Fifty Shades of Meh

The third and final instalment of the Fifty Shades trilogy, Fifty Shades Freed, was released in cinemas a couple of weeks ago.

I reviewed the first two films for otherwise respectable film website Mostly Film. Because apparently I can't stop having opinions about the whole franchise.

Mostly those opinions aren't all that complimentary to be honest but there you go. I'm sure E L James isn't too bothered about my less than enthusiastic opinions. And if she is bothered, she can always console herself by rolling around naked on large piles of money. That's what I would do in her situation.

My review of Fifty Shades Freed review is up today. As Mostly Film tweeted "Etta returned to give Fifty Shades a stern talking-to. It loved it."

The problem with adapting a book for the big screen is that you are always going to have to leave some stuff out. Take E L James’ final instalment in the Fifty Shades trilogy Fifty Shades Freed. The book is 60% BDSM-y sex, 35% Christian Grey acting like a knobhead and about 5% some poorly thought out plot involving a Bad Man, foiled kidnap attempts, arson and stuff.

Check it out and let me know what you thought of the (possibly) final cinematic outing of Chris 'n' Ana.

Sequels, Spin-Offs and Shameless Cash Ins. (Yes, E L James, I am looking at you.)

This is my 'S' post for the Spanking A-Z Blog Challenge. "What's that?" you ask. Check out my page here for more information and a list of all the wonderful bloggers taking part.

E L James recently released a follow up to Fifty Shades of Grey because, heaven knows, she hasn't already made enough money out of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise.

Grey, as I am sure you already know, is Fifty Shades of Grey told from Christian's Grey point of view.  The first few chapters were included at the end of Fifty Shades Freed. Or at least in the copy of the book that I bought two or three years ago. This doesn't seem to have been mentioned in any coverage of Grey that I have come across (although to be fair, I haven't been paying them a lot of attention.) Which leads me to suspect that most people didn't make it to the end of the third book.

The thing is, for the couple of chapters I read, reading the story from Christian's perspective makes some kind of sense. In the first few chapters of Fifty Shades of Grey, we don't really know what Christian's take on the situation is. What does he make of Ana Steele the first time she comes tumbling into his office? Was his turning up in the hardware store in which she worked a lucky accident or part of his weird-arse stalker shit? (Spoiler: Weird-ass stalker shit, obviously.)

Once the couple start dating though, we know exactly what Christian Grey is thinking. We know because he and Ana discuss it in long, boring and fucking unrelentless detail. What on earth could be added to the interminable emails that the couple send to one another when read from Psycho Boyfriend's perspective?

There you go, James. I'm pimping your book anyway. You're welcome.

The book will no doubt sell millions, mostly to people who don't realise that there is literally a fuckton of better erotica out there. (And yes I meant 'literally' literally there. 'Fuckton' is an official measurement of erotic literature output.)

But, you know what, E L? Sooner or later, you're going to have to write a different book. I know it's hard. I know you want to keep the cash cow incessantly lactating. But I'm sure you've got at least one non-Fifty Shades of Grey book in you.

J K Rowling managed it. So did Stephanie Meyers. She managed to quit the Twilighting habit and write The Host, a dystopian sci-fi novel all about invasive aliens hosts and complicated love triangles and whatnot. She didn't just re-write Twilight from Carlisle Cullen's point of view or something.

There you go. That's your next project, if you're not already on it. Fifty Shades of Grey was re-hashed Twilight fan fiction. Maybe your next book should be Host-based erotic fan fiction. You can give Wanda, Melanie, Jared and Ian new names and tweak the story about. Maybe replace Wanda's people's desire for consuming souls and overtaking the planet with, I don't know, a desire to set up multi-million pound businesses, twat about in helicopters and buy a lot of iPads. And bung in some spanking and oral sex, obviously.

Not that that I'm telling you how to do your job, E L James. You know how to recycle, re-use and endlessly rehash books better than anyone.

Five Spanking Books I'd Love To See On The Big Screen

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Fifty Shades of Grey Movie Trailer - Good, Bad or Ugly?

The Fifty Shades of Grey Movie Trailer is out. We may have another seven months to prepare ourselves for the actual film but at least we get a sneak preview of Dakota Johnson looking winsome and Jamie Dornan standing outside a helicopter.


