’t sell books (see celebrity novels). What makes a book a success is always, always a bit of a mystery that is easier to untangle in retrospect.
It’s hard to let deep, personal work go into that churning sea. Will it die? Will it get lost? Will it find its way?
Twinsies
My (day job) intern is a 23yo college student spending the summer in Thailand for modeling, and true to my life, we showed up at our weekly meeting in matching fits.
Read
I handed in work and thought I’d be able to read more, but it feels like my attention is just exhausted. BLOOD OVER BRIGHT HAVEN came from Ayana’s recommendation and she did not let me down! I was excited to celebrate Renee’s adult contemporary debut PARK AVENUE and reread it. I picked up SIX WILD CROWNS while browsing before a doctor’s appointment because I’m sold on anything Henry the Eighth coded, and haven’t yet finished it.
Listen
You can tell I’m especially sad when Townes Van Zandt comes out. The Blues is for people with broken hearts. Townes is for people who don’t want to live.
Not listed, but I loved this Backup Plan single from Bailey Zimmerman and Luke Combs.
Mostly I’ve been listening to 160bpm running playlists as I went back to running and music helps keep me on pace which makes running actually very regulating. The best 160bpm songs? Deer Dance by System of a Down and also Swing by Savage, feat. Soulja Boy—and wow did this throwback make me smile while running.
Watch
I have not shut up about The Studio since watching it.
I mean, I literally have not shut up about it. I’m an autistic with a hyper-fixation. It made me feel so relieved like, oh we are all having these conversations (in the arts). It made me laugh, because it’s elevated chaotic stoner comedy. It made me inspired—it was such an homage to film and also filmed so perfectly and written so well and the acting and the costuming. . . . And it did all of these things at once!!
"The job makes you stressed, and panicked, and miserable. But when it all comes together and you make a good movie, it's good forever."
Speaking of someone who made a great movie—I also got to finally watch Sinners. It was so great, but I was surprised to find myself SOBBING during the ancestors scene. And then at the end with Buddy Guy!!!!! I’m so glad I missed the discourse. It turns out you enjoy everything more without a thousand of the world’s dumbest people yapping to you about it. Do yourself a favor today and listen to Buddy Guy. My God, those opening chords are plucked through my entire body and soul.
Read More
Attraction: Hot, Wrong, and Inexplicably Right
I’m staying off substack until the Sabrina Carpenter think pieces clear.
Pro tip: when you want to break off one of these, and you can’t bear to ghost, you never say “I want to move on for my health” you say “I want to beeee with youuuuuu” and then they take themselves out.
This is a very contextual statement—because there are plenty of other times in society where violence against a white woman is par for the course.
I just wanted to say that I am super excited for this book. I’ve enjoyed your writing for years!
I LOVE the idea of erotic horror, the intersection of arousal and fear and how they can live alongside each other or intersect. I’m so interested in this concept, and the book sounds incredible! Very excited to read when it releases :)