The Week That Was

A week filled with conferences that was as much amusing as it was baffling. It started off with a powwow conference involving some of the biggest names in theoretical physics and research. Which made it so much funnier when the bitchiness of the participants (99.9% male, there was only one female participant who wasn't a family member of a participant) came out full force from day one.

Guess male egos are as fragile and testy as female ones huh?! Then the tea was poisoned - seriously, it had an overpowering smell of detergent. Goodness! And don't get me started on the food. So apart from giving half the audience headaches from the technical presentations, they wanted to kill us with the refreshments. And bear in mind those refreshments brought the other half of the audience out of slumberland into the land of the living.

It was with a sigh of relief that I went on to attend the tech conference. It was, surprisingly, fun. Ok, I'm no techie but at least I understood most of what was going on and in any case, there was enough wry humour going around to make things bearable. Tellingly, no one bothered to answer the contentious questions I threw out there. No one wants to ponder the consequences/side effects of profiling via big data upon health insurance. Tell me no one worries that with all the focus on covering themselves that insurance companies are not looking for ways to streamline their client base so as to cut the payout probability.

It was hilarious that this guy who was the age of some of my former students was trying to emphasise the stability of the UAVs to a friend of mine who asked. Bear in mind, the military use UAVs have always had stability problems, would commercial use UAVs be that much better. If so, hmm, what does that say of the designers and engineers who work on the military use models? And out of nowhere, this cute researcher popped up and for once, I seriously considered hitting on someone while on business. Only three things stopped me: I don't want to damage my professional reputation, he is 5 years younger and he looks like my ex fiancé the one my friends labelled the Spanish psycho.

But seriously, it's been loads of fun. Inspirational in some unexpected ways. The optimism of researchers who talked about doing things simply for good rather than $ contrasted with the slick elevator pitches. The solving of a problem here and now in the case of The Drinkable Book stood in stark contrast to the driverless car enthusiasts arguing over range of use and refusal to engage with questions on the ethics of accidents involving driverless cars.

And finally, the relentlessly monotonous presentations of bureaucrats were thankfully erased by the humour and sense of Google's Director of Games who joked about installing jacks on people's heads for connectivity with the internet - one guy raised his hands to express his wish to be the recipient of such a jack - seriously dude, you aren't being cool, you're showing how desperate you want to seem cool. Hope you even considered what Mical said about receiving a DOS on your own brain once the hackers get to your brain LOL

So how did your week go? Hope it was as fun and more productive than mine was.

No work done on the writing, beta readers forgive me!

All Tapped Out

Writing is like being in labour. Ok, that's what I've heard in any case. Since I haven't been in labour before, I'm not entirely sure the analogy is appropriate. The process of my struggles with my latest story is as close an experience with pregnancy as I'm getting so far in my 30+ years of life. In a way, the feeling of being pretty sure about the storyline, but feeling conflicted and enervated kind of reflects my conflicted feelings about having kids.

As I've said to friends, I do want kids, just not quite the other things that seem to accompany the said kids. I wanted kids with my ex fiancé but not the marriage, so basically we disagreed on a fundamental point. He wanted marriage but not necessarily kids, he was willing to compromise if he had to. We never really talked about it, there were endless arguments but not any real discussion. And while it wasn't the ultimate trigger that broke the relationship, it was a big factor.

Same thing with the story I'm writing right now. It started off as an obsession with the storyline and the intolerable selfishness and lack of remorse on the part of the cheating wife. And yes, there's a pattern to what triggers me :P Then as I got progressively mired in conflict about which ending I wanted,  the process just started to frustrate me. It was like a baby who refused to come out. Right now, I just want to finish the damn thing. I apologise to my beta readers who're probably smiling patiently and putting up with a cranky writer - sorry and love y'all!

Think Meša Selimović put it quite nicely in The Fortress: The listener is the midwife in the difficult birth of the word. Or, still more important — if he desires to understand.

The Pervasive Effects of LW

Reading and writing cheating wives or LW stories has had great impact
on me. Most readers and friends would know by now that I've avoided
the genre for ages. Then I read a couple, was aghast, then read a few
more and was hooked. Now, I guess I'm obsessed in the same way I was
obsessed by revenge tragedies.