For any of us working in the sexy-book-writing business, it is impossible to ignore either the Fifty Shades of Grey books or the forthcoming movie adaption. It's the sexy book that even the people who aren't interested in that sort of thing know about. It's like in the 1990s when everybody had heard of the Spice Girls. Even your Granddad who stopped listening to Popular Music when the Glenn Miller Orchestra stopped playing in the 1940s.

And because everybody has heard of it, everyone has an opinion. The thing is, it's like Twilight.Well, obviously, it's like Twilight, it's rehashed Twilight fanfiction but the other way it's like Twilight is that it's neither as Amazingly Fantastic or as Irredeemably Terrible as 90% of people writing about it on the web say it is.

This meme will literally make the internet implode in on itself

Fifty Shades of Grey is not that bad really. I've paid money for worse erotica. I've certainly read a good deal that's better. So in the interests of defending something that is not that bad really (and go on E L James, you can put that I said that on the cover on the next release, if you like), here is what I think will be good and bad about Fifty Shades of Grey: The Motion Picture.

The Good

• Look, this is a film that is more than likely going to have some spanking in it. There aren't nearly enough of those. Sure, Chross might list several hundred films on its Spanking in the Movies page but seriously, I've gone through all of those and most of them don't even count. Some of them are films I'd already seen and hadn't register any kind of spanking action in. (The Descendants, really?) Basically anyone who wants a movie with more than a passing nod towards spanking and BDSM has got Secretary and that's about it. So, any film where there's a good chance of seeing a girl spanked on the arse and enjoying it is cause to break out the champagne as far as I'm concerned.

• The books- and now the movie - get people talking about domination and submission in the bedroom. People who thought they were weird, find out they're not so weird.They have a convenient shorthand to discuss introducing kinky stuff to their relationships. They don't have to feel like perverts any more - 100 million readers can't all be perverts! Lots of people found out that they enjoyed reading about bondage and spanking and anal penetration and learnt to really appreciate that a Kindle can comfortably be read one-handed. And you know what? Those people go on to find other books that they can read/mastubate to (I feel like there should be a portmanteau word for that. Rwank? Masturead? Choking the Chekhov? I'll get back to you.) So they go and check out whattoreadafter50shadesofgrey.com or Somethinglikefiftyshadesbutlessrubbish.com and that's good for readers and writers of erotica everywhere.

• For all it's many faults (and it has plenty), Fifty Shades of Grey is not what a lot of people say it is. It is not a Rapist's Manual. It's not a Paedophile Con. It's not the worst thing to happen to the BDSM community since the beginning of ever. It's just a not particularly well written book that includes every romantic cliche in the world ever plus some spanking and bondage. Which is OK. Also, as far as I'm concerned, if something can upset an organisation as prissy sounding as 'Morality In Media', they're probably doing something right.

Much like the 'Passion of St Tibulus' in Father Ted. "Is it a type of nudey thing, Father?"
The Bad

• Oh, it's going to be terrible isn't it? Two hours of clunky dialogue, meaningful looks and 'tastefully' shot sex scenes. At least we won't get all Anastasia's drivelly dialogue though. Unless they decide to stick a voiceover on it peppered with 'Oh My's and 'Holy Cow's and making a million bloody references to her Inner Fucking Goddess. Maybe they'll make her Inner Goddess an actual character like Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio.

• They're not even doing the decent thing and smooshing all three books together and making just one film so we can just get it over and done with. They're going to do all the books separately and I'll probably have to go and see them all because I can't remember which of the books has the scene with the snooker table. (There's something about a girl getting bent over a snooker table and spanked with a ruler that rather appeals to me, you see.) In fact they'll probably make more than three films. They'll split the last one into two because, what with Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games, that's apparently what happens these days.

• Once the film gets released, the waves of hand-wringing and soap-box thumping will start again in earnest. We'll be told that no good feminist could possibly approve of submission in a relationship, that any desire to mix pain and pleasure just indicates some kind of mental issues and - repeatedly - that anyone who has any desire to read (let alone write) erotic fiction is some kind of drooling imbecile. Which is bollocks, obviously because loads of us are lovely.

The Ugly?

This is the first shot we see in the trailer of Mr Christian Grey:

Hmm. According to the book, he is broad-shouldered, with dark copper-colored hair and intense, bright gray eyes. "He is not merely good looking - he is the epitome of male beauty, breathtaking."

That bloke up there? If he worked in the accounts department of your office, you wouldn't even really register him. You'd be like 'I think I know who you mean. Is he the one who's sort of non-descript?'

