Ever since Emma Finn's untimely departure, I've been checking her blog periodically - first daily, then weekly and then once in a while - in a hope that somehow more material from her will be posted there by whoever's in control of her archive. After all, she did mention herself that she'd made arrangements in this respect. Unfortunately, nothing was posted.
Cleaner, a story about a rich super model and her fat maid switching lives, is arguably the best transformation novel ever written and it pains me to realise that it will never be finished as intended by Emma. I do not know how much of it she did write but did not have time to share with anyone. It is not even clear if what's on her blog represents the entirety of Book 2 (it is 90,000 words after all!). In either case, I've decided to copy all of the chapters she made available and post them here. It is not inconceivable that her blog will go off-line one of these days and I would hate to see all this excellent material lost forever.
Needless to say, it's too huge to make a single post and it even exceeds blogspot's page size limits so I had to split Book 2 into two pages that I will link to the Library. Other than correcting (very few) obvious typos, the text is exactly as Emma left it even as it's obvious that she was making some plot changes mid-way and was planning to return and fix earlier chapters for consistency. It's taken a lot longer than necessary due to various formatting and linking problems (if any of you tech gurus know how to create a permanent page without either making it a blog post or adding it to the main page via a pages gadget, please let me know! I had to back-post it to 2016, but would much rather have a separate blogger page I can link to), but I believe the text is now in easy-to-read format for your enjoyment. You can read Chapters 1-3 here and Chapters 4-6 here.
I am assuming that many of this blog's readers are familiar with Emma Finn's work. If not, I urge you to get a copy of the Cleaner - I can't think of a better Christmas present! I recommend Book 1 of the unfinished trilogy, but if you want a completed shorter version, you can also read Cleaner: The Original Story. It's a very different take on the general plot as the trilogy went in a completely different direction but highly enjoyable nonetheless.
This is an excellent idea.
ReplyDeleteAs many people as possible should get to read Emma's work, i'd considered putting some of her work on my blog as she was quite an inspiration for me to start writing.
Thank you for doing this.
You are welcome. She was a big influence on my work as well. The original Cleaner was one of the first proper lady-to-maid stories I've read and one of the first examples of f2f realistic transformations I've come across.
DeleteI really enjoyed the original "The Cleaner" but not quite so the second incarnation, sadly Emma left us before there could be a conclusion, I have been hoping that someone, with a similar imagination and skill would finish the series.
ReplyDeleteI really liked the original Cleaner as it was being written and published on yahoo groups around 2002-2003 or so, but I can't say I was too happy with the ending. Neither was Emma herself apparently or she wouldn't be re-writing it completely. I think the biggest problem I have with it is the forced "happy ending". It's not that I like characters to remain miserable with no way to escape (well, there is some of that), but the way it was done seemed rushed and at odds with the rest of the story.
DeleteI hate to say this, but I also think that Emma may have painted herself into the corner with Cleaner II - at least it does seem like she was really dragging her feet with Book 2 with endless cliff hangers and pages upon pages of no development, as she was too scared to move the story forward and was repeating herself more and more. Or so it seemed. Perhaps, if I were reading it all in one go as a complete novel (as opposed to serialised blog posts) it would have seemed more logical and less drawn out and repetitive. I still think that novel is among the best in the genre and I admire Emma's sense of style and attention to detail, but the more I think about it the more I come to a conclusion that it was probably headed in the wrong direction. I would have loved to see her outline for Book 3, but something tells me I may not have liked the ending in this one too!
I'm not much of a reader so I preferred the shorter length of the original. It's fast paced but the rewrite was on track to be nearly 10x longer, which was excessive, in my opinion.
DeleteI did the same as Camille and visited everyday for almost a year, mostly to read comments by fans. Now it's once in a while just as a sort of homage.
ReplyDeleteIt was very sad that she died so young especially as she'd recently born a child. It must have devastating for her partner in life. I felt it particularly as I lost my mother just before I started school and I'm sure it's affected the way I see the world even over 70 years later.
I have 'Cleaner' backed up on my own HD as well as backed up again together with all my other data so it certainly won't be lost. It's great that Camille is posting it here. It's a very suitable home.
I'm sure I read on Emma's blog when she first got so ill that she'd left instructions about the continuation of the story but that seems not to have happened.
Robi
Unfinished stories can tickle the mind endlessly...there's one tale that tells just a little of a rich girl's training as a sex slave that has had me wondering about the before and after for close to twenty years!
