Its springtime in
Chicago 1995 and someone has been prowling the working class/southside
neighborhood of Bridgeport stealing women's panties. Jack Squat, a 20
something with a mysterious mechanism that is biorythmically integrated
into his very spine has been gliding cautiously through his inner city
life until he falls in love and has his heart broken by a beautiful ad
executive named Samantha. When his 'mechanism' malfunctions at the worst
possible time, Jack is forced to engage in a battle against this
mysterious biological system of pulleys and levers that dwells within
the depths of his own marrow. In the complex emotional game of cat and
mouse that ensues it becomes obvious that what is at stake here is not
only Jack's sense of self-worth, but his very soul.
Ed Wagemann Told us about his books :
I wrote The Panty Thief of Bridgeport
in 1996 as part of my graduate thesis at Columbia College. I also won a
literary prize, The Golden Circle Award for Creative Non-Fiction that
year for my essay "Streetball Junkie" which was published in both the
Hair Trigger litearay journal and Sport Literate Volume 1. I'm
currently working on a novel titled The Abortion Doctor's Wife
which deals with some of the moral delimas of the abortion issue. And I
write a monthly blog titled Generation A.D.D. Here is the link for my
blog
About ed wagemann:
Ed Wagemann was raised in a small Midwest
town (population 3,000)on top of a wooded hillside overlooking the
Illinois River just a few miles south of Peoria, illinois. In 1991 he
moved to Chicago and became a student of urban life. He currently is
employed as a substitue teacher in Chicago Heights and is a member of
the Air Force National Guard. He has one son and one daughter.
Taken aback by the generous and caring “Enlightened Ones,” Maggi is convinced to leave her dysfunctional home for what will now be her true family. Led by their enigmatic leader, John Cronus, the Enlightened Ones believe they are building towards a beautiful utopia; one they feel will be the dawning of a new way of life.
The past lives of all involved begin to unravel as they give up all their worldly possessions to build paradise on a remote island. Have the Enlightened Ones taken the road less traveled, or have they sealed their fate with a madman?
Enlightened Ones are required to feel a great sense of trust, love, and freedom, but what happens when the rules change? What will they do when they realize paradise isn’t ready? How will they handle it when their sense of trust is questioned? In a society where betrayal is not an option, what will they stoop to in order to escape, and who will take the blame when their plans mistakenly lead to one of the greatest tragedies of their time?
According to The Guardian newspaper the
figures from Nielsen BookScan show that EL James’s Fifty Shades title trilogy
topped the books chart last year and was a superb addition to an overall rise
in the use of digital print sales for the year 2012.
It is observed that about 4.46m copies
of the first novel of Fifty Shades of Grey were sold in the last year. 3.16m
copies were sold of the second novel while the third novel had 2.9m sold
copies. Amazingly Fifty Shades of Grey topped
on the Bookseller magazine’s analysis of the best selling ebook of 2012. About 1, 609, 626 copies of Fifty
Shades of Grey were sold according to the magazine.
In the beginning Fifty Shades of Grey
was an online fan fiction before
being released in a tiny Australian press as an ebook. Afterwards it was signed
by publishing powerhouse Random House. Most of the people appreciated the
impact of Fifty Shades of increasing the publishing 2012 figures.
Book:
Fifty Shades of Grey is
an erotic romance novel by a British author E. L. James. Fifty Shades of Grey
trilogy has inspired women to read. It is an opened dialogue on sex and has
boosted the falling book industry. It has contributed a lot in increasing the
book sales for UK thus print and ebook sales rose to 4% last year with the help
of E.L. James masterpiece and other creations by different authors. The of
Fifty shades was published on June 20, 2011 by Vintage books with pages 514 . The
average customer rating of Fifty Shades of Grey is 3.3 on amazon.com while 3.6
on goodreads.com.
Fifty Shades of Grey
is criticized because of its origin as fan fiction and that it is based on
Twilight novels. Amanda Hayward of The Writer’s Coffee Shop responds to such criticism
by saying that Fifty Shades of Grey bore very little resemblance to Twilight
and that both are worlds apart. The books are notable not for transgressive sex
but for how women are using technology to subvert gendered shame by exploring
explicit sexual content privately using e-readers. About 70 million copies of
the trilogy have been sold, setting many new records worldwide. It is a
fastest-selling paperback of all and has even surpassed the Harry Potter
series.
The Guardian reports
that in within the three months the book was so popular that it has maximize
the records of being sold in the shape of hard copy and ebook. Furthermore The
Guardian says that when the novel was published, it was selling too quickly
that the publishers of the book had to run extra publishing of books in order
to meet demand of 2.75 million books. It is known as one of the most fastest
novel that has been sold, the million copies were sold out within no time. Entertainment Weekly reviews it as
"It is a classic piece of writing." Fifty Shades of Grey took the place of finalist in the GoodReads Choice Awards for the Best
Romance category by getting A.
Film Adaptation:
Different
professionals have shown interest in adapting Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy in
film. Warner Bros., Sony Pictures, Paramount, Universal Pictures, Mark
Wahlberg’s are the production companies which have shown their interest and put
in bids for the film rights, eventually Universal Pictures and Focus Features
have secured the rights to the trilogy in March 2012. The Author has control
over the movie’s creative process. Bret Easton Ellis, an American Psycho writer
has publicly expressed his intention to write a screenplay for the film. Later
on Angelina Jolie has been reported for her interest in directing the film. She is in contact to direct the adaptation. Latest
news about the adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey is till April 2013 is that
director Gus Van Sant had shot a scene with Alex Pettyfer as Christian Gray
serving as a screen test for the studios.
Classical musical album:
EMI Classics have
released an album comprising of James selected songs on September 11, 2012. It
is released under the title Fifty Shades of Grey: The Classic Album. This
Classic album was on number four on
Billboard’s charts for classical music albums in October 2012 and reviewer
write that album would appeal not only fans of Fifty Shades of Grey but those
also who have no intention of reading Fifty Shades of Grey.
What People are saying :
Howells acknowledges its impact and says
“You can put a lot of it down to E.L. James – Out of the blue she has come and
with a bang”. Richard Mollet, Chief executive of the Publisher Association has the view that “British publishing is a
healthy industry which has the power to succeed as a big giant”. He explains
that the interest among the people about the online book reading has increased
a lot and boosted the digital sales and added that publishers had reacted
quickly to the changes in the industry and the move towards e-readers.
BBC
broadcasts that E.L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy were the best-selling titles
in 2012; its combined sale was 10.5 million. At first it was thought that the
popularity of ebooks will be harmful for the sales of physical books. But now
it is realized that it has been just an exaggerated thing. People still love
physical books and sales of physical books are equal to digital sales. So rise
of e-readers as Amazon’s Kindle in recent years is healthy for book reading and
consequently for publishing due to books like Fifty Shades of Grey.
Editor
of industry magazine The Bookseller
Philip Jones says that shops such as Waterstones were seeing a “rebound” in
sales of physical books. He thanks to children’s and non-fiction areas and the
“growing” market of books such as Fifty Shades of Grey. He adds that physical
book sales have made up around 80% of the overall market. He said to the BBC
that “Digital media is getting popular but the physical media will move with us
for a long time.
