Well, it could have been worse

I have a computer again. I’m back to using the much smaller hard drive that came with the computer, and it’s pretty much stuffed to the brim. The hubby has ordered a case that will let him try to boot the messed-up hard drive outside of the laptop…that’s pretty much going to be our last ditch effort to rescue what’s on it. Getting a new head put on the drive would only be worth the money if it contained information vital to the survival of the Rebel Alliance…or something.

I think I’m going to skip the chapter that got eaten, and go ahead and write the next one. If by the time I get to the end of the story we haven’t rescued that chapter, then I’ll rewrite it. However, I am going to outline how the chapter goes, while it’s still fresh in my mind. I’d just go ahead and rewrite the damn thing, except the thought of doing that makes me so irritated that I just don’t think I can, right now.

Hmm, what is it, Friday? Been doing some reading this week, especially in the wake of Nevermore’s Wednesday digital disaster. (Nevermore is my computer’s name. Bleached Nevermore, actually, is her full name). I finished The Gathering Storm…all 800 something pages of it. I’d say it’s possibly the best one since Crown of Swords, or at least the most enjoyable. The problem with the Wheel of Time series is that it takes so long to set up some of these major events…and thus, you have books like Path of Daggers, where you get all the way to the end and realize that although pawns, knights, rooks, bishops, queens, and kings have all been moved about on the chessboard, nothing of major significance has happened. So when you get an installment like The Gathering Storm, where several elaborate sets of dominoes all come toppling down at the same time, you get a really exciting book.

The prose is all still very Robert Jordan…Sanderson did a good job with blending his voice into the established one. He’s all but invisible most of the time. However, and maybe I noticed this because I had just finished Warbreaker…but there were a couple of passages and exchanges by the characters that I would stop and think, “That was Sanderson humor. Jordan probably would have written that differently.” This is not a bad thing, by any means. I can’t recall any other Wheel of Time books that actually made me snort out loud in amusement over something a character says. Jordan’s humor has more to do with stereotypes, and the misunderstandings these cause…which are sometimes very, very funny…but in a shake-your-head-in-pity sort of funny, not lol funny. But I think Mat, in particular, could have done all along with a little more of the snarky, sardonic type of humor Sanderson is injecting into his character in this book.

Rand’s character got a whole lot darker than I expected in this book. He’s been getting more dark and distant for about four books now, and I thought they’d pushed that about as far as it could go. And I was actually beginning to be annoyed that they stretched the transformation out for so long. Thankfully, finally, that subplot got started on its resolution at the end of this book.

Egwene has turned out to be an awesome character. She really impressed me in Knife of Dreams, and she has impressed me further in this book. Perrin didn’t get much screen time this time around, which was disappointing in the sense that, now that he’s rescued his wife, he desperately needs a direction, a focus, a reason to remain in the story. He really didn’t get one…they were still tying up the Faile abduction subplot that was already pretty much over with. Perrin’s presence felt a little purposeless this time around. I hope that gets fixed. I really don’t think he came all this way just to end up as someone who stands beside Rand in the Last Battle and calls in the wolves.

I loved the part where Cadsuane starts seeing herself in Semirhage; she needed that. I wished they hadn’t killed off Semirhage the way they did…seemed a little abrupt, and anti-climactic. I actually kind of liked Semirhage, as far as villains go…of all the female Forsaken, she reminds me the most of Nasira (Raphel’s ras, from the prequel I’m planning). The way Graendal was taken care of also felt contrived, as though the author really didn’t know what to do with her and decided to just get rid of her. She really hasn’t done anything (that I can recall off the top of my head.) (Granted, we’re not absolutely sure she’s dead, and Forsaken have this knack for reappearing when they are most unexpected. But, balefire…?)

What else. I finished Elantris today, and wow. That was his debut?? I liked it better than Warbreaker. I may have to procure a copy of my own, simply to have a really good reference on how to pace a fantasy novel. And how to make each POV character and his/her entourage interesting enough that you actually want to follow all the subplots (and not just slog through them in order to get back to the interesting storyline). Sanderson also appears to construct magical systems the same way I do…less mystical, more scientific in nature. I tend to like those better, as part of the fun is figuring out how the whole system works together.

Tags: Brandon Sanderson, Wheel of Time

Brandon Sanderson…and a divine problem

Brandon Sanderson has officially impressed me. I just finished Warbreaker, which I grabbed because the library had it sitting on their new book shelf. I said, “Oh, that’s the guy that’s finishing the Wheel of Time series, and does Writing Excuses (my favorite writing podcast).” And the inside cover blurb actually looked interesting, in a genre where very little catches my eye anymore.