For me, it's all about the themes of betrayal and consequences, more
often than not revenge. I'm not a misogynist, let me make that clear.
I've always been a feminist and I despise those who think women are
too dumb or weak to think and decide for themselves.

This, of course, means I strongly dislike LW stories where the wife is
too dumb to refrain from cheating or betraying her spouse.Seriously,
do the deed, face the consequences.

Having said that, I do think people who cheat or are unfaithful can be
prone to delusions or illusory justification of their actions. Some
people do say "it's not how it looks" because they really don't see it
that way. They've built up a whole illusion that helps them justify
their betrayal because the truth is too hard to swallow.

Cheating wives or LW is a genre which provokes some of the worst
responses and reactions from people because it is gut wrenching to
realise that you cannot trust the person you thought you loved and
swore to be with for better or worse. And that after forsaking all
others.

For me it's so gut wrenching that I cannot read or listen to certain
stuff without feeling the indignation or the fire.


Take Heart's All I wanna do is make love to you. It's an old song but
people still react in controversial ways to the song. I'm glad in a
way that the lead singer and members of the group don't like the song
in terms of the content. To be frank I've never been too comfortable
with the song lyrics.

Look, is the lead character really wanted a baby and the guy she's in
love with can't give her kids, there's always a sperm bank. She didn't
have to fuck a stranger, a young good-looking virile stranger. That
she dies says as much about her as it does about her opinion of her
lover or husband.

It gets worse because the second stanza goes on to talk about how the
stranger she fucks did everything right and "brought out the woman in"
her "so many times" "easily". Here's where it gets murky, if she
fucked a stranger to get pregnant, was it necessary for her to enjoy
the process and isn't her vicarious gushing over the prowess of her
one night stand. It gets worse because she goes on to talk about
"loving arms to hold onto" and refers to their fucking as "making
love". So where does that leave the man she supposedly is in love
with?

And that note she leaves the stranger made me choke - flower and seed
- seriously, why the need to justify or beautify the whole sordid one
night stand. It gets worse, she tells him in the note he will "live in
her memories" and he'll "always be there". Hands up anyone else who
thinks the betrayal is complete? First physical and sexual. Then
emotional and mental.

Of course, the stranger himself finds himself betrayed indirectly when
he happened to go the same way some years later. He finds he's been
sperm donor for the woman's child. And that she only wanted that from
him. That he was also a great fuck was bonus apparently. Oh and she's
in love with another man. Really??

How do you love someone and betray them so thoroughly? For those who
think I'm too hard on the woman - if the circumstances were reversed
and she can't have kids, would it be ok for the man to go out and fuck
some female, get her pregnant (oh and declare it was a great fuck
experience) and then present the woman he loves with the situation and
the kid? Hell no! It's not acceptable for a man or a woman though I
can already see women going like "well, men would behave this way
because they're pigs or dogs".

Suffice to say I won't accept this from anyone - male or female. It's
clearly selfish betrayal no matter how you look at it.

The Billionaire Fantasy Reality Bites

The Billionaire Craze

Ok, I know rich guys have always inspired fantasies, but having been asked to review a fair number of billionaire fantasy stories, I have to say:

a) Billionaires don't behave that way. Scratch that, really wealthy people don't behave that way, that includes multimillionaires and those just shy of billionaire status

b) The median age of billionaires does not correspond with those in fantasies, apart from the tech boom guys, most billionaires are the age of one of my ex-employers

I guess the reason why I speak with confidence on the genre is because I've worked for a couple of those monied slimeballs and they are nasty pieces of work. 

Take for instance the most recent example: a self-made billionaire, at that point 40 years old though frankly he looked 50+. I was shocked that he was the age of one of my best friends but looked like an older uncle. He was pretty much the usual slimebag, made his fortune, cashed out, decide to be man of the world/investor, leaves his wife of almost 20 years (and by then at least 2 kids) who saw him through his tough start up years. Was openly with his "girlfriend" before the divorce was finalised. And still perving at almost every female employee in his various "investment" companies. Thinks money is the answer to everything, and once asked me when I'd successfully arranged a publicity media gig how much I had to bribe the other party to set it up - I was so aghast I looked at him and shook my head. 

