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sawyerconfort · 2 years

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If I Am What You Choose | Veronica Sawyer x JD x Reader

Greetings and salutations!

First of all, I came here to thank you for the followers I've gained on this blog in the last few days! Knowing that there are people who still like Heathers and who liked my stories about them is a greater comfort to my heart!

Now, taking advantage of the fact that you are enjoying my stories, I decided to spice things up a bit here with a slight competition between these two (the definition of bisexual was successfully updated), I hope you like it!

What would it be like to have Veronica and JD competing for your love?

Want to see?

Any special requests or suggestions, send an ask or comment on one of my recent posts! I'll do my best to write it!

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Prompt: At the same time you're dating JD, you're in love with Veronica. And while your boyfriend is crazy about you, your crush seems to respond to your feelings. And now? Which of the two will you stay with?

“Please, sweetie, stay a little longer.”

JD pressed hot kisses down your neck and across your face, leaning against the closet, in plain sight. If there was one thing your boyfriend wanted, it was to show that you were his, and of course, whenever there was an opportunity, JD wouldn't hesitate, even if you were in class.

"Sorry J, but I have to go...", you whispered, pulling away from him. "I have art class now, and if I'm late one more time, I'm going to get a big suspension."

He nodded, pulling away from you with a less than happy expression, but he let you go anyway. His extremely protective instinct made him stay alert, those eyes narrowed as you walked out of the locker room and into the classroom hallway.

Anyone who knew you in Westerburg knew that this was the moment you paid the least attention in class, simply because you were sitting in pairs with one of the prettiest girls in town.

You had to suppress a smile when you noticed Veronica Sawyer walking into the room, right behind you, her head down in shyness and the materials hugging her body like a shield. Veronica sat next to you and smiled as she exchanged a quick glance with you as she tidied up her materials.

"Hi...", you whispered, having to hide the urge to explode.

“Hi,” she replied shyly with yet another smile.

The teacher soon arrived in the room, and started talking, talking about things you didn't understand or weren't paying attention, because you was more busy looking at your tablemate. At a glance, you noticed the looks of the three Heathers, sitting awkwardly at the same table, and you quickly remembered why a chance with Veronica was impossible.

No one in Westerburg would have the courage to face a Heather.

“Before you ask me, yes, we will have double assignments this year”, the teacher began, making you more alert for the first time. “Especially because it is the time of our annual art exhibition, and I need to schedule your works exactly for the parents and teachers.”

"Do you think we'll be able to choose the pairs?", Veronica asked, very close to her ear, which gave you an unnecessary shiver. You shrugged your shoulders, trying not to hope that a work between you would work out. She would probably choose McNamara.

Life wouldn't be so good with you, not this way.

“You can choose the pairs,” the professor ordered, turning around. Chaos in the class was already in place, and you watched the three Heathers get up so they could start blackmailing the other students.

You were sure Heather McNamara was walking over to the table you and Veronica were at, but frowned when you saw her turn around.

“Hey, do you want to partner with me?”, Veronica suddenly surprised you. She was looking at you with those beautiful eyes, driving you crazy. "You know, I really like your drawing style, I think we'll do a good job at the exhibition... but only if you want to."

"No! I mean, no, of course, of course I do.”

You were shaking and your sentences were unfinished.

"Perfect! We’ll be a great duo!” she cheered, clapping her hands together. You smiled in response, so as not to look weird. For the rest of the class, you tried not to think about JD and his reaction when he found out.

* * *

“You can't be serious!” he yelled. "You can not be serious!"

“I'm sorry, J, but she really wants to do the work today, and we've got two weeks to go!” you tried to ease the tension as you leaned across the kitchen table and held the phone to your ear. “The other days I promise I'll stay with you, honey. Just try to understand, okay?”

“Sometimes I feel like you hate me, (Y\N).”

That was not a good phrase. It definitely wasn't. Because JD used all kinds of triggers and ways to manipulate and blackmail you emotionally. And he was so good at it that it made you feel guilty for his actions.

At this point, you were wondering if you shouldn't cancel the work with Veronica and leave it for another date, just to be with him.

“No, I don't hate you, JD!” you held your pose. “Of course not, I just need to get this job done before the deadline, okay? Try to understand this, dear, please.”

"You could have chosen another pair...", he whispered on the other side. "I don't like the way she looks at you."

Luckily, the doorbell rang before you could answer or even think about it. With a dry parting sentence, you rushed to answer it, preparing yourself not to be embarrassed to see Veronica Sawyer in her house, in front of you.

She was simple, much more natural and beautiful than she had been at school. You liked that version of Veronica, the version you knew before she became a popular girl. It suited her better.

“Am I late?” she asked, analyzing his tense expression.

"No! No!”, you replied instantly. “It's fine at the appointed time, come in, make yourself comfortable!” now was the time to change the subject before things got awkward between the two of you. “Have you thought about what we're going to do? What painting are we going to do?”

She smiled, approaching the table and tossing some art magazines for you to see. Still acting uncomfortable, thinking about JD and his mixed feelings, you tried to pay attention only to the drawings, but every now and then, her gaze escaped her.

“(Y\NN), you look weird...”, Veronica suddenly caught his attention. "Did something happen?"

Your lips twitched. "No. I'm great."

“It's JD, isn't it?” she caught you in the hop. "Nothing personal, (Y\N), but this guy must be a pain in the ass...", her laugh was mocking. “Seriously, how do you do it?”

“JD is a great boy, Veronica.”

You had no idea why you were getting defensive like that. On the one hand, you felt obligated to defend your boyfriend, the man you loved, but on the other hand, it felt wrong to be using it to mask your feelings for your classmate, even in front of her.

You disguised it badly, and you were a hundred percent sure she was suspicious of your feelings for her.

"Anyway, let's get back to work..." you whispered, focused.

She glanced at you and smiled. "The work. Sure."

* * *

As much as the work gained a more tense atmosphere after that conversation, you and Veronica managed to dribble it and continued to organize the art in the planned way, which made you very satisfied.

Obviously, that work wasn't going to be the only moment of distraction between the two of you, and you expected that. When she left her house, she quickly asked if you could go to the mall sometime, just for shopping, or for a moment together without thinking about school.

That request didn't let you sleep for days. And reflected on your behavior.

“Damn, (Y\N), are you really paying attention to what I said?”

You faced JD, who had the usual Slushie in his hands. He stared at you frustrated, waiting for your answer, making you shake from head to toe.

“Oh, sure, I heard, honey,” you replied quickly. “We can arrange a date yes, just the two of us, I miss you too.”

He smiled. “Perfect,” JD held out the glass toward her. “Would you like a sip, love?”

“Actually, I…”

“(Y\NN)!”

You closed your eyes, feeling like you were screwed from the moment you heard that voice. Veronica approached the two of you, clearly noticing JD but not saying a word about it. Your boyfriend stared at the girl with an expression of pure disgust, but he disguised it when he saw you looking at him.

“Are you really ready for today?”, Veronica asked. "We're going to spend hours in that mall, I hope you don't mind!"

“Oh, yes, of course!” you smiled. "I'll stop by your house at two?"

JD stood up, and you felt like he was going into the most dangerous way possible. With a glance at you, he proceeded to stare at Veronica with the same killer gaze as before, and in the face of her confused response, he gripped her arm tightly.

"Listen, if you think you're going to steal my girlfriend like this..."

“JD!” you yelled, hoping he could hear you. Your boyfriend had grabbed Veronica by the collar, not afraid to attract anyone's eyes. Even the Heathers were watching, disgusted, but still very attentive. “Let Veronica go. She is not to blame for anything.”

“She's going to steal you from me, can't you see?!” he shook her body tightly. “From the beginning, this has been Veronica Sawyer's dirty plan, to steal you from me. And you are corresponding, unfortunately.”

Your brow furrowed.

“JD, seriously. Let her go.”

He glared at you, faced her again, and brutally released Veronica's body. She slumped into the chair and glanced at the two of you as you approached your boyfriend with a rising anger in your eyes.

“What do you think you're doing with that?” you spit out the words. "I know, you want to create chaos in here, don't you?"

"Chaos is what killed the dinosaurs, honey..." he smiled. "I just want to teach those petulant humans a lesson who think they can ruin our happiness like this, all of a sudden...", he held you close to him. "You are mine. Mine forever. It’s just the two of us from now on, okay?”

Your anger grew so much that you couldn't even measure the force of the blow. It hit JD right in the eye, from what you figured when he ducked. Only things would get worse, because you should never have teased a boy like him.

"No..." he huffed. "Damn it! What the fuck, (Y\N)?”

