Authors & Books Archives ⋆ Page 3 of 8 ⋆ L.J. Diva

Why #cockygate could be an issue for authors who do and don’t trademark

17/05/2018 by L.J. Diva Filed Under: Authors & Books, Business & Legalities, Manners & Decency Leave a Comment

I’ve read a lot over the last couple of weeks about author, Faleena Hopkins. She trademarked her book series, just last year, which is fine, however, it’s been her attack on authors using the word she trademarked that has soured the community against her.

She trademarked the very banal word, cocky.

Her series is technically The Cocker Brothers, but she also trademarked the word cocky.

The US trademark system allowed her to do so, which, again, is fine, albeit idiotic, but that is not the issue.

Since obtaining the trademark, she has gone after every author using the word cocky in their book titles, series, or even keywords.

That is what has riled the author community against her. The legal letters she has sent to all of these authors asking them to change their book titles. When they didn’t, she then emailed Amazon to complain and Amazon stupidly removed any and all romance books with the word cocky in the title or description, causing many authors to not only end up in tears, but to lose out on money, have their books banned, and/or are unable to do anything about it.

Of course, that means that Amazon has had a whole barrage of letters, even from the Romance Writers of America who sought legal advice from a trademark attorney. One author, Kevin Kneupper, an ex-trademark attorney himself, filed an opposition against her to stop her from being able to trademark the word and thus to stop her from harassing all of the authors she’s been harassing.

Faleena went on a rant at her website, Facebook and YouTube where she posted a video of her basically mentally falling apart over the issue. It went for over an hour and a half.

She has alienated the community she claimed she belonged to, she lied through her teeth about being bullied. Sure, she may have been by some, but when you’re sending legal letters to authors over something so banal, and then attacking them via their sales pages, that is absolute shit. And yes, you should be taken down for it.

I have not watched the video, but have read multiple blog posts. Quite frankly, it sounds like this woman is arrogant beyond belief and quite the narcissist.

It’s one thing to want to protect what you have created, another to attack wantonly left, right and centre. No one had heard of you before this, and now all you’ve done is made people never want to hear of you again.

It’s sad that she stooped so low, or felt the need to. It’s also sad that she had no advice whatsoever on trademarking such a common word. She attacked others for using the word and demanded they change their titles, yet claimed she could not change her own when people rallied against her and said that marines never call themselves soldiers and she should re-title her own book before she insulted all of the marines out there. On top of that, she seems to have trademarked the word in a certain font, which, is illegal since she did not have permission to do so from the creator of the font, or the place it was sold. And Creative Market prohibits their goods being resold or trademarked. So Faleena Hopkins could be in quite a lot of trouble.

There seems to be many contradictions where this woman is concerned. I doubt she had decent legal advice, if any, and it seems to me that she should not be the one sending anyone a letter to cease and desist, it should have been her lawyer. To be personally involved makes things worse for her.

Since the whole saga blew up, she shut down her social media channels and presumably went into hiding, especially when the hashtags #cockygate and #byefaleena turned up.

I’ve added some links below from websites still talking about it. They can be found on the first two pages when you google cockygate, and this one is where I first read about it – Pajiba – and this awesome review of the whole saga with awesome gifs – NastyGal book Reviews

Vox – Buzzfeed – Reddit – Reddit #2 – Slate – Kevin Kneupper – Myriddn Publishing – The Digital Reader – The Guardian – Electric Literature – Jenny Trout

There are also a massive pile of satirical e-books gone up on Amazon, all very short, proceeds going towards the fight, all hilariously titled. Such as this, this, this, this, this and this.

On one hand I get it, I do.

As someone who has trademarked a whole bunch of names and titles I know where she’s coming from, but shake my head at the bullshit she stirred up.

For the record, here in Australia you can trademark author names, series titles, blog names. Hell, you could even trademark your own name if you wanted to.

I have trademarked Porn Star Brothers, Jewels Diva, Lady Jewels Diva and L.J. Diva, all in the class of 41. It covers books, audio, production, radio, TV, websites etc. Pretty much covers everything you might ever need it for.

But, it’s only for the country of Australia. Sadly it would cost way too much at this point to trademark world wide. At least $30,000 AUD for each trademark, which I seriously cannot afford.

But at least I have the legal backing behind me.

I have also been opposed. And it’s not something you want to happen. They bring up all sorts of ridiculous absurd things to oppose you with, such as, people would not be able to tell the difference, and you’re not currently using it.

And you can read about that over at my style site, Jewel Divas Style.

Oi!