Honestly, it wasn’t the most impressive or enthralling piece of fiction I’ve ever read, but it was good. I never had the urge to put it down and go do something else. The magic premise, BioChroma, was fascinating, and one I’m tempted to steal from. And he managed to successfully fool me into thinking the good guys were the bad guys and vice versa, which I enjoyed. I’ve seen funnier snark…but not much funnier, and not in the adult genre. YA tends to have more snark, and characters who snip at each other. Sanderson’s snark is sophisticated (which you won’t really find in YA), and I like that.

I picked up his debut, Elantris, from the library the other day, and also I finally got my hands on a copy of The Gathering Storm, which is the next Wheel of Time book. I’ll be reading those over the next couple of days.

Shades is coming along…slowly. Last night I went through the whole second draft, formatting it to send to my critique group. Well, of course, I can’t go through my writing without editing, and thus it took a lot longer than it should have. But I made some good changes…mostly tightening scenes, making them as clear as I can. I’ve been a little stuck at my current spot because I’m about to introduce Scisaxar as a character for the first time, and I really don’t know him very well.

The problem is, I haven’t found a way to relate Scisaxar directly to Raphel, or even to Saeli. He’s still drifting around on the periphery of my main characters, and is thus distant to me. Yuril is much easier to write now because she’s had some stage time, and she’s in love with Raphel. I don’t know how Scisaxar feels about Raphel, or Saeli, or any of the main characters. I’m going to drop him into the scene just after Yuril breaks Raphel’s fingers, and I know that Scisaxar is going to be pissed that Yuril has been blasting holes in his Temple. We’ll start with that, and see where he takes it.

Another thing that I’ve been pondering, and something that might help me with Scisaxar’s character, is that I’ve been trying to determine what the “inciting incident” between the two gods was. Why do they hate each other? What started the war in the first place?

Things I know: 1) On a much deeper level, the war has to do with Yuril’s and Scisaxar’s frustration over the Oath. They pit their followers against each other when in truth, both of them would prefer a direct confrontation. It frustrates them to have to work through mortals, and thus each blames the other even more for forcing them to sacrifice followers. This leads them both to be cruel and distant with their peoples. Cruel, because they don’t understand the source of their anger, and thus they take it out on their people. Distant, because they cannot afford to get emotionally attached to people they are sending out to die for them.

2) Both gods helped curse the Midplains. Raphel is right about that. What Raphel doesn’t know is that they did it as a desperate measure, to stop a certain secret society of people. These were the original gray mages, who knew how to build inter-world portals, who could summon both light and dark angelics, and who were delving into angelic and spirit lore that would have been better left alone. These experiments actually drew the attention of the Keeper of the Oath, who paid a short visit to Verre just before the Cursing. Well, that scared the you-know-what out of Yuril and Scisaxar. The Cursing was both a desperate measure and a panic reaction, and was perhaps overdone.

Now, I have a choice to make. Was the Cursing itself the two gods’ inciting incident, leading them to go to war for more than a hundred years…or did the disagreement start before that, and the gods temporarily put it aside for the Cursing?

If the Cursing was the inciting incident, then the resulting war is genuine. Both gods think that the other handled their part of the Cursing badly, or they blame the other for having to do such a thing, or whatever. They have a legitimate, relatively recent grievance against one another. However, if the gods put aside their conflict temporarily for the Cursing, then the resulting war would have to be a farce. In fact, it’s even possible that the gods were never truly at war in the first place, and their “hatred” is a cover-up to keep the world from discovering the truth.

I honestly like the second option better, because it makes the ending to Shades more plausible. Having Saeli single-handedly convince two gods who genuinely hate each other to stop a war they’ve been at for over a hundred years seems unlikely. But if their conflict isn’t real, her job is much easier. However, it dangerously reduces any empathy one might have for these gods…because that means they’ve been sacrificing their followers for a lie. It makes it look like Raphel was right about them, which will make it difficult for the readers to empathize with them towards the end. It works for the overall story of Verre, because the gods really were preventing something that would be ultimately worse than a hundred year war. But Raphel doesn’t know that, and Saeli doesn’t know that, and so the gods are, to them, going to look like monsters. And the only way I can prove that they aren’t monsters is to reveal a whole lot of information and backstory that I don’t want to cover in this trilogy. That’s what the sequel is for.

