Good Bye, Author

Next year, I plan to write one of these each month.

A goodbye letter to an author I don’t expect to read again. Or perhaps, don’t expect to want to read again.

You see, I’ve been thinking that my reviews need a bit more structure, but the scoring on specific metrics method doesn’t really work for me either.

So I’m hoping that this will be better. All the reasons why I won’t read so-and-so again, and all the reasons why I wish it was otherwise.

I don’t deny that the idea probably draws on Dear Author somewhat, and I’m happy to give the ladies over there that credit.

Sometimes these will be authors I’ve read but once, and others I’ve read over and over and over, until it is time to say goodbye.

I plan to post the first one tomorrow.

Why does he have to be redeemed?

The fantabulous Alison Kent had a writing question up today, but that’s only pertinent to my post as it is where I got the idea of mine.

In the post, she says:

The guy I came up with was one that reminds me of King Trahan, a bad boy that I wasn’t originally sure would be redeemable. I’m not sure this time either.

Now, I haven’t read With Extreme Pleasure (though I want to…how I want to!), but I can’t help but think, why does he have to be redeemed?

Why can’t he just be? And why is it always the guy who has to be redeemed?

(Though I consider Linda Howard’s most excellent Death Angel the exemplar of the redemption narrative in romance.)

People always talk about redemption and reformation in conjunction with rakes and bad boys (the alliteration…oh the alliteration!).

One thing that bugs me, though, is that I think a lot of these characters have nothing to be redeemed for. So they’ve slept with a lot of women…so what? It’s not like they murdered little puppies or something.

Shades of Grey*

Kaigou:

TL;DR version: the predominant rationale for white=good and black=bad is based in racism.

It’s not that hard to try something else. It just requires a few seconds’ thought (although that does require a willingness to be arsed enough to be aware of the need). In this story, frex, if a witch gets power from controlling life, call that a Life Witch. If it’s via torturing living creatures to death, call that one a Death Witch. There, see? Two seconds’ thought and I came up with a descriptive term that actually tells me something — and doesn’t require I tap into racist slurs to grasp the text’s meaning.

I’m tired of books featuring the Good Gal/Guy vs the Great Evil — especially in UF.

Why why why? It’s just such a simplistic view.

Which, I suppose, makes sense to why it’s so popular amongst writers. It’s easy.** In terms of worldbuilding, plot etc. The bad guy is always the person on the other side, wearing the wrong type of clothing.

But that also makes it boring, especially when you have a lazy writer who’s just reusing tropes and cliches without Owning them.

I get that readers like it. We are talking about fiction here, and it’s nice to have a world where problems are as easy to fix as Bang Bang Bang, bad guys all dead. I just would like a bit more choice, damn it.

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*Incidentally, the Evil Jackie Kessler has co-written Shades of Grey with Caitlin Kittredge and unfortunately, I haven’t read it. But the first book, Black & White, was fab fab fab! And despite the title, the difference between good and evil is NOT black and white.

**Well, it makes sense to me that if you always know who the bad guy is, then you just shoot them. But if they aren’t necessarily bad, you can’t do that.

How do you go back?

That’s a tough question to ask me, as a reader.

I very rarely go back to an author whom I’ve decided isn’t worth reading.

I judge books by 2 very simple criteria:

1. Is it worth the money I paid for it?
2. Is it worth the time I’ll spend reading it?

Most of the time, the answer is no.

Now, Shiloh Walker‘s holding a contest for ARCs of her December release, Hunter’s Need.

I used to read her books, right from the time she started out in e-publishing with Ellora’s Cave until she moved into NY/print. That was when I stopped reading her. No real reason. I distinctly remember enjoying her first NY MMPB. But I just never picked up her work again.

Sometimes you do drift away from authors. I used to love Nora Roberts — and there was one time when I counted and apparently I had read more than a hundred of her works — but I won’t read her any more. Having said that, with NR, it was that her first real para-rom left a bad taste in my mouth. It was just awful.

With Ms. Walker, it’s a different situation. I just never went back.

Then I saw a link on Twitter today, a retweet from someone I think will become a really good friend. I’m on vacation, so when I saw the link, I thought, why not? And clicked the link.

She’s running a contest, offering ARCs to 2-3 winners that she will pick. All you have to do is blog about the book, and post the link on this page.