I get that an author wants to protect their work, but seriously, if it’s putting you on the outer of the groups you claim to be a part of, yet no one has ever heard of you, and you’re seriously pissing everyone in the world off, don’t do it. Just don’t. And if you absolutely have to, then do so through a lawyer and do it properly and not some random hack job because you’re pissed off and some sort of stupid insane bitch.

Seriously, Faleena, man up and grow a fucking pair. Stop being arrogantly narcissistic and learn to do things properly. You don’t email someone to take it down and then email Amazon instead and have them pulled without giving them adequate time to do anything. Everything has a due process, of which you have not bothered learning. You also have clearly not bothered learning any freakin’ manners when it comes to how things need to be administered.

As one trademarked author to another, get fucking real, pull your head out of your narcissistic arse, grow a brain, build a bridge and then get the fuck over yourself.

Fucking seriously!

Book Review: The old 80s standards, Lace and Lace 2

16/11/2017 by L.J. Diva Filed Under: Authors & Books 1 Comment

As with Valley of the Dolls, three quarters of this book was
terribly boring and terribly long. The good part only started in the last
quarter, and had me crying. The other bad part, I was still thinking about this
book a day later and couldn’t wait to read the sequel to see what happens. It
actually had me caring what happened to these people. Probably because my own
life is such shit.

The stories of five women all entwined throughout the book
starts in 1963 with the prelude, it’s sad, it sucks, and sets the story for the
rest of the 751 pages of this very 80s covered edition. The story is told
across 63 chapters and 12 parts with chapter 1 being told in the present of
1978. Chapter 2 is when the backstory starts, way back to 1948.

The story ducks, weaves, and leaves you confused as to ages
and times. The timeline is dodgy and I had to go back and check the years in
order to get this review straight. Finding, that they missed the important part
altogether, which, to tell the story, needed to be told at the end.

Pagan, Kate and Maxine are schoolmates in Switzerland, 1948.
Judy works at the local hotel and they befriend her, and her non-beau Nick, who
is later killed in war. Sex abounds and I suppose the common day comparison
would be Gossip Girls. High school girls drinking and having sex, not caring
about getting pregnant. In fact, the sex scenes disturbed me as many were
actual rapes which the girls put out of their minds as bad experiences, or
which they thought was normal for first time experiences.

Kate was incredibly weak, having an abusive father she ended
up with abusive men, one who later came out as a transvestite. She ended up a
journalist and then a magazine reporter. Pagan went through several relationships
and became a drunk and hermit before marrying a Lord and throwing herself into raising
money for cancer research, Maxine ended up with a Count and three sons, and a
massive career in interior design, and Judy moved to New York and became a PR
publicist.

Lili, the antagonist, the fifth woman, the child, had her
own horror story to contend with, and not only was it incredibly sad and made
me cry, it also made me angry that she didn’t fight harder. She was fostered as
a baby, but her foster mother married a Hungarian and a year later went with
him to Hungary before the revolution started. They were hunted down and only
Lili managed to escape. Her life was spent in a camp until she was fostered by
an ungrateful couple in Paris. At 13 she became pregnant and had an abortion
(this is the prelude which sets the scene for the whole book) and to pay for it
posed nude for a leery guy called Serge who rapes and abuses her when he’s not
happy. She stays with him for years, becoming a huge star in sex movies until a
rich Greek tycoon takes her away, but he dies after three years together and
his lawyer is a crafty sod who takes advantage of the situation and her. Thankfully,
she has money of her own, and makes a life for herself. Until it leads her to
New York in 1978, in a hotel room where she has asked Pagan, Kate, Maxine and
Judy to attend.

The end felt…rushed. There was no big dramatic scene which
Lili had always imagined. There was no hug, no love, no nothing, except a half
truth and a lie. I presume that will all happen in Lace 2. It ended with an
epilogue, but that was only the definition of Lace, which is what Judy’s
company is called, and then the author, Shirley Conran went on to tell us who
the characters were based on. Quite a story in itself.

The book’s lead-in line is “which one of you bitches is my
mother?” So you know exactly where it’s going and I won’t tell you anything
else.

Books like Lace were the tried and true of the time. Just as
Dolls was very 60s, Lace is very 80s in its blockbuster, sweeping way. Many a
miniseries came from massive bestselling 80s books, and sadly, many did not
follow the actual book storyline, so I will not be watching the movie of the
same title. But I will be reading book 2 to find out what happens when Lili
finds out who her real father is…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So I read book 2.

What a convoluted, disjointed, bloody mess
it was.

First off, right from the prologue they say Judy was sixteen
when she was pregnant, even though the first book said fifteen. Once again it
jumped all over the place, hence being disjointed. And suddenly, there are
three other potential fathers.