Not that I'd normally judge a guy on his appearance, but we already know that Christian Grey has a terrible personality.

So, how do you feel about the forthcoming Fifty Shades of Grey movie? Excited? Disgusted? Or are you just doing a sort of insouciant shrug while you repanel your much cooler sex dungeon and put the finishing touches to your far superior spanking movie manuscript?

Book Review - Master Of Two by Patricia Green and Karin Ito

Want to know more about the book review star rating system? Or find out what other books I've reviewed? Check out this page here.

I feel like this should be nominated for some kind of 'best lingerie on a book cover' award

Patricia Green and Karin Ito's new novel, Master of Two, introduces us to Kevin Watson and his two lovers, Renee and Amiko. Kevin is a dominant Master as well as being a wealthy businessman doing some kind of brokerage-type job.

He's also a Grade-A wanker.

Not because of the keeping-two-women-and-demanding-absolute-submission-from-them thing. I'm totally on board with that. But because of the way he believes that his money gives him the right to swagger around and bully every single person who crosses his path. He has no scruples about waving his contacts and connections in people's faces if it means he can get his own way.

At one point in the story he needs help from a police detective. Unhappy with the detective's proposed timescale he rings up the Governor in front of him and gets him to 'cut through the red tape'. Kevin finishes up his phone call by saying to the Governor "When's the next fundraiser by the way? I wouldn't want to miss it."

And that's the sort of horribly twattish behaviour than can make a reader scream "You pompous, unbearable knob jockey!" at the top of their lungs at their kindle. And you don't half get some funny looks on the train when you do that, I can tell you.

Clearly I have a bit of a problem with ostentatiously wealthy guys in fiction. Which is a bit unfortunate given that they're something of an archetype in the romance genre. There's loads of them out there including James LeBlanc in Normandie Alleman's Daddy Morebucks, Brayden James from Bella Bryce's Waldorf Manor series and, of course, Christian Grey. Grey is a prime example of a wealthy wanker presented as every girl's dream guy. I managed to convince myself after I read the second Fifty Shades of Grey book that the third one would see Christian Grey lose all his money somehow. The heroine, Ana, was always bleating on about how his money didn't mean anything to her and I thought that E L James might give the readers the chance to see that for ourselves. It would also do away with one of Grey's less attractive habits that of ostentatiously bestowing expensive but incredibly unimaginative gifts. But, no. That's not where the story was headed. Grey kept all his money and the pair lived happily and wealthily ever after.

I don't mind wealthy guys so much in historical fiction. In the same way that poverty looks so much more attractive when viewed from a century or more away - Victorian peasants look so much more picturesque than modern day benefit claimants - wealth looks offensive when it's happening in another era.

I'll happily stick wealthy Lords in my Victorian-based fiction. Although perhaps I just have less of a problem with people who inherit their wealth rather than make it themselves. Not that I'm particularly OK with the landed gentry but at least people who are born into money know they're lucky which makes them slightly less insufferable than the "I work hard for my money" 1%ers. You don't work 1000 times harder than a practice nurse. Fuck off.

All of which may be ever so slightly off the point.

Master of Two is an energetic story in which one of Kevin's two women, Amiko, is kidnapped leaving him and Renee, the other member of the trio, the task of tracking her down. They enlist the help of Ross Adler, an objectionable but effective Private Investigator and embark on a rescue mission across Europe as they follow Amiko's trail and try to find out who has taken her and why.

Meanwhile, Kevin's sister Lori is dangerously ill in hospital following a brain injury and Kevin needs to do everything he can to ensure her wellbeing.

Amidst all the fast-paced excitement, it's a wonder the authors manage to fit in any erotica at all but, don't worry, they totally do. With Amiko missing in action for most of the book, the majority of the sex scenes take place between Kevin and Renee who - quite believably, actually - temper their frustrations and anxieties over their lover's disappearance with a whole bunch of sexy spankings and stern domination. Kevin is frequently referred to as a 'sadist' but there's nothing unpleasant in his brutally rough play. Renee is more than receptive to his rules. There are a few nicely satisfying scenes with all three lovers which illustrate well how the One Master Two Slaves dynamic works for this little group.

So, despite my misgivings about Kevin, I really enjoyed this book. It is well plotted, engaging and frequently very hot indeed. Clearly Patricia Green and Karin Ito make a good writing partnership.

I have absolutely no idea how two people go about writing the same book. Do you split the books into chunks before you start, merging them back together at the end, checking that you haven't flatly contradicted one another in the process?