And all of a sudden, your boyfriend gave you a blow that threw you on the table, and made you hit your head on the edge, slipping and falling as the world went out in front of her.

* * *

When you woke up, the first thing you noticed was your blurred vision, which was made worse by looking into the stark white light of the hospital room. Your body was still numb, soft as jelly, and you had no sense of time there. Despite the numbness, you could still hear the sounds of people talking in the hallway.

And you could hear a heavy sigh right next to you.

As you looked up and looked to the side, he could see Veronica sitting in an old yellow armchair next to your mother. She was sleeping, and your mother was wide awake, looking up. As soon as she noticed your sudden movement, she nudged Veronica quickly.

“(Y\N)!” you mom yelled, startling you. “Oh, thank God! I thought it would take a little longer for you to wake up!” she smiled, stroking your hair. “How do you feel, dear?”

"What-"

“No, no, no need to talk,” she interrupted you. “They've given you a good dose of painkillers now, you won't feel anything for a little while and you'll probably get some more sleep. Do not worry about that."

“Mom”, you sighed, feeling a pang in your chest at the fact. "What happened? Where is JD?”

She looked at Veronica, still asleep in the armchair, and then back at you.

"Jason Dean is being interrogated right now, I hope," your mother said in a serious tone. "Oh dear, I don't know what happened, but when your friend arrived with Mrs. Fleming and said you were out, all I wanted most was for justice to be done."

"And how do you know that..." you tried to say, flashes of the fight with JD flashing through your mind.

"She told me. She's been here the whole time, honey."

You looked up to meet Veronica, who was awake now, her gaze far away. When you finally caught her eye, she jumped up immediately from the chair and stood beside your bed, her face pale with fear.

“Damn, (Y\NN), you gave us quite a scare!”, Veronica said in a rude tone, but with no intention of hurting you. "Don't ever do that again, okay?"

“Veronica, JD-”

Your heart began to pound as she approached you and touched your hand, causing a shock that had nothing to do with the effects of the meds.

“It's okay now, (Y\NN), he can't hurt us here anymore,” she whispered. "I'm so sorry, honey, I'm so sorry!"

"You were right Ronnie, he's a pain in the ass..."

She smiled. “Forget it, (Y\NN), rest now, okay?”

"I'm glad you came..." you whispered, feeling sleep slowly consume your body, a relaxing effect. “I like having you with me, Ronnie. You will stay, won't you?”

“I will,” she replied, looking at her mother. "I'm not leaving, I promise."

Still squeezing your hand, she leaned in slowly to kiss your forehead, and your heart fluttered even more, the gauge almost went crazy, but then it went back to normal. With a smile, you closed your eyes, hoping you could see Veronica again when she woke up, pain free of course.

No more competitions, you thought before erasing. Enough with pain in the asses.

Your choice was already made. And when you woke up, you would directly talk to the person about them.

You couldn't run away from your feelings anymore. Even if you had to face the fury of three little girls in colorful clothes for that.

#heathers #heathers x reader #veronica sawyer x reader #jd x reader #veronica sawyer #jason dean #romance #lgbt #drama #angst #imagine #oneshot #i honestly would choose veronica too #they're too hot in this gif i can't

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randallvangundy · 4 years

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PetFusion Ambush Electronic Cat Toy Review

As a cat parent, I love doing everything I can to keep my beloved pet entertained through play. Not only that, but playtime encourages your cat to use their natural instincts. Many animal behavior studies suggest that this is important to the mental and physical well-being of your pet. The best cat toys for cats who live indoors, like the one in our PetFusion Ambush Electronic Cat Toy review, to encourage your cat to hunt and pounce. Therefore, they are entertained and, at the same time, your cat’s mind and body are stimulated.

Things To Consider Before Buying An Electronic Cat Toy

Before deciding to buy any product, it is always good to research it to know if it might be what you and your cat are looking for. Check if it passes all the safety, durability, and stimulation requirements you are looking for. Like any other purchases you make, you want to get your money’s worth with the toy you buy for your cat. It has to be something durable that can withstand everyday use. It should also be safe enough for solo playtime. The toy shouldn’t have any loose parts your cat might swallow or sharp pieces.

The toy should also challenge your cat’s hunting instinct. A cat toy is a good tool to have to keep your cat active both physically and mentally. Having an active lifestyle means that your cat has fewer chances of suffering from health issues such as diabetes mellitus and obesity. Therefore, your cat has a healthier lifestyle and can stay with you longer. In this article, we will dive deeper into the everything PetFusion Ambush Electronic Cat Toy has to offer so you can see for yourself if it is the toy for your cat.

Ambush Interactive Cat Toy Overview

Check Amazon’s Price

The Ambush Interactive toy is designed to satisfy your cat’s hunting instincts. It is a battery-operated device that has six openings on the side. A feather pops out of these six holes in randomized and fast-paced settings. This moving feather mimics a prey that your cat will catch. It also comes equipped with color LED lighting to help draw your cat in further. This also makes the toy a great toy for daytime or nighttime use.

It has two modes that can be activated with a long press of the button. There’s blue for activation and purple for feather change mode. The package includes four AA batteries. It also has a battery plate screw so that it is secured and won’t be easily removed, especially if you have young kids at home.

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Quick Glance

What’s Good

Anti-skid feet to keep it in place on smooth surfaces

12-month warranty for any manufacturer defects

Feather is easy to replace; three-pack replacement can be bought

Long-battery life with the eight-minute auto-shutoff feature

LED lighting

What’s Bad

The motor is very loud that it might scare some cats

Feather is flimsy

Some users wish that it has a slow and fast setting

Features Of The Ambush Cat Toy

The following are some of the key features this cat toy has that you and your cat might enjoy:

8-Minute Auto-Shutoff

This product automatically shuts off after eight minutes. This feature promotes extended battery life so that you don’t have to keep replacing the battery. The package includes four AA batteries as well.

Automated Interactive Play

It is made to stimulate your cat’s instincts of chasing and capturing prey. It provides a moving prey to your cat as a colorful feather pops in and out at interval times on the six holes around it. You can switch it on and leave your cat to have fun with the toy or watch them satisfy their ancient desire to hunt. However, it can be very loud.

Check Amazon’s Price

LED Lights & Replaceable Feather

This toy has LED color lighting that helps attract your cat to it. It also helps make it visible during low light situations. The toy comes with one feather replacement should your cat successfully finish off the prey for good.

Sleek Look & Anti-Skid Feet

The device has a white, sleek design that will go with any interior design your house has. The material it is made of is also fairly durable. It is also equipped with rubber soles so that it stays put even on smooth surfaces, such as tile and hardwood floors.

Check Amazon’s Price

What Others Say About Ambush Electronic Cat Toy

Here are some cat parents’ reviews to help you know how this interactive toy fares with other felines:

This user says that all five of his cats love the PetFusion Ambush Cat Toy!

This cat parent says that this toy helps keep their cat entertained while they work!

Alternatives To The PetFusion Electronic Cat Toy

If you are still on the fence regarding this cat toy, then here are a few other alternatives in the market. This way, you can compare how they fare from other toys.

Friends Forever Interactive Laser Cat Toy

The Friends Forever Interactive Laser Cat Toy is equipped with a rotating laser that is concealed in a diamond-shaped topper.

Like the PetFusion, it needs batteries to work. It also taps on your cat’s natural hunting instinct as they try to catch the red dot.

The laser beam projects at a randomized 360-degree pattern, so your cat has a big play area. It also has a 15-minute automatic shut off feature with three-speed settings. However, it might be hard to get a replacement should the laser burn out. This is unlike the easily replaceable feathers of the Ambush Interactive.

Running Pet Cat Toy

The Running Pet Cat Toy looks similar to the PetFusion. But instead of a feather popping out of holes, this toy has a moving electronic mouse that runs around a circular track.

It has four-speed settings, with the mouse going in both directions. It uses three AA batteries only, but it is not included in the package, unlike the PetFusion.

It also does not have an auto shut feature, which may affect the battery life. Check the product out and see if this might be the toy for your cat.

Catit Senses 2.0 Food Tree

The Catit Senses 2.0 Food Tree is a food tree and toy in one. It makes your cat work for their food as they have to paw at the openings to get the kibble.

It has three difficulty levels to challenge your cat’s natural instincts. This cat feeder is made of BPA-materials.

Unlike the PetFusion and the other toys in this list, this one does not need batteries to operate. This toy also helps your cat eat at a healthier pace. If you have a fast eater or an overeater cat in your hands, this toy is worth checking out.

