Haterz (24 page)

Erotic crime is easily dismissed by a lot of people. I don’t know why. I really resent comparisons to
50 Shades
, you know. That feels really old hat. I was writing before that came along and I’ll be writing long after EL is forgotten about. She’s a lovely girl by all accounts, but what she’s writing really isn’t sex, or BDSM, or even erotic. People say it’s been a great gateway for a lot of folks into reading, but if that’s the case then I hope they read something better. No offence to EL. I’ve met her and she’s a real sweetheart, but she does cast a bit of a shadow over us proper writers. And not just cos of the cakes.

Vampantha, interviewed on the “CrimeTea” Podcast

REVIEW: A Rubber Of Velvet:

An Inspector Grangelove Mystery

by Vampantha

This book is WEIRD. Actually, WEIRD doesn’t do it justice. Neither does horrid, eyewatering, shoddy or grim.

The plot (oh there is one) is basically so old-fashioned it may as well be called
Confessions Of A Copper
or
Carry On Copper
. Someone has graphic sex. They get murdered. Inspector Stevedore Grangelove (hahahaha) is having sex when he’s put on the case. He interviews suspects, has sex with them, gets leads, goes undercover (in a sex club), has sex with more suspects, finds out who the murderer is, has sex with them, and then hands them in, before going home to have some sex.

I’ll talk a bit about Little Grangelove. His member is frequently described as ‘purple,’ ‘throbbing’ and ‘angry.’ I think ‘bruised,’ ‘sore’ and ‘resentful’ also make it in. The poor thing takes more of a pounding “than a hooker’s behind” (this is a frequent simile). Apparently the PC’s plodder is able to satisfy every conquest with a ‘warm gush of love’s fountain’ but it has to do this so often I’m surprised it’s not a dry cough.

I’m not sure what the story is supposed to be. There’s a lengthy subplot involving possibly dyed pubic hair. There’s whole chapters devoted to Grangelove’s unique interrogation technique which features more use of the phrases ‘paddle,’ ‘sling’ and ‘spreader bar’ than you see in the police procedural manual. At every stage, you’re made painfully aware of all of the tricks that Agatha Christie missed out on, such as putting arsenic in lubricant, or electrocution via butt plug.

You’ll have gathered by now it’s not really my cup of teabagging. Fair enough. Horses for courses (talking of which, I will never ride a pony again after that scene in the stables with Lady Vagenta). But you know, Vampantha is no EL James. Frankly, she’s no Sid James.

The writing is execrable. Grangelove does everything ‘wryly.’ He drives wryly, he interrogates wryly, he has sex wryly. He probably drinks rye wryly. I counted 43 instances of the word ‘gush,’ 23 of ‘pert’ and 4 of ‘cum guzzling slut whore.’ The latter is, I guess, empowering. Go Women!

Every apartment is ‘spartan,’ but some are also ‘cluttered’ and ‘homely’ with ‘earth tones’ and yet also ‘clinically white.’ People can’t pass a sunset without remarking on its ‘glowing embers.’ ‘Red sky at night don’t they say?’ they say to each other three times at least. No-one ever pulls a gun on someone else without the detail being categorised in a way which, if it reminds you curiously of Wikipedia, is because every description is from Wikipedia.

If you can make it through all that, you’re in for a treat. If you’re a professional proofreader who loves unpaid homework. Otherwise, oh, my god, this is a cry for help. The standard of proofreading screams ‘self-published ebook’ more than the clip-art and the use of Arial on the cover. There may be a high body-count, but the biggest crime here is against the poor semicolon, which is often allowed to end a paragraph;

I’m not sure why that happens, but, oh, God it hurts me. The two chapter 47s are a treat as well. I kind of viewed it as like a choose-your-own-adventure flashback—if only
Warlock Of Firetop Mountain
had presented you with the choice of fighting or fisting an Orc. Ah well;

Avoid;

Reviewed on

“Crimes Against Language” Blog

T
HE THING ABOUT
a bad review is to take it on the chin. I’ve seen friends get dumped on Facebook and fight back. It never ends well. The best thing to do is to walk away. I’m not sure if I could. (Mind you, I worry I’d just kill them. What have I become? When did murder become easier than solving a problem?)

