Last week, I spoke with Carol Gyzander about how she’s adapted to the challenges of writing during the pandemic and she gave a little backstory about Writerpunk Press.
This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes Patrick Freivald, who I affectionately refer to as a belligerent nerd. Patrick is a writer, teacher, gourmand, and bee keeper who makes honey that will burn your soul, among other things.
Patrick Freivald is a four-time Bram Stoker Award® nominated author, a high school teacher (physics, robotics, American Sign Language), and a beekeeper specializing in hot pepper infused honey. He lives in Western New York with his beautiful wife, parrots, dogs, cats, chickens, and several million stinging insects. A member of the Horror Writers Association and the International Thriller Writers, he’s always had a soft spot for slavering monsters of all kinds. He is the author of eight novels and dozens of short stories, from hyper-violent kickass thrillers and teen zombie melodramas to science fiction, horror and fantasy. Find him at Patrick.Freivald.com, on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and at www.FrogsPointHoney.com.
Three Questions
GMM: Welcome to Girl Meets Monster, Patrick. Your Instagram account is one of the most interesting ones I follow because it gives a tangible snapshot of many of the different aspects of your life: bee keeping, honey making, cooking, teaching, your pets, your wife, and occasionally promotions for your writing. Has social media helped with the promotion of your books? Your honey business? Were you using social media as frequently as you do now before the pandemic? Do you view your social media accounts as an outlet for creativity?
PF: I handle my Instagram rather differently than my Facebook. Instagram is all about food, family, cute critters, maybe a little about teaching (though I try to keep my teaching and my social media very, very separate, ESPECIALLY given the level of vulgarity and cannibalism jokes I’ve actively cultivated on my Facebook page), while Facebook is a mind-dump of whatever’s bouncing around in my skull. Social media has definitely helped with marketing both books and Hot Honey, though by and large I think that’s because it’s been an effective way of marketing myself. I post about whatever I want–science and technology, writing, funny gifs/memes, articles about science or politics or gaming or religion or whatever strikes me as interesting. I sometimes get caught out by people thinking that just because I’ve shared something means that I believe it hook, line, and sinker, but that’s a “them” problem, not a “me” problem…usually my commentary is enough for a reasonably astute person to realize that it’s unlikely I’m fully onboard with whatever I’m sharing. And I’m rarely fully on-board with something someone else wrote.
Facebook has been awesome at promoting Frogs Point Honey (www.FrogsPointHoney.com) — a good number of people hate food posts, but lots of people love them, and I love them, so when I post delicious food things that feature Hot Honey or Rubbit or what-have-you, it draws new and existing customers often enough. The business has built up quite nicely over the past five years, and that’s with pretty much entirely word of mouth advertising, and almost all of that coming from Facebook.
I’m not using Facebook any less than before, and no more, either. I post way too often, to the extent that some people think it must be a managed page rather than just one dude with an obsessive streak and a smart phone, but I’ve been that way with online interactions since the bulletin boards of the early 1990s. When it comes to Facebook as a marketing tool, if all you do is post your own stuff then no matter how interesting you are you’re not going to get a lot of oomph out of your effort–you’ll share a bunch of stuff and get crickets in return. You have to like other people’s stuff, comment, share, etc.; and don’t do it just to game the algorithm, do it because you’ve surrounded yourself with interesting, cool people worth engaging with. It’s an opportunity to be social, to be creative, to share who you are and what you find interesting with the world.
GMM: Tell me about your latest release, Murmur. What is the premise of the book, and what inspired the story? Some of the words used to describe the book include “magical, disturbing, erotic…”. I tend to combine horror and erotica in my own fiction, and I’m always curious about writers who do the same. Why do you think horror and sex make a good pairing in fiction? Is it more difficult to write the sex scenes or the horror? Do you combine the two, or keep them separate in the narrative?
PF: Murmur is, fundamentally, about an affluent New York socialite being sexually stalked by a demon while trying to contend with the one bound to him, that he keeps in a prescription bottle. The inspiration is a combination of an old roleplaying game character and being really disappointed with a movie I’d just watched about demonic possession–it turned out to be very much the same-old same-old, extraordinarily Catholic-themed Exorcist riff, and there’s just so, so much of that out there. So I wrote a book about a kind of half-possessed guy who’d been that way for over a decade and was at a sort of détente with his “pocket demon”, Murmur.
Sex and horror make a good pairing because sex is often beautiful and wonderful and sometimes horrific and awful (at the time or later), we’ve all got our own experiences to bring to the table when we read or watch, and both lend themselves to a great deal of catharsis. I absolutely combine the two–I was somewhat inspired by David Cronenberg’s A History of Violence (starring Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello, with amazing support from William Hurt and Ed Harris). There are two sex scenes in that movie, the first very playful and loving, and the second very raw and downright angry, and they’re between the same two people, who are husband and wife, after some rather serious revelations upend their relationship. I don’t know that I’ve seen sex used to portray the evolution of characters and their relationships done that well anywhere else, and after rewatching it on cable I started chewing on the idea of sex as a storytelling device. The book is kind of smutty, but oh yeah do the sex and horror merge as things progress. Davis is an unreliable narrator who sees Hell and the real world overlapped all the time, and that lends to a lot of opportunities for really trippy body horror and gore amid the naked wumpledance. I took those opportunities, with gusto.
GMM: You mentioned that the flash piece you submitted as your fragment was written during Borderlands Boot Camp. Can you tell me about your experience participating in that program? What initially drew you to enroll? What did you learn about your own writing? Did you come away with some new skills or tricks to improve your writing? Would you recommend the Borderlands Boot Camp to other writers, and why?
PF: Borderlands is awesome–it’s three days cooped up in a hotel with a bunch of other writers, with workshops specifically tailored toward making you a better writer, run by absolute giants of the genre. The year I went they had the three regulars of Tom Monteleone, F. Paul Wilson, and Doug Winter, and also the recently-retired editor Ginjer Buchanan and some guy you may have heard of named Peter Straub. They, and all of the attendees, each read your work and gave targeted, specific feedback–and then you had basically overnight to bang out a story using what you learned. It’s pretty grueling, but you make a lot of friends and learn a lot of things you didn’t realize you needed to learn.
I enrolled because almost all of my beta reading group are alums, they’re all fantastic writers, and they all said it was 100% worth the time and money. I learned that the only person who hates words more than I do is Doug Winter–I have a rather terse style, and he cut the bejeezus out of my manuscript, which was awesome. Ginjer had some really insightful points about the evolution of society between now and the future setting of my work, which threw my perspective on science fiction off-kilter a bit in all the right ways; in particular she asked, “Why would these people be married? I don’t believe that the institution of marriage would have survived, at least not in any form we’d really recognize”–and it was a fantastic question, and made me question a lot of assumptions I hadn’t thought to previously.
If you have the money and the time, Borderlands is absolutely worth it.
A Spiteful Man By Patrick Freivald
“I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man.”
Anna muttered the words again and blinked away tears that obscured her daughter’s image through the scope. She took her finger off the trigger, then tossed the rifle, wig, and sunglasses in the trunk. Squeals of panic and laughter scattered across the field; a boy had plopped a toad onto Sally Walker’s lap.
“Stupid bitch. Stupid coward bitch.” Henry’s words spilled from Anna’s lips as she peeled off the latex gloves and stuffed them into her pocket. Real change took courage. Boldness. All those things Henry never let her be.
She got in the car.
4:28 pm.
Godfuckingdammit.
Twelve minutes home, twenty to clean up and get dinner on the table.
He trudged in on cue, scowled at the kitchen table.
Through sheer will her wince became a smile.
“How was work, Sweetie?”
His tools clanked against the floor, canvas bag toppling against the mound of yellowing newspapers she’d take to the dump some day.
“The fuck is this?”
“Dinner.” She patted his chair. “Stephanie’ll be down in a minute.”
He scowled, opened the fridge and popped a beer. With a grease-stained hand he scooped the fish sticks from his plate, then plucked up the rest from Steph’s.
“She doesn’t need ‘em.”
Anna grabbed his wrist. “Those’re for—”
Light shattered her equilibrium, white hot. Pain spread, red and warm across her jaw. Beer spattered the floor, the wood cool on her cheek. Henry’s boot dug into her back, steel toe a knife in her kidney.
“Your. Daughter. Don’t. Eat. Stop throwing good money after that stupid kid.”
With another beer he disappeared into the living room.
Spiteful man. Hated his wife, hated her daughter. The kind of man ain’t worthy to raise a child, ain’t worthy to walk free. Too stomach-sick to eat, she mopped up the mess and threw her dinner in the garbage before shuffling next to the TV, careful not to block the game.
“You need anything, Baby?”
Henry drained his beer and dropped the can on the floor. She took it and fetched another. And another and another. Drunk past sulking, he’d sleep, and they’d be safe.
#
“Jesus, Anna.”
She jerked away as Frank touched her cheek.
“I fell.”
“He can’t—”
“I said I fell. That badge make you deaf and stupid?”
He leaned against his patrol car, gave her the same cute scowl she’d loved in high school.
“Press charges. I’ll help.”
“I ain’t calling social. They kill families.”
“C’mon, Annie. You got to get out of there. He’s gonna hurt you. I mean, worse.”
“Oh, we’re getting out. I got a plan for me and Steph.”
Frank kicked dirt. “You can stay with me and Bev a while. We got a spare room, car you can borrow when I’m at work. Maybe get you a job down at Lucky’s?”
“I said I got a plan. Henry gon’ shit what’s comin’ his way.”
“Don’t get too clever, Babe.”
“I ain’t. And I ain’t your babe no more.”
“You fuck with him he could really hurt you.”
She met his gaze. “Oh, he ain’t never hurting us again. Bank on it.”
“What’re you—”
She wagged a finger. “A lady don’t kiss an’ tell.”
“Lady?” He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Tell me when you find one, would ya?”
#
“I am a sick man…I am a spiteful man.” The stupid wig slipped. A year’s worth of hair rubber banded to a shower cap, some of it had to end up on the ground.
The tick-tock of the swing brought the blond boy into sight at regular intervals. Anna’s bruise throbbed against the wood stock, every pulse a reminder of that sickness, that spite.
Four-fifty. Time enough for Henry to get here, not enough to get home.
“Fuck him.”
She breathed out, held it, and pulled the trigger. The rifle jerked, impossibly loud. Ears ringing, she watched straw-yellow hair puff red before she cycled the chamber.
Red hair, blue shirt. Ben spun to the dirt as the round hit him high-right.
Timmy gaped at nothing until Anna sprayed his guts across the gravel next to the swing.
Running, now. Panic. Bridget’s mom dragged her behind the tractor tire sandbox. Anna took her knee with the fourth shot, rolled, and bolted for the car.
#
Flushed, breathless, she sat at the table, hands folded. Henry’s rifle lay in its case, bullets in their box. The gloves and wig and spent brass drowned at the bottom of Frog’s Point, weighed down with lead from Henry’s reloader in case the cops found them. Dinner sat on the table, three plates of all-day roast she’d have had to baby hours and hours if she hadn’t have cooked and frozen it three weeks earlier.
Henry kicked the shit out of her anyway, and she managed not to smile through it.
Upstairs, Steph slept. Safe.
#
“You okay?” Frank hugged her, maybe too tight for proper, them standing in his guest room with his wife at work.
“I’m good. Real good. First time in a long while, you know. You?”
He scowled. “I had—doesn’t matter. We nailed the bastard. That’s what counts. He…what kind of sick fuck does that?”
She shrugged, looked away. “Don’t know, you know? A monster, the real kind. I’m just…I’m just glad Stephanie weren’t there. We’re free. Finally free.”
Frank frowned. “Steph’s dead, Annie.”
“Dead? No, she’s right…” She scanned the empty room.
“Gone. She’s gone.” Frank squeezed, his embrace warm and welcome and full of poison. “I’m sorry, Sugar.”
“Nonononono. She ain’t dead. Not dead. She can’t, I only shot, it was just the boys. Ain’t no way she’s…She’s okay. Steph’s just fine. It was just boys.” Frank stiffened, stepped back. He plucked the picture from her bedside table, ran his finger down the image of her daughter’s soft cheek. “She’d have been beautiful, our girl. But it’s been nine years, Honey. We’ve both moved on. You got to let this go.”
Do you have a fiction fragment? How about your friends? Would you like to recommend someone to me aside from yourself? Drop me a line at chellane@gmail.com. See you next week!
Guidelines: Submit 500-1000 words of fiction, up to 5 poems, a short bio, and a recent author photo to the e-mail above.
Back in March, when we first went into quarantine and I wasn’t sleeping and my anxiety put me on an all junkfood diet, I allowed myself to be pulled into a very deep rabbit hole. By which I mean, I started watching Shonda Rhimes’ hit TV show, Scandal (2012-2018). I had just finished watching all five seasons of How to Get Away with Murder (HTGAWM) that were available on Netflix (you can now watch all six seasons), so I was excited to watch another Rhimes show with a woman of color protagonist in a position of power. I mean, there aren’t exactly a ton of those to choose from, so I decided to invest some downtime during quarantine to what I thought would be mind candy. To be fair, both shows provide equal measures of suspense, stimulating romantic intrigue, and lots of violence and murder. I was hooked after watching the first episode of HTGAWM, but I gotta be honest, even though I enjoyed watching the first few episodes of Scandal, it didn’t really get interesting for me until Jake Ballard showed up and became my new TV boyfriend. Buckle up, this is a long post.
President Fitzgerald Grant, Olivia Pope, and Jake Ballard
Warning: Spoilers, Sweetie
Jake shows up in S2: Ep. 14: “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” and meets Olivia Pope at a coffee shop in a seemingly random situation, in which both of them lie to each other about what they do for a living. His timing couldn’t be better, since Olivia has been on a relationship break from her main squeeze, President Fitzgerald Grant. There was a spark of hope for me that Jake would become enough of a love interest for Olivia that she would stop seeing Fitz, but let’s face it, you’d need a goddamned firehouse to separate those two. No matter how many times each of them say things are over between them, we all know better.
Things start to get interesting in the next episode when Olivia goes to the Pentagon to talk to Jake Ballard while investigating the murder of a young woman who slept with important men in DC to gain information that she sold to the press. Her friend, David Rosen, is being accused of killing her. Turns out, Captain Jake Ballard works in military intelligence. While Olivia questions him as if he is guilty of something, Jake turns on the charm and asks her out two times during her visit. They both have professions that prevent them from sharing certain details about what they know or don’t know. While he’s concerned about her questions, you also get the sense that he sees her as a much needed challenge.
