There is no surprising plot in a romance novel. That is both their sin and secret.
A romance novel offers the comfort of fantasy where love and life ends well.
So the success of a romance novel lies in its twists in plot, in the dialogue, in character development, in its writing.
What it cannot be is boring and simplistic in its handling of the plot.
I have read 50 pages of Kat Martin‘s re-released book DEEP BLUE (2005) and I cannot read another page.
It is agony.
I am going to get my $7.99 back. Plus tax.
Kat Martin has written good books. This is not one of them.
As an avid reader of romance novels, nothing tolls the death of a book faster than heated glances, a random emergency which sends the heroine to the Caribbean to hook up with an ex-seal treasure seeker who is attached to an archeologist?!
If you dabble in implausibility, the characters better sing off the page. But Martin’s Hope Sinclair is a heroine who is poorly developed and is a loser. She is paperboard thin.
Hope is a reporter. Her home is ransacked and it is her editor that thinks of the reason why: a story that she is working on. Ta-da!
Her reaction to her home in shambles — or being pulled from a hot story — creates an equally vapid response. This investigative reporter on the brink of a major corruption story has no instincts, no nose for the story and blissfully goes off to a happy piece in the Caribbean.
The journalist I know would sell their Granny to stay on the scent of a truly hot scoop. I remember going on errands with my husband — a former reporter — who would follow the lights and sirens of any fire or police who crossed our path. Reporters have a calling, which makes them like crazy rabid dogs (but in a good way).
That is why Hope Sinclair is a wash-out. And if you can’t love the heroine, there is nothing else to attach to and the story is lost.
Kat Martin knows how to write a good book, and I own about five of her novels which are good, but she did not do so with the DEEP BLUE.
Verdict: The book deserves to be returned.
Translation by Guy: I devour romance novels, and know all about them, and this one sucks like Electrolux. Give to me my monies back. Kthxbai!
As is my custom, and habit, and my Bobby Brown prerogative, I’m going to go with the first page — as printed.
You know, printed with ink at these places we used to call “stores of books,” where you handed the nice folks who live there paper decorated with dead presidents and they let you walk out with ALL KINDS OF YUMMY WORDS.
So if you read the first page of this thing on a Kindle or iPad or Atari 2600, your page 1 will doubtless look different and such. Please give my regards to the Complaint Department.
After a line edit of Page 1, we’ll talk about our general literary impressions — about how metaphors are like similes, only different; about how my hatred of semi-colons runs deeper than my loathing of A-Rod; and how somebody wrote a mainstream and incredibly successful novel about sexy nonsense without putting any sort of sexy nonsense whatsoever on page 1.
Does the title and cover matter? Nah. Only if you want to sell 40 bazillion books.
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY
I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror.(This may be a world record. Bam, in the first sentence, she breaks a cardinal rule of fiction writing: don’t tell readers what the hero or heroine looks like by having them stare into a mirror, gaze upon their reflection in a pond or, I don’t know, whip out their driver’s license and say, “Huh, five-foot-ten, a hundred and twenty pounds, red hair, green eyes and a few freckles. Howbout that?” Ugh. This is not exactly “Call me Ishmael.”) Damn my hair – it just won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal.(Unless the heroine’s hair is crucial to the plot — unless she starts out with unruly hair in Act 1, switches to a bob in Act 2 and shows how much she’s grown and changed by rocking a purple Mohawk in Act 3, the hair, it is Boring, and a Distraction. Also, nobody refers to friends and such by their full name. If she’s your bestie, you say “Katherine.”) I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. (Enough already with the hair. Seriously. The only two words with any kind of real conflict and potential are “final exams,” and unless she flunks those, and therefore gets kicked out of university and has to live under a bridge in a cardboard box, it does not matter for the story.)Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. (More about the hair? MORE? Not necessary, not interesting and not entertaining, unless her hair is secretly a sentient being, organizing a plot to take over the world, one follicle at a time. I’m guessing Bruce Willis, being immune from such attacks, will get recruited to foil this plot in DIE HARD 17: THE HAIR DYES HARDEST.) I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. (Back to the staring-at-the-mirror trick, which has to go. Find another way to describe the heroine and make the reader care about what the heroine looks like in the first place. I don’t know, a conflict, a situation, a hook.) My only option is to restrain my wayward hair in a ponytail and hope that I look semi-presentable.(Now we’re beating the Dead Hair Horse on its way to the glue factory.)