After Lili is kidnapped in chapter one (the book’s timeline jumps around again), three men get letters demanding
ransom. All three, apparently, are potentially her father. As it turns out, Judy
finally reveals all near the end to Sandy, the winner of the beauty contest
Lili was judging. God knows why she’d confide in her, only because Sandy pushed
the question about Lili’s father.

Second, there are way too many people who mean nothing in
this book. Besides the three men who are suddenly potentially her father, there’s
a new man for Judy who crushes on Lili, then there’s Gregg the racing car
driver Lili’s seeing after she dumped the boyfriend of two years, Simon, because
she found out he was gay.

Then Prince Abdullah comes back and woos Pagan after her
husband dies from injuries sustained from a car accident, and a week after his death her
dog dies. Little does he know he’s Lili’s real father.

But you get this convoluted backstory of these boyfriends
Judy had at the age of 15. She’s raped by Abdullah, then a month later has sex
with a new guy Curtis, and when he dumps her a month later has sex with some
British kid who turns into a rock star in his later years. There are all these
people who could be the culprit, but it ends up being the personal trainer Judy
hired at her work to get the staff healthy.

There’s not much story on him (his mother is domineering and controlling and he’s under her thumb) which is why it’s so pathetic. So is the ending.

They figure out where Lili is probably hidden and go looking
for her. Pagan falls from a roof, and Judy tries to talk Tony down while
getting her daughter out of the room he has her trapped in.

The book ends badly, quite frankly. They all get outside where Tony is shot dead and Judy frees Lili from her handcuffs and hugs
her, then Lili says, “You did come for me. My real mother did come for me, in
the end.”

Seriously?

That’s all we get? After investing in this hideous 80s crap,
that’s all we get?

We find out that Maxine had figured out Lili’s heritage, and
in the end Pagan did too. Kate wasn’t even in the book that much as her
character disappeared to the middle of a war to write about it.

But that’s all we get? What a crock of shit!

Clearly Shirley Conran didn’t bother re-reading her first book
to get the details right when she wrote this, and clearly she had no idea what
the story was going to be when she did write it. This is a mixed up, mess of
garbage that is really disappointing.

Don’t except the mother daughter relationship to be there. It
isn’t. And while Pagan figures out why, Lili was born from rape not love, it
really doesn’t focus on the bond that should be growing between Judy and Lili.
And that would be because a year later there is none.

I’m disappointed. As much as book 1 was crap, I invested
enough to read book 2 and was bitterly let down by the conclusion. Which is
crap! I was considering reading Shirley’s other books, but if this is the way
she writes, I’ll go back to Jackie Collins, thanks very much.

Would love to know if you’ve ever read these books and what
you thought.

Book Review: Valley Of The Dolls

09/11/2017 by L.J. Diva Filed Under: Authors & Books 3 Comments

I figured since Jackie Collins was once likened to Jacqueline Susann, that it was time I read that book…

You could definitely tell it had been written in the 60s, it
had the tone and feel and it made me feel as if I was in a Mary Tyler Moore
show, a working girl gets her first job at an office, finds an apartment and
gains a social life and friends quickly.

The book starts with long-winded conversations about
everything, making it, in my opinion, incredibly boring. And these
conversations go on for pages.

There is not a lot of description of characters, not a lot
of details about background, it comes in certain parts, but by then, you’ve
forgotten about them.

The scenes jump around a little, the text doesn’t flow
smoothly, being stunted in most sections, there’s no explanation of things, not
much detail in conversations, and you have to try and keep up with the story.

Anne is so insipidly boring for a twenty-year-old. She
cannot stand up for herself, and finds herself engaged while not having the
balls to tell the guy no. She doesn’t take the ring off, doesn’t give it back,
doesn’t put her foot down until she’s cheating on him when she insists he takes
it back and he tells her to keep it. She does hook up with Lyon Burke…

Jennifer uses people to get what she wants, even women, and
is stuck trying for the affections of singing sensation Tony Polar, who has a
mysterious past that only his sister knows about.

And Neely…for some reason I thought she was a black girl, I think she’s white, but she’s
just a teen on the verge of stardom.

The first sex scene doesn’t crop up until page 116 in this
edition, and the first mention of Seconal, a.k.a the dolls, aren’t mentioned
until page 179.

So far, it’s boring. It may have been right at home in the
60s, but it’s incredibly dated now. I was actually left wondering why this was
so popular, unless it’s because there was nothing else for women about women,
written by a woman.