While making plans for a date with Olivia over the phone, we learn that Captain Jake Ballard is full of secrets, because he has surveillance cameras in Olivia’s apartment and is watching her from the comfort of his living room on an enormous flat screen TV. This super shady behavior puts him in the villain category. However, his directness, take-charge attitude, flirtatiousness, and dark sense of humor make him very sexy. I mean, beyond his tall, dark and handsome appearance.
Their first date doesn’t go as well as Jake planned, because first, Olivia is late, second, he hates the restaurant she chose, and refers to it as “a place where dates go to die.” Third, Olivia refers to their date as a meeting, which he corrects her about, and fourth, she leaves before the end of the date when she gets a call from her team of super spooky problem solvers.
Jake’s next big secret is that he’s friends with Fitz. Old friends. They were in the navy together. In fact, Fitz hired Jake to watch/stalk Olivia, but I get the sense that Fitz doesn’t know that Jake is also spending time with her in person. And, Fitz hasn’t told Jake that his relationship with Olivia has essentially been business up front, party in the…well, you get the idea.
Jake continues to watch Olivia, and his interest quickly becomes more than the assignment Fitz gave him. To say that Jake becomes obsessed with Olivia would be an understatement. And, much like the handsome and charming stalker/serial killer, Joe Goldberg, in Netflix’s You, Jake’s inappropriate behavior started plucking at my heart strings. Don’t judge me. Stalker or not, Jake Ballard is a super sexy man with a high profile job in the government. Each detail we learn about him makes him more and more appealing. At least, up to a point.
There’s a scene in which he’s watching Olivia while she’s crying in her bedroom. While watching her, he’s concerned about her well being, and calls her to ask her out on a second date. Which she turns down, most likely due to her feelings for Fitz after their latest encounter. Olivia is in her bathrobe sitting on the edge of her bed. After she hangs up with Jake, she goes to her closet and starts getting dressed. Jake has the opportunity to watch her undress, but turns off his TV instead. Placing him in the not-so-sure category. I mean, he is watching her without her consent as a favor to her emotionally unstable lover, but he sets boundaries based on the feelings he’s developing for her.
Is Jake a villain? It’s too soon to decide. Should Olivia has sex with him? Absolutely.
Olivia keeps making plans and then canceling on Jake. However, it is clear that his interest in her is strong enough that he is willing to be patient. Also, Fitz suspects that Olivia is seeing someone new, because he witnesses her laughing while on the phone with Jake. When Jake checks in with the President, Fitz demands to know who Olivia is dating, which puts Jake in an awkward position. Not only has Fitz essentially confessed to his relationships with Olivia, but Jake is the guy Olivia is technically dating. So, he lies to Fitz, and tells him she isn’t dating anyone. Which isn’t a complete lie, given the fact that Jake’s attempts to date Olivia keep failing.
Slowly, Jake earns Olivia’s trust, which is complicated by the fact that we still don’t know if we can trust Jake. But, he also allows himself to trust her. After they work together to bring American hostages home safely, their professional relationship begins, opening the door for their personal relationship as well. After Olivia stands him up for the third or fourth time, Jake shows up at her apartment and asks her to take a chance on him. She tells him she isn’t ready to date, because she can’t stop thinking about another man (Fitz). He tells her to close her eyes, and then kisses her. After kissing her, he leaves, which is brilliant because now, she’ll be thinking about him, too.
If you think things are complicated now, oh Honey, you haven’t seen anything yet. The next complication is that Jake is having secret meetings with a shadowy character who asked him to murder the Director of the CIA and make it look like a suicide. Then, when Jake realizes that Olivia is looking into the possible murder of the CIA director, the shadowy character tells Jake to “take care of Olivia Pope.” We can only assume that he wants Jake to kill her. Soon after, Jake and Olivia have sex for the first time. Confused? You should be.
That same night, while Jake is asleep, Olivia gets out of bed to get a glass of water. She looks around his place and picks up the remote control to his TV, which is when she discovers that he’s been spying on her. Obviously, she freaks out and tries to run. Jake tells her it isn’t what she thinks. They fight and he tackles her. She hits her head hard enough to get a concussion and Jake takes her to the hospital. Before she passes out, he explains that he is watching her to keep her safe, and about that time, a man in a black balaclava enters Olivia’s apartment, which they can see on Jake’s TV. So, I guess it’s a good thing he’s been spying on her, right? Maybe, but stalking is still a crime and is often a sign of more terrible things to come. It’s a red flag and not the ideal way to begin a relationship. Stalking is a trope in horror/paranormal romance for a reason. It is the behavior of monsters, or at the very least, dangerous men.
When she wakes up in the hospital, Jake is there and feeds her a story about being attacked at her apartment and that he saved her. He asks her to stick to that story if anyone asks. Moments later, the President shows up. That’s right, the President is so high on his white privilege that he sees nothing wrong with visiting his mistress in the hospital and putting a secret service detail outside her room to keep her safe.
This is when Olivia learns that Jake not only knows him, but has been watching her at Fitz’s request. Talk about awkward. So, not one, but both men she is romantically involved with have been lying to her. Together. And…too each other. Yeah, like I said, it’s complicated. And now, uncomfortably weird, because Jake sees Fitz embracing Olivia while she’s in her hospital bed, and realizes that Fitz is the man Olivia is pining for. Fitz apologizes to Olivia for hurting her, but she refuses to accept his apology and tells him to leave her alone. He leaves, but tells Jake to keep watching her. And suddenly, Jake realizes he’s the other man.
Before Olivia leaves the hospital, Fitz tries to get Olivia back. Again. He “demands a second chance,” and in a moment of weakness, she kisses him. But, sticks to her guns and refuses to take him back. At this point, I got excited. Because I started to believe that Jake had a real chance with Olivia. The shadowy figure asks Jake to deal with Olivia again, and Jake asks to have someone else assigned, because he feels there’s a conflict of interest. When the shadowy character asks if he means because of his relationship with the President, Jake lies and says yes. But we know it’s because of his feelings for Olivia. But Jake is reminded that he doesn’t have any choice in the matter and we begin to understand that Jake isn’t just in military intelligence, he truly is a spy. And, as it turns out, he works for a secret agency within the government that the government doesn’t even know about.
So, not only is Jake’s life complicated by the fact that he’s falling in love with the woman he’s supposed to he stalking for his friend, and killing for his boss, but now that Olivia knows that Jake has been spying on her, she puts her walls back in place to protect her feelings again. Despite the fact that Olivia keeps pushing Jake away by venting her anger at him, he refuses to give up on her. Which is good, because when Olivia’s life is in danger, Jake repeatedly saves her at the risk of losing his on life.
The second time he saves her life, Olivia learns that 1) Jake is part of B613, the secret agency she knows about because one of her team members used to work for them, and 2) Jake explains that the reason someone is trying to kill her is because she is dating the President. At this point, Olivia’s perception of Jake changes because she knows he is risking his life to keep her safe.
After saving her life this time, Jake comes clean with Olivia and tells her that sleeping with her was his mission (B613), and says goodbye to her. Before he leaves, she tells him to close his eyes, and kisses him the same way he did to her when she was trying to forget Fitz. By telling her the truth, he believes that his chances with her have ended, but in reality, he is now more appealing to Olivia because she knows he cares about her. Concerned about Olivia’s process of decision making? You should be.
Jake disobeyed a direct order from Command, killed another B613 agent, and now his life is in danger unless he figures out a way to make up for this huge mistake or run. Running really isn’t an option. Oh, and I almost forgot. While Jake was stalking Olivia, he had surveillance cameras in his own apartment and captured the two of them having sex in pretty much every room of his apartment. Unfortunately, someone else sees the video and uses it against Olivia. Well, tries to anyway, because Fitz has a worse secret and he forgives Olivia for sleeping with Jake. Fitz keeps up the fantasy of divorcing his wife and marrying Olivia to make her his First Lady. But, Olivia breaks things off with Fitz.
Meanwhile, Jake ends up in the hole — an extreme version of solitary confinement for B613 agents who misbehave. Simultaneously, someone leaked to the press that Olivia is the President’s mistress. And, we discover that the shadowy character who was commanding Jake to kill Olivia, is in fact, Olivia’s father. No shit. For real.
Her father makes arrangements for her to board a plane and leave the country so that she can disappear. But after having a conversation with the Chief of Staff, she decides to stay. Which further enrages her father, who is disappointed in her for aspiring to only become a first lady, a role he believes to be beneath her. He wants more for her, and thinks she should want more for herself. He’s not 100% wrong.
As we learn more about Olivia’s father, Eli Pope/Rowan/Command, it becomes clear that he wields more power than most high-ranking officials in government. He’s also scary as hell. The most unsettling thing is that he is able to control Olivia by holding whether Jake lives or dies over her head. While Jake is gone, Olivia visits the morgue each time someone matching his description shows up, because she has no way of knowing what has really happened to him. Olivia finally gets her father to release Jake and he doesn’t look so good when he’s dropped off at Olivia’s apartment.
After Jake has a chance to heal for a few days, Olivia decides to kick him out of her apartment. She does so, because she doesn’t want to be caught up in whatever her father is involved in, and she still isn’t 100% sure that Jake hasn’t been sent to continue spying on her even though he emphatically says otherwise.
So, rather than staying under the radar, Jake decides to team up with another B613 spy, Olivia’s employee, Huck, to try to take down Olivia’s father. Which, is really dangerous for everyone involved. Did I mention that we’re only in season 3 at this point? Jake is doing his best to maintain distance, or at least respect Olivia’s boundaries, but it is clear he still has strong feelings for her. So, I got really excited (again) when Olivia invited him to be her date to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
So, at the very least, they’re friends at this point, right? Except that Jake isn’t stupid and understands Olivia only invited him so that she could see Fitz at the event. He makes it clear that his feelings are hurt and rather than the two of them going back to one of their apartments at the end of the night, Jake simply tells her the evening is over and that he’s upset about how she has treated him.
I’m not going to lie. Each time Jake shows up to save, protect, or comfort Olivia, I would say out loud, “Olivia, you need to forget about Fitz and make Jake your main squeeze.” Sadly, she didn’t listen. I mean, she continues to see both of them, which is admirable on her part, because they are both smoking hot in my opinion, but clearly, Jake is the better option. At least, he is until he gets pushed away too many times. But, we’re not there yet.
At this point in the narrative, Jake has discovered that when Fitz was in the Navy, he shot down a commercial flight that Olivia’s mother was on. It’s a complicated series of events that I won’t delve into too deeply, but essentially Olivia believes that her father is responsible for her mother’s death, and the man she loves shot down the plane. Again, she doesn’t know who to trust. Her heart is broken. But, because Jake is one of the few people trying to help her, I assumed that he would become the best option for Olivia.
One of my favorite lines in the series, is Olivia’s response to Fitz when he says he loves her after she finds out that he shot down the plane her mother died on. When he says, “I love you,” she says, “so what?” That is an excellent response to a man who has hurt you over and over and over. Especially when he tells you to stay away from his rival. Would you stay away from this man?
Yeah, me neither.
But, things become increasingly complicated when Jake takes Olivia’s father’s position as the head of B613. He becomes Command with the help of Fitz. Before he takes the position, he goes to see Olivia. He kisses her, and tells her, “Whatever happens next, I wanna make sure you know that I loved you.” Why does he say goodbye? Because he knows that as Command, he will be expected to do terrible things that she might not forgive him for in the future. Although, telling someone you love them before saying goodbye is a smidge manipulative.
All right. It’s a bit more complex than that, but at this point in the series, Jake really is the best boyfriend option for Olivia. In fact, in order for Olivia to maintain the ruse that she is not Fitz’s mistress, she asks Jake to be her fake boyfriend. That’s right. This sexy hunk who could have any woman he wanted, chooses to be second best in Olivia’s life because he is in love with her. Does this handsome devil really agree to be Olivia’s “beard” (his word, by the way) to maintain the illusion that she isn’t the President’s mistress? Sure he does.
As terrible as it sounds, Jake’s role as Olivia’s beard allows him to be his wonderfully sarcastic self, while brushing up on his passive aggressive skills. To say that he’s frustrated is an understatement. I mean, he’s maintaining the pretense of being Olivia’s boyfriend, but without the benefits. After he leaves his super goddamned important job early because she needs to talk to him about something, he finally snaps and says:
“Stock. Your. Damn. Fridge. If I’m going to be your fake boyfriend all day, I’m going to come home at the end of it and drink a beer and eat real food. Wine is not beer and popcorn is not food.”
After which, he begins undressing and Olivia asks him what he’s doing. He tells her he’s going to take a shower and go to bed after having pretend sex with her.
Of course, this is all happening while he is given the highest level clearance in the government with access to all the skeletons in everybody’s closets. Jake is on the path to becoming an extremely powerful man. The problem with that is, power corrupts. And, in his new role as Command, he’s finding it very hard to be all things to all people. Not only is he responsible for protecting the Republic, while being Olivia’s beard and maintaining enough distance from her at the same time so the President doesn’t get jealous, he also has to deal with the ridiculously inappropriate demands Olivia sets for him as she tries to take down her father.
The fact that Jake hasn’t gone batshit crazy yet is a miracle. But, he’s a tough guy and can take a lot of punishment. Which is good, because a lot more is coming his way. Did I mention that we’re still in season 3? As we learn more about Jake through his role in B613, we soon discover that he is one of the nicest serial killers you could ever hope for in a fake boyfriend.
All of the terrible things Jake has to do in his secret serial killer role (I mean, I guess since he gets paid that makes himan assassin) begin weighing on him. Just because he does terrible things doesn’t necessarily make him a terrible person. Right? In fact, he keeps asking Olivia to save him.
At the end of S3, Olivia finally comes to her senses and runs away with Jake. And they stand in the sun together. I’m not ashamed to say that I cried like a baby because I was so happy that they were finally going to be together. She FINALLY chose Jake. They spend two months standing in the sun together. Apparently, standing in the sun means having sex on the beach with a smoking hot man who worships the ground you walk on.
And then, in S4: Ep. 1, Olivia decides to return to Washington, D.C. after finding out that one of her team, Harrison, was found murdered, despite the fact that she and Jake were happy on the island. Alone. Together. When they get back to the city, Jake tells her that they will only be in town for a few days. She seems non-committal when she agrees. Jake’s fears are starting to come true. He knows that if Olivia becomes reconnected to the life she left behind, it will be impossible to get her to leave again. But more specifically, he knows that if she sees Fitz she will choose the President over him.
Olivia is in denial about the fact that being back in D.C. will jeopardize the happiness they shared on the island. An island located somewhere off the coast of Zanzibar, that doesn’t exist on any maps. You know, a deserted island away from all their troubles. An island where she gets to spend every day with a smoking hot sex machine. Fortunately, Jake is clear-headed enough to help her see the reality of their situation.