Perhaps the war began as a farce, but then got personal for the gods. Scisaxar is winning, after all, when the story opens. Maybe he started to press his military advantage and broke the unspoken understanding between him and Yuril. But why would he do that? I have to pull this back to the Cursing somehow. He would have to have some sort of grudge, if not against Yuril herself, then against her followers. Several possibilities present themselves. The most obvious is that Yuril attracts more followers and Scisaxar is jealous. Or he honestly feels that her followers are degenerates, and despises/feels sorry for them. Or they did something that got a lot of his people killed. No, that’s too general. They did something that got one certain person that Scisaxar really cared about killed. That would be a very strong motivation for wanting to win a farcical war.

Ah, an idea. Scisaxar loved a pre-Cursing gray mage, one of the ones in the thick of the angel experiments. The gods decided, together, that the order of gray mages had to be destroyed and the knowledge buried. They devised the Curse between them and set it loose on the Midplains. Afraid for his love, Scisaxar pursued her and pursued her, and finally brought her around to his point of view. He made her a White Mantle, and thus thought she’d be protected. Then, while the Curse was still spreading, she and a whole mess of her cohorts got caught by Cowls. Both gods’ followers had orders to kill or convert any gray mage. Scisaxar’s love refused to become a Cowl, so they killed her. Scisaxar demanded retribution, but Yuril refused, saying that even though the girl had repented of what she’d done, she still had the knowledge. The knowledge had to die. Scisaxar’s grief leaked into the still-spreading Curse, and it devoured the land as well. Once they contained it, followers from both sides were shocked and confused over why the gods would do such a thing. Yuril suggested that they stage a war, and let each side blame the other. The true reason for the Cursing would surely be buried. Scisaxar, afraid of losing all his followers, agreed. The war began, both as a farce and as revenge, on the white god’s part.

That’s very vague, and I can probably tweak it. But it could have a number of ramifications. One, Scisaxar is going to hold a severe grudge against Cowls, and against Yuril for letting them do what they did. It’s not really her fault; Yuril probably wouldn’t have sanctioned killing the girl, but the Cowls didn’t ask beforehand. Scisaxar is going to make sure his own people follow a strict hierarchy that leads directly to him, and he’s going to make sure they never act outside of his jurisdiction. He’s going to be jealous that Yuril manages to attract more followers, but at the same time, he’s not going to take any pains to make himself likable. Something like how a grieving widower would feel about a sibling who gets a lot of attention…jealous, but unwilling to compete. That jealousy is going to be manifested specifically in how he feels about the Raphel problem…because he can see that Yuril loves Raphel the way he loved ____. But Scisaxar’s also the one who will be suffering the most remorse over the Cursing, because he essentially screwed it up. He’ll possibly be the one who is more willing to listen to Saeli in the end.

So the war is both a farce, and personal, but more personal on Scisaxar’s end. Scisaxar’s pain amuses Yuril, but she doesn’t allow herself to think about it too deeply…lest she be reminded of how she really feels about Raphel. And worse, Raphel is exactly the kind of Cowl the white god hates, because he’s a wild card. He does what he wants, and the gods can go screw themselves. It was those kind of Cowls who killed Scisaxar’s love. He’ll hate Raphel, and hate that a Cowl managed to steal yet another follower away from him (first Kaladan, then Saeli), and he’ll hate Yuril for wanting to spare Raphel, and he’ll hate that were the tides turned, he would do exactly the same thing as his sister. No wonder the gods have to abandon the scene…neither of them can act. Their hands are tied by their pasts, and by the Oath. And we’re back to the Oath again.

I think I have a handle on the white god now. Enough to start writing him, anyway.

Wow. Scisaxar is walking into this conflict with some seriously complicated crap in his past.

Tags: authors, books, GMC, Reviews, Scisaxar, Shades, Yuril

Doing Friday on Saturday

My mother and I spent a good chunk of yesterday cleaning the entire apartment, which left me completely exhausted. I took a nap before dinner, and then after we ate, I laid back down. After about two hours of this, the hubby and I decided to just go on to bed…so we did. Which is why I did not update yesterday.

So…I picked up another vampire book from the library the other day. Too bad our libraries don’t seem to carry any of the newer YA fantasy books that I’d like to read, but oh well. The book I picked up was Blue Bloods by Melissa de la Cruz. which is apparently the first in a series. It was not a bad book…but all the same, I didn’t think it was all that good, either.