I have read the excerpt. It’s good. Visceral, sexy and hot, the hallmarks of Ms. Walker just as I remember them.

Still have just over a week left of vacation. Maybe I’ll pick a Walker title up. Maybe I should. Serendipity, you know?

Lynn Viehl’s Shadowlight

Ah, how I have waited for this book, the first of Lynn Viehl’s new Kyndred series.

(FD: the author sent me an e-arc.)

It continues certain story arcs from the Darkyn series, and some of the more memorable characters make an appearance in Shadowlight, though it is always clear that Gaven and Matthias are the protagonists of this book.

My closest friends will tell you that I am a huge huge huge fan of Lynn Viehl, and this book, as always, lives up to the fact that it has Lynn Viehl (or any other of her pseudonyms really) on the cover. I have been accused of being willing to read her grocery lists, but that is definitely not true: after reading somebody else’s grocery list and finding out that she/he is normal, just like me…Nah, I don’t need my beloved Paperback Writer to do that to me.

Shadowlight is sleekly written, pared down to the bones of this story, with the over-arching narrative is seamlessly woven in.

I do find that the writing style is a bit more distant, more reminiscent of the author’s SF work than anything else. For me, it doesn’t detract from the relationship between Gaven and Jessa. Both of them have secrets, and the writing style suits that.

One of the things I like most is that it reads like the beginning of a great epic fantasy. Different genre, true, but in the sense that it’s a delicious glimpse into the world of the Kyndred, and with the promise of great things to come.

In other words, Shadowlight is definitely recommended. If you’d like to read other (more objective *g*) reviews, the author has posted a round-up on her blog of the other reviews she’s received via the e-ARCs she sent out.

Pt I of The Evil Woman: Bad Mothers

I am very close to my mother in ways that most of my peers just don’t understand. I miss my mother more when I’m at university than my friends when I’m at university.

(I don’t have a bio up yet, and may simply skip writing one, but in any case, I’m 21, and heading back for my final year of undergrad in a few days.)

I’m inclined to say that it’s because most of them have yet to come to terms with their mothers, and also because most of them have less in common with their mothers than I do.

Like my mother, I like to cook, sew and bake — just so you know, I learnt so that I can train my future house-husband to my standards. *g*

I honestly think that if I didn’t have those things in common with her that our relationship might never have gotten over my terrible teenage years. They were so bad that I seriously contemplate not having kids just to avoid all that.

So I do, to some extent, understand why they write about it. As Jenny Crusie says:

If the Heroine Overcomes the Bad Mother story gives you a vicarious victory, you’re going to like it, and I don’t think you need to have had a Bad Mother in real life to want that catharsis because I think it goes back to basic human outrage over injustice: a mother should be loving and protective and the protagonist’s isn’t so the story rights that injustice by providing her with the love she’s missed before. That sense of outrage in general is crucial to reader satisfaction, that reaction that this situation is just wrong and must be remedied, and so the reader reads on to see it fixed. If this is not a trigger for your outrage reflex, if reading this as it plays out does not give you that catharsis, then it’s not going to work for you. No catharsis. That doesn’t means that the Bad Mother isn’t a valuable trope.

Valuable trope or not, it’s an Overused Trope. It’s a cliche.

I can still live with it, but the thing that really bugs me is that I’ve never seen any romance writer delve into why their heroines (I hate this term but female protagonist?) and their mothers feel this way.

Their mothers are just Evil and Nasty and Mean. True, some mothers are all that, but wouldn’t you say that it is highly unrealistic that so many of them are like that?

What about the generational divide? What about the different experiences? These are the kinds of things that’s driven the differences between yourself and your mother. Therefore they apply to your character and her mother too.

I can’t say I agree with Robin, who wrote the excellent, original post on RTB, here:

So there is a lot of precedent. But still, is it a bit odd how many bad mothers there are in a genre that so strongly validates and celebrates domesticity and fertility? Or is that exactly the point?

I’m disinclined to think that romance validates and celebrates domesticity and fertility. But I have to say, it does make for an excellent contrast vs your heroine who’s strong enough to get over her maternal issues, and have lots of kids who adore her blah blah blah.

This is the first part of a series that will focus Evil Woman types in Romance. If you have any suggestions, you can email me.