DeleteMeanwhile who here has seen this?
http://www.news.com.au/entertainent/celebrity-life/what-a-waste-tziporah-malkah-on-regrets-starting-over-and-her-tumultuous-year/news-story/b37182e94660e60110d2db82b81b498c
Model-actress who was engaged to billionaire is now fat & homeless.
Thanks, Robi. Yes, I remember she mentioned those instructions. Whether they even existed remains a mystery. I didn't know her personally, we did exchange a few emails over the years, but that's about it. So very hard to judge to what extend her online persona matched her real self.
DeleteThe comments in this post make me wonder if I've accidentally stumbled into the fantasy of an old maid, as if some of you are waxing poetic about the Victorian Era because you actually lived through it. I wasn't even legally an adult when Camille was reading the Cleaner serial on Yahoo.
DeleteAnd if I told you I was actually using a typewriter and got my first cell phone when I was already married for a few years?
DeleteHow in the world did you use a typewriter to read Yahoo?
DeleteI only use paper in mine...
Well there were things called Teletypes that were close relatives to an electric typewriter that connected to remote computers at the dizzying speed of 110 baud (bits/sec).
DeleteThe first computers I worked on had neither a keyboard nor a VDU - there were a few toggle switches, push buttons and incandescent lights but the main data I/O was via 80 column punched cards or a line printer. It had a clock speed of 1Mhz and cost in excess of £100,000 each!
You youngsters don't know you're born :) We had to design the toys you take for granted.
OOPS,I misspelled "entertainment" in that very long URL.
ReplyDeleteCamille can check it out,it's also cross-linked from another story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-5207641/Tziporah-Malkah-reveals-biggest-regrets.html
20 years ago she lived an enviable life and now she's getting into arguments at gas stations over menthol cigarettes. I can't imagine anyone would want to be her today.
DeleteI'd like to think that "Tziporah Malkah" traded places with the real Kate Fischer like in the Cleaner story and she's simply reverting back to the fat slob she used to be when they met.
Thanks for sharing. Somehow such stories, when told by tabloids or TV, lose all their appeal to me. Is it the inherent sensationalising that makes it very hard to believe them completely? Or because in most cases the protagonists are just unappealing human beings to begin with? Or can I only enjoy lady-to-maid plots if I am certain that it's only fiction? You can be excited about social drop, but once it becomes yours or anybody else's reality, it suddenly loses nearly all the appeal somehow. Probably goes to show that downgrade fiction is quite similar to horror stories.
DeleteWould it make a difference for you if she was happier today than she was back then? Objectively, she's worse off but fame and fortune can bring it's own set of problems.
DeleteWould you be uncomfortable with what a person like Martina Big has done to herself or would that be more OK since it's what she wanted?
Real-life downward mobility is certainly loaded with misery...I don't know that it's possible not to be sorry even if one thought it would be hot to start.I do have problems with some of Kate/Tziporah's decisions (she threw half a million dollars' worth of jewelry into the ocean!).
DeleteThere was someone on Fetlife who claimed to be a woman with such fantasies and strung a number of us along for a while but then admitted being a fake.
I've got to say, I love the type of true life accounts that are presented as real. Reddit is filled with these types of "stories" as people like to lie on the internet. I don't see the harm in them unless it's a sob story and they are soliciting donations.
DeleteOn this site, I think that Interview With Madame Nguyen comes the closest to making the reader entertain the idea that might possibly be true.
DeleteIt was sad when Emma Finn passed away, leaving a young family is heart breaking. I was enjoying Cleaner 2, interesting the comments on its length and whether, with its serialisation, it was losing its way. It makes me think a bit about Dickens whose own stories were released in such a fashion and maybe could have been trimmed somewhat (readers will disagree on that too no doubt).
ReplyDeleteIn a similar way maybe the Millennium trilogy for me started well and tailed off in each book; I felt, rightly or wrongly, by book 3 that the author had got bored of it and was going through the motions. I didn't think that yet with Cleaner 2, I really wanted to know how the story would progress. It was sad never got the chance to find out, a sadness paling into insignificance against the loss to her family. Thanks for storing this and sharing in a more easy to read format.
With these thoughts in mind wishing everyone a safe Christmas, and thinking of those we have lost and those we are yet to find
Merry Christmas to you too and thanks for being a frequent visitor. Dickens is a very good example, but I think it was extremely common at the time. Dumas worked like this much of the time and it actually shows too with end chapter cliff hangers and lots of reduntant descriptions meant to fill space.
DeleteEmma Finn & I were friends and correponded over the years. She said my short story on Fictionmania 'LADY ANN'S HOLIDAY" got her writing again, thank god because she was such a talented writer.