Kate is my roommate, and she has chosen today of all days to succumb to the flu. Therefore, she cannot attend the interview she’d arranged to do, with some mega-industrialist tycoon I’ve never heard of, for the student newspaper.(Awkward. First reference is Katherine Kavanaugh and now she’s Kate — just call her Kate both times. Also, how many student newspapers score interviews with “mega-industrial tycoons” … who you’ve never heard of? If they’re really mega, then you have heard of them. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and so forth. If they you haven’t heard of them, they aren’t mega at all. Edited text follows in red.)Kate is my roommate and she’s chosen today, of all days, to succumb to the flu. That means I’m stuck interviewing some industrial tycoon for the student newspaper.So I have been volunteered. (Redundant.) I have final exams to cram for, (already said that) one essay to finish, and I’m supposed to be working this afternoon, but no – today I have to drive a hundred and sixty-five miles to downtown Seattle in order to meet the enigmatic CEO of Grey Enterprises Holdings Inc. As an exceptional entrepreneur and major benefactor of our university, his time is extraordinarily precious – much more precious than mine – but he has granted Kate an interview. A real coup, she tells me.
Damn her extracurricular activities. (The last sentences were brought to you by the letter E: enigmatic, exceptional entrepreneur, extraordinarily, extracurricular. There are other modifiers that start with the letter E: extraneous, excruciating and ejector seat. I am looking for the handle, because it’s time to pull it.)
Kate is huddled on the couch in the living room.
“Ana, I’m sorry. It took me nine months to get this interview. It will take another six to reschedule, and we’ll both have graduated by then. As the editor, I can’t blow this off. Please,” Kate begs me in her rasping, sore-throat (compound modifier) voice. How does she do it? Even ill
(end of page 1)
Notes from the Red Pen of Doom
Are you kidding me? ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
I thought THE FOUNTAINHEAD was a bad Page 1 (here’s my post about that debacle), but Ayn Rand is flipping Shakespeare compared to this first bit.
This page 1 consumed barrels and barrels of red ink, even though all my red ink is digital and such. Had to change my way of editing to handle this thing, because usually, anything edited gets turned red, but if I did that to this first page, 90 percent of this thing would be red, and it would be all Confusing and such.
So this is a mess, and not a hot mess.
God bless anybody who sells a ton of books or movie tickets. I adore books and movies, and the more people read books, and see good movies, the better. HOWEVER: the first page of a book is a lot like the trailer for a movie. You start out with your best stuff, and it’s a rock-solid guarantee that the writing doesn’t get magically better ten pages or 100 pages later.
The first page, and the first chapter, get polished and polished until they are a shiny diamond made of words.
Maybe you could argue this book is the one exception to that rule.
So why did something like this sell like hotcakes?
I believe, deep in my soul, that packaging matters more than the product. Not because that’s how things should be. It’s just reality.
The title of a book — or a movie, or a TV show — can save your bacon or kill you dead.
What else can sell or sink you? Images. That’s why the cover of a book or punk rock album is so important. It’s why we remember the movie poster for JAWS. When we’re thinking about what to spend our monies on in Barnes and Noble, and what to see on Friday night at those giant buildings where popcorn costs $9 a bucket, covers and posters and titles are where we start. Images are more visceral and powerful than words. I am not making that up. THERE IS SCIENCE AND SUCH.
