New ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Manuscript Stolen

E.L. James’ latest novel Grey—a retelling of Fifty Shades from Christian Grey’s perspective—has been stolen, reports The Daily Mail. James was spurred on to write the novel by growing fan interest for a story providing insight into the infamous Grey’s troubled background.
Word surfaced that the manuscript went missing this past Monday. In collaboration with Penguin Randomhouse, the police are investigating the theft. Originally due for publication on June 18th (AKA Christian Grey’s birthday), it is feared that the thieves plan to release pirated versions of the novel, or release excerpts to media outlets.
Worry not, Grey readers. Despite the theft, the publisher has confirmed plans of publication are still moving forward.
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There's an irony, which I shan't exposit.
I'm not really that broken up about this, TBH.
One wonders if the early drafts will be any worse prose than the final?
Amateur and pro writers alike shitting on other writers like James or Dan Brown, etc. et al., has become a cliché. It's low-hanging fruit. Can we get a new schtick? Maybe admit our jealousy, at the very least.
What else is cliche? Acting as though derision is necessarily derived from jealousy.
Not that I'm against people being nicer.
I never said that mockery necessarily equates jealousy. Sometimes, however, yes, it does. For instance, when writers continuously bash the same writers over and over again, it becomes stale, and one cannot but help to suspect that there is a hint of jealousy from said bashers. Or perhaps we're envious? These writers like James or Lena Dunham, take your pick, while they are doing what they love to do for a living, we sit here bickering from our armchairs. If nothing else, instead of making fun of their stories, we should be discussing the stories' merits and why readers connect so well with them.
Surely, we are the ones deserving of mockery.
My appraisal of the news item as ironic wasn't based on a judgment that the writing was bad.
In any case though, you're right that jokes against extremely popular work often become routine, even memetic, separate from any actual experience with the work being lambasted.
Agreed.
Does the Daily Mail mean 'stolen' as 'shared via Dropbox'?
The DM story says it was a "finished copy", and the book comes out in a few days, so I guess they mean a hard-copy was taken from the print run. I haven't heard about a leak, so it might've just been a warehouse worker wanting to read it.