The first thing I noticed after the first few pages was that the POV tends to wander from head to head several times per scene, and it’s not always clear whose head you are supposed to be in. One person will enter the scene, and begin talking to another person. You start reading about how Person #2 is internally reacting to Person #1, and at some point you realize that you are now in Person #2’s head. Then Person #3 joins the conversation, and now we start hearing what THEY are thinking. Now I had been informed, in no uncertain terms, by several different sources, that this is one of those things that you Don’t Do in Fiction. Period. After reading a book where it is done, I can understand why they tell you not to do it. It’s confusing. I don’t like having to backtrack in a story because the POV swapped from one person to another and I didn’t realize it. Seriously. Scene breaks! Don’t head-hop.

The story also took a long time to get going. About 65 pages into the book, and the only real significant thing that has happened is that a girl has been found dead. We’ve had a paragraph of description for every main character, and several dedicated to various locations around NYC. These did a pretty good job of painting the ritzy, upper-upper class culture that these characters live in, but they really didn’t create a mood, or add to the tension. And there were a lot of them.

Okay, and I know this is part of that subculture, but it irritates me when I have to hear all about the characters’ wardrobes every few pages. Also, the characters’ descriptions are never anything like how real people would describe themselves. They read like character bios from the inside cover of a manga. For example:

“Schuyler was startlingly pretty, with a sweet, heart-shaped face; a perfectly upturned nose; and soft, milky skin- but there was something almost insubstantial about her beauty. She looked like a Dresden doll in witch’s clothing. Kids at the Duchesne School thought she dressed like a bag lady. It didn’t help that she was painfully shy and kept to herself, because then they just thought she was stuck-up, which she wasn’t. She was just quiet.”

Just before this, we were in Schuyler’s head as she made a comment. Then we had a paragraph of description of what she was wearing. Followed by the above. Are we still in Schuyler’s head? I dunno, because I don’t think most people would describe themselves as “startlingly pretty”, call their own face “sweet”, and describe their own complexion as “milky”. (Unless, of course, they were completely stuck-up. But we’re told she isn’t). The last two sentences are the only ones that sound like they could have come out of Schuyler’s head…as a lot of teenagers see themselves as shy, and think that the world perceives them as stuck-up because they don’t talk to people. I believe that. I don’t buy the rest. Sorry.

And of course, it being a vampire book, we have to have the “big reveal” moment, when the main character discovers that 1) vampires are real and 2) she is one. (Actually, two of the main characters have to face this transition.) As far as reveals go, this one falls pretty flat. I mean, you the reader know that the two main girls are vampires long before they themselves figure it out. (If you’ve read the inside cover, you know before the story opens). So all of the shock, and disbelief, and denial that the characters go through when they figure it out rings false, or falls flat. This is one of the big problems with writing a vampire book right now, especially when the main characters of the story don’t know they are vampires. With so many vampire books on the market right now, it’s hard to believe that any intelligent youth embroiled in a vampire story would fail to realize that they are, in fact, in a vampire story. Such a reveal requires the characters to live in a world in which the current market of young adult vampire literature does not exist. Having the characters react with disbelief and shock makes them look idiotic instead of realistic. This is not the author’s fault, but it is something that could have been handled a little better.

Overall, I’m not all that enthused with this story…not enough to read the next book in the series. (Even the House of Night books were more interesting than this one, and I have enough issues with HoN to fill a whole other entry). I think, if I am going to explore any more current vampire books, I will pick either the Vampire Academy series or the Vampire Diaries series (which inspired Twilight, if I remember right).

Tags: books, Reviews, vampires

The writer’s library, thus far

Thought I’d share the list of writing books that I own, and personally found very helpful. (Obviously, if I hadn’t found them helpful, I wouldn’t own them…)

Stein on Writing – Sol Stein

A standard. Anyone who wants to write good fiction should read this book at least once. Better yet, attack it with sticky tabs and a highlighter.

Writing the Breakout Novel - Donald Maass

Same as above. Really, if you were going to buy just two writing books, this one and the one above are probably your best bet.

Spunk and Bite – Arthur Plotnik

Remember Strunk and White, and their little book full of rules for style? This book shows you how to bend those rules.