Vampantha’s book got a succession of really very bad reviews. And she replied to each and every one of them:

Hey there – I seriously don’t have time to reply to this upsetting filth, but clearly you have LOTS OF TIME!!! Why don’t you go and get a life? Sure the books got typo’s, but its also got one thing that youlll never have and that’s TRUTH. Buy a dictionary and seriously look it up why don’t you?

Hi! Thanks for trashing my book without reading it properly. Wonder if any1’s ever managed to finish any of your books? I seriously think not with you looking how you do.

A curious thing happened. If you were an author as well as a reviewer, and you’d reviewed
Rubber Of Velvet
badly, then the chances were that a series of one-star reviews would appear on your Amazon page. A typical sample would be:

WASTE OF TIME!!!
2 Nov 2014

By Vampantha

Avoid this book! Seriously, waste of time and money. Illiterete garbage. No suspense at all – obvious from the start that the detective’s boyfriend did it! Lame.

Not all of these reviews appeared under Vampantha’s name. She reacted to complaints about the ones that did with, ‘CAN’T TAKE IT? THEN DONT DISH IT OUT. SERIOUSLY.’ However, the reviews that weren’t obviously written by Vampantha attracted more attention. As one blogger put it...

Declaration: I’ve only met Vampantha once at KetCrimeCon ’12. She’s not a friend, or even an acquaintance, really, but she was on a panel about Getting Started In Crime Writing, and I went up to her afterwards to ask her for advice. She looked me up and down and then pointed to her breasts (I am not kidding) and said, “Honey? If you want to get ahead, get a set like these. Seriously.”

I thought that was a bit of an odd and sad thing to say. I’m a shy person and rarely manage to say anything clever on the spot, but I couldn’t help muttering, “Is that how Dorothy L. Sayers did it?” To which Vampantha nodded, “Well, that’s seriously how all the Americans get on.”

She was on quite a lot of panels at the Con, and had no shortage of opinions. It was the last Con that Clayton Roberts ever did, and I was really looking forward to hearing him speak, but Vampantha was also on the panel, so, as it was clearly taking him time to draw breath, he didn’t really get to say much. Vampantha did. She offered the following advice: “The thing is, I see Vampantha as a brand, and I’ve got to conform to my own standards. Always be polite, kind and damn witty. Seriously, I dress as the brand—I’m careful to ensure that I’ve a recognisable silhouette—always the dress and the corset so that, at a glance, people know that I’m Vampantha.” There was a lot more in this vein.

Later on that night, I was chatting to a male publisher friend (someone who I knew so well I wouldn’t dream of asking for help getting a book published. It’d mortify us both). We were chatting about the food at the hotel, when up came Vampantha. I kind of saw her approaching because, I swear, she was unzipping her jacket as she got nearer. You could hear it going
zizzzzzz
. And then she stood there and announced herself to my friend with, “Hey there. Why you wasting time with that gal? Seriously, does she have THESE?”

That was Vampantha being polite, kind, and damn witty, right there. I’m no qualified feminist, but I am a woman, and I seriously just can’t even. Especially, because there’s a thing about these conventions that some of you may know—not all the men who go to them behave, perhaps, as the Complete Gentlemen they could be. I’ve 5 brothers, all of them sportsmen, and I must say, drunk Jocks have always treated me with more courtesy and charm than your average male convention-goer. I think, alongside a lot of female attendees, I’ve got used to smiling tightly as I remove unwanted hands from bits of my anatomy. To see Vampantha out there being so... Vampantha, well, I found it a little unpleasant. I don’t want to say she’s setting a bad example, as that makes it seem like I’m slut-shaming, but I will say that she came up to me the next day in the corridor and said, “Sorry about last night, honey. Seriously hope I didn’t butt into your boy business. I didn’t mean anything by it. I was just titnotizing him.”

Titnotizing. Yeah.