Olivia is back for less than a day and already has a new case. She slips right back into her routine like she never left. She plans Harrison’s funeral and intends to go back to the island, but…as it turns out, feeling important is more valuable to Olivia than running away with a man who could easily be the love of her life.
So, instead of getting on a plane and heading back to the island with Jake, she decides to stay and pick up where she left off. And, as soon as she sees Fitz, you know it’s game on for them and their ridiculously dysfunctional relationship. Jake tells Olivia that he got a hotel suite close to her apartment for booty calls. When she questions his statement, he explains that since they are back in D.C. he also has business to take care of, and he doesn’t have time to live in her apartment and wait around to “service her.” She has the nerve to take offense. Again, Jake is the only one in touch with reality.
But, she hasn’t completely lost her mind. She still has enough sense to make a booty call to Jake’s hotel room. And bonus, she shows up wearing her coat, boots and nothing else.
Maybe they aren’t standing in the sun anymore, but they still seem to be happy. At least for the moment. The longer they stay in the shadow of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, their chances of riding off into the sunset together get smaller and smaller. But it doesn’t look like Olivia is going to stop riding Jake any time soon.
Despite the fact that Olivia and Jake are maintaining a sexual relationship, he keeps making the distinction that he is not her boyfriend. Not because he doesn’t want to be, but because she has never officially recognized him as her boyfriend even though they spent two months alone on a tropical island banging each other’s brains out.
I mean, I understand that it isn’t always necessary to define roles in a sexual relationship between consenting adults. However, the only reason Olivia refuses to define her relationship with Jake is because she’s hoping for something, or rather someone better. And, he knows that (and who she wants instead). So, he keeps making it clear that she is the one who defined those boundaries within their relationship and refuses to pretend to be her fake boyfriend anymore. He deserves better. Of course, he’s still interested in having sex with her on the regular though.
I’d clear my whole schedule to find out what that thing might be. I mean, she knows what that thing is, obviously enjoys it, and yet they are sleeping in separate beds most evenings. If a man as fucking spectacular as Jake Ballard wanted my undivided attention, not only would I clear my schedule for him to do that thing nightly, but I’d find time first thing in the morning, plan a few nooners during the week, and I don’t know, the moment he walked in the door, whatever time that might be.
Olivia doesn’t share my point of view and is more than happy to piss away really good sex with a smoking hot man who is willing to call her on her bullshit. Which is exactly what she needs. He genuinely loves her. Would do almost anything she asked. Except, be her pretend boyfriend. He needs her to acknowledge her feelings for him. He needs her to choose him first. But he also doesn’t ever expect her to choose him. And yet, he continues to protect her. Even though that means putting his own life at risk.
I know I’ve been painting a rosy picture of Jake, but the more we learn about him, the more that comes into question. I mean, he is a Black Ops spy. We know he’s killed people, but at this point, we have no idea how many people. Admittedly, if my fake boyfriend killed people for a living, I might have some misgivings about making him my real boyfriend.
Who am I kidding? He looks amazing when he’s killing people.
I mean, he even looks good when he’s digging an unmarked grave to hide the bodies.
At the beginning of S4, Jake keeps trying to get people to listen to him about what is happening around them now that Olivia’s father is Command again. He keeps trying to tell Olivia that her father has put a hit out on him, and he tries to tell Fitz that Rowan is responsible for assassinating his son. But no one has time to listen to Jake, and then all of a sudden Jake is accused of killing the President’s son. And, since Fitz is already jealous of Jake for running away with Olivia, he can’t wait to make Jake’s life a living hell.
And, when Olivia doesn’t hear from Jake, she assumes that he’s avoiding her. Which is crazy given the fact that he wants to spend all of his time with her if she would allow it. Oh, and it would be great if she publicly recognized him as her ACTUAL boyfriend. It takes her a while to figure out something is really wrong.
The good news is that Jake’s training has prepared him to deal with interrogation and extreme methods of torture. So Fitz’s efforts to get Jake to admit that he killed his son aren’t going well. In fact, Jake manages to push all of Fitz’s buttons instead.
Fitz allows his jealousy to cloud his judgement and refuses to hear the truth about who really killed his son. Then Jake makes the mistake of saying the thing that no one else is able to say out loud–he tells Fitz that Olivia loves both of them. Which makes them both good guys, because she wouldn’t love them if they weren’t wearing white hats. Even though it’s obvious that Olivia loves both men, Jake is the only one who can say it out loud without having icky feelings about it.
Everyone is out to get Jake and Olivia’s father continues to lie to and manipulate her so that she believes that Jake actually killed the President’s son. So, not only does the President not believe him, but Olivia begins to question the facts. And, after Jake gives up on the notion of proving his innocence, he tries to comfort Olivia even though he knows he will never be her first choice.
Olivia figures out a way to prove that Jake didn’t kill Fitz’s son. But, instead of releasing Jake right away he is kept at the Pentagon so that Olivia can prove that her father was behind the assassination. Jake uses this opportunity to take additional digs at Fitz. He especially likes to remind Fitz that Olivia chose to run away with him and that they are still seeing each other.
Despite Jake’s posturing, he still doesn’t believe that Olivia cares about him as much as he cares about her, and after Fitz leaves the room, Jake tells her he knows that she’d rather be standing in the sun with Fitz. She gets upset that he keeps talking about himself as if she doesn’t care about him.
When Jake is finally released, things get more complicated as he attempts to find and potentially kill Olivia’s father. He’s a bit stressed, so when he arrives at Olivia’s, he’s surprised to see how happy and carefree she’s acting. She has food, beer for Jake, wine for her, and there is music playing. Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ’Bout a Thing” to be exact. And, she’s dancing. He tries to tell her about the danger they need to be concerned about, at least the one he’s aware of, and she refuses to talk about anything serious.
Just to keep things interesting, Olivia is kidnapped by mercenaries that same night, leaving Jake with the most terrifying case of blue balls in history. He’s about to get kinky with his sorta kinda girlfriend. He takes off his clothes, prepares to make her fantasy come true, and then she disappears. Because he’s a highly trained spy, he jumps into action and begins looking for her immediately. But the men who took her are professionals and no one can track her down.
She’s gone for weeks, put up for auction to the highest bidder on the Dark Web, and the President is forced to go to war by the Vice President in order to get Olivia back. Yeah, the Vice President had the President’s mistress kidnapped to make him go to war. This show is not boring. A little over-the-top at times, but never boring.
Neither Jake or Fitz are able to rescue Olivia. An old friend who has connections with the Russian mob through Interpol is able to make the highest bid and rescue her. When she finally gets back to D.C., and after she is interviewed by the FBI to determine if she let any government secrets leak to her kidnappers, Jake and her team take her home and make sure she’s okay. Jake offers to spend the night, but Olivia declines, confusing Jake. Then, Fitz arrives on Jake’s heels, and Olivia throws him out after telling him that he wasn’t the one who rescued her.
Olivia is clearly suffering from PTSD, but she isn’t seeking help. She jumps back into her work and pretends that everything is fine, but when she isn’t working, she’s hiding in her apartment with a gun. She avoids Jake and Fitz, but at least she takes Jake’s calls when he checks on her.
I guess because neither of them are currently sleeping with Olivia, Jake and Fitz slip back into business as usual, and Jake continues his part-time job of stalking Olivia so he can keep tabs on her for Fitz. Confused? Don’t be. Olivia has always been an assignment for Jake, whether he’s watching her for Fitz or her father, his job is to stalk her and report back to whomever is paying him to watch her. The problem is, Jake can’t separate his job duties from his attraction to Olivia. Even though doing the job you love is good advice, in this case, maybe not so much. If your job is to stalk someone, you should try not to fall in love with them. To be fair though, that is an obvious danger of voyeurism.
B613 is in danger of being exposed by former agents and the District Attorney. Jake has warned them to stop because they are all in danger of being murdered. Jake bugs David’s office and finds out that he is planning to trap Jake into testifying, but Jake has other plans that involve killing off agents that are willing to testify against him.
Backed into a corner, we begin to see Jake’s true colors and his mercenary is showing. Olivia has abandoned him for Fitz. Well, actually, she’s been sleeping with another guy who just happens to be a B613 agent, too. Surprise! But we don’t know that yet.
Jake’s in danger or being exposed as a Black Ops spy who has killed a lot of people. No, really. A lot. He is finally pushed to what appears to be his limit, and takes up residence in the apartment across the hall from Olivia without her knowledge. Olivia’s team decides to kill Jake and when they come looking for him, he threatens to kill Olivia if they don’t leave him alone. Would he kill Olivia? Maybe. But it seems unlikely since he’s still in love with her.
Because they can’t guarantee Olivia’s safety, and honestly, because they are a little terrified of Jake, they back off and give up on exposing B613. Jake is now officially a villain. And, as we all know, any villain of note should have an interesting, and often heartbreaking backstory. Jake has that in spades.
Is he really a villain? Not yet. At best, he’s an intriguing antihero who is doing his damnedest to be the hero. And, if he’s really lucky, he’ll win the heart of the woman he loves. In fact, he agrees to testify and bring B613 down with Olivia and her team. Once again, Jake risks his own safety to wear a white hat and stand in the sun with Olivia.
And then, Olivia’s father reappears and begins threatening everyone Olivia cares about unless she puts a stop to exposing B613. Eli Pope is an actual villain, and he’s been grooming Olivia to become just like him some day. And, they both use Jake to do their dirty work. Jake is loyal to a fault. He has been a gun for hire, a convenient boyfriend, and a champion for the causes Olivia insists on upholding no matter how insanely dangerous. Even when he has seriously important work to do, he always seems to be on call whenever Olivia needs him. How long do you think someone can do that without receiving the love and respect they deserve? My guess is not long. Especially when you consistantly give the person you love opportunities to step up and treat you better.
Jake has several part-time jobs, and one of them is wooing a woman who should have chosen him already. As the date of the trial to expose B613 gets closer, Jake stops by Olivia’s office to remind her that he’s got her back, and if she’s scared or needs someone to talk to, his strong, broad shoulders are available for her to cry on. He doesn’t make any sexual innuendos. He doesn’t remind her of how badly she’s treated him. He simply tells her he’s there for her if she needs him. And she seems to be adamantly opposed to accepting his help.
This man is hopelessly in love.
And what does he get for his trouble? He gets mortally wounded by the guy who’s been banging Olivia and almost dies after being stabbed many, many times.
As you might imagine, I had a lot of feelings about this. When the character you care about the most is in danger of dying, and if you’re anything like me and live vicariously through fictional characters, it’s going to hit you pretty hard. When Olivia’s team find him the next morning barely hanging on to life, I was a mess. It takes a very long time to get Jake the medical attention he needs, and because there’s a price on his head, they can’t take him to the hospital. They have to rely on a back-alley Russian doctor who most likely makes a living attending to bullet and stab wounds for the criminal underworld.
So, not only is Jake in danger of dying because of his many, many stab wounds, but then the person who tried to kill him insinuates himself into the situation enabling him to try to kill Jake again. Let’s just say that it’s an exciting episode. Olivia obviously cares about Jake, because she’s terrified of him dying. But her feelings for him are still unclear. She loves him, but she isn’t in love with him. It takes him almost dying for her to admit that she never should have left the island. Well, no duh.
After figuring out that the guy she’s been banging is actually a B613 agent and working for her father, Olivia has her team torture him for information while Jake recuperates in her bed. He has wanted to be back in her bed for a while, but this isn’t what he had in mind.
But hey, he’s still alive.
Jake’s a smart guy. He figures out that Olivia has the B613 agent, Russell, in the apartment across the hall and explains to her that it doesn’t matter how much she tortures him, he won’t talk. Jake tells her he won’t talk because Russell is like him. She gets defensive and says that Jake is nothing like Russell. He says that they were both trained to get close to her, and that they both have a PhD in Olivia Pope, but there’s one difference between Russell and Jake.
He then goes on to say that Command would consider his feelings for her a defect. When he shares with her that essentially she is his greatest weakness, she opens up and finally talks to him about what happened to her when she was kidnapped. Something she hasn’t talked to anyone else about. Instead of using this connection as a way to get closer to Jake, she lets him know that she isn’t going to stop trying to get information out of Russell because she wants to get her father.
Jake’s curiosity gets the better of him and he goes across the hall to meet Russell, have a beer and compare stories about what it is like to be trained by Rowan, Olivia’s father. They bond over the fact that they are both unique among B613 agents. And, Jake explains to Russell Olivia’s role in Rowan’s weird game of control. Proving that Jake definitely has a PhD in Olivia. No one knows her better. Which would be more romantic if he wasn’t her stalker and a serial murderer. And yet, I still want him to have a happily ever after with Olivia.
Jake testifies before the grand jury about B613. And minutes later, all of the jurors are brutally murdered. Rowan/Eli Pope blackmailed the First Lady who is also a senator into giving him the list of names so that he can kill them. So, everyone who listened to Jake’s testimony is dead except Jake and the District Attorney.
Jake once again offers Olivia the option to run away and she turns him down because she’d rather keep trying to take her father down which makes everyone around her potential victims. So, when Olivia decides to involve the CIA, shit gets real. She and Jake are thrown into prison, because the head of the CIA is too afraid to arrest Rowan. How many times is Jake going to take a bullet for Olivia — literally and figuratively?
At the end of S4, Jake tells Olivia his mission is over. B613 no longer exists. He has delivered her home safely. Once again, he tells her that he is in love with her, but she’s in love with Fitz. He walks away and she is confused. She thinks of their time on the island. But instead of running after him and telling him that she loves him, too. She lets him walk away and goes to the White House to see Fitz that night.
To say the least, I was disappointed. I mean, I wouldn’t kick Fitz out of bed for eating crackers, but Jake Ballard is far more interesting. And WAY more murdery without being a vampire, werewolf, or the Devil himself. In fact, Jake Ballard is the first non-supernatural character I’ve been interested in to this degree in a long time. Come to think of it, the last human I obsessed over was also a murdery secret agent.
At the beginning of S5, Olivia is outed as the President’s mistress and decides to run instead of dealing with the fallout. She takes a case and dives into work rather than dealing with reality. Who comes to help her? Why, Jake Ballard, of course. Although he told her his mission was over, he can’t seem to stay away from Olivia. He wants to help her and always wants to come to her rescue in the hopes that she will see him as a hero and accept him as her main squeeze.
While Olivia is working a case/running away from her life, she is emotionally distraught over her relationship with Fitz, but asks Jake to spoon her on the filthy motel room bed they share. In fact, when Jake returns from his beer run, he climbs onto the bed next to Olivia as if it is the most normal thing in the world, and she doesn’t question it. They are lying together like a couple. A couple who has faced a lot of obstacles and trauma, but are still there for each other. Olivia got Jake out of prison. And Jake runs to Olivia’s side when she’s in trouble. Is it just me, or should they run off to Vegas and get hitched? I mean, Jake is Olivia’s lover and in many ways, her best friend. But she doesn’t treat him as well as she should. Without hesitation, Jake comforts her and they spend the night together with him holding her. He doesn’t think twice about doing it. Because, as he’s said to her time and again, he loves her.