Our Final Thoughts

A cat toy is a good way to keep your cat busy in a fun way. It helps in preventing boredom while also encouraging exercise. As our PetFusion Ambush Electronic Cat Toy Review revealed, many cats enjoy PetFusion Ambush Electronic Cat toy! Why? A feather arm continuously pops in and out of a hole randomly so your cat never knows what’s coming.

It is a great stimulus for their hunting instincts while also helping to keep them mentally and physically fit.

Click here to get current pricing on Amazon for The PetFusion Ambush Electronic Cat Toy >>

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#pets #Pet Care #dogs #cats #veterinary care

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how2to18 · 6 years

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TEN YEARS AGO, the collapse of Lehman Brothers triggered the global financial crisis of 2008. Democrats were eight years in power, and their failure to prosecute the corporate criminals behind the crisis surely ranks as their biggest legacy. That failure was the condition of possibility for the anti-elite narrative that inspired the white working class and the white upper class to support a genuinely fascist insurgency before and beyond November 2016. It was also the condition of possibility for Billions.

Across its three seasons on Showtime, Billions explores the aftermath of Lehman’s and Obama’s 2008 peaks, tracking the waning and waxing faculty of elite professionals to steer their careers and helm the most powerful country in the world. The show is built around an extended parallel between outer-borough upstart Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis), principal of the wildly fruitful hedge fund Axe Capital, and Manhattan WASP Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), US Attorney for the New York Southern District and hero of a counterfactual recent past in which 81 bankers and traders were successfully prosecuted for their outlaw engineering of toxic asset slides. Rhoades fancies himself a just warrior, fighting against “[these] Teflon corporations that defraud the American people on a grand scale.” As the series opens he levels his gaze at Axe, the Moby-Dick of parkour finance.

Root for the law, or root for the money? Fortunately, we don’t have to choose, since here both sides equal each other in their maniacal pursuits of professional acme — a steady double date with bent rules, a shared ruthless drive to win. Root for the winners! Both men are game theory geniuses, spooling out scenarios and hedging countermoves with the speed of gigahertz processors. Their sheer effectiveness propels the show’s narrative and renders the difference between good guys and bad guys a mere matter of preference.

The winners run their races in structural parallel, their lines intersected at right angles by mutual ballast: Wendy (Maggie Siff), a psychiatrist whose penetrating understanding of Bobby guides the growth of Axe Cap, and whose lashing crop rouses the vim of her husband, Chuck. The very first shot of the series frames Chuck bound and gagged on the floor, a vinyl stiletto boot pinning him down. (It’s not TV, it’s Showtime.) “You’re in need of correction, aren’t you?” she says, burning his chest with a cigarette and again with urine in the wound. Cut to the Manhattan skyline, that other site of bad boys who will be bad boys even after market corrections, and there we find Wendy’s second sphere: she is lucratively employed as the in-house performance coach at the hedge fund, a high-class fluffer whose flash-sessions amp the traders with dominatrix directives to “get out there and do what needs to be done.” All day long, Wendy dispatches debilitating anxieties and disruptive fetishes at lightning pace, checking in frequently with Axe to save him “from making a huge mistake for dick-measuring purposes.” She takes deep satisfaction in her beneficent effects. On “Comp Day,” when financial firms assign annual bonuses to their employees, she regularly merits $2 million — and that’s not counting spontaneous gifts from Axe like a black Maserati GranTurismo Sport. Her business model is clearly not Jacques Lacan’s.

Chuck’s rewards differ: he can’t help but be bad, even as he draws the compensation of righteousness, and his inner conflict mines much more fodder for repentance under the latex lash. “I work for the public good!” Chuck scolds Wendy in season one. “No, you work for the good of Chuck Rhoades,” she flatlines back. When he initiates an indictment against another giant hedge fish whose political ties will fall out advantageously, Chuck’s deputies repeat the exchange in a later season: “It’s the right thing to do,” Lonnie Watley (Malachi Weir) says. Kate Sacker (Condola Rashad) parries, “It’s what Chuck wants. It doesn’t make it right.” At the end of his righteous road, if Chuck Senior (Jeffrey DeMunn) pulls enough strings from behind the velvet curtains of his Fifth Avenue study, Chuck will be governor, a latter-day Spitzer chasing corporate offenses in between incriminating sexploits, clad in ever-more refined sharkskin grays of power.

Even as Axe, Chuck, and Wendy split repeatedly over the public good, legal technicalities, and codes of honor, they are three peas in a pod, winners united in their incomparable competence, their oft-declared outsized intelligence, their profound professionalism. The show’s creators are also consummate professionals (a team that includes Andrew Ross Sorkin of The New York Times financial pages): the script is exacting, the plot gasping, the performances riveting, the cameos towering, the wardrobe flawless. Not your average workplace drama, Billions is impressively synoptic in its horizontal integration of mental health, financial services, Silicon Valley industries, and law and order, with a little Yonkers-secret-recipe-pizza and private-duty-intravenous-hangover-cure-nurses spicing the mix. Some seek money, some seek glory, some seek power, but everyone wants to win. The show thus poses the question, at the time of writing in 2014, at the time of setting in 2012–2016, and at the time of airing in 2016–2018, of professional potency. What is it about this decade that makes being excellent at your elite job a matter of concern?

The authors of the financial crisis were, on the whole, excellent at their jobs. Inventing asset classes to dissimulate toxicity, booking loans as revenues, hyping instruments to defer reckoning, evangelizing for the equations that discount merely mortal common sense, and evading regulatory oversight with NASCAR agility, the hedgies of the new millennium performed spectacularly. What Axe calls the “unimaginative, do-gooder authorities” — regulators and legislators, Federal Reserve governors and lifetime senators — stood equally spectacular in their unwavering commitment to the upward transfer of wealth.

Barack Obama, the executive officer with purview over all this excellence — Harvard Law stamped, a 10 million popular vote win span, and cooler than the crispest cucumber — tragically forswore the audacity of power, and instead measured his every move for the middle. Appointing Wall Street alums to the Justice Department, maintaining the GOP Treasury, and utterly staying the course with the boondoggle bailout Hank Paulson and George W. Bush had rushed in late 2008, Obama achieved bipartisan support for the plutocracy. He declined to bail out the people. He announced but never really executed a program to aid homeowners in tiny proportion to the support for banks. He committed to but never delivered a plan for jobs for struggling homeowners, and he oversaw, in the name of Too Big To Fail, outrageous mergers of investment banks with consumer banks destined to risk even bigger failures. Facing the black and white of racist obstruction and class war, he went gray. Professionalism of the middle is not professionalism of the top.

2008’s extreme wreckage couldn’t be answered from the center. Billions endorses excess, and not only through the tops of S&M dens. It meets tremendous deeds with zealous, polarizing professional prowess. All three principals are awesomely effective, getting out there and doing what needs to be done. In supreme-stakes “three-dimensional chess,” as they call it, Axe, Chuck, and Wendy appraise their options with hawkish precision, and much of the viewing pleasure rests in the exertions of keeping up with these darting analysts. If we can hang with these pros, tracking their razor rhetoric, technical argot, nimble abbrevs, and bountiful movie allusions, aren’t we smart too? (I watch the show with my JD/Econ PhD husband, and we need subtitles.)

The power of the spoken smart animates most episodes of Billions. Choice bon mots leaked to the press can trigger shorts and swaps, misdirections planted in the ears of suspected moles confirm corporate espionage, incendiary insults inspire ire, and single syllables can suborn murder. Threats are promises and speeches are deeds; to be effective is to wield the word as cause, spurring domino actions. Fierce oratory anchors the action, accomplished stage actors people the remarkable cast, and the show makes much ado of theater, its narrow focus on the orators predominating over fancy camerawork, set design, or action sequences. Drama is the paramount medium of the act, so Billions deploys its theatricality to foreground its study of agency.

Evoking black box theater in its constrained interiors — the dark kitchen of the Rhoades’s Brooklyn townhouse, the wood paneling of Upper East Side clubs, the utilitarian taupe of federal offices — the show’s aesthetic is a tight frame for the efficacious act. It makes virtually no use of exterior settings, establishing shots, panoramas, or montage, only occasionally inserts drone footage of the Manhattan skyline between scenes, and is almost exclusively low-lit, faces half in shadow. Even the gleaming white of the Axelrod Westport headquarters (a conspicuous post-9/11 relocation for many such firms) reflects the light of scrutiny, transparent office walls and centered communal trader table exposing and circumscribing power plays. Chess moves within close squares, the actions anyone takes best be good form, as they’ll ramify into a long tail.