ReplyDeletethe new version of CLeaner on Amazon is terrific read. You can't go wrong in reading it. It has a hypnotic effect and you lose youurself in the Model Dahlia's spiral into madness.
In my correspondence with Emma she made it very clear that if she died outlines would be posted. So far they've not. As far as Camile's 'sfeeling that Emma was stalling & she didn't quite know how to finish part 2 making Dahlia accepting surgery and willing totall acceptance of a total switch believable. I sent her suggestions on my Dahlia might accept the surgery, which she liked but probably was not going to use. Anyway what has been written i Cleaner 2 is brilliant and the 2 characters really come alive. Most of Emma's story are supernatual which makes radical changes more radical & believable
for me anyway. Below is the URL FOr Emma's Amazon page
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=emma+finn&rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Aemma+finn
Yes, hypnotic is a very apt description. It certainly feels this way when you read it. I think the biggest challenge Emma was facing was how to justify the ultimate change without Dahlia going completely insane and totally losing herself. Hence the endless "why am i doing this" segments. Unlike me, Emma was a big fan of magic changes and the supernatural, but the Cleaner is billed as a realistic story, which makes the writer's job so much harder.
DeleteI have done stories with varying degrees of realism and magic...it's a challenging edge to dance along to make things believable.
DeleteDo these outlines she said would be posted exist anywhere?
Finding the author of that other story I noted in my reply to Robyn has bedevilled me for about twenty years!
Have you, Camille, had any communication with Emma Finn's family? (Or agent, editor, literary executor, etc?)It sounds as if you have not, but I should think that would be an essential first step. Perhaps there are plans underway that have not yet been made public. Besides an outline for "Cleaner", it's plausible that she may have left behind other unpublished works, in varying states of completeness. "Cleaner Preservation Project" sounds like a worthy effort, but it seems premature to talk about it if you don't know what, if any, plans already exist for her literary estate. Also, I see that transformation-stories.blogspot.com is archived and readily accessible via archive.org (Wayback Machine).
ReplyDeleteThe Wayback Machine doesn't contain archive an entire site. It takes the occasional snapshot of the landing page, so there are only a few random snippets of stories over the years.
DeleteSince the Cleaner II was never published and could be lost to time, I backed up all the individual postings on http://archive.is/ last year. There are 194 pages in total from the final post dating back to December 2014. I was intending to get everything, including the stuff from http://emma-finn-thrillers.blogspot.com/ but never got around to it. I suppose I'll do that before it's gone.
*The Wayback Machine doesn't contain an archive of the entire site.
DeleteIt has been 16 months now. If there were plans underway one would think they would had been made via her blog by now. Let us hope I am wrong, but even if I am I see little harm in reminding people of Emma's work. I have not reposted anything that is not available on her site for anyone to read right now. I have also provided all the links to her site and her Amazon page. So honestly I am not quite sure I am in violation of her copyright as you seem to be suggesting. If there is indeed her literary agent out there who thinks otherwise, I'd be happy to take it down even as I do not think that is really necessary from a logical standpoint.
DeleteAn additional 400 URLs later and a copy of Emma Finn's Dark Tales of Transformation is complete. (Unless I accidentally missed some pages) Aside from Cleaner II, it's pretty redundant as the stories were eventually collected into volumes available for purchase, but her comments and various musing from are now saved.
DeleteShe also posted completed stories to fictionmania and the changing mirror.
Deletehttps://fictionmania.tv/searchdisplay/authordisplay.html?word=2623
https://thechangingmirror.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=35
Actually, I wasn't thinking about copyright at all. To some degree, I was thinking about the moral rights of an author. I was thinking more about coordination and avoidance of duplicating efforts. If there are more Emma Finn stories or even drafts out there, I assume you'd want to find out about them and include them. Primarily, I was just thinking that there are a lot of unanswered questions about "Cleaner", whether there is an outline, whether there are unfinished drafts, etc. I suppose it's not strictly necessary, but I'd think that it would be good to have answers to those questions, and only someone connected to Emma Finn could give those answers. You may well be right in your inference from 16 months' inactivity. On the other hand, dealing with literary matters probably wasn't her family's first priority after her tragically early death.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think I see your point. And yes, it would have been amazing to get in touch with her representatives if I only knew how. Her blog and e-mail were my only ways of reaching her and both appear to be dead. If you have any suggestions, please share them - I would want nothing more than to get a hand on her outlines/unfinished stories. In either case, I don't see how re-publishing what's already on her blog anyway could in any way jeopardise anything. In either case, thanks for speaking out, I really appreciate that.
Delete