 Mm-hmm, working on content, working on offensive content. Okay, you ready for this? Are you ready? Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to From the Desk. Today we are talking about something that is near and dear to my heart, offensive content. I'm going to try and give you pointers on first how to write it, how far you should go. And if you're out there screaming, don't let him tell you how far to go. Calm yourself down until we get to the end of the video. So right off the bat, what spurred this is, I got a terrific one-star review. Actually she didn't start at all. From Mother Horror on Instagram. I think she's under the same name over on Twitter. It might be Sadie Luhu, I'm not sure. I call her Cindy Lou. Good friend of mine, Sadie Hartman. She gave a DNF review to The Bedding of Boys. Everybody knew it was kind of like a running joke on Twitter that we all wanted to see what Sadie thought of it. Sadie doesn't like a whole bunch, it's not that she's a prude, she just doesn't like a whole bunch of graphic sexual content. And that's the entire book for The Bedding of Boys. If it's not natural sex, it's abnormal sex, or whatever, it's very disturbing content. One of the main points of the book is it's a female pedophile going after younger boys and I described the sex scenes far more than, let's say another author would, or even myself would if it was a adult male with a female teenager. And the reason for that is I'm trying to tackle the double standard, like why is it okay if I do this? And it's not okay if I do that, it shouldn't be okay to do either one of them. But I'm going to get away with that because I chose to do a female pedophile and a male child. But that's the point of the book, anyways. So, and that's not a spoiler, you can read the synopsis and get that. But Sadie got about as far as I thought she would, actually I thought she quit after the very first opening chapter, which we're going to get to in just a second. But she left a DNF review, if you want to go check it out, I think it's the most liked review on there. And I love it because it lets people know people that might be offended unnecessarily, people who might be triggered, those kind of things will stay away from the book and that will actually keep the rage reviews, people who are deeply offended by that stuff. It's going to keep those people away. And if it doesn't, maybe they'll try it to see if it's really as bad as it is and they will review it and they will talk other people out of it or they will talk other people into it. And that's the big thing. And I don't want to go on a rant for negative reviews, but negative reviews sell books. I mean, you can just go look at her review and read the comments. And she sold the book to at least two people that I know of. One guy ordered signed copies from me because of her review. So negative reviews, they do sell books. So right off the bat, going back to what I talked about with, I didn't think she'd make it past the first chapter. There's a reason for that. When I wrote the first chapter, I specifically wanted the most vile content I could get in the book in the very first chapter. That way, if somebody goes over to the look inside on Amazon, they automatically know. And I didn't change the story or anything. I didn't force the first chapter. It was a natural thing that just kind of grew over time. When I first wrote the book, I started with Neve's first chapter. And then I went back and after about three or four chapters, I went back and added that one. And then I rearranged some stuff. But pretty much the structure of the book is like it was. It's not like I forced something into play. But I made sure that that first chapter was as offensive as possible because I kind of learned my lesson with Bay's end. I got a lot of negative reviews from people who got to the middle of the book. And I guess they were expecting a very serene, nice experience, I'm not sure. And they got to the middle of the book and was like, holy shit. Also with Hope for the Wicked, it's the same thing. You get to the middle of the book and it's like, holy shit, what did I get myself into? This is nothing like the beginning of the book. And that can be fine. But some people, that will ruin the entire experience. And that's why people like Stephen King in Pet Cemetery, he warns you of the terrible stuff that's coming. And some people don't like that, some people do. But the easiest way to do it is to start off with the most graphic thing. If you were worried about that, I know this book is going to be polarizing. The Bedding of Boys is going to be polarizing. It's supposed to be. In fact, in another episode of From the Desk, I said, I'm surprised if anybody likes it. The whole purpose of the book is to offend and upset because I want people to think about the double standard that's out there. It just doesn't make any sense. If it is wrong for a man to sleep with a child, a girl or a boy, then it is also wrong for a woman to sleep with a girl or a boy. Below the age of consent. And I'm not going to start preaching to you, but that's just how I feel. It's a double standard that bothers me. It's the hypocrisy. Because all the time you hear from guys, oh, you hear about a teacher sleeping with her students and you're like, where were these teachers when I was younger? Dude, that's illegal and that's nasty. But anyway, enough preaching. My point is, if you're going to write offensive content and you want to skirt as many negative reviews, if you're that type of person that's bothered by negative reviews, you're gonna wanna put it right up front so that people, when they flip the book open or when they go to the look inside on Amazon, they're gonna see it right off the bat and they're going to know what they're getting into. Now, getting into actually writing offensive content, how far should you go? I personally, now this is where my opinion comes into play and this is not fact. Me personally, I do not