If you gave this a more typical title for the genre, and a more typical book cover, you’d probably end up with a title like A BUSINESS AFFAIR and some kind of Ryan Gosling clone wearing a suit on the cover with the heroine nearby, messing with her pony tail while she wears the highest of high heels and a business suit with a skirt that is just this side of immodest. Or the cover would feature a blindfold and a pair of handcuffs.
If you really want to go traditional, it’d be Fabio wearing a suit while he holds a blindfold and a pair of handcuffs.
And if you put that different title and cover on this very same book, it wouldn’t sell 40 bazillion copies and get turned into a movie. It’d be just another book in a genre that isn’t exactly new and wanting for titles.
I bet you anything the unusual title and cover is why FIFTY SHADES OF GREY went viral and became a smashing success.
True story: guess what the author of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO wanted as a title for his novel? Go ahead. Guess.
Originally, Stieg the Larsson wanted to title his novel MEN WHO HATE WOMEN. Think would sell more than five copies to his mom?
I am not making this up: Larsson wanted to go with MEN WHO HATE WOMEN.
Raise your hand if you think that title would have set the world on fire and led to hit movies starring James Bond.
The title and cover — the packaging — are 90 percent of the battle. The packaging matters more than the product.
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY is an interesting, literary title. The cover photo of a grey tie is also atypical of the genre and really stands out. The combined effect gives the book a literary veneer.
Some people might feel embarrassed getting on Flight 435 to Frankfurt and pulling out a paperback titled A BUSINESS AFFAIR with Fabio holding a blindfold and handcuffs on the cover. And you can bet the male audience for such books is hard to find with a microscope.
Give the same novel a different title and cover — and the gloss of lit-rah-sure — and that makes it OK for people to read what they might otherwise never get caught dead: romance and erotica.
This reminds me of the early Eric van Lustbader novels, like THE NINJA, which were hot sellers because they slipped in page after page of shockingly naughty scenes to readers — mostly men — who simply expected ninjas fighting with swords and such. It was like a James Bond movie where they didn’t fade out when 007 kissed the girl, but switched from a nice safe PG movie to something unsafe and dangerous and wild. I can tell you 14-year-old boys around the globe had their minds blown. You can print this kind of stuff without getting arrested? I can buy it at the store and they don’t ask for my driver’s license, because I don’t have one yet? NO WAY.
Verdict
Back to FIFTY SHADES OF GREY and why the first page, aside from the awkward messiness of it all, is just not interesting. You could hire a team of authors to rewrite the same plot points and they would throw up their hands and say forget it, we can’t do magical things with wet unruly hair and cramming for finals week, because there’s nothing truly at stake here.
It is beyond boring to read about some college student kvetch about her hair and her schedule. Try having a job and a kid and a commute, then talk to me.
There’s no conflict, no reason to care about the heroine. Is she fighting for any cause greater than herself? Are there public stakes at all? No. Private stakes that we can divine? No. Maybe if her boyfriend just dumped her, hey, now we have somewhere to go. A catalyst, a hook. But we’ve got nothing to work with here.
The heroine seems shallow and self-centered. I have no feelings about her, Kate or this Mr. Grey, because there’s nothing on the page to make me care, and no foreshadowing that anything more exciting or interesting might happen on page 2, page 22 or page 222.
I don’t mind entertaining trash, no matter the genre. In fact, better that a book or movie embraces its entertaining trashiness than beats me on the head with the Cudgel of Prententious Nonsense, which is never any fun at all.
HOWEVER: Entertaining trash better be GOOD trash, and not forget the entertaining part. This page 1 is an epic fail on both counts.
When was the last time you went to a movie and wanted to stay behind and watch it again?
What was the last political stump speech that made you laugh and cry and want to go knock on the doors of your neighbors to make sure they voted? When was the last time you read a newspaper story that built up to an amazing climax instead of petering off into boring little details?
More people are writing more things than ever before. Movies and TV shows, blogs and newspapers, hardcover novels and digital e-books. Yet most of it is forgettable. Trite. Boring.