Poor form haunts Axe even as he cuts a precision figure, since his solo firm originated in unsavory transactions around 2001, a second world-historical juxtaposition alongside 2008. The destruction of the World Trade Center created all kinds of opportunities for financial crimes and shady gains, from insufficient health care for widows and first-responders, to the war-profiteering that drove the stock market up after the fraudulent invasion of Iraq. Axe, we learn late in season one, owes no small segment of his empire to 9/11. A stroke of luck kept him out of the office that morning, and a stroke of evil genius netted him nearly a billion dollars by shorting airline and hotel stocks in the very hours during which his colleagues perished.

The line from 9/11 to 2008 to 2018 spun by Billions is the problematic of professional power, from W’s amateur incompetence to O’s centrist impotence to HRC’s unshakable taint. Does power rest with the mighty rulers of imperialism, or with the few who seek retribution? When the elites peddle business as usual amid crises of their own making, how do they get away with it? Can a woman maintain the same middling charade as her male predecessor? Billions merges these elite domains of the political, the legal, and the financial with the baser registers of the professional, the sexual, and the criminal. Absolute effectiveness requires relative tactics in different domains, but the strategy remains the same.

Luxely compensated black-clad Wendy is the cold, beating heart of the show. Her impeccable professionalism carves out an admirable Obama middle way between justice and money. The creative choice to foreground a woman in a genre usually defined by its abundant big swinging dicks comprises the show’s sizable allure. Beautifully loyal to both Axe and Chuck, Wendy’s actions are not quite as determining as theirs, and indeed several of the plot trajectories involve elaborate maneuvers by both men to protect her from implication in their misdoings. But she is fiercely dignified in her right to a career unhampered by her husband’s, hungry at every moment for a harder puzzle. Her work acumen shines as a real point of identification.

The middle imagines itself as noble, going high when they go low, but it often requires a certain prostitution, and Wendy finally sells herself to protect both her men. Having quit Axe Cap and left her marriage at the end of season one, over the course of season two she eventually negotiates a deal to recenter herself and buffer her men from one another: she’ll return to the firm, and Bobby will drop the hundreds of malicious prosecution lawsuits he is funding against Chuck; she’ll return to the marriage, and Chuck will hunt other whales. A potent broker like the rest of them, she exudes Swiss neutrality even as the show centers her decisive seat of power.

Combining the financial and legal expertise of her two men with her own primary expertise in psychic motivation, Wendy’s control is dazzling to behold, her deeds superseding those of both men. It comes as a hard gut-punch when the third season’s decisive misdeed is her own: she violates her patient Mafee, a likable every-bro with just enough “Navy SEAL” to thrive at Axe Cap, trading on her insider knowledge of his infatuation with her to seduce him, persuading him to lie to federal investigators on her behalf. Axe, Chuck, and Wendy are all facing jail time for their vertiginous triple crossing at season two’s climax, in which Chuck raids the personal trust he had sequestered when taking public office to overinvest in his friend’s juice company, but really to bait Axe into sabotaging the company to score on a big short of the IPO. Wendy, learning of the sabotage, does not warn Chuck, but joins the short. Her hedge is financially savvy though legally and maritally unsound, a middle ground between competing value systems, but no longer innocent. It primes her to shrewdly cross lines in season three, colluding with Axe and Chuck to pin the sabotage wholly on a fourth party, and to mine the exculpating falsehood from Mafee’s affections. As her black vixen sheaths foretell, the gray is untenable. There’s no credible integrity in the middle.

Wendy’s highly calculated betrayal of Mafee, and her betrayal of us for rooting for her, gets repaid in a patient’s betrayal of her. Taylor Mason is introduced in the second season as Mafee’s intern analyst, bound for the U Chicago MBA. Axe demands to be introduced to the young temp who makes Mafee millions, and on walks Taylor: “My pronouns are they, their, them.” Played by Asia Kate Dillon and earning Billions the Outstanding Drama Series award from GLAAD, Taylor is often celebrated as the first major gender nonconfirming character on a television series, but their drive is all too binary. “It’s not just about numbers and decimal points,” Wendy warns them. “No, I’m pretty sure there is only money,” comes their icy retort.

Where others want the good or the might, Taylor’s want is the machine. A stony quant, their grad school plans dissipate in the sway of one of Bobby’s trademark virile speeches: “You retreat behind your aquarium walls. What you don’t realize, Taylor, is that glass — it’s not a barrier, it’s a lens. It’s an asset. It’s what makes you good. You see things differently. That’s an edge.” The ensuing comp bargaining, rapid-fire and cut-throat, is equally signature. If there is someone who can rival Bobby, it is Taylor — not Chuck, poor analog soul. Where Chuck tries and fails to use Wendy to beat Axe, Taylor wins, optimizing their private sessions with Wendy to ultimately manipulate Axe.

Heeding Wendy and trusting their judgment, Bobby gives Taylor the reins at Axe Capital after one of Chuck’s contortions at last ensnares him in enough legal trouble to warrant a trading suspension. After crushing the capital raise by garnering $6 billion in new investments from a single speech, Taylor abruptly launches a solo firm, breaking Bobby’s bank and Wendy’s heart. All along, we’ve watched Wendy’s dual loyalties reap uneven returns: Axe tells her almost everything, leaving little plausible deniability (thank god for Doctor-Patient privilege), but Chuck tells her lies, and profanes patient confidentiality to steal fuel for his cases against Axe. With Taylor, she finds a relationship more complicated and intriguing than those with the male traders — an arc of actualization for both, a hint of the psychiatrist’s vocation beyond fluffing. But she also finds out that her most genuinely gratifying work can be someone else’s chess move; Taylor uses Wendy’s empathy for their experience in the über-male workplace to spur Wendy to advise Axe to offer Taylor more money, more prominence, more “forward momentum.” In a gray garage, in the most stabbing exchange of all the show’s Shakespearean duels, Wendy spits, “What do you want?”:

Taylor: You.

Wendy: You think … I’ll actually come with you? Haven’t you done enough damage?

T: I’m building not destroying. That’s where you come in …

W: Nice ideas. You are no moral fucking compass. For a moment, I thought you might be because you needed me to think that. But you used me. … You preyed on me and my empathy for you, preyed on me to get what you wanted from Axe — being part of the raise — so fuck you.

T: Oh, you don’t seem to understand. I’m not just offering you a job for my sake. I’m offering you a fresh start for yours. A restart for your slew of fuckups. You let things devolve at Axe Capital. You didn’t see me being pushed out the door. You couldn’t stop Axe from succumbing to his own worst nature. Instead, you succumbed to it. And who knows what other fallout you’ve created or at least allowed elsewhere in your life.

By recognizing that Wendy’s professional power underwrites Axe Cap’s, and thus that Wendy is culpable for its sins, Taylor caresses Wendy’s raw desire in one hand, while bitch-slapping her with the other. Wendy pretends to be in the middle, but is really in charge; by contrast, Taylor intends transparent management, “top down but not imperious or impetuous,” and largely “tech-centric,” employing the team of algo writers Axe Cap only briefly entertained, working as purely as possible. “A place free of arrests, indictments, insinuations,” Mase Cap pledges a Shangri-La of robotic proficiency bulwarked against irrational exuberance and illicit info. Even through the original sin of its founding, it’s a vision that winds Wendy, thudding the sternum of her own illusory virtue. Like Axe before them, Taylor goes solo with filthy lucre, but points out that Wendy, too, is an axe. There is no middling in financial baseball.

Axe vows certain vengeance, while Wendy counsels “looking within, to see what you, what we, may have done to cause this. We rebuild our business as we rebuild ourselves.” As Wendy and Bobby align against Taylor, Wendy and Chuck also realign, finding new thrills in resistance to the noxious anti-black autocrat Jock Jeffcoat (Clancy Brown), the new Attorney General after national regime change. A gruesome fusion of Sessions and Trump, Jeffcoat’s racism is matched only by his corruption. (He even gets to shout, “You’re fired!”) Chuck spends the second half of season three working with his two black Assistant US Attorneys and a black New York State Attorney General to build an obstruction case against Jeffcoat, renewing his commitment to justice after a détente with Axe Cap, but applying all the brinksmanship lessons learned to goad Jock into exposure. Jock is a better target than Axe, for it is easier to believe in preserving the neutrality of political institutions than in revealing the open truth of the rigged market. Sacker assures: “He’s finally doing it right, the right thing […] He’s doing that Chuck thing, but for the right fucking reasons this time.”