write sex involving children below the age of 11 and I get that baseline from Stephen King. If you read it, you know what I'm talking about. I think anything below that, I can't stomach writing it and there's some people that are perfectly alright with that. I try not to write any actual abuse and if I do write any child abuse as far as sexual abuse, almost all the sex, except for the opening chapter of betting a boy is consensual, even though the boy, a nev, the main character isn't of age. And the reason for that, I mean, I just can't stomach those things. I can't make myself write that. I was uncomfortable enough writing the betting of boys and even I have personal experience as a teenage boy sleeping with an older woman. That woman should have ended up in jail but that's beside the point. But I was uncomfortable writing those things and I want people to be uncomfortable but I think it all comes down to authorial intention. When you get to a point in a book where you are feeling uncomfortable, you can either push yourself and challenge yourself or you cannot do it. So basically what I'm telling you is it is your choice what you do but you have to understand that if you offend people, you have to be ready to offend people. There's little else that offends people more than sex. I mean, they're allowed to show murder, they're allowed to show naked bodies, butts and whatnot on television. They're allowed to show all that stuff on just regular TV nowadays which I don't mind any of it but sex, actual act of sex, if you show that in many circles, it's just straight up pornography whether or not it's tasteful or not, which is odd. I mean, we can take life but we can't show the act that gives life but back to offensive content. I know this is a rambling one, isn't it? Anyways, so back to offensive content, the number one thing you want is to get your message across. This whole series is gonna try and help you, hopefully it's helping you do that, how to clean up your manuscripts, how to get across the message that you were trying to get across, all that stuff as an independent author or even in this case any, you know, a legacy author or whatever author who publishes with legacy press. But you always wanna make sure that your core message is intact. Don't go against anything. I think the only time offensive content really and truly breaks people and chases them away, I'm talking about the majority of people is when it does not fit. You always hear that, you know, gratuitous nudity, gratuitous sex, you even hear gratuitous violence and you have an entire genre called splatter punk which is nothing but emotionless killing. It is, people are just there for the gore. It is, it's the porn version of horror literature. You have erotica and then you have porn. You have horror and then you have splatter punk. If there is no emotional connection there, don't expect your deaths or don't expect your offensive content to mean anything. I think that's why Lolita is so affecting for so many people because it's so beautifully written. It's so emotional that people get attached oddly enough to these characters and these people. Same with, check this out. Same with Game of Thrones. Daenerys and called Drago, Drago, Drago, whatever the hell his name is. Those two, their relationship is disturbing as hell for me because she falls in love with him falls head over heels and that's, it's a rape, rapist relationship. It's a victim, rapist relationship. Cause that was just hard, hard to read. Now of course the age of consent didn't work, didn't exist back then, but there was no back then either because it's all made up world in that book. But that's one point where that book offended, not really offended me, it bothered me to have to read that stuff. And a lot of people, because the book is so good, will just like, eh, it's whatever. Because it fit the time frame, it fit the medieval feel of it. That's what offends people is when you, it seems like you just threw something in there to either, you know, just for shock or for a reaction. When your offensive content has no purpose, that makes it even more offensive. It stands out. Whereas if that is your intent, I would say that's fine, whatever. If you wanna write Splatterpunk, there's nothing wrong with it. I mean, I've written some books that have absolutely no point other than to gross people out or to just have some of the coolest kills or whatever. I've written no stories in those books. There's nothing wrong with it. I'm a fan of those things, especially in horror movies. But if your point is to get a message across, I would say that you need to ease people into it or hit them all at once. So those are my two pieces of advice. Especially if you're gonna be writing offensive content, you need to expect, well, you should expect negative reviews anyways, not bad reviews, negative reviews. To me, a bad review is somebody who wrote a review poorly. It has nothing to do with the book. But a negative review is to be expected period, but if you're gonna write something with the intent of offending people and then getting upset about offending that seems silly to me. Anyways, so what do you think about offensive content? Especially what is something you would never write or read? I don't think too many readers watch this show. If you do, comment down there below. I'm talking about readers who don't also write. But if there's certain things that you will not read and will not write, let me know down there in the comments below. And if you have any questions, definitely ask because I got off on a tangent here. I didn't have any notes. I just went off. But that's pretty much what I would wanna do from now on. I just wanna sit down and talk to you guys and discuss things almost as if this is a live video kind of deal. But leave your questions down below. Until next time, I have been E, you have been U. There's been another from the desk. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye bye.