It used to be, blockbuster movies were the ones that had amazing special effects.
STAR WARS showed us things we’d never seen before, like lightsabers. Who doesn’t want a lightsaber?
JURASSIC PARK gave us dinosaurs that weren’t claymation or puppets. Today, though, any old TV show can afford to have great special effects.
And with the written word — novels, speeches, non-fiction and poetry — every author has the same unlimited special effects budget. You can do whatever you want for free. So what’s the problem?
In college, wise men with Einstein hair stood in front of lecture halls to tell you literature isn’t really about verbs, adverbs and dangling modifiers. No. Beneath the surface, lit-rah-sure asks a fundamental question that some believe is just as important as religion or science.
That question is this: “What’s worth living for, and what’s worth dying for?”
Nine words.
But I’m not banging in the keyboard late at night, powered by industrial amounts of coffee, to channel that old man with Einstein hair and a corduroy jacket with patches on the elbows. No. I not some ancient professor, and my closet contains no corduroy whatsoever.
I’m here to talk about those nine words, and why it leads me to one inescapable conclusion: that I do, in fact, know how to spell “inescapable.” Bit surprising. Thought I’d muff that one.
Also: every man must read a romance — and every woman must read a thriller.
Why every man MUST read a romance
Not to pick up girls. And not, if you’re married, to improve your odds of staying out of the dog house.
Every man should read a romance — and think about these things — for an entirely different reason. It’s the first part of the question, the “What’s worth living for?” part.
See, I could walk into (1) a cubicle farm, (2) factory break room or (3) sports bar and show any random 10 single men a photo from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, and if I asked them — drunk or not — whether they would marry this swimsuit model. I’m only half kidding when I say nine of those men would shrug and say, “Sure.”
Because we men are stupid that way.
HOWEVER: We need to get over it, and start thinking about these sorts of things. And yes, a damn fine first step would be to read a romance novel.
Watching a rom-com starring Matthew McConaughey, who’s last name is impossible to spell, does not count. Neither does firing up Netflix for SEX AND THE CITY 3: SARA JESSICA PARKER SHOPS FOR PURSES IN PARIS.
You must read an actual romance novel, with words and sentences, though I’ll leave it up to you whether it involves Men in Kilts.
I’ve written a few things about romances. (See below.) And my thinking has evolved quite a bit, not just because I’ve met 5,092 romance authors and talked to them, using this thing I like to call the Series of Tubes.
On the surface, sure, romances are about relationships. How two people meet, how they fall in love, all that.
Beneath that, romances are often about a massively important choice: who do you commit to, and marry? Classics like PRIDE AND PREJUDICE feature a lot of talking, thinking and scheming about who should get matched up with who.
At first I thought this was a lot of gossipy gossip nonsense. But it’s not. These choices are hard, and they mirrored real life. Back then, who a woman married meant everything. It wasn’t like folks had a lot of career choices and birth control options. Could this man be a good provider for oh, eight or ten kids? You’re damn straight if I were a woman back then, I’d want to marry a handsome prince. Tell me that story. Let me live that dream, not the one where I die in squalor giving birth to child No. 9.
High stakes back then. High stakes now, and a big deal for everyone involved. Who should you marry and have kids with? Oh, that’s massive, especially before the invention of The Pill and no-fault divorce. Can’t think of a bigger decision, and it’s definitely worth thinking about, if not agonizing over at least as much as the average man obsesses about his fantasy football picks.
Most men I know are generally horrible at this. We tend not to talk about love and relationships with our buddies, our sisters, with anybody. A lot of us tend have the attitude, “What happens, happens.” Then two years later, they’re married to somebody they’ve either (a) dated since ninth grade or (b) met last Thursday and flew down to Vegas to get hitched.
Four years later, they have two kids. Seven years later, they’re divorced. Not cool. Not smart. I know a lot of good, educated people who made bad choices and wound up like this. I feel lucky. Also, my beautiful and brilliant wife devours novels like candy, including not just lit-rah-sure but romances of all shapes and sizes. So I know enough to be dangerous.