I’ve kind of been aware of Vampantha ever since. You know, in a ‘oh, right, her,’ sort of a way. She’s one of those figures on the Crime Lit Scene who you can be very aware of without ever having read one of her books. (Confession: I have read a couple, actually. She puts together some nice people you quite like and then kills them off in horrid ways. If that’s your thing, then it’s not bad.) Mostly I’ve heard of her anecdotally, or in one case having to try and counsel a friend after he left his wife for Vampantha only for her to say, “Oh, honey, that’s seriously sweet, but no.” (The best counselling I could offer was to punch him on the nose.)

Anyhoo, obviously I was aware of Rubber-of-Velvet-Gate. Or Rubber-of-Velvet-Gash as a friend called it. At the same time, I was having a bit of a personal voyage. Due to a deal falling through, I’d ended up self-publishing a project (
The Magpie Kiss,
if you’re in the mood for a bit of post-war murder & melodrama).

One thing I’ve learned as a writer—we’re hugely jealous of anyone else’s success. Like there’s a finite amount to go around. Like high school, only much more mental. If Sally got the captain of the football team, then fair enough. There was only one of those. But there are lots of publishers and lots of little triumphs—pretty much enough to go round.

So anyway,
The Magpie Kiss
came out and sold—well, pretty badly, but it actually sold. #12,354 in the category after a couple of weeks, meaning 30 copies. Ouch. Don’t worry, I’ll live.

Thing is, I spotted that
A Rubber Of Velvet
was at #12,355 in the category. In other words, I was outselling Vampantha. Result.

Only, it was waaaay more curious than that. Because Vampantha’s book had some 1- and 2-star reviews (4 in total) and then 37 5-star raves. How, I wondered, could it have more reviews than copies sold? How? It’s not like it was on NetGalley; I checked. Interestingly, a lot of the ‘people’ who’d handed Vampantha 5-stars are the same ‘people’ who handed her rivals 1-star reviews. And those are the only reviews they’ve ever written.

Sooo...

– an impossible number of reviews?

– by phantom reviewers?

– I’m titnotized.

Taken from

thesallyanneadventures.blogspot.com

V
AMPANTHA DIDN’T COMMENT
directly on the article. Her last tweet before she protected her account for a bit was, ‘Some people don’t get that I am a big thing. Seriously.’

V
AMPANTHA ARRIVED AS
an actual dossier. As in a proper wodge of print-outs in a manila folder pushed through my letterbox by hand. Because obviously the Killuminati knew where I lived.

I couldn’t quite figure what they wanted me to do with her that she wasn’t already doing to herself. Vampantha was basically committing career suicide.

Only then, she emerged in a Jackie Aspley profile. A photocopy turned up in the post:

THE HEARTBROKEN QUEEN OF CRIME

One group you don’t want to upset are crime writers. Jackie Aspley meets a Mistress of Crime who has upset the armchair murderers.

Vampantha is a curious, some would say sad figure. She feels she owes the world an apology.

“I don’t want to blame it on my brother’s suicide,” she begins, pouring me quite a nice glass of wine in the lobby of a very fashionable hotel. I’ll say one thing about Vampantha, she does things in style.

“But yes, when he killed himself, it kind of took the joy out of my world and since then, seriously, there have been...”—she pauses, and rests a hand on mine—“issues. You know, sometimes, you’re up seriously late, staring into the internet and you decided you’re gonna fix it. Or rather, the wine inside you’s going to have a serious go...”

Jackie Aspley, thedailypost.com

And on it went. There were two Post-it notes attached to it. One said, ‘She’s never had a brother.’ The other said, ‘Depression? Bollocks.’ There was also a photocopy that gave away a few details about Vampantha’s real name. She had recently married a Sodobus executive, which explained how she got by.

For some reason, Duster had her in their sights. And I was fine with that.

I ‘
REACHED OUT
’ to Vampantha.

Hello!

I hope you’re well. I’m a publicist with over ten years’ expertise at representing key brands and global clients in the corporate sector, but I’m now setting out on my own, looking to represent purely literary clients. I’ve read all your books (I hope you’re not offended that they’re my fave guilty pleasure!) and would love to represent you. As I’m looking to build up my portfolio, I’d initially be willing to represent you for three months for free, and then take it from there.