Dynamic Characters: How to Create Personalities That Keep Readers Captivated- Nancy Kress

This was actually my first writing book. It was a required text for the only creative writing course I ever took (and subsequently had to drop, because I couldn’t keep up with that and two art classes in the same semester). It’s a good solid guide to how to build character, come up with backstory, etc…I didn’t find it particularly useful at the time, because character is the one thing that I’m naturally good at.

Bullies, Bastards, and Bitches: How to Write the Bad Guys of Fiction – Jessica Morrell

I saw the title of this and just had to open it. I loved it immediately, because I like my characters to be, for the most part, a little bit on the edgy side. She covers everything from villains, sociopaths, and monsters to dark heroes, anti-heroes and even unreliable narrators.

Writing Great Books for Young Adults – Regina Brooks

Good solid book if you write YA fiction. I’d really like to find a book that deals specifically with YA fantasy fiction, but this was a good place to start.

On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells – Leigh Michaels

This book covers a lot of ground, and although it deals primarily with romance novels and the romance genre, a lot of the principles are things that carry over into general fiction writing. Most of my stories have a love story in them somewhere, even if they don’t fit specifically within the romance genre guidelines.

Tags: books, business of writing

Reviews, both paranormal and YA

Must Love Dragons: by Stephanie Rowe

Wow. I saved this one for last because I thought it had the greatest potential to be really, really cutesy or just plain bad. Well, it was neither. I think it trumps Industrial Magic as my favorite so far, in that it was very good and it actually stayed within the bounds of what I would call paranormal romance. The heroine was saucy and interesting; I particularly enjoyed her voice.

General thoughts: Characterization was excellent. They even made Satan into an interesting and complex guy (oh yeah, did I mention that Satan was a character in this story? Haha.). The story used a unique twist on the relationship between dragons and dragonslayers, and though it really only existed to heighten the sexual tension between the two main characters, it was a fun idea. The plot was fast paced and fun…never a boring moment that I recall. The characters were snarky and none of them take themselves too seriously, which seems to happen a lot in the romance genre.

Relationships: Finally, a book that has a nice balance of romance and sex that is detailed enough, but not over the top or gross. There were two sex scenes, but the first one was so fast and brief that it almost doesn’t count (which was, plot-wise, actually the point. Neither of the characters were altogether cognizant when it happened.) Unlike Hidden Currents, the guy does not get an erection every time he looks at the heroine…the two actually struggle with their attraction to each other in a realistic manner.

Bones of Faerie: by Janni Lee Simner

Short, enjoyable YA novel. The premise is that there was a terrible war between Faerie and the human world, and both lands are scarred. In the human world, trees and plants eat people, crops moan and struggle when they are picked, and magic kills. Parts of Faerie have been blasted by nuclear weapons. The story is about a girl who lives in a village where anyone born with magic is cast out to die. She discovers that she has magic, and she goes on an adventure to find her mother, who disappeared. Definitely illustrates the dangerous aspects of Faerie, which many YA novels do nowadays, but it also shows the flip side of the coin, and suggests the damage we could do to their world with our weapons. That was the most interesting part to me.

The Midnighters Trilogy: by Scott Westerfeld

I actually finished this a few weeks back, and really enjoyed it. The premise was fascinating, and the level of detail in the world was actually making me jealous. Basically in this little town in Oklahoma, time stops at midnight, and there is a “secret hour” squished into the instant between midnight and just after. People that are born close enough to exactly midnight can experience this secret time, and they all have special abilities that only work during midnight (well, some work all the time, but are only really useful during the midnight hour).

The characters are all interesting and differentiated, but not quite as memorable as the cast of Westerfeld’s Uglies trilogy, IMO. He commits a minor writer’s sin by having a Jess and a Dess in the same story, but the two are so different that I never get them mixed up. Westerfeld always impresses me with his ability to cover so much ground in so few words. At the end of one of his trilogies, you feel like you’ve experienced a story that should have taken more than three relatively short books to tell. (That’s something I really want to learn how to do). The other thing that he does that I really like is that his stories never end completely happily. At the end of the Midnighters trilogy, one of the characters ends up stuck permanently in the midnight hour, and another has had his mind altered. All the characters lose something, but in the end they all come to terms with it.

Peeps: by Scott Westerfeld

Probably one of the most original vampire stories I’ve read, other than The Society of S by Susan Hubbard. Vampirism in Peeps is caused by a parasite that does strange things to people’s bodies and minds. The story starts with Cal, who has the disease but is only a “carrier”, someone who can spread the parasite but doesn’t have all the symptoms (like insanity). He’s trying to track down everyone he infected (before he knew he had it), and in the process they all learn the true purpose of this parasite. I like the way he writes teenagers so that they are convincingly teenish, but aren’t annoying.