I know that there are romances which really dive into the struggle to choose between two different partners. I know that it’s cheating to make one a villain and one a hero. Both choices must have merits and demerits. Thought I hate the stupid movies and books, TWILIGHT highlights this choice: the sparkly vampire or the hot werewolf? THE HUNGER GAMES — great book, great movie — also features this tough choice, and does it well. BRIDGET JONES’S DIARY makes you think twice about the handsome bad boy and take a second look at Colin the Firth and his ugly Christmas sweater.
There’s a long list of stories diving into that decision. They’re worth reading, and watching, and talking about.
Because in the end, a lot of people figure out “What’s worth living for?” isn’t about money, fame or spending more time at the office. Life’s about your wife and kids and family.
Pick wisely, men. Get all the help you can get, and not from your buddies, because they’ll say things like “Dude, the choice is obvious: Kelly the waitress with the sweet Mustang, unless you want to cruise around town in Sarah the lawyer and her hand-me-down minivan.”
Why every woman MUST read a thriller
Thrillers answer the second half of the question: “What’s worth dying for?”
If you answer the call to serve — as a firefighter or homicide detective, a Marine or a smokejumper, a coal miner or logger — there’s a chance you’ll die on the job. And if somebody breaks into your home and threatens your wife and kids with a gun, it’s your job to take a bullet and take the guy out while you’re family gets away safe.
This is how men think, and it is something that we talk about. It’s also why we tend to be obsessed with violent sports like football, MMA and hockey. (WWE, however, is fake and lame.) These things are practice for real life.
The question is, how often do you roll the dice? You can’t run around pretending to be Superman, spending your nights cruising dark alleys looking for muggers and rapists to duel to the death. (That’s because Superman is kind of a dipstick, invincible and annoying. Batman, now, is the man. You can go ahead and pretend to be him.) Yet you can’t be a complete nancypants, either, running from every fight and challenge.
When do you decide something is worth dying for?
Thrillers answer that question in a visceral way, with the stakes raised as high as they go.
Should you answer the call of your country and fight a war, taking the lives of other young men with families of their own, and possibly coming home in a body bag yourself — even if you suspect the war is wrong?
If a serial killer kidnaps your daughter, do you put your faith in the cops — or turn your CIA training loose and go after the whackjob yourself, despite the risk? Liam Neeson votes for hunting down whackjob kidnappers.
Should your family suffer under the oppressive fist of a planet-destroying dictatorship, or will you risk your freedom and life by joining the rebellion, which probably has the same chance of victory as the Mariner’s have of winning the World Series?
When the only hope to save the world is to get on an armored space shuttle with Bruce Willis, fly to an asteroid, drill deep inside and set off a nuclear explosion, will you go on that suicide mission, knowing that you probably won’t come back, or will you stay behind to enjoy one last week of picnics and bottles of Riesling with Liv Tyler before the world goes kaboom?
Just as betrayal is a common theme in romances, it’s also a huge element to thrillers. Because there’s nothing worse than doing dangerous, deadly work for a boss who is secretly an evil jerk. Not only did you get duped, but you did dangerous things, maybe violent and murderous things, for the wrong reason. That tends to piss men off.
Even though it’s a cliche, there’s truth to the typical action movie nonsense about a lone wolf detective / Green Beret / assassin who’s weary and retired from the game. It takes a lot to convince him that he should return to work, because he doesn’t fully believe that all the suffering and sacrifice is worth it. He’s seen too many good people die already.
Often, the story proves him right. He’s a cog in the machine, a machine that will use him up and throw him away. Is that worth dying for? Probably not.
Action movies and thrillers are about the need to make that choice decisively and wisely. There’s no “I’ll go halfway with you on this assault the Death Star thing, OK?” You only die once, except in Bond movies, thought I’m not exactly sure why Bond gets to die twice. I do know this: Bond has terrible taste in women. Are they beautiful? Sure. But after they sleep with him, they all turn up dead. EVERY TIME.
