Random assortment

[megwrites]

1. I just want to say a big "bless you" to all those authors who put up sample chapters on their sites, and actually start with the first part when they do this. I've come across several authors who want to pull an excerpt from, say, chapter 20 or chapter 10 or some such and I'm like, "THIS DOES NOT HELP ME". The thing is, to understand your book, I need to read it in order. Thus, I need to start from page one. And while chapter 20 may be a page turner, if the first 19 chapters are boring as hell, I'm not going to invest. Which is why I like to start at the beginning. To make sure that your book is giving me a reason to want to read on.

2. I have a really, really evil trouble starting post in my head after seeing some news around the writersphere about a couple of paranormal romance series being discontinued for bad sales according to their authors.

But one in particular really made me want to say some inordinately snarky things. It's not that I relish a fellow writer not meeting with success when they work hard and put their hearts on the line, it's that when said writer pens a book that basically says from front to back, "Sorry, people like YOU aren't good enough to be in this book. People like YOU are too ugly for a Sexy Tiems Paranormal Romance Like This, come back when you're beautiful", I'm not sad to see it leave the shelves. And I feel just a little bit vindicated to know it failed.

The thing is? I'm used to mainstream romance and paranormal romance hating me by exclusion. I'm used to being told I'm not pretty enough because I've got covers and covers and covers of books about skinny heterosexual white chicks staring at me to let me know what is pretty enough. And I've sort of learned to deal and find the hidden gems and live with eternal optimism and not expect too much.

But this book didn't just settle for exclusion, it went right on to face slapping. This one book actually made me leave not just the romance bookshelves (and abandon all the other books I was going to preview and consider buying) but the bookstore. It was during this winter when I was going through a lot of bad mental stuff and there I am, looking for something exciting and fun to read because damn but I needed some relief and *bam*. Hit in the face with the things that have, at times, my made life completely miserable. Things I have to push back against on the daily or cave in to self-harm.

For the moment, I'll table that post because I'm not looking to get into internet drama over it, but one day I may make the post about how writers need to think twice (and thrice) before they decide ignoring big parts of their potential audience is the way to go - because as recent news would seem to bear out, that bigotry isn't working out so well for some people.

3. It being poetry month and me not wanting to post any of my own poems right now, I'll post my favorite Pablo Neruda poem:

Sonnet XI
by Pablo Neruda

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Comments

[holyschist]

Oh no, villains can be sexy but eeeeevil!

Or we talking actual ugliness and beauty of character?

[apis_mellifera]

I was thinking actual ugliness. It just seems to me that if all her good guy characters are pretty, then it just follows that all her bad guy characters are ugly.

I read a book a couple of weeks ago where most of the villains were ugly, lower class, and fat. I was SO ANGRY (the book had some other issues, too).

[megwrites]

Please anti-rec me this book so I can avoid it! It sounds dreadful.

[apis_mellifera]

The Falling Machine, Andrew Mayer (it's out in June). It was badly written and I really don't think it was even edited--there were sentences that MADE NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. And some really strange stylistic choices that were distracting at best.

[holyschist]

Yeah, I don't know--with an author like that, they could go either way, for "Their outer ugliness reflects their inner evil" or "sexy villains!" But it just seems like a ridiculous, offensive, stupid attitude to take to writing.

I read a book a couple of weeks ago where most of the villains were ugly, lower class, and fat.

UGH. I am furious that the Bitter, Evil Cripple is still such a common trope, as well.

[apis_mellifera]

I think it's a really lazy thing to do, too. Writers are getting paid to make stuff up--can't they be more original than that?

[holyschist]

Don't get me started! Apparently my expectation that writers should think about what they write and do their research is ~unreasonable~ because a writer's only job is to write, and thought and research are not part of that. Or something.

[apis_mellifera]

So I probably shouldn't tell that on the VERY SAME PANEL there was another author--who writes SFR--who said, with a completely straight face, that she doesn't do any research because her job is to be an entertainer and she can't be bothered because women who read SF don't care about the science?

[holyschist]

ONLY IF YOU WANT MY HEAD TO EXPLODE WITH RAGE.

(I love "hard" SF in theory, except that most of it has nothing whatsoever to do with science, so "hard" tends to stand in for "meaningless jargon and lack of character development." But argh, argh, I feel SF should so much be the literature of ideas and the nature of what it is to be human, not a bunch of jargon and fluff. This is not incompatible with romance! Also I laugh bitterly at the idea that male SF readers care about the science, given the average level of science in the manly hard SF books.)

[apis_mellifera]

My jaw *literally* dropped when she said it. And there was indignant squeaking.

SF should totally be the literature of ideas and what it means to be human and I think the very best examples of the genre do just that. It's just that those examples are often few and far between. Then again, examples of really awesome romance novels are also few and far between. Sigh.