The final sequence of season three distills all these tactical realignments. In companionable silence with Chuck, Wendy takes a call from Axe. “I saw Taylor,” she says. “Fuck them. No, I mean fuck them over. You have to. We do.” “Well, that’s different from look inward,” Axe reproves. “Yeah, well, you know what, I’m different.” A different Wendy invites Bobby into the Rhoades dining room, mutually funding a new rapprochement. The closing lines over flowing wine put the long play for season four: “So you know how you’re gonna go after Jock?” Bobby asks. “Some ideas floating around my head. And, uh, Taylor?” Chuck reciprocates. “Yeah, yeah, got a plan that’s starting to form.” Wendy, wronged by both Taylor’s treachery and Jock’s tyranny, husbands the partnership: “Tell him about it. There’s no one better at breaking down a strategy.” From above, the camera’s final shot captures the tops of three heads harmoniously leaning in, readying for “a real good time together” (The Velvet Underground trills us), for staking out different fights.

From Wall Street to The Big Short, the financial malfeasance genre is often marked by its gray regard for greedy elites, and Billions doesn’t quite crack this ambivalent mold. It offers charismatic winners at many chosen professions, unencumbered by constructs like ethics or law, and we want to be on their teams. But the insistent connections it draws among its principals, their common core of intrinsic drive, provokes not so much the guilty pleasure of cheering guilty heroes, as the savory systematic reflection on the diversified ends of powerful means. Use your might for the middle, or go one better?

A hedge offsets risk by playing both sides, rapacious plunder in middle-ground clothing. Billions deftly explores these faux middles via elite power struggles, elite deeds, and the tactics of elite war. Strikingly, though, its insights catapult beyond elites, whose monopoly can’t be trusted, who shouldn’t be the winners all the time. Everyone needs tactics, everyone needs strategy. Even we the writers and readers of literary magazines amid the ruins of the university, we the taxi drivers and lawyers at LaGuardia, we the marchers for climate science and gun regulation and feminism, we the teachers on strike, we the candidates with “impossible” platforms, we the servers in restaurants, we the occupiers outside baby jails, we too with power. The middle cannot hold. Get out there and do what needs to be done.

Anna Kornbluh teaches literature and literary theory at the University of Illinois, Chicago.

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shirleydazzle · 6 years

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Top DUI in Taylorsville Utah

When police in Utah find a person that they believe is driving in suspicious manner, they often pull the car over. The traffic stop can be for driving too slowly, too quickly, for a broken tail light or for many other reasons. In some cases, drivers are pulled over when officers suspect DUI is the cause of their erratic driving. This is when you need a DUI Lawyer.

Utah anchor faced DUI charges after arrest

This is what happened recently to a local television personality in Utah. On a spring evening, the woman was travelling slowly in the left lane of a highway. Noticing this, an officer pulled her over for a traffic stop. Once the woman stopped her vehicle, the officer noticed a cup with a straw in it in her car. The cup turned out to be filled with alcohol.

Field sobriety tests were administered on the woman, though she refused to take a preliminary breath test at the scene. Instead she requested and received a blood draw at the local station. In the end, she was accused of having a .10 blood alcohol level, which is above the state DUI limit of .08.

This finding led to a DUI charge for the Utah woman. She mounted a defense against the charge and eventually plead guilty to a lesser crime. This allowed her to pay a fine and serve community service rather than face jail time for her crime. Mounting the defense proved to be a good choice for the accused woman, and many in the state may find that taking similar actions could help to ensure that they receive a fair and appropriate outcome in their individual case.

Is stopping at DUI checkpoints legally required?

Many law enforcement agencies throughout the country use checkpoints in an attempt to deter drivers from getting behind the wheel of their vehicles after drinking. The question becomes whether Utah drivers are legally required to stop at DUI checkpoints. As is the case with other legal issues, the answer is complicated.

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The first question that needs to be answered is whether these checkpoints are even legal in Utah. The simple answer is that they have been legal since 1992. However, law enforcement agencies cannot simply set up such a checkpoint without first adhering to certain parameters. First, a court order must be obtained to conduct such an operation.

Thereafter, the public must be notified before the checkpoint takes place. This gives drivers the option to avoid the area if they choose. However, for those vehicles that do approach the location, their ability to avoid being stopped is somewhat limited. If a driver attempts to perform an illegal maneuver in order to avoid the checkpoint, he or she could face legal consequences. One source indicates that police could charge a driver with disorderly conduct under these circumstances.

For those drivers who are arrested on suspicion of DUI, it would be in their best interest to obtain legal counsel as soon as possible in order to ensure that their rights are protected. Just because an individual is taken into custody for driving under the influence does not necessarily mean that the charges will stand. Even if the arrest was legal, it is not a foregone conclusion that the driver will be found guilty. The charges must still be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law before any penalties can be imposed on an accused individual.

Free Consultation with DUI Lawyer

If you need help with a DUI Charge in Taylorsville, Utah, call for your free consultation (801) 676-5506. We want to help you.

Ascent Law LLC8833 S. Redwood Road, Suite CWest Jordan, Utah 84088 United StatesTelephone: (801) 676-5506

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char27martin · 7 years

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5 Literary Agents Discuss the Horror Genre

A special treat on this Halloween morning: Five literary agents, who all represent the horror genre, took a break from reading manuscripts to answer a few questions on horror, including what they’re seeing a high demand for, what about a submission inspires confidence, and common weaknesses they see in writing. If you’re currently struggling through your work-in-progress at the moment, take your own break and see what these horror literary agents have to say. You may just find your key—whether it’s psychological horror, marginalized voices, or crossover appeal—to breaking out!

How has the horror genre evolved in recent years, in terms of both writers/books and readers/audiences?

Tricia Skinner: Horror has always proved it’s not a genre to take for granted. As soon as you think no one wants to read it or watch it, out pops some crazy cool horror book or movie that resets everyone’s perception. I think horror blends well with other genres, which broadens its appeal to readers who claim to staunchly dislike the genre on its own. Horror’s growing crossover appeal is what I’ve seen in recent years. The purely niche stories aren’t having a good time finding homes.

Caitlin McDonald: I think both writers and readers have become more discerning. There will certainly always be an appeal in campiness, but recent years have seen an influx of works that are more polished, more literary, that rely less on—or undermine—the usual tropes. I think the pressure to adhere to the “rules” of horror has lessened.

Carlisle Webber: I think it’s reached out to readers who normally wouldn’t go for a straight-up horror novel. I’ve seen horror books with plots that more closely resemble mysteries or thrillers, and I think that’s helped expand the audience.

Lane Heymont: Horror has stepped up its game recently—especially in the last few years—both in publishing and film. In years past, horror was reserved for those who already had an “in”, such as Stephen King, Koontz, Joe Hill (one of King’s sons), or to smaller presses. This was mainly because the genre was a hard sell to the Big Six (now Five) publishers. But, horror has made a huge comeback. Thanks, I think, goes to those smaller presses who took chances and produced fantastic stories by amazing authors. Some of my favorites are Nick Mamatas, Christopher Golden, Michael Hodges (I am biased since he’s a client of mine), Kate Jonez, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (who writes and edits a lot of women-driven Lovecraft), and Jennifer Brozek.

What I love about horror now is that it’s taken on this literary bent. For example, Silvia Moreno-Garcia edited She Walks with Shadows with Paula R. Stiles. H.P. Lovecraft was a notorious sexist, racist, and anti-Semite (despite his wife being Jewish), and it’s been fantastic to see his style of writing interpreted by so many talented women and POC.

The whole H.P. Lovecraft thing has caused quite a stir, and I hope not to receive any angry e-mails or comments about it. I love Lovecraft and everything he did, but it’s amazing to see his work translated to reflect our time.

As for movies—which are intertwined with books—we have The Conjuring franchise, the Insidious franchise, Sinister, and especially Get Out by Jordan Peele (from Blumhouse). Blumhouse has made huge strides and pushed boundaries with the horror genre. I can’t wait to see Happy Death Day!

Julie DInneen: The horror genre continues taking us in directions we haven’t gone before, overlapping with other genres and generally giving us more variety, as we would hope.

Meet the Agents

Julie Dinneen, D4EO Literary Agency: After years of editorial work, professional writing of many descriptions, and an internship at The Bent Agency, Julie joined D4EO Literary as an agent in 2017 to build her own list of upmarket fiction. Across the board, she’s looking for books that hook her from the very first page, whether it’s the writing, the voice or some unquantifiable draw that demands her time. She’s drawn to stories that are exceptionally well-written, that star dynamic, unforgettable characters, and that appeal to a wide, commercial audience. She’s looking for literary fiction with commercial appeal and beautiful, stand-out writing (The Girls, Cloud Atlas). She’s on the lookout for upmarket general, women’s, and historical fiction her book club will want to spend hours talking about (Big Little Lies, The Nest, Orphan Train). She’d love to discover a new twist on chick lit—think Bridget Jones for millennials—and she has a weakness for fun, perfectly-executed beach reads. She’s also looking for well-written romance, both contemporary and historical. She especially enjoy epic, genre-bending romance (Outlander, The Bronze Horseman) and she never says never when it comes to paranormal, although believability and originality are essential. Genres she reads less of, but will still consider, include high-concept YA with blockbuster potential, psychologically complex horror, and female-centric thrillers. In these categories, she’s looking for select projects with storytelling that won’t let go.