And for a book titled Valley of the Dolls, what valley are
they talking about? Is it a metaphor for the ups and downs the pills give you?
It’s certainly not about any valley in California, which I always thought it
referred to since everything I’ve ever heard or seen about this book talked
about actresses and pills. So my assumption was it’s about actresses taking
pills in California. Valley of the Dolls. Apparently not.

I read up to page 194 when I started reading, and all of the
above is what I got out of it. Now here’s the rest of the book…

After a tumultuous nude acting career in France, Jennifer
eventually found love with a senator in Washington, however, after seven
abortions, she’s developed polyps and has a lump in her breast. The doctor
removes it and wants to do a mastectomy. She refuses, and slips away in the
middle of the night to overdose on Seconals in her hotel suite because her
boyfriend loves her breasts so much he’s glad she can’t have kids over losing
her boobs. So she kills herself, in no great detail, and I had to read the page
twice to make sure she was actually dead. Jesus, imaging killing yourself over
losing your boobs these days…It was sad that she did that, and I cried.

Lyon breaks up with Anne to go and live in England to write
his book. (Let me tell you people, you don’t need to quit your job or go live
in another country to write a book). She ends up in a relationship with Kevin
Gillmore, owner of a cosmetics company that makes Anne famous in their ads.
Eventually, Lyon comes back and Anne breaks up with Kevin and marries Lyon,
after secretly loaning money for him to buy out the firm he works at. Things go
well, Anne finally has a baby which she names Jennifer, but in the mix of all
this is Neely…

Neely went from a fat lazy husband to a fag (in the book’s
words) husband and has two kids she really does not give a shit about. He
divorces her after she’s admitted into what is commonly known as rehab, but
known back then as a sanitarium.

(Ironically, Jacqueline Susan’s own child ended up in one
after being born autistic. There are a few threads of her personal life in this
book, Jennifer’s first husband, Tony Polar, had convulsions as a child, so is
still a child, and deteriorated so much he ended up in the same sanitarium as
Neely. Jennifer aborted their baby so it wasn’t born with the same metal
issue.)

Back to Neely. Anne and Kevin organise for Neely to be put
into the sanitarium for help as she has been self-destructive for over a decade,
and it was the second time she had tried committing suicide. Apparently, back
then, if you tried suicide, it was an automatic trip to the nut house. She got
herself better and Lyon’s agency took her on for a comeback.

Unfortunately, that comeback made her incredibly selfish and
demanding, demanding Lyon leave a very pregnant Anne so he could travel with
her.

Unfortunately, that meant the two of them started an affair
Anne soon found out about. And what did Anne do? Nothing except to start taking
the god damn Seconals. Lyon didn’t even make it for his own child’s birth. The
affair lasted for two years until he finally dumped Neely from the company and
they took on an up and comer to their company.

Insipidly weak Anne, still not doing anything about her
cheating cunt of a husband, says nothing. Not even after the New Year’s Eve
party when she finds out he’s now cheating with the new talent, because the
little girl loves him sooo much!

Once a cheating cunt, always a cheating cunt!

Quite frankly, the end made me so freaking angry I was shaking.
The fact that a friend could fuck your husband and not have a care in the world
because she’s a selfish cunt, made me want to kill her. And him.

I wouldn’t tolerate it. I sure as fuck wouldn’t put up with
it, and regardless of the fact if she had’ve told him to get out, he wouldn’t
have lasted with Neely that long because she was a demanding bitch.

So, Anne just took a Seconal and went back to the party,
becoming the typical rich wife, of a typical cheating rich husband, who will do
nothing because she is too fucking weak to do it.

Diet pills were brought up on page 210, they’re green,
Neely’s taking them, and then yellow ones get mentioned on page 215. That’s
three kinds of pills, along with Demerol that are the drugs of choice. Jennifer
takes the red ones to sleep, Neely takes red to sleep, green to diet and yellow
to wake up. Anne takes them because she’s being cheated on and wants to feel
better. What a crock! What a fucking cop out of life. I can’t confront my
husband on his cheating cunt ways because I love him so much and we have a baby
and so I’ll just take these sleeping pills to ease the pain. God, how fucking
weak! I really don’t understand taking a pill to cop out of life. Which is what
Anne does.

My overall thoughts on this books are the same as above.
It’s definitely a 60s book. It jumps around and you really need to concentrate
to figure out you’ve changed scenes, places and times. Anne is so fucking piss
weak, and I know the book starts in 1945 and goes till 1965, but I was so bored
with this until the last quarter when you started seeing that Lyon was cheating
and Neely saw Tony in the sanitarium. I think Jacqueline left the good bit
until last and made me sit through bullshit to get to it.