With the case solved, Jake returns Olivia to her apartment in D.C. and asks if she’s going to be alright. She says yes and gets out of the car into a throng of reporters asking if she is the President’s mistress. She turns to the camera, and says yes. I wanted her to say no. I wanted her to get back in the car and go somewhere with Jake. But that didn’t happen.
Jake’s response to Olivia’s “truth” is to go to her office where her team is trying to put out the fire Olivia started and “help” her. He tells them that she doesn’t need help, because she finally did the thing she tells everyone else to do, “do not lie.” When the teams asks Jake what the plan is, he says, while opening a plain brown paper bag, “My plan is to sit here and drink the majority of this vodka. Get remarkably wasted, and watch the world end. Anyone care to join me?”
And then, while Olivia is in the White House, after making out with the President in the Oval Office and pissing off everyone else around her, she calls Jake to tell him that she thinks she made a mistake and he says, “Just say the word, Liv, and I’m on my way.” She tells him she’s good, there’s some awkward silence on the phone, and then she tells him to have a drink for her. His response is, “Done.”
Unpopular opinion: Olivia Pope is a monster. There, I said it.
When Jake sees the news report that the Louvre is on fire, he goes to visit Eli Pope in prison. Jake asks Eli if he is responsible for the Louvre, which is part of a plan called Lazarus 1. Which seems to mean that Jake has never left B613 and that B613 isn’t really gone, just on temporary hiatus. Jake accuses Eli of trying to regain power and threatens to kill whomever Eli is working with on the outside.
While the media is pulling Olivia’s life apart and trying to make her look like a power-hungry harlot, and the writers use this as an opportunity to highlight the use of racially coded language or dog whistle politics in the media for the audience, Jake heads to Paris to follow the trail of clues leading to who is kicking off the plan Eli pretends to know nothing about. And, while in Paris, Jake runs into someone he never thought he’d see again: his wife.
Jake thought his wife, Elise, was dead. Surprise! They were supposed to meet at Grand Central Station and she was an hour late, and he assumed that she had been murdered. He tells her he grieved for her and that he loved being married to her. So, of course, I was hopeful that Jake might get a little happiness. He’s reunited with a woman he loved and they are obviously happy to see each other.
But, Jake Ballard isn’t allowed to have long-term happiness. First, Elise gets shot in Paris, and when Jake visits her in the hospital, she admits that she didn’t meet him at Grand Central Station because they are both spies. He asks her to come back to the States with him.
Olivia randomly drops by Jake’s for a visit and meets Elise, but he doesn’t tell her she’s his wife. Olivia goes to him for advice about her relationship with another man. When she is scared about what is going to happen next in her life, she goes to Jake. And, because he seems to know her better than anyone else, I mean he did stalk her for a long time, he always tells her what she should do and he’s almost always right.
Jake should be getting his happily ever after, right? Wrong. Elise is the person on the outside who has been helping Eli Pope regain power. When Jake finds out, he’s less than thrilled.
Olivia finds herself in a situation where she might have to marry the President, and who does she call? Jake. She asks him what she should do about whether or not to marry Fitz, and he points out how ridiculous that is, given their history. She says that she’s sorry and that he’s the person she talks to when she needs a friend, and then he hangs up on her after saying he’s hanging up.
Then she calls him again to tell him that she’s going to marry Fitz. She says that she wanted to tell him before he heard about it on TV, and his response is “whatever.” She starts to say that she needs him to feel a certain way, and he tells her that she’s not allowed to need him for anything, or ask him for anything, because that’s Fitz’s job now. And, he hangs up on her again.
He decides to leave with Elise, and they plan to meet the next day at the train station. But when he shows up, she’s already dead. Why? Because Olivia arranged for her father to be freed from prison. There is an amazing scene in which Olivia comes home to find Jake in her living room sitting in the dark drinking bad wine, which he complains about when she asks why he’s there. He tells her to sit down, she ignores him and then he shouts at her to sit down.
Typically, when Jake is with Olivia, he is there to keep her safe, but she has found herself on the wrong side of Jake Ballard and he can be quite scary. As always, he points out to her that he knows her better than anyone, including herself. He calls her a hypocrite because her story about wearing a “dumb white hat” is bullshit since she just left a mass murderer out of prison to serve her own agenda. He points out that the President isn’t impeached and she doesn’t have a wedding ring on, two things that she needed to make happen at any cost. Jake tells her that Elise is dead and Rowan killed her, then he corrects himself and says, that she killed her, because she let Rowan out of prison. Then he says this wonderful line, “The woman I love killed the woman I used to love, or the woman I used to love killed the woman I love. I can’t figure it out.” He yells at her some more, she tries to justify her bullshit and then he stands in front of her menacingly before kissing her and leaving.
Jake Ballard is out of fucks to give.
The President asks Jake to hunt for Rowan, and Jake let’s her know that when he finds him he’s “going to look him in the eye and put a bullet in his head.” Apparently, Jake can hold a grudge and when people fuck him over, his solution is to start killing people.
Of course, Olivia doesn’t believe that Jake’s serious about hunting Rowan. And when her father comes to see her to tell her that someone is trying to kill him and that he’s a victim, she decides to call Jake. Actually, she summons him to the Oval Office. After Olivia tries to convince Jake that her father is in danger, he lets her know that he isn’t down for any more of her bullshit.
“What did you think? That I’d come here and spoon you? Give you a shoulder to cry on, listen to you talk about all the dark places Rowan built inside of you? That train has left the station and you do not get to ride this (he means himself) anymore. If you want someone to talk to, tell your boyfriend that you just let his son’s killer out of prison. See how that works out.”
Olivia gets vindictive and accuses Jake of being petty and jealous because she chose Fitz instead of him. But their argument, that I hoped would come to fisticuffs, was interrupted when Fitz comes into the office and they pretend they aren’t having a lover’s spat. Is it a lover’s spat when you fantasize about killing the other person?
Soon after, we discover that Olivia has a secret. While Fitz is waiting for her at a state dinner that she helped to plan, she is at Planned Parenthood getting an abortion that she won’t be able to tell anyone about. There is no one she can turn to for support because she has essentially burned her bridge with Jake and is a prisoner in the White House.
And, when Fitz asks her where she was? She can’t tell him the truth, so they have a fight about all the terrible things that are wrong with their relationship. They both air their feelings of resentment, and Olivia admits that she preferred Fitz when he was unavailable. Fitz tells her he hates that she’s always right and that they tried. But their current situation makes it impossible for Olivia to continue to be his girlfriend.
So, as a completely unexpected turn of events, Jake moves in with Olivia’s father because he finds out that he wasn’t Lazarus and honestly he has nowhere to go. Or does he? Six months after Olivia and Fitz break up we find out that Olivia has started having dinner with her father again. She tells him she doesn’t want to come by the house since Jake is there. Which is funny, because when she gets home, Jake is waiting outside her apartment and tells her she’s late. And then Olivia pretends that she wants him to leave and then they jump each other’s bones and have epic foreplay before heading to her bedroom. I guess Olivia is allowed to ride that train again. Ride, Olivia, ride.
The President asks Jake to investigate leaked information from the NSA. While they’re catching up, Fitz asks Jake if he talks to Olivia, to which Jake says no. But he has a smirk on his face. He isn’t exactly lying. He’s having sex with her, but they aren’t having a relationship. They are friends with benefits without the friendship. Like, she acts disgusted when Jake tries to show her actual affection. Not only are they not friends, but they are also working against each other on the same case.
Jake loves Olivia. Well, at the moment he loves to fuck her. But, he can’t just sit around waiting for Olivia to come to her senses and fall in love with him. He has aspirations and he’s worked hard to get to where he is in his career in the military and government. He needs a day job beyond secret agent, mercenary, and Olivia’s doormat. So, what does a super spy with lots of bloodstains on his resume do when he’s looking for a new job? He kills the competition. Literally. Jake essentially murders his way to the top. He’s not afraid of hard work or getting his hands dirty. And, by getting his hands dirty, I mean blood and soil from unmarked graves.
After the suspect Olivia is looking for turns up dead, and they figure out Jake killed him, Olivia gets a little upset. Especially when Fitz appoints Jake as the Head of the NSA. Which Jake knew about and didn’t tell Olivia. While he’s still living at her father’s house. Potentially shady? Yeah, totally. I guess Jake is accepting his role as a villain. And, he looks effing stunning doing it.
Olivia confronts Jake. And her father dresses her down, telling her to follow their example and get some real power, and refers to Jake as his son. Which always makes me a little uncomfortable given his relationship with Olivia, and that is going to get even weirder in the coming seasons. Like really weird. Like Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia weird.
As much as I would love to keep yammering at you about Jake Ballard and his insanely dysfunctional relationship with Olivia Pope, I think I’m going to leave it up to you to discover Jake’s fate. Will Olivia pull her head out of her ass long enough to realize that Jake Ballard, regardless of his many murdery flaws, is an ideal partner as she continues punching her way through glass ceilings? Or, will Jake continue to make terrible mistakes in the hopes of winning Olivia’s love only to be disappointed again? With the Winter holidays just around the corner, and since we’re all stuck in our houses anyway, why not devote roughly 5 days and 4 hours of your holiday break to binge watching Scandal. It is delightfully entertaining, with a cast of characters so frustrating that you’ll talk to your TV. So, find a warm blanket, make some popcorn, pour yourself a nice big glass of wine, and get ready to fall in love with Jake Ballard. Scandal originally aired on ABC and is currently streaming on Hulu.
About a year ago, while thrift shopping, I picked up three paperbacks with smoking hot half-naked men on the cover. Technically, that would have been enough to grab my interest, especially with this warning on the back of the books:
WARNING! This is a REALLY HOT book. (Sexually Explicit)
I don’t know about you, but as a writer of dark speculative fiction who dips her toes in erotica/paranormal romance, that is a goal worth attaining. It is my dream to have that kind of warning on the back of my books. Honestly, having someone feel embarrassed to be caught reading one of my books is something I am working hard to achieve. While I personally feel no shame in being caught reading Elizabeth Amber’s books, she did her damnedest to make me blush.
Like I said, smoking hot dudes on the covers and the promise of unspeakable perversions would have been enough, but with the added bonus of mythological creatures who worship Bacchus, the original Lord of Kink, how could I not read this series of books?
Ancient Grecian Erotica
Spoilers Ahead
The series examines the romantic lives of nine male characters, all satyrs, and the struggles they face living among humans undetected, threats to their power from both humans (EarthWorld) and non-humans (ElseWorld), while falling in love with their female partners (human and non-human) while the female partners try to thwart the efforts of the smoking hot satyrs to mate and marry them.
The novels are set in Italy, both Tuscany and Rome, with stopovers in Paris, Venice, and of course, ElseWorld. There is a stunning array of villains, all of which would lead you to believe that a certain percentage of the Italian population are sadistic perverts who thrive on enslaving others for their basest desires, and who aren’t above incest.
The female characters, almost all of which are virgins, carry the weight of the world on their shoulders and keep their darkest secrets away from the men who want to rescue them. In each book, the main story arc deals with miscommunication, one of the satyrs saving a damsel in distress after discovering all the sordid details of their pasts that they have almost no control over, and then we get a happy ending. Okay, lots of happy endings, if you know what I mean. So, essentially Elizabeth Amber has written several novels that are at their most basic level a comedy of errors, but you know, with huge satyr penises.
In fact, Elizabeth Amber never wants us to forget just how huge those satyr penises are. And, if that isn’t interesting enough, once a month at the full moon, the satyrs grow a second huge penis that disappears after the first mating during the full moon. In case you’re wondering how that extra appendage gets used during the full moon, think double penetration, but with only one partner. I’ll give you a few moments to let that sink in, pun intended.
Fun Facts About Satyr Lords
So many satyrs to choose from: There are two main satyr clans, one in Tuscany (Nicholas, Raine and Lyon) and one in Rome (Dane, Bastian, Sevin and Lucien); however, there is a satyr from ElseWorld, Dominic, who is super duper hot as well.
Magical semen: Satyrs can control the potency of their semen, and are only able to conceive with their partners on the full moon. But only if they DECIDE to impregnate their partner. Their semen also technically has healing properties and enhances their protective magic to keep their partners safe.
Blue balls = death: If the satyrs do not ejaculate within their partner at least once during the full moon, they will die. No, seriously. One of them almost dies because the woman he is trying to woo keeps refusing his sexual advances. Satyrs use this excuse on a regular basis to get laid, and it totally works.
Satyrs are heteroflexible: Two of the satyrs have relationships with somewhat unusual partners. One is involved with a hermaphrodite who has both male and female genitalia that are fully functional. And another is involved with a creature called an Ephemeral, who must inhabit the bodies of people who are about to die in order to have a tangible physical body in EarthWorld. Occasionally, she has to put on a male skin suit. Body snatchers can’t be choosers. Two of the hottest sex scenes in the novels are technically homoerotic and blur the lines between sexuality.
Virgins are irresistible: In almost every case, the love interests of the satyrs are virgins before they mate with them. Which, in most cases, causes some anxiety for these women when they see the size of the satyr penises for the first time. Not to mention the appearance of a second penis. I mean, almost invariably, the women compare the satyr penises to size of their forearms. Again, let that sink in. If you can.
Satyrs can last all night long: As you might imagine, satyrs have high sex drives and are notoriously good lovers. During full moon, they MUST have sex over and over until the dawn and take every precaution not to injure their partners. They use an elixir to essentially drug their partners, which I suppose is akin to magical Rohypnol. They employ other methods, beyond four play and lube, to make their partners’ experiences pleasurable.
I’m not going to give away anymore of their secrets and spoil all the fun, I’ll let you find out some of the other…interesting methods the satyrs use to prevent chafing. I can’t recommend this series enough. If you enjoy super hot paranormal romance. If you love huge satyr penises. If you love sexy, tall, dark and handsome romantic heroes. If you like kinky sex. If you are looking for an escape from your daily routine to the Italian countryside. These are the books for you.
Seriously, smoking hot paranormal lovers with not one, but two huge penises. What’s not to like?
Last week, Girl Meets Monster had a delightful conversation about how music inspires the writing process with J. Edwin Buja. This week, I welcome fellow horror writer, Ronald J. Murray.
Ronald J. Murray lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His fiction has appeared in The Ladies and Gentlemen of Horror 2017 charity anthology, Bon Appetit: Stories and Recipes for Human Consumption cannibal-themed anthology and recipe book, and the forthcoming Lustcraftian Horrors: Erotic Stories Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft from Infernal Ink Books. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association. You can find him enjoying his umpteenth cup of coffee at some ungodly hour while a film he’s seen a million times before plays in the background.