Lane Heymont, The Tobias Literary Agency: Lane has judged writing contests across the country and served as faculty member at a wide range of conferences. As Literary Assistant at the Seymour Agency, Lane led the marketing efforts for their authors and enjoyed connecting clients with readers. As a lover of literature since childhood, and at the prodding of his mentor Nicole Resciniti, he decided to pursue his passion as a literary agent. He went on to help found The Tobias Literary Agency. He strives to bring incredible and thought-provoking books to the masses, culminating in reaching the number one spot on Publishers Marketplace for agents representing horror, and the Top Ten for women’s fiction and romance. Lane represents a broad range of commercial fiction including romance and all its sub-genres, fantasy, science fiction, horror, celebrity/memoirs, pop culture, serious nonfiction, and true crime. He is a member of the Romance Writers of America, Horror Writers Association, and the Association of Authors’ Representatives. He believes what John Gregory Dunne said: “Writing is manual labor of the mind.”

Caitlin McDonald, Donald Maass Literary Agency: Caitlin joined DMLA in 2015, and was previously at Sterling Lord Literistic. She represents adult and young adult speculative fiction, primarily science-fiction, fantasy, horror, and related subgenres, as well as contemporary fiction about geeky characters. She also handles a small amount of nonfiction in geeky areas, with a focus on feminist theory/women’s issues and pop culture. Caitlin grew up overseas and has a BA in Creative Writing from Columbia University.

Tricia Skinner, Fuse Literary Agency: Tricia was raised in Detroit, Michigan. She obtained her undergraduate degree from the nationally acclaimed Journalism Institute for Media Diversity at Wayne State University and earned her graduate degree from Southern Methodist University. Professionally, she began her writing career as a newspaper reporter and wrote for The Detroit News, Investor’s Business Daily, MSN, and The Houston Chronicle. She’s covered small & minority business, personal finance, and technology. Tricia has 20 years of experience working with the video game industry in various roles, including public relations, industry relations, and writing/editing. She is also a hybrid author of passionate urban fantasy (represented by Fuse co-founder Laurie McLean). Diversity in genre fiction is dear to Tricia’s heart. As an agent, Tricia wants to represent authors who reflect diversity and cultures in their work. She specializes in Adult, Young Adult and Middle Grade. On the personal side, Tricia has a Tom Hiddleston obsession and she is definitely Team Vader. Her family includes three Great Danes (so far).

Carlisle Webber, Fuse Literary Agency: Carlisle refused to major in English in college because she didn’t think there was anything fun to read on the required lists. No Stephen King? No R.L. Stine? No thanks! After college, she took her love of commercial, YA, and middle grade fiction to the University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences, where she earned a Master of Library and Information Sciences. She worked as a public librarian for years before deciding to move to the business side of publishing. She attended the Columbia Publishing Course, interned at Writers House, and worked at the Jane Rotrosen Agency in New York City. She considers herself to be an editorial agent and holds a Professional Certificate in Editing from University of California, Berkeley. She belongs to the American Copy Editors Society and Bay Area Editors’ Forum. When editing, she aims to make a book the best possible version of itself, shaping it in a way so it can best use its unique voice to appeal to a wide audience. Carlisle is looking for high-concept commercial fiction in middle grade, young adult, and adult. If your book is fresh and exciting, tackles difficult topics, reads like a Shonda Rhimes show, or makes readers stay up late turning pages, she’s the agent for you.

What are you seeing a high demand for in the market?

JD: Anything and everything that’s original, believable and well-written. One trend we’ve seen more of is the weave of humor into very-scary horror, as successfully done by authors like Grady Hendrix and David Wong.

CM: I’m seeing a (welcome) interest in stories like Get Out that mirror real-world issues in our society. Psychological horror is also strong right now.

LH: I’ve been receiving lots of requests from Big 5 editors for more psychological horror than anything else. This also works well with the film side of things—low budget, high return—affording more writers a chance to see their horror novels optioned for film.

I also think psychological horror allows for fresher ideas. Monsters are a dime a dozen, but what really interests readers (and editors) is the ordinary person’s reaction to those monsters. Take Stephen King’s It, for example. What makes Pennywise so terrifying is the ability to use the Losers’ fears against them. Yes, there is the pan-dimensional monster murdering people, but the story is really about the Losers’ psychological responses to that monster—overcoming fear and childhood trauma through friendship and unity.

There’s also been a huge push for horror by marginalized peoples and women. We want to see horror from the view of different cultures—a client, Sean Cummings has a very cool horror that takes place in 1920s Canada. I’d also love to see some more horror based on Jewish mythology, or by Cajun or First Nations people. Horror should join other genres in helping counter our current political climate. Editors are looking for projects that do just that, and so am I.

That’s the long-winded way of saying, psychological horror and multicultural horror.

TS: Writers amped up the psychological terror, which continues to work. Horror that mirrors the world today, how people are so disconnected, hateful, and paranoid, but provides a scapegoat in the form of a monster, are doing well right now.

CW: Books that feel like We Have Always Lived in the Castle, where there’s not necessarily a lot of fast-paced terror up front, but a looming dark presence that builds as the novel goes on.

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What about a submission inspires confidence that you’ll be able to find the work a home with a publisher?

LH: This is a fantastic, and almost impossible to answer, question! The answer mostly given, and appropriate, frustrates authors to no end, so I apologize in advance.

What makes an agent or editor feel a project will be successful? Voice! A fresh angle also helps, but if you have a killer voice—see what I did there?—you can tell a clichéd story like it’s as fresh as ripe tomatoes. After all, there are only so many plots. Just ask Aristotle, Georges Polti, or Carroll Carroll, who said, “There hasn’t been a new idea in seventy-five years.” That was in the 1950s!

What I’m getting at is it’s important to hone your craft. Work out your voice. Avoid clichés. I often tell writers to help avoid falling into traps they must ask the questions before the readers have a chance to. Or do what James Wan did while writing Insidious: keep a notepad by your desk with all the known clichés and when you find you’ve written one, rewrite it.

CM: A strong and unique voice. This is true of any genre, but in horror it’s even more important, because this is where that tense atmosphere comes from. Think of it like the cinematography of a horror film: How little things like camera angles and cuts can build audience terror far more effectively than just showing a monster on the screen. The same principle applies here: How you tell the story is, in horror, almost more important than the story itself.

JD: As mentioned above: originality, outstanding writing, and storytelling that pulls me in and won’t let go. Right now I’m reading Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box and I’m finding myself reading [it] when I should be doing other things. When that happens with a submission—and when it can sustain that momentum throughout—I start thinking about which editors might be a good match.

CW: Just like other genres, if a book has compelling characters, high tension, and other hallmarks of a quality novel, I’m more likely to want to represent it. A good scare is even scarier if it’s happening to a character I’m invested in.

TS: Crossover appeal is the first thing I’d look for in a submission. The writing must be gorgeous and mesmerizing. A publisher will always consider any work with incredible writing.

What are the most common weaknesses in your horror submission pile?

TS: Poor writing, weak structure, and failing to deliver on the horror premise. The weakest submissions are usually from writers skimming the genre’s surface layer. Some writers spend too much time in one area (e.g. creature creation) yet very little in another area (e.g. character motivation). The worst is never delivering the chills and cold sweat throughout the story. If the only time the story is scary is when the monster is in the scene, something is wrong.

JD: For horror that involves the supernatural—and most of it does, though not all—believability is especially difficult to pull off. Convincing readers that the supernatural is real—and terrifying—isn’t easy. Holes in the world-building can undermine a reader’s belief and shatter the illusion. The central job of effective horror is to scare or shock the reader and to simultaneously make us want more. If we don’t believe, we won’t feel the fear. In the same vein, if we don’t feel the need to find out what happens next, the writer has more work to do.

CW: The first is too much gore coupled with not enough characterization. It’s not enough to have blood and guts for the sake of having them. They have to surround a main character whom I want to follow to the end of the story. The second is a lack of world-building. The author writes a book and can clearly imagine their world and its rules, but it isn’t well explained to someone who’s coming in with no knowledge of their world at all.

CM: Stories that are just not unique enough in premise. I see many of the same two or three basic ideas over and over again, and unless you have a truly phenomenal narrative voice, it’s going to be hard to make that stand out on the bookshelf. Look beyond the usual settings and tropes for your story. I want to see more horror that really shakes it up.