Or does the manuscript get passed back and forth between writers? Each crossing out and re-writing what the other has written beforehand, fighting over the story's direction until the whole thing deteriorates into a petty editing war with chunks of text being constantly deleted and re-added and sneaky aggressive comments like "Patricia sux" or "U r a loser, KI" being inserted into the narrative.

I don't think for a second that this is how Patricia Green and Karin Ito work, obviously. They are clearly professionals and have the excellently written book to prove it. I think I'm just worried that this is how things would turn out if I ever tried to write a book with someone else.

As far as star ratings go, there is a certain type of Amazon reviewer who will base their star rating on how much they liked the principal character. I don't hold with that school of thought at all. I don't much like Harry Flashman, Madame Bovary or the one who isn't Sam-I-Am in Green Eggs and Ham (and come to think of it Sam-I-Am is pretty annoying himself) but that doesn't stop their books being great.

Yeah, you. Mr "would not, could not with a goat".

Master of Two is a very good 4 star read whatever I might think of Kevin Watson as a guy. He's just lucky I'm not reviewing this on fictionalcharactersiwouldliketogoforapintwith.com. He'd be lucky to scrape a single star, the smug twat.

'Safe and Tame' Fifty Shades Movie

Yesterday, I speculated that next year's Fifty Shades of Grey movie will concentrate less on sex and more on plot.

Seems like I may have been bang on the money. If by plot you mean "making moon-eyes at each other, in between helicopter rides and job interviews". Which sounds like a fair synopsis of the first book, to be fair.

The Guardian ran a story on Wednesday saying that test audiences found the movie 'surprisingly tame'. (Mind you, the article also referred to Anastasia as a "willing, well-remunerated sex-slave" which would suggest that the writer hasn't actually read any of the books himself.)

It's too early to know whether any spanking will make it into the film. There's surprisingly little of it in mainstream movies. (Well, surprising to me but my perspective may be a little skewed.) I doubt anyone's shocked that Universal plan to play it safe. We'll have to wait until Valentines Day next year to see if any of the movie's intended audience are happy with the result.

Fifty Shades Darker: The Infographic

As a teeny, tiny minnow in the Erotic Romance pond, I am of course very well aware of E L James whose "Fifty Shades of Grey"  trilogy spans the metaphoric pond like a big fishy Colossus.

Not too many authors in our genre get their works read out by Charles Dance or feature in major UK supermarket's Christmas ads.

It was the perfect Christmas. The kids played with their toys while Gran read about butt plugs and anal beads.

I'm not going to rubbish E L James's work. There  are far too many people doing that already. I am a bit baffled as to why it's being made into a movie, though.

It seems to me that the reasons why the books were so popular was because they were books. I'm clearly not the only person who likes my smut to be directly fed into my brain via the printed page.

Changing the books to films seems to be missing the point entirely. It's like remaking The Full Monty with female strippers or replacing the puppets in Avenue Q with human actors.

Although, obviously I appreciate that films with sex in them are jolly popular. What with arty films like Lars Von Triers Nymphomaniac at one end and at the other, films which contain nothing but sex. Porn films are very popular, I'm given to understand. They built a whole industry on it.

It's possible that Fifty Shades of Grey: The Motion Picture will work by concentrating less on the sex and more on the plot.This would be a terrible idea because while E L James is pretty good at writing sex scenes, her plots are rubbish.

It wasn't even necessary to have much a plot, really. Two people meet, fall in love, overcome emotional difficulties together. Boom. Sorted.

Except that for some reason, James felt it necessary to pepper the books with fight scenes, car chases, escaped mental patients and kidnapping attempts. This is especially true in the second book of the series, Fifty Shades Darker. James seems seems to think that every single scene should take place immediately after the last one so they all happen at an alarming breakneck speed. It's not quite '24' but early morning fleeing from gun-toting madwomen are sort of forgotten by mid-afternoon because three other unlikely plot points have occurred since then.

I have, for reasons of science, I have cobbled together a timeline to illustrate my point.

As you can see, it all starts off pretty quietly as Anastasia mopes about at the beginning of the book following her break-up with Christian Grey at the end of the last one. But by Friday our happy pair are back together and everything becomes a big ol' mishmash of sex, violence and vulgar displays of wealth.

I present to you, Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fifty Shades Darker Infographic. Enjoy.

(Click on the image to see it in all it's mad technicolour glory)