There is a new book out this summer, Tampa, that is creating a category six shitstorm everywhere because it deals with a female school teacher who preys on teenage boys for sex. I haven't read it, so this is not a comment or a review. According to the author, Alissa Nutting, this is her way of making a statement, using shock value in fiction to make that statement, and addressing a serious issue with satire (yes, satire and child abuse). So far, it's been banned in bookstores in Australia and the author won't even let her own Catholic parents read it.
She said, "I wanted to satirise the way these cases are received in society. Always looking to excuse the woman rather than looks at it as a criminal case, the way we do with men."
She continues to talk about how she was inspired by a Florida case that involved a female teacher seducing a teenage boy, and how she wants to change the way society looks at these things. Isn't she just the ultimate concerned citizen.
She said through the sexual content in her book and the extreme character of Celeste...who won't even have children because she's scared she'd want to have sex with her son when he's a teen...she wants to change people's way of thinking when the seducer of a pupil is a woman and not a man.
All I can add to this right now is that I don't know what planet she's been living on, because in the society where I live I haven't seen much of a difference between the way men and women are treated in these cases. It's a crime; you're a fucking creep; man or woman. If anything, I think the female teacher who goes after the teenage boy tends to get more heat from society than the male teacher. In fact, when older women go after younger men...and the men don't even have to be minors...there's always a double standard and the woman is treated worse. So from what I've read so far the defense about what motivated Nutting to write a book like this isn't very strong. It's sounds contrived and she's reaching too far.
As a sidenote, this is another HarperCollins gem, which makes me wonder just how bad things are in trad publishing right now. I did read a few of the reviews, which are interesting. But I'm not linking to this one. And that's because I can't help feeling this is nothing more than a grandstand by an author and a publisher who isn't as concerned about kids as she (they) is about making money. I write erotic romance and I have to watch every single step I take to the point where I can't even use the word "boy" to refer to a grown man in a book. And when I see something like this I want to spit nails.
Here's what one reviewer wrote:
Brave and beautifully written; a provocative look at a taboo subject. -- Irvine Welsh Tampa is a wild ride - sexy, fast, funny, and frightening, the counterpoint to Lolita. Humbert Humbert is tame by comparison. You won't want anyone to know how much you enjoyed reading this book. -- David Vann Tampa is an instant classic. A dirty, funny, shocking, provocative, Nabokovian scandal-in-waiting that will be read and mis-read and fiercely debated. -- Matt Haig Tampa charms and seduces you into the mind of its remorseless female protagonist then twists the knife by skating uncomfortably close to your own inner darkness. Lock up your sons. -- Viv Albertine
Brave? I will be buying this and reviewing it.
Alissa Nutting's literary agent is Jim Rutman of Sterling Lord Literistic. If you've written a book with underage characters and sex, this is the man to query.
Lesbian on Two and a Half Men
I recently read they will be introducing a new character on the TV series, Two and a Half Men. And she's going to be a lesbian. I can still remember what a huge deal it was when "Ellen" wanted to come out on national TV.
"Two and a Half Men" is introducing a new female voice to shakeup Season 11. That voice will come in the form of Charlie Harper's (Charlie Sheen) illegitimate daughter, Jenny, a 21-year-old lesbian from New York.
"I think it would be great have that voice on the show from a different perspective," "Two and a Half Men" creator Chuck Lorre told reporters at TCA. "The show has had enough testosterone to last a lifetime."
I've watched the show on and off over the years, and it's actually one of the few I've liked. It should be interesting to see how a lesbian character is handled...portrayed. Because most TV sitcoms still don't seem to get it right with gay male characters in the sense that they never show the diversity within the gay male community. Just like straight men, we're all different. Same goes for lesbians.
Women Who Love Gay Romance
The title of this anthology poses an issue with my blog posts because it's so long...The Women Who Love to Love Gay Romance. I think in terms of search engines when I'm blogging and I try to keep the titles short and simple. However, this title needs to stay because that really is a summation of all the stories in this book.
I still don't have an exact release date yet, however, it will be next week. I'm still having cover issues and it's hard to set an exact release date at this point. But it will be sometime next week, and I'll be posting about it periodically from now until then.
Here's the introduction as it will be pubbed in the book:
When I first imagined the notion of an anthology of short stories about The Women Who Love to Love Gay Romance, I wondered about how many responses I would receive in the calls for submission. The next aspect that made me stop and wonder was whether or not I would receive the kind of stories I wanted to include in a book like this. In other words, I wasn't looking for M/M Romance written by women in the classic sense. And I didn't want drawn out academic diatribes about gay men in M/M Romance. I was hoping to receive stories about women who not only love gay romance, but were willing to include strong female characters in gay romance as active participants in the actual romantic storylines. But more than that, these stories also had to be plausible…or at least reasonable…as well. In the same respect, I didn't want to place any restrictions on the authors, and I wanted them to run with their fictional fantasies, so to speak.
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