LH: This goes along with the previous question: clichés, and then gore.

Those are the two biggest weaknesses I’ve found in horror. Blood is fine, but it must serve a purpose. Just like foul language, sex, and nudity. I’m not against those things, but it’s obvious when they are there just for thrills or to pull a gut reaction.

Horror is more than violence, blood, and monsters. It’s the shadows creeping beyond the door when you look away. It’s the sense of dread clawing at your insides when you look up at the inky night sky and find the stars are not there.

Relying on physical fear often leads to a weak plot, weaker story, and a lack emotive prowess. This is because we can only suspend so much disbelief. We’re reading words on a page so we instinctively know we’re not in any real danger, which is why it’s so important to focus on the power of words to cause the air around us to saturate with dread.

Suspense is one of the most powerful tools a writer has for captivating readers—but it isn’t just for thrillers. From mainstream fiction to memoir, suspense creates the emotional tension that keeps readers on the edge of their seats. Mastering Suspense, Structure, & Plot is your hands-on guide to weaving suspense into your narrative. Award-winning author Jane K. Cleland teaches you how to navigate genre conventions, write for your audience, and build gripping tension to craft an irresistible page-turner.

In this book, Cleland will show you how to:

Implement thirteen no-fail techniques to construct an effective plot for your story

Use Jane’s Plotting Road Map to add elements of suspense like twists, reversals, and moments of danger

Write subplots with purpose

Improve your descriptions, character development, sentence structure, and more

What do you wish you would see more of in your inbox?

JD: Voice. In any genre, originality of voice really stands out. And, of course, wonderful writing.

CM: More crossover horror: Stories that serve two genres at once. One of my recent sales is The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling, which combines a horror narrative with a science-fiction setting for a whole new level of creepiness. Using science-fiction or fantasy to change up your setting from the real world is a great way to bring a freshness to your horror novel—not to mention all the new scary elements you can introduce.

TS: I’d prefer physical creatures instead of ghostly/spirit manifestations. I’m not tired of truly dark Southern Gothic. Horror manuscripts with a multi-ethnic cast and set in a large city, or a city that isn’t Seattle, along the east coast, or fictional. An international horror story would rock. Something that jumps continents. And in all of these suggestions, I don’t care if it’s historical, alternate history, present, or future. Query me!

LH: Psychological horror—I recently signed Shadow Award-winning author Daniel I. Russell, who has written a fantastic psychological horror involving an “evil” doll. It may sound cliché, but with his voice, we truly feel the maddening suspicion of whether this inanimate object is possessed by some evil or if it’s our own madness stalking the hallways. It gave me the spooks and several of my interns complained about nightmares after reading it!

I’m also less interested in gore and violence, and more craving projects which show us how horror affects characters. This is something H.P. Lovecraft, Poe, and Le Fanu excelled at. You might be able to tell I love me some Gothic and stories involving horrors beyond description.

Last, but not least—actually, most importantly—I’m looking for projects from marginalized writers and multicultural stories. If you have a horror novel involving voodoo, ifrits, mazikeen, or any other non-European horror, send it my way!

CW: I’m addicted to true crime podcasts and TV shows, so I’d love to see more human-based, as opposed to primarily supernatural, horror. Since psychological thrillers do so well, I’d love to see some psychological horror land in my inbox. I also love stories about ordinary people in extraordinary situations.

Are there any premises or plot structures that you’ve seen played out in this genre?

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CM: Ancient evil powers tormenting sleepy rural towns. The Thing in the Woods. This is a subgenre that still seems to have something of a market, but in my opinion, it’s been done to death. That’s not to say that I won’t be interested if the voice is especially amazing and unique, but there’s a lot of competition out there and it’s hard to find a new angle to bring to this table.

JD: I don’t think any premise has “played out.” Every writer spins a tale from a slightly different angle and brings her or his own unique vantage point to a story. When writers have talent, a good idea, and trust themselves to follow their vision along its own unique path, it becomes something new. You might think the market has had enough of horror stories about teenagers getting lost in the woods or hunted down at summer camp. But then a book like Joey Comeau’s The Summer Has Ended and We Are Not Yet Saved comes along and it’s new. It’s gruesome, almost funny, and somehow turns something that could have been derivative into something original. This happens all the time. In 2010, we could have been forgiven for thinking the market had seen enough of vampires, but then Justin Cronin proved us wrong with The Passage, which is inventive, well-written, and truly eerie. And on that note … if you’ve written 2017’s completely original, well-written vampire novel (in any genre), please query me!

CW: Books where a serial killer is a primary or secondary character can be hard to sell. I get the appeal, because serial killers are a little like modern-day fairytale villains, but in too many manuscripts I’ve seen they lack dimension. Also, when a serial killer is involved, there’s almost always a plot element of “How do we stop them?” so that gets repetitive.

LH: Haunted houses—we currently have an author on submission with an excellent haunted house project.

No mad scientists, either. I once mentioned—okay, maybe several times—Frankenstein is my favorite book of all time. Notice the Gothic horror? So, lots of authors pitch their horror novels as being in the vein of Frankenstein. Obviously, that’s not an automatic rejection, but it’s sure close. No one’s novel can compete with perfection. You might as well tell me you’ve written the next Iliad.

Horror only works if it’s fresh, so you need to come with a totally different angle than we’ve seen before. Think about films that left us scratching our heads: M. Night’s Sixth Sense or Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others. Both movies had the same twist, but it’s the delivery and tones which set them apart.

Something else that bothers me about horror projects I’ve been receiving is the treatment of women. Too many people seem to use them as fodder for murder to gain our sympathy or anger. I’d love to see some kick-ass women in horror—think The Descent (one of my favorite horror films) or She Walks in Shadows or anything in the vein of Billie Sue Mosiman.

TS: I’m bored with the “malevolent forces target a child” trope. Same goes for ghost house, pissed off witch spirit, vampiric whatever, cannibal neighbors, etc. If it’s on Netflix in some form, I’d rather not read it. I’m looking for new and fresh.

If you’re an agent looking to update your information or an author interested in contributing to the GLA blog or the next edition of the book, contact Writer’s Digest Books Managing Editor Cris Freese at [email protected].

The post 5 Literary Agents Discuss the Horror Genre appeared first on WritersDigest.com.

from Writing Editor Blogs – WritersDigest.com http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/horror-literary-agents

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demitgibbs · 7 years

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R&R: Six Spas We Love

This is the seventh year we’ve put together the annual Spa Edition, and one of my favorite things about producing this edition is the relationships with the local spa owners. Every year I look forward to seeing them and spending some quality time with them and their staff. A lot of people think of spas as places we visit while on vacation, but trust me, if you take care of your body on a regular basis, it will take care of you and make you look and feel younger for many years! I am writing about the spas in the order in which I went to them. 1. Chi Spa

I recently had a much needed massage and treatment at Chi Spa in Wilton Manors. They decided to give me the Mini Chi Revitalization Package ($199), which was two hours of bliss. The “mini” version of one of Chi Spa’s most luxurious treatments consisted of of a relaxing massage, followed by an exfoliating salt scrub and completed with a deliciously hydrating body butter treatment.

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I was greeted by my therapist Teena Wiggins, who had a cold cup of refreshing water on hand. She was extremely personable during my massage, which made it easier to relax. After Teena hit all of the important muscle groups on my body, it was time for the salt scrub (my favorite part). The exfoliating salt scrub was exactly what my body needed after a few weeks in the summer sun and pool chlorine. After I rinsed off the salt scrub in a steamy bath, my body was covered in body butter to sooth my skin. My skin was literally like butter! Before my treatment was finished, Teena draped hot towels on my feet and torso and sprayed my face with an aromatic citrus spray. Needless to say I didn’t want to get off the table after that.

2. The Grand Resort and Spa

Going to The Grand Resort and Spa is always fun, as not only do I get to see their friendly staff, but I get to see my wife Paula. I think by now her real husband realizes that our marriage is no threat to theirs…LOL!! This year JD decided to personally be the therapist and administer the “Nourishing Sea Mud Therapy (80 mins – $160).” This Massage/Scrub combo starts with a cleanse, and then an exfoliation. Following the exfoliation you are massaged with warm mud. The mud used in this treatment is great for drawing out impurities and detoxifying the skin. It was amazing how relaxed and refreshed I felt after the treatment.

