A few thoughts

Dear Candace Bushnell,

I was a big fan of Sex and the City. Saw every episode, see myself as Miranda with a whole lotta Charlotte on the side. I even tolerated your snotty little self in that annoying show Wickedly Perfect. And when I came across your book Trading Up, while I was right in the middle of a giant reading slump, I thought this would be the thing to get me out of it.
Ha.
I finished your book and promptly chucked it against the wall. Then I played a little kick ball with it. And later tonight, and probably every night for the next few weeks, when I dance around the kitchen, I'll be doing it on top of Trading Up.

Most importantly, you broke the two most cardinal rules of writing.
1. NEVER lie to your reader. The heroine can lie to whoever she wants in the story, but don't put me in the character's head and have her think something that isn't true, just to "fool" me. That's what foreshadowing is for. Oh, you haven't heard of foreshadowing? It's a literary technique in which the author alludes to something she isn't ready to reveal to the reader just yet. It's a literary technique that keeps the reader reading to find out what's going to happen. Lying to the reader just pisses them off when they find out the truth. Yep. I'm pissed off.
I still have the odd game of kickball with Suzanne Forester's Morning After, which I still maintain set the romance industry back thirty years, for the same thing. (Oh, and the heroine that, after the hero drugs her, rapes her when she's a virgin, forces her into marriage while she's unconcious, impregnates her, kidnaps her and uses her for a potentially fatal operation to steal her amniotic fluid, says "it's okay, because I luuuuuuuve him". YECH.)
2. Show. Don't tell. I know I was supposed to feel sorry for Janey. I was supposed to feel sorry for her when she pimped herself out on the Arab's yacht. And when she dealt with her mother (for that whole three lines). The thing is, I never did. Not even once. You know why? Because you never once showed me why I should, you just told me that I had to. Guess what? I don't usually do stuff just cuz someone tells me I have to.
If I'd actually *seen* the relationship between Janey and her mom, I may have had some sympathy for her. If I'd understood why she did what she did to get to where she was, I may have been able to build an emotional relationship with her. But you didn't. So I didn't.
Which leads me to another pile of issues.
3. Make your heroine sympathetic. Janey was a social climbing bitch. Fine, that's her character. But she didn't have a single redeeming quality. Not a single one. And I just couldn't care less about her (yes, couldn't care less. Despite the rampant use of could care less... well, that means a whole lot less of caring, which kinda negates your whole point there... duh.). And if I couldn't care less about her, well, why should I care about her story? Worse, NONE of your characters had a redeeming quality. Oy.
4. Finish your subplots. Sure it was supposed to be very interesting to read about all of these "friends" Janey made, but don't tell me half their story, leave them facing a major dilemma and then not even bother to tell me what happened. That's just wrong.
5. Um. Every scene is supposed to move the story forward. Riddling almost 600 pages with boring crap that isn't relevant to the story, well, let's just say you didn't exactly endear me to your book.
6. Plausability. Your last chapter? What the hell was that?? I didn't buy a single word of it. Not one. It was so ridiculous. It didn't have anything to do with the rest of the story. It was like you got bored with the book before the ending and paid someone else to write the last chapter, and they didn't bother to read what came first before they did.

In closing, Candace, sweetie, go put on a pair of Manolos and walk away from the laptop. Faaaarrrr away.

Thank you.

Pink


Dear Toy Buyer,

People hate our company already. People set up websites and petitions and giant political battles because they hate us so much. So putting a doll in one of our flyers with copy that says "also available in afro-american" ummm, not exactly gonna endear us to the rest of the world.

Just saying.

Pink



Dear Bum,

Stop being so lazy.

Thanks.

Pink