Not your usual sitcom nonsense
All this is why romances and thrillers can be epic. The stakes are high. The emotions are visceral. It’s not the usual nonsense you see in a sitcom every night, where Bart Simpson shoplifts for the first time and in 30 minutes learns the important life lesson that stealing is wrong, wrong, wrong. Roll credits.
Harry Potter is really one big long thriller about whether Harry will get Voldemort — a serial killer who happens to be a wizard — before Voldemort gets him.
STAR WARS takes an unexpected twist, with a father sacrificing his life to save his son and free a galaxy from oppression. I expected the new Death Star to simply get blown up in an even fancier explosion than the first time. I did not expect Darth the Vader to toss Emperor Wrinkly Face of the Lightning Fingers down an endless shaft. A father’s love turned out to be the biggest deal in the end. Interesting.
There’s a reason why many thrillers start out with a family being slaughtered and the lone survivor setting out to avenge them. You’re taking away what’s worth living for, and that leads the hero answer the question of what’s worth dying for.Your wife and kids mattered. You can’t let that slide. And you won’t.
Thrillers aren’t as compelling when the hero is aloof and the mission has nothing to do with his emotions, family or country, when it’s just a job where the hero is busy looking cool while wearing sunglasses and shooting guns. There’s nothing behind it. It’s flat and empty.
Everybody wants something worth living for, to dedicate themselves wholly and completely to something, because otherwise, what’s the point of waking up, fighting traffic and slaving away in a cubicle for thirty years until you die, right? People get that. It’s why people become obsessive fans of the Green Bay Packers or STAR TREK, why people dedicate themselves to politics, religion or a cause. Some folks divert this urge into collecting every Beanie Baby every made. Don’t.
Great stories — in movies and novels — speak to this need to matter, to belong, to put a stamp on life, to give your all, even if it’s bonkers.
And truly great stories take us deeper.
Harry the Hedonist will argue that lovers leave you, husbands divorce you, kids randomly get leukemia, and in the end, we all die, so pass the wine and live it up.
Isaac the Idealist says you should dedicate yourself to great ideas and institutions, which are the only things that last.
Ned the Nihilist trumps THAT with “Nothing truly lasts. Institutions don’t care about you and even a killer asteroid, nuclear war or homicidal robots from the future fail to destroy us, the sun will eventually turn into a red giant, doing a burnt-toast number on earth before ruining THE ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD by going supernova.”
Do I have video? Yes I do.
But if nothing truly lasts, there’s no point in sacrificing friends and family for an institution or an idea. Be good to others. Do the right thing. Love with all your heart. Or use two cows on a silly blog to explain all of politics and philosophy. (The world explained by TWO COWS)
These questions are tough, interesting and complicated — and every tough, complicated problem has an easy, simple to understand wrong answer.
You can get into these kinds of questions with romances and thrillers in a way that Philosophy 402 classes simply can’t touch. Because if you put human faces and names behind the ideas, and real emotions, the neat logic about the deontological notion of equal treatment versus the greatest good for the greatest number — all that abstraction turns to dust.
Also, take it from Plato and every dictatorship on the planet: literature and stories are the most powerful, and dangerous, way to talk about ideas. That’s why evil governments burn books and censor movies.
So men, read a romance.
Pick something that won an award, or one with Fabio on the cover. But grab one. And don’t buy one at Barnes and Noble, because I know you won’t do it. Ask your women friends for their favorites, read the back covers and pick your favorite of the bunch. Also, hear me know and believe me later in the week: romance novels are more interesting, and useful, than reading Cosmo when you’re waiting in the doctor’s office, despite all the tempting headlines. (Secret truth: every edition of Cosmo is actually the same. They swap out the covers, change the headlines of the stories and NOBODY NOTICES.)