That’s all I’m doing tonight, as my fingers are getting tired.

Tags: books, Reviews

More reviews, and a new idea

I finished Industrial Magic, and I still agree with my previous post. Urban fantasy, not paranormal romance. Good, though. I’m definitely going to track down the first one.

I also finished:

Hidden Currents: by Christine Feehan

This seems to be part of a series of unrelated books all dealing with the same characters: the Drake sisters. All the sisters are varying degrees of psychic. This story was about the youngest one, seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, who gets to carry on the legacy and have seven (!) girls of her own.

General thoughts: The conceit was interesting, but I think this particular story failed on several levels. It begins with the girl getting captured by this really depraved mega-millionaire, who trades sex slaves on the black market. She is badly abused by this guy, sexually, physically, psychically (oh yeah, the guy’s a psychic, too). Okay, now I understand this sort of abuse really happens, and I think I’m a reasonably sympathetic person who gets appropriately outraged when I hear about it. However, it’s just not something I want to see in a romance novel. Stories like this are supposed to be, first and foremost, entertainment. Abuse does not entertain me. I don’t want to read about it in my free time, thank you.

So then, the girl, Elle, is rescued about three or four chapters into the story (which, by the way, makes the entire back cover blurb completely misleading), by the love of her life (whom she’d given up on) and her sisters’ boyfriends. The entire rest of the story is given over to her recovering from abuse, and rekindling her romance with her guy, Jackson. I hate to say it, but this author has obviously never read accounts or interviewed anyone who had actually been abused. Elle has little panic attacks, in the beginning. By the middle of the book, she’s happily having sex with Jackson and really shows little other sign of trauma other than being a little nervous in crowds. Bullshit. It should have been weeks, months, before she could bear another man to touch her. Hold her. Let alone have sex with her. You just don’t get over that kind of abuse that easily. Epic fail in the realistic catagory.

The story was just interesting enough to keep me reading, but really, not all that memorable. Everything the characters devised pretty much worked, which should never be the case. Elle’s setbacks are almost inconsequentially small, and are quickly fixed. Example: the climax. The sisters’ guys devise a way to defeat the millionaire villain. They execute said plan. Said plan goes over without a hitch. The villain is defeated. Boring, boring, boring! Most of the writing was given over to Jackson reassuring Elle that he really loved her, how he’d never leave, how he’d never let her abuser find her, etc. Elle also did a fair bit of that, too; she’s not going to give up, she believed in the two of them, blah blah blah. Yeah, characters need that, but it really did get old after the twentieth time or so.

Relationships: The book was too erotic for my taste, plain and simple. I finished it, but I did a lot of skimming, honestly. I guess people must like it, though, because there’s an awful lot of it on the market. I can read a sex scene, but seriously, 8 pages devoted to a blow job? *gagging noises* There were, again, a lot of body parts. I’m a grown married woman, so I’m quite familiar with what the parts do. I care more about the emotions of the characters. Also, and this is a personal peeve of mine, but I really hate it when a penis is referred to as a “cock”. It’s just…vulgar, to me. I cringe every time I read it. Let’s just say that I did a lot of cringing while reading this book. I suppose “member” or some other clever metaphor (spear? sword? let’s not go there) isn’t much better. I say, why name it at all? We know it’s there, we know what it’s doing. I’d rather read about how the characters feel inside.

Another problem was that the sex was too idealized for my liking. Even in the Gardella Vampire Chronicles, the author, along with describing the normal sensations, didn’t forget to mention when the heroine’s hair pins were digging into her head, or a bedpost poking her back, or the coldness of the floor. In this book, there’s none of that. The scenes have a setting, but the setting exists solely for atmosphere…it doesn’t actually interact with the characters at all (at least, not after they are getting it on). Even if I was having the greatest sex of my life, I think I’d still at least notice being bent back on a piano. In reality, I think that would be majorly uncomfortable.

And I guess there’s only so many ways to elaborate on “pleasure washed through his/her body” without getting redundant. Really, really redundant.