Once Jennifer divorced Tony, you didn’t hear of him again
until the sanitarium, so that storyline was abruptly ended. You never really
got why Jennifer killed herself now she was finally happy, even though the boyfriend
wanted her boobs. She didn’t even tell him she had to have it removed, so
didn’t give their relationship a chance. Could he have left her? Sure. But
maybe he would have stayed as well. She didn’t know, just copped out of life
because her looks and her boobs were what made her. Which just goes to show,
you really do need a good job to back you up if acting doesn’t pan out. Don’t
put all your eggs in one basket because looks fade.

And Anne…oh, god, how I want to punch you in the face for being so weak.

If you like 60s women’s fiction, give it a chance. Jacqueline
wrote other books, bizarrely, all of which Jackie Collins had in her
collection, but I won’t be giving them a go.

I did look up the movie after reading this book as I was
going to watch it. But upon reading that it’s completely different to the book,
there’s no point. I hate it when movies don’t portray books properly.

It’s been two years since Jackie Collins passed

18/09/2017 by L.J. Diva Filed Under: Authors & Books, Life - Death - Health Leave a Comment

Two years ago today, Aussie time, I heard the news that Miss Jackie Collins had passed.

I was gutted, and cried off and on for months. Hell, I even shed a tear every now and then now. She was my mentor, my idol, my inspiration when it came to my books and the way I wrote.

That’s why I pushed for the Porn Star Brothers books. The whole series is dedicated to her, and I already had the idea for the first book and was waiting to write them when she died. And then I felt it was an absolute necessity to get them done and released on the anniversary of her death. Which I did last year, when the first three novellas were released as tribute across her death and birthday anniversaries. Forever, the current novel, is officially released today, as a continued tribute. I will release future books on March 19th and September 19th until they are all released.

It’s hard to describe the feelings one has when they lose a mentor. Someone that means the world to you even though you never met them. Business experts tell us all to get a mentor, whether they know it or not, and to follow the things they do that work, and ignore what doesn’t.

I followed Jackie for years. Wrote to her at her website in 2007 after she had been here for her book tour. And she replied, twice. She also liked two of my pics on my Instagram style page, and her family liked one from the first anniversary of her death when I read her last book as a tribute.

It’s tough to lose someone you look up to. Can they be replaced? Maybe. But in my case no. There will never be another Jackie Collins. There will never be another ballbustingly, bonkbuster writing, rollicking Brit author as Jackie. Her sense of humour, her knowledge, her…everything.

I have a US paperback edition of Hollywood Zoo, which was later named Sinners. On the cover she is likened to Jacqueline Susann (first pic below, book on left). I’ve never read Valley of the Dolls, but somehow came across this Vanity Fair piece on Jacqueline Susann and found out that she herself, died from breast cancer.

What the hell are the odds of that?

Two bonkbuster raunchy authors called Jacqueline dying of breast cancer.

I posted last year about the Jackie Collins collection I had acquired at that point, and you can read it here.

Below are the books I’ve managed to buy this year. I’ve been so busy writing and releasing my own, money has been tight on what else I buy, but I got these early on in the year.

Gotta love the back cover pictures!

Jackie also got herself on the covers (bottom left)

I plan to continue the collection when I have the time and the money. This year has been busy getting books edited and released, and that will continue…but for now, I’ll see how I go.

For Authors, What Does ‘Not Well Written’ Actually Mean?

18/05/2017 by L.J. Diva Filed Under: Authors & Books, The English Language, Writing Leave a Comment

I recently had one of my tween stories given a review and that is what it said. It was not well written. But not well written compared to what? A literary masterpiece? It’s a tween story for god’s sake.

The review didn’t mention spelling, grammar, maturity, issues with the story etc, so not well written means what exactly? You could look at 100 books and none of them will be literary masterpieces. They will be written as well as the author can write it, but then that still may not be good enough for some people.

By what standards are they using? Their own? Not well written compared to their books? Their English skills? Clearly some people just expect everything to be a masterpiece. Except people don’t write like that. That’s right, NO ONE writes literary masterpieces without help. The very few books that become literary masterpieces are beaten to a bloody pulp by countless editors telling the authors what to write. So what do us mere mortal authors do? Do we write to the best of our ability and stick to that, or do we ask the reviewers to expand on their comments so we can get some idea of what they thought was wrong with it in case there actually was something wrong with it? Of course, it could just all be in their own head.

It’s a real pity there wasn’t more to the review than just, not well written.

At the end of the day what does not well written actually mean, coz I’m confused?