The Literary Measuring (Beating?) Stick
Q: What's the difference between V.C. Andrews and Jesse L. Cairns?
A: One is a bestselling author. The other is alive and possesses actual talent.
In case you didn't know, V.C. Andrews (Virginia Cleo) has been dead since 1986. At the time of her death, she had published seven books and published and sold over 30 million copies, the most (in)famous of these being the seemingly immortal Flowers In The Attic, the film version of which featured Kristy Swanson's bra-clad chest in what is undoubtedly (in my opinion, at least) the series' finest moment. However, she has not let death slow her down; far from it! At the time of this blogging, Andrews has published sixty-three novels and collections of short stories, a figure to make even the most hardened literary guru green with envy.
I can understand how this literary beanstalk has been allowed to spiral so nightmarishly out of control, on one level. Most publishers would probably prefer to deal with a dead writer, truth be told. Most people really don't care about interviews with authors, their expenses for book tours are very small and best of all, they don't call the publisher pestering them for information about when their next book is going to recieve that long-promised "hard push" that might get them on the bestseller list. The benefits of this arrangement are enviable.
Except for one small detail: it's fucking ghoulish. The woman is dead, for Christ's sake. Let her literary bones rest in peace!
Oh, and another problem: the books suck on ice.
V.C. Andrews books are fairly cookie-cutter and easy to write, making the job of the unnamed ghostwriters (and never has that phrase been so accurately used) that much the easier. Start off with a "daddy's girl" who is used to getting her own way. Make the mother a psycho bitch or better yet, an unredeemable slut. Toss in a couple siblings that must be looked after or preferably fucked, if they're far enough out on the branch of that particular family tree. Stir with a mysterious secret from the past the reader figures out in the first third of the book unless they are impossibly dense, season with a few juicy rape scenes that sometimes the heroine actually grooves on, add a pinch of handsome mysterious stranger (who is coin-flip odds of being somehow related to our heroine either by marriage or--ick--by blood) and top off with more melodramatic dialogue, purple prose and florid description than you can shake a burial urn at.
Oh, and after you've written four or so of these books about this one silly wench... write the prequel last of all! And don't forget those laughably forbidding sounding titles (Dark Seed, Twisted Roots and Wicked Forest are staring up at me from my browser as I write this), because that ties it all together in one neat, bestselling package.
(vomits in the corner)
Critics have been doing to the V.C. Andrews name what I have just done for years and years, yet it doesn't seem to do anything except incite her legions of slack-jawed "readers" to defend their minstrel with page after page of web documents containing many correctly spelled words and about as much imagination as a 98 Degrees reunion concert. She is, without a doubt, my number one with a bullet on the Literary Hate Parade.
However, she also holds a special place as the first bestelling writer I ever discovered (in her first book, the long-suffering Flowers In The Attic) who I felt I could someday be better than. Reading that wretched piece of tripe actually inspired me even as it depressed me at the same time. Up until then, the authors I read all seemed magical and clever, impossibly more human than human and keen observers of the world we lived in, untouchable on their pedestals. V.C. Andrews was the first one to shuffle up to my doorstep in rags, and in a way, I thank her for it. Negativity, in its own way, can be just as inpsirational.
So, what about you, my devoted peeps? Who's the worst author that has ever blackened your reading world, and what was your reaction? Inquiring minds want to know.
PS: My birthday is on Friday. Yeah, I put myself over again. Shameless self-promotion is the best kind!
A: One is a bestselling author. The other is alive and possesses actual talent.
In case you didn't know, V.C. Andrews (Virginia Cleo) has been dead since 1986. At the time of her death, she had published seven books and published and sold over 30 million copies, the most (in)famous of these being the seemingly immortal Flowers In The Attic, the film version of which featured Kristy Swanson's bra-clad chest in what is undoubtedly (in my opinion, at least) the series' finest moment. However, she has not let death slow her down; far from it! At the time of this blogging, Andrews has published sixty-three novels and collections of short stories, a figure to make even the most hardened literary guru green with envy.
I can understand how this literary beanstalk has been allowed to spiral so nightmarishly out of control, on one level. Most publishers would probably prefer to deal with a dead writer, truth be told. Most people really don't care about interviews with authors, their expenses for book tours are very small and best of all, they don't call the publisher pestering them for information about when their next book is going to recieve that long-promised "hard push" that might get them on the bestseller list. The benefits of this arrangement are enviable.
Except for one small detail: it's fucking ghoulish. The woman is dead, for Christ's sake. Let her literary bones rest in peace!
Oh, and another problem: the books suck on ice.
V.C. Andrews books are fairly cookie-cutter and easy to write, making the job of the unnamed ghostwriters (and never has that phrase been so accurately used) that much the easier. Start off with a "daddy's girl" who is used to getting her own way. Make the mother a psycho bitch or better yet, an unredeemable slut. Toss in a couple siblings that must be looked after or preferably fucked, if they're far enough out on the branch of that particular family tree. Stir with a mysterious secret from the past the reader figures out in the first third of the book unless they are impossibly dense, season with a few juicy rape scenes that sometimes the heroine actually grooves on, add a pinch of handsome mysterious stranger (who is coin-flip odds of being somehow related to our heroine either by marriage or--ick--by blood) and top off with more melodramatic dialogue, purple prose and florid description than you can shake a burial urn at.
Oh, and after you've written four or so of these books about this one silly wench... write the prequel last of all! And don't forget those laughably forbidding sounding titles (Dark Seed, Twisted Roots and Wicked Forest are staring up at me from my browser as I write this), because that ties it all together in one neat, bestselling package.
(vomits in the corner)
Critics have been doing to the V.C. Andrews name what I have just done for years and years, yet it doesn't seem to do anything except incite her legions of slack-jawed "readers" to defend their minstrel with page after page of web documents containing many correctly spelled words and about as much imagination as a 98 Degrees reunion concert. She is, without a doubt, my number one with a bullet on the Literary Hate Parade.
However, she also holds a special place as the first bestelling writer I ever discovered (in her first book, the long-suffering Flowers In The Attic) who I felt I could someday be better than. Reading that wretched piece of tripe actually inspired me even as it depressed me at the same time. Up until then, the authors I read all seemed magical and clever, impossibly more human than human and keen observers of the world we lived in, untouchable on their pedestals. V.C. Andrews was the first one to shuffle up to my doorstep in rags, and in a way, I thank her for it. Negativity, in its own way, can be just as inpsirational.
So, what about you, my devoted peeps? Who's the worst author that has ever blackened your reading world, and what was your reaction? Inquiring minds want to know.
PS: My birthday is on Friday. Yeah, I put myself over again. Shameless self-promotion is the best kind!