In other news, I’ve started a 1500 word short story that I might also submit to Writer’s Digest. This is a different contest than the one I sent the Smell of November to, and the possible cash prizes are higher. I had known about the contest, but wasn’t going to bother with it because I didn’t have any good ideas. I had read on Westerfeld’s blog about the concept of a “dialogue spine”, and how you can punch out the bare bones of a story using only two characters talking to each other. Then I remembered the hubby and I tossing around the idea of what it would be like to be a blind vampire. Then I listened to End Transmission by AFI, and I had my character: a blind vampire who is tired of what he is, and wants to die.

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Shades is coming along. Saeli has her Mantle now, and knows she’s a cleric. Trying to decide how to get her to that party without too many extraneous words.

Tags: ideas, Reviews, revisions, vampires

The paranormal romance genre

And why I need to be careful of blithely assigning such a label to ANY of my stories. Seriously.

I decided that if I’m going to write a paranormal romance, I ought to read a few paranormal romances, so that 1. I can see what’s out there and 2. I learn how it’s done (and how it’s done badly). Since I’m completely unfamiliar with the romance genre as a whole, what I’ve been doing is going to the local library and scanning the romance shelves for anything labeled “paranormal”. (Thank goodness most of the lines label the type of romance it is; otherwise, I’d be really lost.) When I spot one, I pull it out and glance over the back cover. If it looks moderately interesting, I grab it. Otherwise, I put it back. Now, I admit this is not the best nor the most efficient method of choosing reading material, but it does give me a broad spectrum of choice. So far, I’ve checked out about ten books, started five, and finished…two. Although I think I may actually finish the one I’m currently on, so that will make three.

Let me be clear. I’ve never liked the romance genre as a whole. If the book is not so erotic that I’d be embarrassed to be in the same room with it, it’s so sweet and romantic that my teeth start aching. Flawless heroines and perfect heartthrobs turn me off a story…well, anything that throbs turns me off, really. *clears throat* Also, over the years I’ve realized that I’m not a huge fan of happy endings. Total happy endings, that is, where everything is tied up so nice and neat that the story might as well have not happened at all. Or where the main character completely reverses all the adjectives trailing after them: poor, ugly, inhibited, etc. and lives happily ever after. Ouch. Pass the Orijel, please, the sweetness is killing me.

I recognize that not all romance is that bad. (As I intend to write a couple of novels that fall under that label, it is probably best that I develop at least a passing tolerance for the genre). Undoubtably, there are gems scattered amidst the crap. Unfortunately for me, I’m still in the process of picking through the crap. Here’s what I’ve found so far:

The Gardella Vampire Chronicles: by Colleen Gleason

There are four of these (at least…if she’s released another one, I don’t know about it yet). The library didn’t have the first one, so I began at the second. Strike One: the books in the series are not numbered, so if you don’t know anything about the story, you don’t have a clue which book falls where in the series. I checked out the three that the library had, and was able to piece together the order in which they should be read by making inferences from the back cover blurbs. (In one book, the heroine goes to Rome and one of the heroes is missing. In another book, she is in Rome, and the missing hero has turned up. In another, she is back from Rome, and both heroes are now present and accounted for. Inference.) Turns out, the library didn’t have Book 1, so I started at (what I assumed to be) 2. On a positive note, there is so much backtracking and referencing in each book that it’s not necessary to have read the previous books to understand what is going on in the current story.

General thoughts: On the whole, these really weren’t all that badly done. I got most of the way through books 2 and 3, and finished 4. The fourth was the most interesting, IMO…the other two didn’t hold my interest quite as well. The vampires were traditionally depicted (undead, stake through the heart kills, sunlight kills, holy water burns, damned souls, fangs, etc.). The series was a lot like Buffy the Vampire Slayer set in Victorian London, which means the heroine does a lot of carrying stakes in her garters and bodice, hiding them in her hair, and dealing with the hassle of skirts. There are a lot of vampire slaying scenes, and the action was done well.

Relationships in the book: The heroine actually has two love interests, at least from the outset of book 2. (Apparently in book 1, she had an admirer and eventually a husband that knew nothing of her vampire slaying activities, but then he got turned into a vampire and she had to slay him. I haven’t actually read the first book…that’s all backstory gathered from the books I did read.) One of Victoria’s admirers makes no secret of his affection, and keeps trying to coax her into his bed. (Happily, she usually refuses, but then we inevitably have to hear about how tempted she is, and how sexy he is, for the next few paragraphs). The other guy refuses to admit to himself that he’s in love with her, and is a much darker character in general. I actually like him better, and I think Victoria ends up choosing him in the end.