Three Questions
GMM: Tell me a little bit about your fragment. You gave me just enough to be hooked. Is this a traditional ghost story, or can I expect to see something different than the expected horror tropes?
RJM: Without giving anything major away, I can tell you that this story contains a lot of psychological elements, as in psychological manifestations of memories, feelings, and the consequences of actions taken in the past by two protagonists. These characters will be put through a gauntlet of horrors specially designed for them as individuals with some elements that are objectively observable and experienced by both.
In short, yes, there will be ghosts, literally and figuratively. But would I feel comfortable calling this a traditional ghost story? Definitely not.
What I hope to accomplish with this first novel, From Out of the Black Fog, is an anthology series of novels with new characters experiencing something different in an alternate version of Monongahela, Pennsylvania.
GMM: Speaking of tropes, I see that you have a short story in a collection called Lustcraftian Horrors: Erotic Stories Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. What is the title of your story in this collection? Lovecraftian Horror is familiar to most people who read horror fiction, but the concept of Lovecraft meets erotica is intriguing. Have you written other horror erotica? What challenges did you face working within that subgenre?
RJM: The title of this short story is In the Labyrinth, about a sex-addict seeking extra-marital thrills that ends up wrapped up with a cult that worships the perverse fertility goddess Shub-Niggurath. I imagine that Lovecraft is rolling over in his grave at the creation of this anthology, considering his suspected aversion to sex and women.
I have had other horror erotica published, one of which was Cornelia in Bon Appetit. The biggest challenge I’ve faced working within the subgenre is weaving a sex plot in with a horror plot. I’ve reconciled the issue with the perspective that sex is one of the most intimate and vulnerable places a person can put themselves in. If something horrifying happens as a result, that subverts something that’s safe and pleasurable under normal circumstances. It’s a real Junji Ito solution!
GMM: Cannibalism is a taboo subject that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, which is probably why it is a recurring theme in horror fiction. One of my favorite fictional cannibals is Hannibal Lecter, because he is a complex character that blurs the line between the horror of murder and our fascination with the macabre. Which cannibals, real or fictional, inspired your short story in Bon Appetit: Stories and Recipes for Human Consumption?
RJM: I can’t say that I was inspired by a real or fictional cannibal to write this story. My inspiration for the cannibalistic antagonist in this story stemmed from the horrors of war. Doyle was a Vietnam War veteran who’d been separated from his unit during battle. He developed the taste for human flesh while surviving in the dense jungles of Vietnam until he was eventually rescued.
From Out of the Black Fog, A Novel by Ronald J. Murray
Lorne kept his eyes forward and high enough that he wouldn’t walk face-first into anything. He watched the glow and fade of streetlights illuminate the sidewalk, and he listened to the occasional whish of cars that rolled along Main Street beside him. He didn’t want to shift his vision elsewhere. He didn’t want to look up again and into any window that he’d passed. He just wanted to keep going forward, keep walking to his car, which he’d parked at the lot at the Aquatorium.
He looked up. His skin crawled. It’s like when your head knows there’s something you shouldn’t look at for too long or it’ll really screw you up, you just keep staring. You can’t help it.
He shut his eyes and turned his head. The snap motion was almost dizzying. He didn’t care. Then, he looked again. He swallowed hard. His eyes locked to it this time. He’d heard of people seeing their dead loved ones in their peripheral vision or in the faces of others while they grieved. It started like that, earlier in the day, but it devolved to this disturbing level.
In every window that he passed, he saw Amber’s face. Drained of color and cold, expressionless. Her empty eyes looked at him, unblinkingly. She followed him, seemingly crossed the alleyways he’d passed unseen, and appeared again in the dark windows of the next building. Over and over. When the window was large enough, he saw more than her face. He saw her hunched walk that kept pace with him. He saw her head kept turned nearly ninety-degrees to watch him.
No. He shut his eyes tight. He shook his head. No. He was cracking. That was it. That had to be it. He was having a psychotic break or something. You don’t see shit like this if you’re a normal person with a quiet normal life who loses a loved one just like everyone else in the world.
He turned his head. He opened his eyes. He began walking again. Someone passed him from behind, and he shoved his hands deeper into his jacket pockets. He drew his arms tighter against his body. The person went into Jim’s Bar just ahead. The scent of fried food and cigarette smoke poured onto the street for a second.
Something thudded loudly beside him. Lorne jumped. A hand smacked glass beside him. Amber’s face stared through the square window of a thick wooden door that led to the apartments above a shop. Her hand was still pressed against the pane. The doorknob began to rattle.
Adrenaline found his limbs. He jogged away. People, he thought. I need to get around other people. He tore the door to Jim’s Bar open. A few patrons glared at him through a cloud of smoke illuminated by television screens. He took a few steps further inside and shot his eyes back and forth. He sucked a breath deep into his chest, and he hoped he wouldn’t encounter anything to extraordinary here.
Next week, I’ll be talking to EV Knight, so get excited. Do you have a fiction fragment to share? Send it my way at chellane@gmail.com. See you next week!
As some of you know, I decided to dip my toes into the dating pool once again back in December. This isn’t my first foray into the wilds of online dating, and given the nature of my experiences, it probably won’t be my last.
In the time I have spent using dating apps to meet new people, I have noticed certain behaviors that either make me laugh, want to cry, or burn down the entire Internet depending on my emotional state.
Before I launch into a psychotic tirade about the bizarre mating rituals of human males, I’d like to take a moment to address the men I am dating, have dated, and potentially will date. First, and foremost, thank you for being decent human beings (this is not true for some of you, and you know who you are…if you don’t, it isn’t my responsibility to enlighten you). If I have gone on more than one date with you and continue to maintain contact with you after we are no longer dating, that’s a good sign that you are “one of the good ones.” At some point in time, you have added something positive to my life and I have learned and grown from knowing you. If you are reading this and you haven’t heard from me in quite some time, it’s probably because you are dead to me.
Now, on with the tirade…
I’ve been thinking about writing this blog post for quite a while and in the process of thinking about what to cover and the tone I should use, I’ve spoken to a few friends who have also tried online dating. A close friend of mine is also currently wading through the dating pool, and on a regular basis we compare notes. This is especially true if the same man is interested in both of us. We laugh about it because our tastes are so different that we’d never need to worry about being in competition for the same dude.
A few months ago, when I began this process of meeting new people, another friend of mine joked about needing a dating resume after I expressed some of my frustrations about how difficult it is to find what I’m looking for in potential partners. At the time, it seemed like an absurd idea but the more I think about it, your dating profile is essentially a resume. And, first dates aren’t that different from job interviews. Except, you don’t usually get drunk during a job interview. And, I’m not suggesting that you should get drunk on a first date, but it happens sometimes.
If, after getting drunk on your first date, you get the chance at a second date, hopefully that person has enough of a sense of humor to accept that you don’t remember everything you talked about at that first meeting. Which will help you decide if you’d like a third date with this person.
Okay, maybe that wasn’t a tirade. But, stick around. I promise one is coming.
Dear Men on Dating Sites,
Hello! Thank you for your interest. Here are a few things I think you should know about me and why I’m swiping left on your profile.
First, I’m a bit cynical and have a rather dark sense of humor.
My response to the following question should clue you into these facts about me.
What I’m actually looking for…? A handsome alpha werewolf who owns his own home and business.
Yes. That exact sentence appears on one of my dating profiles. Clearly, this is meant in jest. However, several men have asked me to explain my response and have gone so far as to view the fact that they are not a werewolf as a strike against them. They aren’t wrong. I mean, who doesn’t want to date a handsome werewolf?
When I’m not fantasizing about sexy fictional characters, I’m actually looking for kind people who are able to appreciate my weirdness and hopefully recognize the kindness in me. Along with kindness, I’m looking for intelligent people who have something interesting to talk about. If you are actively pursuing your goals, creating something with your hands or mind (or both), and having a positive influence on the world around you, then even better.
I’m seeking comfortable intimacy. I want to talk about things that matter. I want to be held and kissed. I want to go on dates that become the inspiration for stories I’ll write in the future. I want someone to push my boundaries and encourage me to accomplish my goals. I want someone who will allow me to explore their body and mind without fear or the need to constantly be in control. I am seeking someone who thinks vanilla sex can be nice but doesn’t want it to be the norm.
Before we go any further, I need you to understand that the last statement in the paragraph above is not an open invitation for you to send me pictures of your favorite kink. Nor is it a thumbs up for you to send me dick pics. I’m not opposed to you sharing these educational materials with me, but only if you have my permission.
Thank you. Please continue.
Here’s who I am NOT looking for…
Conservative Christians. Do I really need to explain why I’m not interested in dating a conservative Christian? If you aren’t sure, here’s one of my older blog posts that might help you figure that out. Praise Satan!
Collectors. Ultimately, I am seeking my person. A partner who is committed to building a life with me. Someone who takes a liking to me and decides to stay in my life for the foreseeable future. But, while I’m looking for that person, I’m not opposed to various flavors of non-monogamous relationships. However, if you are dating so many people that you need to refer to a spreadsheet to figure out when you can see me, I’m not interested. I do not wish to be part of your harem, and I am not part of the expansion package for your marriage.
Racists. If you include the following statement in your profile, don’t be surprised if women aren’t dying to meet you: Willing to date outside my race. I also recommend avoiding any language that fetishizes women of color. Telling me you’ve always wanted to have sex with a (insert racist comment) isn’t a compliment. We’re now in the realm of microaggressions and straight up racism.
Perverts. If your profile picture resembles a glory hole, you aren’t looking to meet people for meaningful connections. And, I’m not sure if a dating app is really the most appropriate place for you to meet people. I recommend hanging out in the parking lots of truck stops and deserted rest areas.
Serial Killers. I realize this seems like a crazy thing to mention, but some of the profile pictures men choose to share on dating apps leads me to believe they are comfortable with their lifestyle of meeting people, murdering them, and whatever else they do with the corpses before holding a quick roadside funeral. For example, if you pose for a photo while wearing your best suit and holding an assault rifle, after I’m done laughing hysterically, I’m going to swipe left. I understand the need for anonymity at times but if your profile picture is you wearing a clown mask, we won’t be meeting. And, thanks for the nightmares.
Actual profile picture from OKCupid.
Hipster Know-It-Alls. If you’re in your 20s or 30s and your list of interests matches mine or possibly my grandfather’s, please don’t presume to know more than me about something we share in common. I mean, you’re cute and your beard is glorious but please don’t attempt to school me on the history of American music and how it influenced the British Invasion. I may not know everything, but I was raised on a steady diet of Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, the Mersyside Sound, Al Green, Little Richard, Otis Redding, Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, Robert Gordon, The Stray Cats and the Rockabilly gods that influenced them. I grew up in the 70s listening to radio stations that played entire album sides. On vinyl. I owned a rather extensive collection of music on vinyl that ranged from New Romantics to Punk to Post Modern and proto-Goth, with a healthy dose of British bands popular in the 80s. Please don’t speak to me like I’m stupid.
Trophy Hunters. If you have a picture in your profile where you’re wearing camouflage that isn’t government-issued or holding a dead animal, I’m swiping left. There’s only one kind of hunter I’m interested in.
The Tragically Boring. If your profile pictures consist of staged shots of you and your bros playing golf, drinking beer, hanging out with skinny white women, running a marathon, or getting pumped at the gym, I’m sorry to say that your profile is no different from the last 20 I swiped left on. Please make yourself sound interesting even if you don’t think you are. Everyone has at least one skill, experience, or goal that makes them stand out from the crowd. Tell me that story.
As many of my friends (and people I have dated) can attest, not all of my dating experiences have been bad. I’ve met some interesting people who I genuinely like and care about. But finding them often feels like looking for a needle in a pile of needles. I’m going to keep meeting people until hopefully, I find my person. I’m not sure I believe that there is only one person out there waiting for me to find them, but I’d like to think there are people out there who are interested in building something more meaningful that lasts longer than a few dates.
Eventually, I will add to this list of what I’m NOT looking for as I continue my journey through the realm of unknown expectations and vague statements about personality traits. So, wish me luck. And wish all the weirdos out there on dating apps luck. I’m rooting for them, but I’m not meeting them for drinks.
Last week, Girl Meets Monster had a visitor from across the pond, Frazer Lee. This week, Kenya Wright stopped by to talk about whether or not women of color have a responsibility to include deeper messages about racism, sexism and other social justice issues in their fiction even when they are writing romances about vampires with double penises. That’s right, I said vampires with double penises.
Kenya Wright wrote her first novel during her third year at UM Law school. She dropped out a month after the release and never looked back.
Words are power, and Kenya wants to be the greatest wizard that ever lived.
It’s an audacity to inspire and teach the healing of love through arousal.
It’s this crazy idea that love can not only help a reader escape, but the story can also teach the person about being human, while making them laugh, cry, and hot for more sex.
Three Questions
GMM: The opening of your story feels like a thriller with a promise of some horrific scenes, but is this story a romance? Is it part of a series? Without giving too much away, which characters form the main love interest? Is there a triangle, or does it get more complicated like one of Laurell K. Hamilton’s novels with too many lovers to keep track off throughout the series?
KW: This is a second chance romance, but on a softer note than what I usually write. A large focus is the mystery. However, there’s tons of steamy sex sprinkled in. There’s several twists, but i would say Shadow and Lyric have a strong possibility of a fun romance.
There is a love triangle forming. I’m writing the second book in the series. For the Masque of Red Death, I’m doing revisions. So, I do see a love triangle happening, although I do try to avoid those. I can never figure out who the heroine should be with in the end.
I love LKH, but there is a harem quality to her story, and I’m not really into harem romances. I should check a few out though. I wouldn’t mind an actual harem in real life.
GMM: As a woman of color writing erotica and speculative fiction with steamy romance, do you feel obligated to have a deeper message in your stories? You mention that race and police brutality are elements of this story, but do you ever simply write a romance or speculative fiction story that examines the relationships between people without a broader message? Can writers of color write books without broader messages about race and class and racism? Is it possible to divorce yourself from that ongoing narrative within our culture when you set out to write a story?
I’m hoping to change someone, when they read my stories. I’m trying to get a person to think of something differently as they’re aroused and scared at the same time.
KW: I definitely feel obligated to have a deeper message in my stories, but then that’s how I am in life. So, even when I’m trying to write a straight romance, somehow themes of gentrification, colorism, and rape culture seep into the story. I also think my readers expect stronger messages from me with each novel as well as show of growth. I make it a point to learn something new with each story–whether a new mechanism with storytelling or different pov.
