By Jessica Colon
Special to YNOT Europe

LONDON – Hello dear readers. Romance novelist extraordinaire Jessica Colon here, writing from my luxurious flat in London. I know as you read this, you are likely waiting with baited breath for the seventh installment in my “Slim Saladino” series, Slim Saladino’s Top-Secret Recipe for Hidden Love, but I just had to take a moment out of my busy schedule to tell you something very important: Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James sucks and is in every way inferior to the brilliant works of classic literature written by true romantic novelists like me.

In case you’re thinking I simply disapprove of the filthy, degrading, disgusting way in which sex is portrayed in the Fifty Shades trilogy, you should know this has nothing to do with my distaste for the book. Naturally, I do find every sex scene in Fifty Shades to be objectionable on every level imaginable, but the real problem here is the book is simply far too popular for a romance novel written by someone other than me.

On a basic, fundamental level, unless a romance novel is written by me, it just can’t be very good. Only I am capable of the nuance, subtlety and keen intellect required to depict a sex scene with the mystery, intimacy and various other nouns a good sex scene requires.

Take, for instance, the following passage, which comes from the 43^rd book in my L.A. Love Murder Macho Man series:

Kenneth lowered his considerable girth on to me as he thrust his tongue deep into my eagerly waiting mouth. Recoiling slightly, his face crumpled into a puzzled visage as he removed from his gaping maw a small lump of Juicy Fruit which I had forgotten I was chewing before our amorous entanglement began. Casting aside the now-flavorless gum, Kenneth shrugged and got back to business. “Where was I?” he said, grinning coyly. “Oh yeah, I was going to fuck your more or less moist vagina with my really quite erect penis.”

Compare that to the following run-on sentence, which very well might have appeared in Fifty Shades:

Like, we were in the elevator or something, and like he totally tried to stick his tongue all the way down my throat while rubbing his cock against me through his skinny jeans and like on the one hand, it was sorta creepy, like something my old math teacher would have done during detention or whatever, but on the other hand, it was like so hot, I almost fainted and fell down right on my favorite Valentino satchel.

I ask you, who would pay £6 to read 500 pages of that? OK, maybe it’s worth the £4 for the Kindle edition, but I wouldn’t be caught dead reading a book on a Kindle, because the new iPad simply matches way better with all my favorite shoes.

The other thing about Fifty Shades is we all know in real life, nobody is actually into bondage or humiliation or masturbating with a salmon fillet, or whatever other filthy nonsense they get up to in the Fifty Shades trilogy. It’s all shock-value entertainment, just like the other trendy things bored, middle-class white people experiment with to spice up their lives these days, like doing yoga, listening to rap music or vying for the Republican U.S. presidential nomination.

I also don’t want people to think I’m envious of E.L.’s success, or think she doesn’t deserve to be a best-selling author. I’ve met E.L. on several occasions, and as far as horrible-looking, vapid, unhygienic, talentless literary hacks go, she really wasn’t any more objectionable than the next. Honestly, I wish her nothing but the best — especially when it comes to treating the awful sexually transmitted disease she presumably has contracted somewhere along the line but conceals from the public so as to not scare off any man who might be desperate enough to make physical contact with her.

If I had to guess why Fifty Shades is so unreadably bad, other than the author’s obvious inability to put two words together coherently, I’d say the books clearly are rushed out with no concern for quality. I mean, we’re talking about three books published in just two years here, and as an author, I can tell you there’s no way to fully commit yourself to the quality of your book when you’re pumping out a new one every six months. (Trust me: I released the six most recent volumes of my Confessions of an L.A. Lothario series in June, and if I’m being completely honest, only four of them are worthy of comparison to War and Peace, while the other two sadly sank to the level of The Sun Also Rises.)

While I remain dubious of BDSM as both a sexual practice and subject matter for a novel, just to show I’m not an old fuddy-duddy (and to prove I can write “kink” better than any other Brit), as soon as I finish the final 11 books in my Sister Anne and the High Priest of Lust series, I’m going to devote a full six weeks to the development of a new bondage-themed novel, The Purple Bruise of Cairo.

So, enjoy your run as the world’s go-to auteur of sick, degrading filth for as long as it lasts, E.L. James — but when my kinky novel drops, be aware Oprah is going to stop returning your calls.

Jessica Colon is the best-selling author of such classic romantic novels as Vermont Vista Wives: The Next Generation, Near-Fatal Beguiling and Maimed by Love Part 2: Woodchip My Heart.