Gleason’s sex scenes are a lot more erotic than I’d be comfortable writing, but of all the paranormal romance titles I’ve read so far, they are the most well written. (That may not be saying much). They advance the plot. Body part descriptions are kept to a minimum. They actually have somewhat of a dramatic arc. My chief complaint is that the author is overfond of the word “slick”. Tongues are slick. Sweat is slick. Other things are slick, most of which I don’t care to describe here. “Slick”, to me, is not a romantic or even a sensual term. It’s just…gross. It throws me out of the scene, usually with an “eww”.

Changling: by Yasmine Galenorn

Yet another one where the library only had the second book in a series. Although from the back cover, it’s not entirely clear that it’s a series…and again, it’s not necessary to have read the first book to understand this one.

General thoughts: I liked this one for what it was. The worldbuilding aspect was interesting, thankfully, because a lot of the story was devoted to explaining how the world worked. Sometimes this got annoyingly obvious; characters did a lot of sitting around explaining to each other things that you KNOW they already know. The three sisters were well characterized, if a little too much at times. I could tell that the author was fond of them. There were some great one-liners.

Relationships in the book: Eh. The author functions on the “fact” that faeries are not monogamous beings, and therefore the sisters, being half-fae, are going to have lots of love interests. Well, okay, but when characters act a certain way just because “it’s in their genes/blood”, it comes across as unconvincing. The middle sister, who is the point-of-view character in this one, has a human boyfriend: Chase, but she becomes very attracted to the hot Were-puma, Zach, during the course of the book. This causes her no end of guilt, but apparently not enough to prevent her from having sex with the guy at the end. And then, to top off the unconvincingness, she tells Zach that he’s great and all, but she’s really in love with her human boyfriend. While she and Zach are having sex, mind. Oh, but Were-puma is okay with that, he understands, he can deal with a one-time romp. I was doing a whole lot of WTF’s at this point.

The Warlord’s Daughter: by Susan Grant

I’m not going to be nice here. I only got a few chapters into this one before putting it down in disgust. The heroine is the classic sheltered innocent, her perfect beauty marred only by her glasses and her tendency to be clumsy. It’s like the author knew she had to give this girl some imperfection, and chose the most superficial things she could think of. The hero is the classic hot, muscly bad boy who got kicked around by his sadistic father growing up. Now he’s all grown up, and people think he’s bad, but he’s really the good guy. (Seriously, the guy even goes on for several paragraphs about why he works out all the time. Sure, dude. Why don’t you save the psychological melodrama and just flex those muscles for the camera?).

The hero and heroine encounter each other and there’s that instant connection. “Oh, look, there’s someone who understands my pain! *swoon*” I got as far as the guy deciding that he’s going to find and marry this girl. It was like, there was never any doubt that the two of them were going to get together in the end, so why did it take them an entire book to do it? Ugh. I just don’t like stories like this. They are far too predictable. Any tension or delay in the relationship generated by the story is annoying, not intriguing, because you know they’re gonna end up romping in the sheets in the last chapter. I even checked to make sure.

Into the Shadow: by Christina Dodd

I’m only about four chapters into this one, and I’m seriously considering not going any further. There’s a long prologue where you are introduced to a slightly disturbed and disturbing hero character who tends to scare the crap out of everyone he meets. Then, in chapter 1, you have a long, explicit, and completely unnecessary sex scene between a heroine you met two paragraphs ago, and a guy you assume is the scary hero guy you met in the last chapter. Also, there are lots of body parts, including one penis (which I hear is a no-no), and some of those parts are doing things that I really don’t think real parts do. Seriously. The sex serves no purpose. The heroine doesn’t even know this guy…he’s just some random person that comes into her tent at night to have sex. I mean really, do you really expect me to have any respect for this woman? And then you find out that the guy really wants the girl to leave the area, which immediately makes me wonder why he’s fucking her every night.

Not a good start. I’m not even sure if I care about the story at this point.

Industrial Magic: by Kelley Armstrong

I’m about half way through this one, and so far, I think it’s the best one I’ve read. I’d honestly label this as more of an urban fantasy than a paranormal romance. The characters are believable, the world is interesting but not over-explained as it is in Changling, and the story itself is interesting. Sex is minimal and completely off-screen, and the two main characters are already in a committed relationship. Again, this is the second book in a series, and I may actually go back and read the first one.

When I’ve read more, I’ll do more reviews.

Tags: books, Reviews