I honestly can’t think of an erotica or romance of mine where I didn’t share some message. Even my first erotica trilogy of vampire romances explored the idea of slavery and dictatorship. Being that there were a whole lot of vampire kings in the story with double penises, no one seemed to mind the speculation on enslavement.
Basically, I always like a story with a deep exploration of humanity, sprinkled in between some hot orgasms and colorful dark characters. I think with broken heroes and mind-battered heroines, it’s hard to not dissect what is wrong with that character as I’m writing the story. It’s hard to not further wonder. . .how society might have been the cause for this character’s background. And then this message begins to spill onto the pages.
Writers of colors can totally create stories without broader messages of race and class. I think every creator has a special reason for why they are on this planet. Even if this particular black guy likes to write books on hats–just hats and nothing more. Who knows what that can spark in the person’s mind that reads it?
Books are awesome because they can inspire. They have this ability to ripple. Poe is a great example of this.
I can divorce myself from certain narratives, but it’s pretty difficult. I prefer to be an artist that has something to say, whether anybody wants to hear it or not. I think that the most important thing in this world is how the internet creates a marketplace for ideas. If you can shift one’s thoughts, you could change their life. I’m hoping to change someone, when they read my stories. I’m trying to get a person to think of something differently as they’re aroused and scared at the same time.
GMM: In some of our conversations, we discussed my love of monsters and touched on the idea of the eroticism of evil. What, in your opinion, makes monsters sexy? Why write about them in the romance/erotica genres? Are any of your romantic leads monsters? Why did you choose them?
KW: A monster is an element of horror. And, horror is very therapeutic. When a person reads a story about a woman getting tortured and killed, they finish the story with a new sense of relief that they’re not that woman. They have a brighter pep in their step. They look at the world a little bit better. But then there is some fear that comes to them too. And fear is good too. It protects. It teaches. It makes you choose your behavior differently, so that you don’t become that poor woman that was tortured in the book.
So, here we have monsters. And they’re these dangerous promises of death. And we’re so scared by them, but then. . .if it’s my story. . .we’re also aroused by them. Because even though that monster is killing everyone else in the book, for some reason the monster loves this heroine. And the reader is the heroine. So she or he is loved by a monster. And for some sick ass reason, that shit feels great! It’s a high. Addicting. Like a flame to a crack pipe. You want more monsters to love you! You want more to kill and protect for you.
So, the majority of my heroes are contemporary monsters in many ways. I love Quentin Tarantino and Guy Ritchie films. Most of my heroes are on the bad side of the law. The majority of my heroines have been broken in some way, but are strong survivors. I’ve found that this combination of man and woman is addictive for me to write. Thank God, people like to buy these books too, because I don’t believe I could stop writing dark horror romance.
The Masque of Red Death, by Kenya Wright is a second chance romance that unites the exploration of race and police brutality from THE HATE U GIVE with the twisted Poe-inspired serial killer plot line of THE FOLLOWING.
I sat on the ledge of Eureka’s justice building and watched the city burn below my feet.
That Saturday evening, the riots had continued. The sun was setting, yet everyone on the street was just beginning their day.
When will it stop?
Black smoke rose in the air. Even high up, it was hard to breathe. Glass shattered. Tires screeched. Mothers cried. The police stormed the streets, threatening to tear gas citizens, but their words drowned in the screams and the drops of blood being splattered on concrete.
Tears streamed down my face.
I almost didn’t notice Shadow’s signature scent as it filled the air.
“How can you sit up here and watch all the rioting?” Shadow asked.
“How can you not? This is your city as much as it’s mine.” Wiping away my tears, I looked at him. Designer from head to toe, he wore a purple blazer over a white buttoned shirt and charcoal gray slacks. Not many could pull the look off, but he did.
I glanced over my shoulder and past him. Four of his goons stood by the roof’s entrance. Shadow liked them colorfully uniformed as if he was a character out of a comic book—black suits, white hats, and red ties. He thought he was a hero.
He’s the villain in the story. Never forget that.
Shadow stepped closer to the ledge. “I need your help, Lyric.”
“You always do, but I’m done helping heartless people.”
“I’m many things, Lyric, but I do have a heart.”
“Shadows don’t have hearts. They’re just cold, shapeless, dark things that black out all the light.”
People called him Shadow because he moved like one—sneaking around unnoticed and blending in and out of the darkness. They should’ve called him killer or thief, but his money and looks kept him out of trouble. He towered over most, wielded power like the devil, and held the city in his hands.
The real danger lay in his words. They flowed smooth like a saxophone, trapping the average soul and squeezing until the essence bled out. He had a knack for getting people to do fucked up things, especially me.
With no sign of fear, Shadow stepped closer to the ledge. “Someone sent me a box. Two things were inside. A mask made out of human skin and a letter written in blood. ”
“Sounds like Wednesday.” I closed my eyes and returned to humming, but I could no longer catch the melody. Shadow had seeped into my pores and disturbed my peace.
He continued, “The person signed the message with three big bloody letters. He called himself Poe.”
“Interesting.”
“This isn’t a joke. I need your help.”
“I don’t care.”
“I’m not playing about the box. It was all black with a red velvet bow and a tiny clock dangling from the center. Whoever sent it is a sick motherfucker.” Shadow frowned. “The letter talked about a game that I had to play or more people would die. And the whole thing was written in blood. This person is threatening to kill me.”
Next week, David Day stops by to talk about writing short horror fiction and to share a fragment. Do you have a fragment collecting dust that needs to see the light of day? Send it my way to chellane@gmail.com.
Last week, K.W. Taylor shared her thoughts on time travel tropes. This week, Girl Meets Monster welcomes horror writer, Stephanie M. Wytovich. Stephanie is an amazing friend who enjoys laughing at the darkness just as much as I do, and despite the number of years that separate our birth dates, I often think of her as a kindred spirit who would most likely help me hide a body. She was kind enough to find some time in her busy schedule to drop by, share a fragment of her fiction, and answer a few questions about one of my favorite subjects: vampires.
Stephanie M. Wytovich is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her work has been showcased in numerous anthologies such as Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Shadows Over Main Street: An Anthology of Small-Town Lovecraftian Terror, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror: Volume 2, The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 8, as well as many others.
Wytovich is the Poetry Editor for Raw Dog Screaming Press, an adjunct at Western Connecticut State University and Point Park University, and a mentor with Crystal Lake Publishing. She is a member of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, an active member of the Horror Writers Association, and a graduate of Seton Hill University’s MFA program for Writing Popular Fiction. Her Bram Stoker Award-winning poetry collection, Brothel, earned a home with Raw Dog Screaming Press alongside Hysteria: A Collection of Madness, Mourning Jewelry, An Exorcism of Angels, and Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare. Her debut novel, The Eighth, is published with Dark Regions Press.
GMM: What inspired the fragment you shared with us today, and is this piece abandoned or simply “on hold” while you work on other projects? What would make you finish it?
SMW: Vampires have gotten to be a bit of a cliché, overwritten stereotype in the horror genre these days, so I wanted to challenge myself to write a story that turns the monster on its back (insert evil smirk here) and shows us insight into some of the problems that go on behind the scenes, you know, once all the blood and intestines are cleaned up.
Currently, this piece is unfinished, but it’s definitely something that I plan to get back into once a few other projects are off my desk. I’m in the middle of finishing my next poetry collection (The Apocalyptic Mannequin) and I have a novelette coming out the fall (The Dangers of Surviving a Slit Throat), so I’ll probably drag the undead out of their nest later this winter and snuggle up with them again once the world goes white.
GMM: We share a love of vampires, and we’ve talked about them extensively, but I don’t think I ever asked you where your love of vampires began? What story or character pushed you into the realm of loving monsters?
SMW: When I was little—like too little for this to probably be okay—I was downstairs in the basement watching Salem’s Lot with my mom while she ironed my dad’s clothes for work the next day. Seeing the little boy tapping on the kid’s window pretty much broke me—I had two windows next to my bed at the time—and I slept with the blankets up to my neck for weeks.
However, no matter how scared I was of what lurked outside my house at night, I became fascinated with vampires. I loved their look, their teeth, how intelligent and worldly they were. They weren’t afraid of their bodies or their appetite (sex or other), and I admired their confidence and their ability to be themselves. Plus, I’ve always had a thing for bad boys, and those pale dreamboats were—and still are—my jam.
I watched Interview with a Vampire and Bram Stoker’s Dracula not too long after that and picked up every vampire book I could find…the more emo, the better. I was an insufferable tragic goth child, and when I got to middle school, I wrote my first vampire story, which was a piece about a traveling vampire clan that slaughtered a young girl’s family. My teachers thought it was way too dark, and I got sent to the guidance counselor for a chat. After that, I wrote flirtatious paranormal romance stories with vamps and other monsters in them to keep me out of trouble.
That is, until I got to college.
Then it was back to blood and sex.
You know, the essentials.
GMM: While vampires were originally seen as something nightmarish, creatures we should fear, over time they have become the heroes of romantic fiction. Do you think this shift in how we view monsters like the vampire is potentially dangerous, or do you see it as a healthy kink? Or, like most things that create cognitive dissonance in our minds, do vampires simply ride the fence between erotic and deadly?
SMW: I think vampires have always been this erotic, deadly creature in my eyes because the threat of violence, of death, becomes an adrenaline high for the reader/viewer. Vampires look at humans as these fragile, beautiful things because their lives are so short, and that energy, that delicacy is what makes a mortal erotic to them. I think it’s similar for us: we see them as these wise, confident, well-traveled and explored immortal beings, and the dance between their monstrous nature and what’s left—if anything—of their human nature, is a turn on. Everyone wants to be the one person that a vampire protects, loves, and refuses to kill.
However, I will say that while there is an absolute erotic slant to my writing when I’m playing with these creatures, I like to work the angle that these monsters are hunters, and no matter how beautiful they are, they are deadly and they should be feared. For me, paranormal romance is fun, and I like to live in that world on my personal time on occasion, but when it comes to my stories, vampires are about one thing and one thing only: blood.
Untitled, by Stephanie M. Wytovich
No one was happy to see him dead but me, but truth be told, I wasn’t all that happy. He had a beautiful throat, such a gorgeous neck. It was a shame to treat the human body like this, but with a pulse like his, his blood was art, and like the rest of his body, I needed it—wanted it—in my mouth. No matter the cost, no matter the price, the sanguine taste of sudden death always tasted better with a little panic etched into it.
“Julia,” Daven said, her hands shaking my shoulders. “Snap out of it. We have to go. They’re coming.”
“Let them come. I’m not finished yet,” I said. My vision was spotty and the inside of my mouth tasted like smoke and shame. The vibrations of death still rang in my teeth.
“Not finished?” Daven said. The vein in the middle of her forehead pulsed an ugly purple-red. “You’ve slaughtered half the people in this bar, and you’re telling me you’re not finished?”
I stood up and adjusted my shirt, hiked up my jeans.
The bathroom spun on a tilt, the lights growing brighter by the minute.
“That’s what I’m telling you,” I said. Josh’s ashen body lay propped against the toilet, his neck still offered to me under the fluorescent lights.
The room tinted red, pulsed like a bleeding vein.
My head lolled back and I felt a mute relaxation as my eyes glazed over and the corpse started to hum.
“Fuck’s sake,” Daven said. “You’re high. You killed him before you drank didn’t you?”
Daven and I had been staying in a flat in Lawrenceville—the two of us boozing, fucking, kidnapping the night. Pittsburgh become our own personal playground, but when I met Joshua two years back, he excited me, touched me in a way that Daven couldn’t, wouldn’t. Where she was a soft chamomile, a warm cup of tea, Joshua was hard, rough like calloused hands with a musk that was more sex than sweat.
He was new, something different, a wild stallion with a gentle heart, and I admired his stamina. He liked to be bit, and he was a generous donor, which worked well for me because Daven always complained about the bruising.
Joshua, however, wore them like medals.
I traced his jawline with my eyes, thought about the first time I drank from him.
He was beautiful a man, but dare I say it, an even more attractive corpse, and my tastes for the exotic ran deep, even if it was forbidden, even if I found myself in love, even if, but most especially when, I found myself betrayed.
“He was dead to me the moment he set eyes on her, Daven,” I said. Leah’s disfigured face seeped into the forefront of my mind. “But let’s not quibble over the specifics. The only thing left between us now is blood, and I intend to take what was promised.”
Daven paced.
“The Order won’t tolerate this,” she said. “You’ve broken the agreement. They’ll—they’ll kill you, Julia. It’s against our nature. And Leah–”
Red. So much red.
“You mean it’s against your nature,” I said. “You with your rules and your bonds. I’m not vampire, Daven. The Order doesn’t own me.”
“That’s the problem, Julia,” Daven said. “No one does.”
Next week, Speculative Fiction writer K. Ceres Wright joins Girl Meets Monster. Do you have some premium work collecting dust in a drawer? Send it my way at chellane@gmail.com. See you next week!
I recently listened to the audiobook of Glen Duncan’s The Last Werewolf, which is probably one of my favorite books of all time. I own a print copy and have read it twice, but decided to listen to it in my car on my way to work over the course of two weeks. I have a 40-minute drive to and from work Monday – Friday, and when I don’t feel like listening to music I listen to audiobooks that I download for free through an online service provided by my local library.
Over the past several months I listened to two Joe Hill novels, Heart-Shaped Box and NOS4A2, and the first two novels in the Vampire Diaries series by L. J. Smith. I had to stop listening to the Vampire Diaries novels, because I was getting pissed off at the fact that there are no people of color in the stories, and Elena Gilbert is a spoiled rich white girl who doesn’t deserve the love and attention of either Salvatore brother. I prefer the TV series to the novels mainly because of the diversity of characters and well…Damon Salvatore is a beautiful monster.
I would happily listen to more Joe Hill novels in my car, but I’ve either read or listened to all of them and last summer I even listened to Doctor Sleep and got my Charlie Manx fix through the world(s) shared between Joe Hill and Stephen King. I got very excited while listening to NOS4A2 when Charlie Manx talks about the different “inscapes” and the people he’s met that use them — Pennywise’s Circus (IT), the True Knot (Doctor Sleep), Christmasland (NOS4A2), the Treehouse of the Mind (Horns), the Night Road and Craddock McDermott (Heart-Shaped Box). Seriously, NOS4A2 is an Easter egg treasure-trove for readers of King and Hill. Treat yourself!
Reality has been kicking my ass, so my goal when choosing entertainment of any kind is to get as far from reality as possible. I often jokingly tell people that if a TV show, movie, or book doesn’t have vampires, werewolves, demons, witches, ghosts, or other paranormal characters, I’m not interested. But, it’s not really a joke.