The Grand Resort and Spa has recently initiated a membership program, which is very exciting. There are 2 membership programs to choose from. Membership Package #1 is $85 a month and includes (choose 1) a 50 min Swedish massage, a 50 min classic Dermalogica facial, a Ultra Calming Facial or a 50 min scrub. Membership Package #2 is $125 a month and includes (choose 1)80 min Swedish massage, 80 min Age Smart facial, deep cleansing facial, Bio Active peel, or an 80 min signature body treatment. Both packages also include: 10% off the purchase of spa services, 10% off spa retail purchases, 10% off future bookings at the resort, 10% off purchase of beer and wine from resort while receiving spa services, access to and the use of the resorts common grounds, Jacuzzi, pool, and resort services, and during member’s first month of membership they may obtain access to the resort for one guest at a time while member is present. Guest access to resort includes all the facilities members are allowed to use. The Grand Resort doesn’t sell day passes but spa guests can enjoy the facilities along with their treatments. Who wouldn’t want to take a dip in the resort pool or hot tub to show off their glowing skin? JD also wanted to remind the community that the Spa offers great mid-week specials on Tues, Wed and Thurs, which change every week so call them to find out.

3. Urban Retreat

Frank Velaz, the owner of Urban Retreat Spa and I have known each other for many years (Did you ask how many? Well I am not saying to protect the guilty…LOL). Frank is advanced certified in collagen induction therapy by Dermapen World International. He opened Urban Retreat and Spa in 2006 and the business has steadily grown. His staff of therapists have at least 10 years’ experience in the industry.

The service Frank decided to give me was the “Relax & Renew” (75mins $145), which gets out tension and stress from the body and face, as well as providing needed hydration. It’s an upper Body Massage (he asked me to pick the pressure) using Pure Fiji Organic Body Lotion. For me Frank chose the Starfruit Scent as it is the mildest, as he knows I don’t like smells that are too strong. Then he proceeded with a Skin Sense Hydrate Facial. It’s a seven step instant hydrate and protect treatment. It includes wash/scrub, Hydrate Aloe/Jojoba toner, bio-molecular hydrate mask, a skin plumping Hyaluronic Infusion, a Vitamin C & E Collagen Stimulating Serum, a Lip Complex and ends with a silky SPF to protect skin from environmental damage. Frank told me that the Relax and Renew is a very popular treatment, which lots of clients like to use to start a “power day” looking and feeling good. This is a great treatment when you want to re-center, relax and balance. Frank loves to bring his clients to the full length mirror in the lobby after the treatment so they can see how visibly different they look! It’s usually a “WOW!!” moment, kinda of like a ‘big reveal’! Urban Retreat offers a Free Skin Analysis to properly design a custom plan of professional treatments and home skin regimens, with reality based prices. Evidence based skin care solutions. PCA Skin Certified Peel Treatment Center and Certified In Collagen Induction Therapy by Florida Esthetics Association.

Lavish Manors

I have been to Lavish Manors many times, so this year I sent Oscar to experience the joys of this spa. When he arrived he was greeted by owner, Tommy Le, who he said was very welcoming. He was then introduced to John who performed his Hot Stone Paraffin Spa Pedicure ($55). As soon as he sat in the incredibly comfortable massage chair John offered him wine or water to drink. His feet were then soaked in a Jacuzzi tub, and shortly after his my nails were trimmed, shaped, cuticles groomed, including an intensive callus treatment, and a salt scrub. He then said his legs were pampered with a warm herbal wrap to soften and plump the skin, next his legs were exfoliated with a sloughing scrub, and softening sea butter. After this he basked in luxury as they performed a long lasting relaxing massage using warm stones and hemp oil distinctively scented with patchouli. The pedicure ended with a refreshing and smoothing paraffin treatment and a wrapping with aromatic hot towels and then his nails were buffed.

Afterwards Oscar received the Shellac Gel Manicure ($30). This relaxing manicure includes nail trimming, shaping, cuticles detailing, lotion massage and buffing followed by Shellac, which is Chip free for up to 2 weeks. There is no damage to natural nails, resilient mirror finish, no drying time. Oscar said he left Lavish Manors feeling wonderful and he couldn’t stop looking at ow nice his toes and fingers looked.

Babylon Men Massage

Babylon Men’s Day Spa is the newest Spa edition to Wilton Drive taking over the old space of 78 Degrees Spa. Babylon Spa originates from Asia. Their masseuses are trained in Chinese and Thai massage techniques as well as Japanese essential oil massages. They pay special attention to pressure points using essential oils to massage these special areas. They offer heat treatments and Chines traditional cupping techniques so their clients can enjoy full relaxation in a peaceful setting.

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The service they were giving is called “The Perfect Massage” (90 mins – $80). After I lied down on the table, they put a towel over me for a 10 minute Massage of full-body muscle relaxation. Next they used oils for a full body massage. My therapist said that the neck, shoulders, and small back generally the parts that need the most work so they focus on these places, so their guests can be completely relaxed.

After the oil massage technique, they did Chinese cupping, which cures the fatigue of the body (Did anyone see the Real Housewives of Orange County last season?). In the end, they use the hot stone to relax the muscles and let the massage achieve the perfect effect. After the massage he encased my body with warm towels, which made me feel like I was in a cocoon and was super relaxing. While in the cocoon he massaged my feet, hands and head.

Spa Cabanas Guesthouse & Spa

Spa Cabanas at The Cabanas Guesthouse is celebrating its 9 year in business. Norman Lachance began with only himself running and operating the business. Norman contributes the success of the Spa Cabanas to the loyalty of local clients as well as the return of the frequent traveler. It’s due to the continued support of these clients that Spa Cabanas has grown from a one owner/therapist ran business to the successfully ran Spa that it is today with seven employees. The Cabanas Spa has been part of this Spa issue from year one and its always a pleasure to go there and see Norman and his General Manager Clint. They really make you feel special from the moment you walk through their doors. This year they set up a ½ day of services for me.

The first service was with Dene, who is a massage therapist and massage. He administered a sixty minute Swedish relaxation massage ($95) with some trigger point examples. Almost immediately Dene noticed that I have a lot of tension in my shoulders and neck and asked if I sat at a computer all day. When I told him that I did, he spent more time in that area. In addition he used a lot of trigger points to relax my body and I must admit I felt so much more relaxed and loose after the massage. Actually noticed the difference at work for days. Afterwards it was on to Jimmy, who is a Paramedical aesthetician, and who has worked on me for many years. Once a year we get to catch up. This year was especially nice as he got married and I got to hear all about his wedding and his wonderful husband. Jimmy administered the Bio-Lift Facial ($139), which is a unique facial that was introduced to the Spa Cabanas just one month before I received the procedure. This facial includes the use of their new Palm Sonic Nrg Device which reduces visibility of fine lines and includes a heat and cooling option to open and close pores, tripling product absorption and pushing products into the skin. Now anyone who knows me knows that although I won’t do surgery or needles I will try anything natural to remove lines on my face, so I was totally game for this facial, and was excited about the results I saw afterwards. Jimmy also administered the Baby Foot ($40), which is an unparalleled, total foot care package. Their scientifically formulated product contains 17 types of natural extracts which exfoliate and moisturize at the same time. In addition, the Fruit acids such as Glycolic Acid and Critic Acid allow the dead skin cells to peel, but the Alcohol makes the dead cells soft, and the Salicylic Acid, Lactic Acid and Isopropyl stimulate a flaking effect as well. The fruit acid penetrates into the layers of dead skin cells and breaks down the desmosomes which hold the layers together. By this process, skin is undamaged but peels easily away from the fresh layer beneath. After peeling, your feet are reborn just like a baby’s foot,giving you healthy, beautiful feet. Baby Foot not only peels the dead skin cells from your feet, it also maintains the grain of the skin and adds moisture to the skin. The boots with all the extracts are put on your feet prior to getting Facial and stays there until the facial is done and then is taken off and your feet are wiped with a hot towel. This truly makes a big difference and your feet after peeling feels soft and supple, just like a baby’s bottom. The Spa Cabanas offers a variety of Massages and Bodywork,which include Swedish, deep tissue and sportswork aswell as aromatherapy, therapeutic and hot stone massage. Spa Cabanas is also able to provide Manicures and Pedicures and all areas of your Manscaping needs with body hair trimming,waxing, shaving and most recently, they have introduced Sugaring. Sugaring is the natural alternative to waxing. Spa Cabanas are constantly updating their monthly specials. Check out the month of October where they are featuring: 10 sessions of a 60 minute massages for only $499 (Reg price $950.00); Microdermabrasion plus massage only $149 (Reg Price $224); 3 Medical Grade Chemical Peels for only $189 (Reg Price $267).

from Hotspots! Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.com/2017/09/28/rr-six-spas-we-love/ from Hot Spots Magazine https://hotspotsmagazine.tumblr.com/post/165833362305

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