I just found a new person to follow on Twitter.  Andrew Shaffer (@evilwylie) has a sense of humor I can appreciate.  He’s written a parody of the wildfire best seller 50 Shades of Grey which is an adult, erotica fan fiction spin off of the wildfire YA best selling Twilight Series.  Shaffer’s book started as a satirical selection of tweets mocking 50 Shades of Grey and progressed to tweeting the first chapter of his parody 140 characters at a time.  The tweets earned him 2000 readers and an offer via twitter from a small press.

His agent is currently shopping the complete manuscript around now.  I hope it finds a home, because I can tell you that while I have no intention of reading any books in the Twilight or 50 Shades of Grey series, I would buy Shaffer’s book just to give him a buyer’s version of a high five.

Shaffer plans on publishing the book, if it’s acquired, under a pseudonym. He’s also acutely aware of the meta nature of what he’s doing—writing a parody of a novel which, itself, is a variation on another novel—and he’s celebrating that fact. “I was upfront about my intentions to ‘sell out’—I posted that once I sold the book to a publisher I would change the characters’ names to Edward and Bella and hide out from my fans in a McMansion in Beverly Hills. Of course, this all just parodies EL James’ path to success, so maybe what I’m really doing is an extended piece of performance art?”

via ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Parody Makes the Rounds.

I’ve written on this topic before and touch on my philosophy in the bio I wrote up in the About Me section of this website.  The article linked below shows that other people understand where I’m coming from and maybe even agree with it.

There are two ways to deal with the ugliness that exists in the world.  One is to ignore it and if you’re lucky you can go through your whole life convincing yourself things aren’t all that bad.  This works well to protect the practitioner but does little to change the circumstances of anyone who might be trapped in the ugliness.  The other is to step into the darkness and wrestle it into submission, or at least cooperation, so that you can keep it at bay.

Surviving cancer and developing relationships with victims of the ugliness have made it impossible for me to choose the first solution.  Instead, I choose not to be afraid of the darkness, nor will I let it win.

As writers we have an opportunity, through our work, to recognize the experience of darkness not as a byproduct of conditions, but as an expression of state of mind and perception. It is reality that some life stories have a nightmare quality – a dense brutality. But to create a character able to transform his story is to recognize that the light within can only truly be concealed by the character himself. This revelation is emotionally powerful and liberating for the writer and the reader.

via AuthorMagazine.org – an on-line magazine for writers and readers….