I have been feeding my brain a steady diet of paranormal romance and dark speculative fiction. I binge-watched seasons 12 and 13 of Supernatural recently and now I’m suffering from Winchester withdrawal. Fox decided to cancel Lucifer, so I watched the last two bonus episodes and now that’s over and done. I started rewatching season 2 of Preacher to psyche myself up for season 3, but I’m not 100% sure of the date of its return to AMC. Then, on a whim, I decided to finally watch Lost Girl on Netflix. It has a Buffy vibe that I really enjoy and it is loaded with sexy, interesting, and often hilarious supernatural creatures. I like the dynamics between the Dark and Light Fae, I like the slow unfolding of the long cultural and political histories of this dual society, and I like the relationships that form between the characters. But, I’m not going to lie, the main reason why I’m watching right now is because of a certain werewolf.
In the first season of Lost Girl, Dyson and the main character, Bo Dennis, become lovers. Because he is a werewolf chock full of Id and raging sexual energy, he is the first lover she’s ever had that didn’t die after having sex with her. Which, you know, is kind of a big deal when you’re a succubus.
I mean, imagine if you had spent most of your adult life making love to people you’re attracted to or have strong feelings for, and each time you follow through on your sexual attraction, they end up dead. Sex with you is literally deadly. You are the embodiment of the death of love. Then, one day, you not only discover what you are and why your partners are dying, but you also find a mate who can provide you with what you need — companionship, acceptance, answers to your questions, finger-licking mega-boost sexual energy, and death-free sex. Death-free sex that is totally mind-blowing for both of you. You’d be tempted to think that love might still be in the cards for you.
I mean, love is still in the cards unless the person you love loves you so much that they inadvertently sacrifice their passion for you in an effort to save your life. Hence, the death of love. I mean, what’s more tragic than loving someone so much that you sacrifice everything for them with the consequence of never being able to love them again?
I’ve been on a werewolf kick for a while. Like I said, before I started watching Lost Girl on Netflix roughly a week ago, I listened to Glen Duncan’s The Last Werewolf, read by the late Robin Sachs, who lent his uber-sexy deep British accent to the first-person narrator, Jake Marlowe. Jake is a 200-year-old British werewolf who is facing the certainty of extinction of his species.
For most of the novel, he accepts the fact that death is coming for him. In fact, he welcomes it. After 200 years, 147 of which he’s spent as a monster killing and eating humans, he’s done. He believes he’s seen it all and there are no new mysteries awaiting him. And then, the Universe has a few more laughs at his expense.
I suppose that most werewolf stories are really about love and it’s loss when you examine them closely enough. Lycanthropy is typically viewed as a curse that ruins the lives of the people who contract it. In most cases, lycanthropy is passed from werewolf to human through a bite. Unless lycanthropy is inherited through a family bloodline, or achieved through magical means, like wearing a belt made from a wolf’s pelt with a little black magic for good measure, werewolves are usually the survivors of violent attacks. And, once their physical wounds heal, the psychological ones are usually just beginning. If the werewolf has a conscience, they will most likely experience the early stages of a mental collapse after the first full moon when they turn into a homicidal maniac in wolf form.
Jake Marlowe became a werewolf because he was bitten by one and during his first transformation he killed his wife. After killing and eating her, he read her journal and discovered that she was pregnant. His first act as a werewolf was to literally kill and eat love. For 147 years, he spent his life observing the sacred rites of werewolves: Fuck, Kill, Eat. He never found love again. At least, not until he realizes he’s about to be extinct. The Universe likes to laugh at us, but it seems to be especially jovial where monsters are concerned. At least romantic monsters who cling to their humanity in the midst of an extreme identity crisis. Jake assumes he’s the last living werewolf on Earth until he meets his female counterpart, Tallula Demetriou. So, not only is Jake no longer the last werewolf on Earth, but now he has a reason to live: Love.
So, what’s the deal with werewolves and romance? Well, who doesn’t want a passionate lover driven by their Id with superhuman strength, stamina, and a biological need to mate for life? A werewolf mate will literally kill people to keep you safe…or as an insane response to their unbridled jealousy.
At the heart of all werewolves is murderous rage and rapacious sexual energy. Left unchecked, they commit atrocities like Jake Marlowe killing his wife and unborn child, and while in human form they are often slaves to their libido. Without love, werewolves are basically fucking, killing, and eating machines.
Typically, werewolves are portrayed as strong, handsome men suffering from some sort of identity crisis, or extreme guilt over becoming a murder once a month, and possibly an unbearable, soul-crushing melancholy brought on by unrequited love.
What I like most about Glen Duncan’s Last Werewolf Trilogy is the fact that we see the lives of werewolves from two perspectives, both male and female. Jake Marlowe’s acceptance of his true werewolf self — the good, the bad, the ugly, and the murderous — makes him an oddly likeable character. He has sex with prostitutes and somehow manages to not be a misogynist. He kills and eats humans once a month and somehow manages to be endearing in his descriptions of his own psychology. He’s a conundrum of horror, repulsion, intellect, cynicism, and raw sex appeal. Werewolves are mythological bad boys and they make excellent romantic characters when making terrible choices is your raison d’etre. I probably mentioned this before, but falling in love with monsters is usually a bad idea, regardless of what popular paranormal romance tells us. Whether you join Team Jacob or Team Edward, you’re essentially signing up for assisted suicide.
But, what if the werewolf is female?
If the 2000 cult horror film Ginger Snaps teaches us nothing else, it teaches us that female werewolves are dangerous monsters (and super-fucking cool). Their danger lies not only in the physical power that comes with their transformations each month, but in the empowerment that comes from shedding all the bullshit societal expectations of femininity. Female werewolves embrace their sexuality and engage in the mental gymnastics required to deal with the implied duality of being vessels for the creation of life and choosing to murder to satisfy the bone-rattling hunger for human flesh.
But hey, don’t most women deal with similar dualities in every day life? Women are expected to be attractive to appease the ever-present male gaze, but only if they maintain the illusion of virginity. Women who ignore the male gaze and express their unique brand of sexuality or lack of interest in sex all together are accused of being sluts or hags. Let’s face it, there’s nothing more monstrous than sex-positive women who take full ownership of their bodies and decide who can and can’t have access to them.
Female werewolves choose their own paths. They embrace their sexuality. They choose multiple partners or mate for life. They become mothers or remain childless. They give the middle finger to societal expectations and rip out the patriarchy’s jugular.
As it turns out, Jake Marlowe is not the last werewolf. Tallula, his lover, his mate, his salvation, the love of his life (no pressure), makes the inevitability of extinction less likely. In fact, he gains strength in knowing that she is a better werewolf than he could ever hope to be. Tallula struggles with internal chorus of right and wrong that developed from her American upbringing and the expectations that women can only occupy certain roles — maiden, mother, and crone. And possibly, harlot. Tallula likes sex and engages in murder with the same ardor. She and Jake kill together and then have sex over the corpse in werewolf form, which ironically brings them closer together as a couple in their human guises. Essentially, their a serial-killing couple. Murder mates. Even monsters need love, right?
So, if female werewolves are more powerful and scarier than male werewolves, that might help explain how male werewolves have become sexually-charged eye candy in a lot of paranormal romantic fiction. I’m just stating that as a fact. It’s not a criticism in the least, because that would make me a hypocrite. There’s nothing I enjoy more than objectifying sexy werewolves…and examining the potentially dangerous ramifications of sexualizing monsters.
Peter Rumancek of Hemlock Grove, the Netflix original series based on Brian McGreevy’s 2012 novel by the same name, is an interesting monster. While he is physically appealing, his real attraction comes from his delightful irreverence and cynicism, and while his Romany upbringing predisposes him to criminal activity, his internal struggles are more geared toward keeping the people he loves safe rather than his guilt over killing and eating people.
Then we have Alcide Herveaux, who could possibly be the sexiest werewolf ever in paranormal fiction. Charlaine Harris has kindly given us countless fuckable fictional characters, but Alcide is in a class all by himself.
In Alan Ball’s adaptation of Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels for the HBO series True Blood, Alcide gets a much broader story arc than he does in the novels and his flirtations with Sookie Stackhouse got much further. He’s an interesting character who embodies strength and loyalty to a fault. And jealousy. Let’s not forget jealousy, which is essentially Alcide’s kryptonite.
I have a soft spot in my heart for Alcide because he makes worse relationship decisions than I do. I mean, this guy has TERRIBLE luck with romance and his choice of partners, including Sookie Stackhouse, are pretty much all bad ideas. Plus, there’s the added bonus of him being naked a lot of the time.
So, in the process of writing this blog post I realized that I have a lot more to say about werewolves and this post might be the jumping off point for a short series of posts. I definitely feel like I have more to say about female werewolves vs. male werewolves, and I’d like to talk more about Glen Duncan’s trilogy. But, I need to think about the subject a little more deeply.
Which reminds me, while I was listening to the second audiobook in the trilogy, Tallula Rising, I was able to solve or at least recognize the solution to an issue in my own writing. Tallula talks about her feelings in relation to motherhood and the acceptance of the terrible things she does and that are done to her. It was a moment of clarity that confirms the idea that in order to become a better writer, you need to read more books. I’m not going to talk about that moment of clarity in this post. I’ll save it for a future post. But, I will say that the irony of finding clarity about my own identity, my own writing, and the world I live in through stories about monsters is not lost on me. My own otherness has made me feel connected to monsters since childhood and I have always felt empathy toward characters who have no control of who or what they are. I suppose, I feel a kinship to monsters and the older I get, the more I take pride in that fact.
I’m going to keep up the ongoing process of self-discovery through writing in the hopes of becoming not only a better writer, but hopefully, my best self. And, I’m going to keep thinking about werewolves.
I don’t know what you’ve been up to lately, but I’m hip deep in season 13 of Supernatural right now. Netflix dropped it last week just in time to avert a serious case of withdrawal after I finished season 12 the previous weekend. When I was watching the show in real-time, I stopped watching around the end of season 9 (2013). I didn’t exactly lose interest in the show, but my life became a bit more complicated and I had to direct my need for narrative toward finishing my own novel and completing the other assignments required for graduation from my MFA program. It was also around this time that I gave up cable for streaming services and when I did have time to watch TV, I opted for things I’d never seen before and caught up on movies and BBC favorites.
Back in March I decided to start watching Supernatural from the beginning and religiously binge-watched every episode through season 12. I know, it was a real hardship to spend all that time getting reacquainted with the Winchesters and all the amazing characters that series has given us. As I watched my favorite episodes again and episodes that were new to me in seasons 10 – 12, I considered writing about several characters who have had almost the same impact on me as Sam and Dean. Castiel’s strength always surprises me no matter how many times I see him stand up for what he believes to be right. Crowley’s humanity endears him to me whether he’s shining in a moment of kindness in the name of friendship or doing something obscenely craven because his feelings have been hurt, or he’s tired of being treated as a non-threat. I did write about Lucifer a few years back, but Mark Pellegrino was only one of many Lucifer’s I’ve loved over the years.
I’ve always been attracted to Dean, but I am definitely Sam-curious. In fact, and I’m almost ashamed to say this, I realized I was attracted to Sam around the time he returned from Hell without a soul and allowed his Id to take over.
“It is a frightening thought that man also has a shadow side to him, consisting not just of little weaknesses and foibles, but of a positively demonic dynamism.” ~ Carl Jung
Actually, if I’m really honest, I became interested in Sam when he was drinking demon blood, having sex with a demon, and becoming what other hunters considered a monster. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by that since I do find monsters sexy as hell sometimes…okay, a lot of the time.
And, like I said, Dean has always been hot, but there are certain seasons that I find him hotter. When he bore the Mark of Cain and allowed his inner-psycho to come out and play his hotness ramped up considerably. Speaking of Cain…wow. Yeah, I considered dedicating a post to the Father of Murder. I mean, you don’t get much darker than that.
The Power of Cain compels you!
And, while I find Tom Welling’s portrayal of Cain on Lucifer interesting, Timothy Omundson’s Cain on Supernatural left me weak in the knees. He’s somehow more believable, sexier for being a Knight of Hell and wielding so much power. It also helps that he was deeply in love with a human and suppressed his desire for murder to settle down with her. What can I say? Romantic monsters just do it for me. Monsters who never quite lose touch with their humanity no matter how hard they try.
There are lots of characters in Supernatural I could devote a blog post to, but recently, while watching season 12, I met Arthur Ketch. Initially, I wasn’t sure I liked him. I mean his introduction is subtle, he’s only mentioned almost as a cautionary tale, a boogeyman to be feared by the already seemingly evil British Men of Letters. When we next encounter him, we don’t see his face. He’s simply packing a case of weapons in a non-descript bedroom decorated in dark colors. And then, we see him executing a young woman, a psychic Sam and Dean rescued from her ignorant and abusive family. Still, not even a glimpse of his face. But we do know that he’s an assassin and kills without mercy. And, because his approach to dealing with monsters is shoot first, ask questions later, we also know that as a British Man of Letters, his motivation for doing things will differ greatly from Sam and Dean’s. Of course, once we get to know Ketch, we realize he’s a lot more like Dean than Dean might like to admit about himself.
The enemy of my enemy…
It took me a few episodes to realize that Arthur Ketch is in fact a hottie. But, I have always been a sucker for a well-dressed man with a British accent…who murders people for a living.
James Bond taught me that well-dressed murderers are sexy.
SPOILER ALERT: If you haven’t watched seasons 12 and 13 of Supernatural, turn back now. Spoilers galore ahead.
Arthur Ketch is like a nightmarish James Bond who specializes in killing monsters for Queen and Country. At 44, Mr. Ketch has killed a lot of people – human and otherwise – at the behest of his superiors. He takes his job very seriously and simply does what he is told. A highly trained “company man” with access to an arsenal of weaponry designed for the annihilation of all things supernatural.
Fire gets the job done.
His toys impress Sam and Dean, and Ketch’s less-murderous counterpart, Mick Davies, helps to convince the Winchesters that joining ranks with the British Men of Letters might increase their chances of eliminating the monster population of North America.
Bless my crumpets!
Mary Winchester is the one who decides to join forces with Ketch and the two make a formidable team, racking up an impressive kill rate. In the process of becoming murder buddies, Mary and Arthur develop an attraction toward each other, or perhaps it might be better to say that Mary recognizes Arthur’s attraction to her and decides to take advantage of the opportunity to have sex with someone for the first time since dying and coming back from Heaven. As far as we know, John Winchester is the only man she was ever with, because we assume John was her one and only true love. And, hey, let’s face it, John Winchester is a tough act to follow.