Lynne Connolly’s Last Chance, My Love

Last Chance, My Love would have been a decent enough read, if some editor cut it in half.

Or, if I’m in a more generous mood, by a third.

The concept of the trilogy that Last Chance, My Love is the first book of has been done before. Not quite done to death, but done before, because I recall having read at least 2 versions of this one – better versions, at that. Also, as for Triple Countess, I’m sure there are who are earls thrice over, so that their wives are countesses thrice over too, right?

Having our noble couple trek down to a little inn that used to be brothel to make it over? As a hook, it’s not bad though it doesn’t feel very realistic to me – I wouldn’t have paid good money for LCML, and got it free from the Samhain website here.

The thing that bugs me most is that they seem to have spent more than a hundred pounds, though I know that it went a lot further then – inflation blah blah blah. Seriously skeptical, especially given that Miranda seemed…well, not stoopid but the type who just waits for the husband to hand over the cash.

That said, I like the idea of a marriage in trouble, and the handling of that seemed decent enough to me – bearing in mind that I’ve not been in a serious relationship or even seen a divorce up close.

I didn’t like enough in this book to get another book by the same author, and frankly, if I had paid for it, I would have been quite annoyed with myself.

You can get this book here in various formats, though I’m not sure how long it will be up.

On Pricing Ebooks

This is what I think.

Many people who read ebooks have an ebook reader, or are otherwise reasonably dedicated to moving to ebooks. I don’t know many people who read ebooks exclusively on a laptop/desktop as I do – at least, until I get a Blackberry or Nokia E-series later this month.

People who read ebooks exhibit a strong preference for ebooks to print. I would go so far as to say a very strong preference, because ebook readers don’t come cheap.

If you have bought an ebook reader, you have sunk costs: costs towards a venture that are irrecoverable. But if you have an ebook reader and you don’t have ebooks, the ebook reader is a useless lump of metal and plastic.

So I think the cross-elasticity of demand for ebook vs print is quite close to zero, i.e. ebooks do not compete with print books. Following onto that, the fact that the marginal cost of ebooks is or is close to zero probably doesn’t get you lower prices – I’m not sure that, at least in the short-term, that it is in the publisher’s interest to price it that low.

The original question was why print books are cheaper than ebooks. I daresay the answer is that publishers so far think that they can get away with it, because a publisher is generally the sole supplier of particular titles.

If you want the ebook version badly enough to pay for it, well, the publisher laughs all the way to the bank. If you can wait, and you are willing to accept a print version, then you pay less, but the publisher still earns a profit of you.

In other words, they are segmenting the market, ebook reader versus print reader.

Most Books Aren’t Worth Reading

And that’s the plain and simple truth.

Don’t misunderstand me. I love books, and I love to read.

This blog does, after all, have Books in the title, even though it spoils my lovely alliteration, seeing as I have A Multitude of Madnesses and A Multitude of Models too.

I just think that most books aren’t worth their price tag, or the time one would spent on them.

Harsh…maybe. But then, there’s the hundred thousand titles and more that are published each year.

There’s always something else I can read.

I Hate Your Book

Dear Author,

I hate your book.

It’s nothing personal. You were just unlucky enough to have me pick up your book.

Then actually open the book and start reading it.

And start disliking it or worse.

Who knows why?

Maybe you wrote a Western filled with cowboys and what I really wanted was a futuristic filled with superheroes. Maybe your authorial voice just grates on my reading ear like nails on the chalkboard, or maybe it’s the exact opposite: you read so bland that it’s like eating plain white rice porridge, without salt or soy.

Maybe I do truly think that your book is just plain hateful, so much so that I simply cannot put into words.

But you are a probably a nice person. I have read many books that have been written by people who have been nice to me, and whose books I’ve disliked to varying degrees of intensity anyway.

So you see, it’s not a judgement of you, whoever you are. It’s a judgement of the book I have read that so happened to be constructed of words that YOU lined up into sentences, paragraphs, scenes and chapters.

As far as I am concerned, it just happens that it’s YOUR name that’s on the cover. Not quite random chance, but close enough from the individual perspective.

This probably isn’t the best start to our relationship, but I thought it best to have it out of the way. Clean slate and everything, you know?

Yours sincerely, M