And while he didn't hesitate to spend on himself, he was penny-pinching when it came to employees and even more so when it came to the divorce, think he spent more time trying to protect his assets than he did with his kids. Of course, that could just be prejudice but boy, did he go flat out to ensure his wife got as little as possible. Seriously, that was a woman who helped him build his fortune and he was busy doing her in in the last stages of their marriage. 

It's slimebags like these that make me snort at most billionaire fantasies. Believe me, the Fifty Shades movie caught more cheap sleaze than wealthy predilection. Many of these guys (and yes, guys, they outnumber the women by at least 5 to 1) have more money than taste or sense, if you see the decor they prefer for their mansions and yachts, you'd agree too. Shockingly bad. Kitsch is the kindest word I'd use. 

So, while I appreciate the fantasy, because I know the reality, I guess the fantasy is hollow for me. I recognise the attraction of these characters but as a cynical private banker (he liked to refer to himself as a service provider though frankly I thought of him as a facilitator or enabler) once noted, "when you're that rich, it's no longer about what's attractive about you, you define attractiveness and people naturally flock towards you even if you're butt ugly". And that is the reality behind the fantasy. 

Defining Judith Loewe

It's awkward to say the least when one has to define oneself.

Particularly when one isn't all that sure what one is.

March 2015 marked my first venture into writing erotic romance and as the year progressed, erotica. 2015 also saw me venturing into a genre where I'm a minority. Make that a minority among the minority. As a fellow female author noted, LW is a genre populated largely by "old lonely white males". I chuckled when I  first heard that because it rang so true - sorry guys. Make no mistake, I think some of the writers in LW are of the finest in the online erotica space. And I'm glad and honoured to call some of them friends. I've avoided even reading LW stories for so long simply because the vitriol and misogyny scared me in some of the first stories I'd read. I'd only dared venture further because some of the themes struck a cord in me that other genres perhaps missed.

Betrayal is a theme that triggers the worst response in humans and it's perhaps worse for someone like me. I'm a feminist and a liberal , I don't enjoy misogynistic behaviour so it came as a bit of a surprise that I thoroughly understood and empathised with the impulse to punish that comes with the BTB segment of LW. For me, the urge to punish is not so much directed solely at the female as it is directed at the one who violates trust. Readers and critics may ask why LW? Well, it could be for two very parochial reasons: betrayal by men are so common that it loses the shock factor and despite the feminist movement having made leaps over the decades, social mores dictate that women are supposed to be the faithful, steadfast half of heterosexual relationships. The latter makes me laugh because practically speaking, it would technically mean adultery should involve only married men and unmarried women or homosexual partners. Perhaps the real reason why LW is so gut wrenching is because most expect married women to be paragons of virtue and when expectations are that high, disappointment is inevitable and the consequent reaction is necessarily over the top.

So what is my position on all of this? I write LW stories because some stories just provoke roiling emotions and writing becomes a form of catharsis. 

As I've said to various commentators and friends, I write to entertain myself. As bad as it sounds, I'm in this because it's fun and I enjoy it. It's a bonus if readers enjoy it too. I don't want to be defined by the convenient categories that everyone likes sorting others into. I'm a bunch of contradictions. I'm an X% non-white female writer who is probably transiting from quarter life crisis hangover (10 years hangover) to midlife crisis. One who's pondering returning to the UK and going back to school, not the dreaming spires though, pretty sure another dose of that would drive me batty. One who's tired of loneliness but honest enough to tell the closest thing to a dream man that she doesn't love him enough to marry him. Maybe I'm just dumb.

So what's up in 2016?

Frankly,  I'm not too sure myself.

One thing's for sure: I'm going to rediscover the fun in writing and perhaps enjoy life in the meantime.  Happy 2016 everyone. Do read my stories if you can stand them. Would love to hear feedback.  😈😇🐣