But, 30 years is a long time to go without sex…although, if Mary has been in Heaven reliving the brightest moments of her life as a wife and mother in the Winchester house, then maybe she hasn’t technically been going without sex all that time. Who can say? Is there sex in the afterlife? We’re led to believe that angels have zero libido and only become interested in sex when they become human. The exception to this would be the archangels, given the fact that Lucifer fathered a Nephilim and Gabriel loves porn. Demons are another story, and seem to have varying degrees of desire which may simply be a matter of personality and drive.
Office romances rarely end well.
At any rate, after 30 years of being in Heaven and then dealing with the reality of coming back to Earth, reconnecting with family, and accepting her true nature, Mary has an itch and Ketch is more than happy to help scratch it. The problem is, Ketch seems genuinely taken with Mary and seems to think that he’s found his true match – a woman who is as ruthless and skilled at killing as he is. True love, right?
It takes a real man to get his ass whooped by a woman.
Mary has other ideas, though. Despite their good working relationship, Mary makes it clear that she’s not interested in forming a lasting romantic relationship with Ketch. She wants their night of sex to be a one-time thing. He nearly hides his disappointment, and accepts her terms. At least to her face. You get the sense that Arthur hasn’t had much luck in love, and that’s most likely because his extra-curricular activities involve murder. Until we see his feelings get hurt by the fact that Mary essentially rejected him even though she agrees to have sex with him, he appears to be a textbook psychopath.
Is this picture overtly phallic and sexually arousing? Asking for a friend.
Yes, he’s an assassin who kills without mercy. That’s his job. He was trained to be that, and he apparently gets paid well for his efforts. He has to appear scary in order to scare things that should only exist in nightmares. When your job is to kill monsters, you had better develop a persona that is frightening enough to not only scare your fellow humans, but possibly the Devil himself. Or, at least a Prince of Hell.
White is the new black.
However, we soon begin to realize that this life path Arthur has chosen has also made it impossible to form lasting relationships with humans, and especially women. Ketch has no trouble swearing loyalty to the British Men of Letters, but he has a crisis of conscience when he betrays them and ends up on their most wanted list. In many ways, he envies Sam and Dean’s relationship, and he still carries a torch for Mary even though she shot and killed him. To be honest, he probably feels like he deserved to be treated that way after the way he treated her.
We always hurt the ones we love.
Like I said, I’m only a third of the way through season 13, so I don’t know what lies ahead for Arthur Ketch, but I hope he gets a shot at redemption. Even a psychopath can find his way out of the darkness. Especially when they want to do better, be better. I’m hoping this monster can redeem himself and who knows, find true love.
I don’t know about you, but Life has been kicking my ass lately. Due to some issues with my employment over the past several months, I had to start working for a temp agency to earn some money in order to dig myself out of a huge financial hole. Back in August of last year I walked away from a job after realizing that despite all my hard work and effort, I was never going to be seen as a peer or equal by the people who literally rewrote the job description I wrote for my position so that I would no longer qualify for the job I had been doing for 4 years. So, I cobbled together what little dignity I had to spare, and left.
Then I started working for a small company that was struggling financially, which meant that I was struggling financially. I liked the work and the people, but I had to borrow money and pull money out of savings in order to scrape by. I’m behind on all my bills, and I am often crippled with worry about the future.
I was invited to present a paper about vampires at an academic conference in Romania this summer that I had to pull out of, because I couldn’t afford the trip. I’m still a little broken-hearted over the fact that I can’t go, because it was a dream come true. Well, maybe next year.
On the bright side, I sold a short story and picked up some freelance work writing web content, and I have some amazingly supportive friends and loving family in my corner. Even if they can’t bail me out of debt, they cheer me up and remind me that life isn’t just about collecting a paycheck. Although, paychecks are obviously necessary and I can’t live without them.
This morning on my way to work, a piece of gravel flew up off the road and cracked my windshield. Now I have to figure out the how the hell I’m going to pay to have it repaired, come up with the money for my son to go to summer camp, and oh yeah, pay my rent.
I am a 46-year-old, divorced woman of color with three college degrees and lots of valuable work experience. I go on interviews every few months in the hopes of finding a better job, but nothing seems to pan out. I spoke to a woman yesterday on the phone about a job, and she said she was worried that I was overqualified. I explained that I’m a single mom. I’m raising my child alone with no child support. I need a job to survive and I’m looking for a stable position where I get to do work I enjoy. Oddly enough, that seemed like a novel idea to her, as if there were jobs falling out of the sky and I had my pick. We’ll see if I pass the personality test she sent me as part of the interview process. That’s right. I took an online personality test today to see if my personality, not just my education and years of experience are a good match for a job I’m overqualified for. Isn’t Life a scream?
On top of the fact that I’m in non-stop survival mode, I’ve hit my sexual peak and haven’t dated anyone in over a year because I’m not interested in meaningless hookups. To be fair, I’m not exactly in an ideal phase of my life to attract worthy partners. By worthy, I mean single, attractive, kind, interesting, educated, financially stable men with a dark sense of humor who can laugh at themselves and make me laugh, who didn’t vote for Trump, and aren’t members of the NRA. Too specific? I don’t think so. Actually, if you think you meet these qualifications, I’ll be accepting applications later this month. Just kidding. Sort of.
Sure, I have pleasant flirtations with friends on social media, but again I haven’t been on an actual date since early last year. Psychologically, I’m not sure I’d be very good company some days, but my friends keep telling me I’m a great catch. Whatever. My plate is kind of full with raising my ASD kid, dealing with my own issues of anxiety and depression, while trying to figure out how the hell I’m supposed to pay for everything. All while trying to work full-time and build a writing career.
Writing is one of the most important and soothing activities in my life. Before I ever even considered publishing my work, I wrote because I wanted to, needed to. Most of my life, I have dealt with times of crisis by finding solace in fiction. I read, I watch films and TV, and I write. Some people might tell you I hide in fiction. Screw them. They aren’t my friends. Fiction is a balm that allows me to escape from reality, and right now, mine is a non-stop shit show.
Some people enjoy watching sports and reality TV shows, or reading romance novels with happily-ever-afters. Unless there are monsters or other supernatural or magically gifted characters involved, I’m not interested in watching. Don’t get me wrong. I love romance, but I like the paranormal variety, where crazy women fall in love with vampires, werewolves and demons. If you’ve read any of my other blog posts, you know that I absolutely love monsters. Vampires are my favorite monsters, and have been since before I was a teenager. I like complicated characters who are a bit more villain than hero who have faced such great tragedy that they go a little crazy. So, naturally, insane vampires are at the top of my list when it comes to being entertained.
One of the craziest and most entertaining vampires ever is Franklin Mott. Over the weekend, I treated myself by watching all of the True Blood episodes Franklin appears in, so I could laugh, get creeped out, and forget about my troubles for a few hours. I indulged my love of monster soap operas and reminded myself that things could be much worse. I could be tied to a toilet in a cheap motel while being held against my will by an insane vampire who thinks he’s in love with me. Wait. Actually, that sounds like a fun weekend.
Franklin Mott is a Grade-A psycho. We’re first introduced to Franklin, played by British actor James Frain, in episode two of the third season of True Blood, “Beautifully Broken,” in which Lafayette Reynolds prevents his cousin, Tara Thornton, from committing suicide while mourning the death of her murderous boyfriend, Eggs. Tara is not only mourning the death of her boyfriend, but the fact that the happiest she ever felt in her life was when she was being psychically controlled by a maenad. She compares the experience of being head-over-heels in love with Eggs to being a zombie. That complete lack of control scares her and further challenges her belief in the existence of true love, or at the very least, her belief that she might not be worthy of receiving it.
Tara hasn’t had a lot of luck in the romance department, and she’s beginning to wonder if the problem is her. So, the fact that the next man she attracts is an exceptionally violent vampire, does little to boost her self-image.
Franklin comes to Bon Temps to gather intelligence on Bill Compton for the Vampire King of Mississippi, Russell Edgington, and learn more about his human companion, Sookie Stackhouse. After finding a secret dossier on Sookie hidden in Bill’s office, and disposing of a dead body Jessica has stashed in the cellar, Franklin goes in search of a little R&R at Bon Temps’ hottest night spot, Merlotte’s.
It’s Tara’s night off, but Lafayette wants to keep an eye on her after her suicide attempt. She’s feeling pretty low, but pitches in behind the bar. When Franklin asks how she’s doing, she tells him she’s trying not to kill herself. He jokingly asks how that’s going for her. She says, “I’m still alive.” He says, “That makes one of us.” Tara then gets up and offers him a bottle of True Blood.
Later in the episode, we see Tara sitting in the parking lot behind the bar drinking Wild Turkey straight from the bottle. Two drunk rednecks stumble out the backdoor, talking shit about Eggs in less than flattering terms, and one of them takes a piss on the spot where he was shot to death. Tara confronts them and things escalate quickly. She gets into a fist fight, but is outmatched until Franklin suddenly comes to her rescue. He helps out by holding one of the men so Tara can continue punching him, releasing some of her rage and grief. While Franklin holds the man and Tara hits him, Franklin’s fangs pop out, clearly turned on by Tara’s bloodlust.
The next time we see Tara and Franklin, they’re in bed together in a cheap motel. Tara has never had sex with a vampire and the experience is eyeball-rollingly orgasmic for both of them. In the midst of the encounter, Tara tells Franklin to bite her, but he refuses. Confused, she asks why. He tells her it’s because she asked him to, and his tone is teasing, playful.
They continue to have sex until dawn, and Franklin seems to have taken a liking to Tara. He asks her questions about herself wanting to get to know her. Curious as to where all her rage comes from. At this point, he doesn’t even know her name. Unwilling to develop any sort of attachment, Tara gets dressed and tells him she isn’t interested in forming any kind of lasting bond with him. And you get the sense that his feelings might be a little hurt when she leaves.
Still on assignment for the Vampire King of Mississippi, Franklin continues to follow leads to gather more intel on Bill and learn more about Sookie. He tracks down Bill’s progeny, Jessica, and lets her know that he’s the one who disposed of the body she was hiding. Then he proceeds to grill her for information. In the process of learning more about Bill and Sookie, he also learns that Tara is staying at Sookie’s while she’s off trying to find Bill. Bill was kidnapped by Russell Edgington and is being held captive in Mississippi. Against his better judgment, Eric provides Sookie with a werewolf bodyguard, Alcide Herveaux, who accompanies her to Mississippi.
Franklin shows up at Sookie’s and Tara is shocked to see him. She refuses to let him come in until he mesmerizes her and bends her to his will. She invites him in and he asks her questions about Bill and Sookie and discovers that Sookie is in Mississippi looking for Bill. Franklin then proceeds to kidnap Tara, claiming that he loves her and wants them to be together. Apparently, whether she likes it or not. This is when we begin to see just how crazy Franklin really is. We get a glimpse of his possessive, controlling nature when he tells Tara that if she keeps smiling while talking about Jason Stackhouse, he might have to get jealous.
Franklin begins exhibiting some of the classic signs of stalker/abuser behavior. He believes that if he has feelings for Tara, she should have feelings for him. It’s okay if she doesn’t right away, because he’s going to convince her that they’re meant to be together. Even if he has to resort to violence. For instance, he bounds and gags Tara in the bathroom of the cheap motel where they had what she believed was their one-night stand. When the sun goes down, Franklin shows up with flowers that he duct tapes to Tara’s bound hands before putting her in his car.
When she demands to know where he’s taking her, because she views his actions as kidnapping, he acts offended and tells her she’ll ruin the surprise. She’s angry, confused, and terrified. Again, we get the sense that her refusal to simply enjoy the ride hurts his feelings. He imagines a relationship developing between them that is obviously one-sided.
At one point, Tara demands to know why he keeps her tied up if he has feelings for her, and he tells her it is for her safety. He gets upset and nearly breaks down crying, because again, his feelings are hurt by her implication that he is keeping her tied up to hurt her, not protect her. His behavior becomes more erratic and confusing the more time she spends in his company. However, Tara is a pro at dealing with abusers, and soon learns how best to manipulate Franklin to protect herself and convince him to do what she wants.
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If she shows signs of being upset, he asks who made her feel that way and threatens to kill them. He apologizes for not taking better care of her when he forgets that she needs to eat regular food. He brings her gifts and tries to make her comfortable. Then, he goes a step too far and proposes to her. She obviously can’t say no, but has no desire to become a vampire. If they are wed, he plans to change her so they can be together forever. One of the obvious drawbacks of falling in love with a vampire, or becoming a vampire’s object of desire, is that in order for any long-term love affair to occur, you have to become like them.
He loves her so much, he wants to kill her. She doesn’t want to die. In fact, she’s horrified by the thought, which is ironic given the fact that she tried to kill herself at the beginning of the episode in which they met. But, I guess the message here is that she wants to die on her own terms. She wants her death to be her own decision. She wants to be in control of her life and death, not at the mercy of a psychotic, love-sick vampire. Beyond that, Tara also realizes that just because someone desires you, that doesn’t mean they have the right to own you. And, Franklin Mott’s version of love entails ownership.
While watching the episode in which he offers her what amounts to an eternity of slavery to her bloodlust, it wasn’t lost on me that the setting was an old plantation house in the deep South. Tara is essentially a house slave at the mercy of her owner’s desires. Franklin is not her lover, he’s her master. She’s held against her will and forced to endure his poisonous version of affection. Of course, if you tried to explain this concept to Franklin, he’d probably be so offended that he’d black out in a murderous rage and wake up in a room surrounded by body parts.
Despite his dangerous flaws, Franklin Mott is an interesting character. He has some of the funniest and most memorable lines in season three. His gallows humor, intelligence, biting sarcasm, and taste in mostly all black clothing make him charming and oddly attractive. Something broke inside Franklin long before he became a vampire. There was darkness in him prior to becoming one of the undead. However, even if he wasn’t a vampire, his attraction to vulnerable women who have essentially given up on life makes him a predator.
As fictional characters go, Franklin Mott is right up my alley, but I wouldn’t want to meet someone like him in the real world.
Ronald J. Murray lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His fiction has appeared in The Ladies and Gentlemen of Horror 2017 charity anthology, Bon Appetit: Stories and Recipes for Human Consumption cannibal-themed anthology and recipe book, and the forthcoming Lustcraftian Horrors: Erotic Stories Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft from Infernal Ink Books. He is a member of the Horror Writers Association. You can find him enjoying his umpteenth cup of coffee at some ungodly hour while a film he’s seen a million times before plays in the background.
Kenya Wright wrote her first novel during her third year at UM Law school. She dropped out a month after the release and never looked back.
Stephanie M. Wytovich is an American poet, novelist, and essayist. Her work has been showcased in numerous anthologies such as Gutted: Beautiful Horror Stories, Shadows Over Main Street: An Anthology of Small-Town Lovecraftian Terror, Year’s Best Hardcore Horror: Volume 2, The Best Horror of the Year: Volume 8, as well as many others.
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