Women, find a thriller. Hopefully one by Barry Eisler or Lee Child, who should be sending me kickbacks.
Then start a literary knife fight in the comment section about Men in Kilts versus Haunted Homicide Detectives Who Are Allergic to Razors.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
A classic from my old blog. Back by popular demand. Enjoy.
I vowed to read a romance novel, you made suggestions and debated the worthiness of various novels in the comments. And then you voted.
So I journeyed in the Epic Black Car to a local store of books, where you hand them pieces of paper decorated with dead presidents and walk out the door with 3.6 metric tons of books.
Jonathan Franzen (literary smugness) and The Spork vs. Janet Evanovich and the Swedish king of mysteries.
My favorite bookstore of all time is Powell’s in Portland, as it is giant and independent and impressively badass. However: Portland is far, far away from my secret lair. I went to Borders, which has apparently decided to lump all books into four categories: Mystery/Thriller, Romance, Sci-Fi/Fantasy and Literature, which means “everything else.”
I couldn’t find the winning book in Romance, but this book did not exactly come out last month, so maybe they didn’t have it in stock. No. They did.
It wasn’t in Mystery/Thriller or in Sci-Fi/Fantasy, though apparently people are writing a helluva lot of novels about Star Wars and video games that really should not have a bunch of novels written about them. Halo novels – seriously? No.
The winning novel was in Literature, near stuff by Hemingway and Heller.
Hemingway still sells books.
The cover was surprisingly normal and boring and literary. You wouldn’t know it was a romance novel. It could be anything.
I expected something typical of the genre, and I wanted it to be crazy and outrageous. I wanted Fabio with a sword and a beautiful woman.
The back cover copy puffed up the author for a bit, then set up the story: combat nurse from WWII is on a second honeymoon with her husband when she touches a mysterious boulder and GOES BACK IN TIME.
What I expected to find.
Then she has to choose: try to get back to hubby in 1940-whatever or stick around 1740-whatever with Captain Kilt in the middle of a war and spies and treachery.
This isn’t a bad setup. I raise my glass of bourbon to war and spies and treachery. Go go go.
Chapter One starts off foreshadowing things in the first sentence, saying this little village is the last place you’d expect for a disappearance.
The housekeeper at the inn is nosy and tends to sweep the floor outside the room where the heroine (Claire) and her husband, Frank, are staying.
Frank is an archeologist who’s traveled all around the world who’s now starting a job at Oxford. He is Indiana Jones: smart, but adventerous. OK. Cool.
The cover of the winning book.
The heroine is a combat nurse who saw a lot of action. OK. Also cool. She does tend to talk about her curly hair a bit much. I could do without that.
The rest of this chapter, they’re hiking around the countryside and meeting villagers, who do speak in dialect. “Kenna have a whiskey, lass?” Think of a village full of Scotties but no Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock and you’ll get the picture.
If I didn’t know from the back cover that the disappearing involved the heroine touching a rock and doing Back to the Future without the use of a DeLorean, then this could easily be the first chapter of a cozy, and it could be that the vicar is the one who does the disappearing — only the heroine finds him later behind the pub, strangled by his own bagpipes, and then Miss Marples shows up.
But this is not a cozy.
The heroine's hubby is Indiana Jones with a British accent.
There’s a lot of foreshadowing about Frank’s ancestors being important back in the day, and of the circle of stones that are sort of like stone henge, but not, being important. She visits them once, then goes back and witnesses a mysterious dance by villagers there.
Verdict so far: It’s fine. A bit talky and slow — this novel clocks in at 830 pages — but the writing does the job and there’s plenty of setups for the payoffs to come.
I have not thrown the novel across the room. This is always a good sign.
The author raises questions that haven’t been answered yet, and there’s enough layering and interweaving already to lay the foundation for a lot of stuff. Let’s see if she can pull it off.
The third time she hikes to the stones, she touches one. Bam. Back to the Future.
The heroine, Claire, is a combat nurse like Juliette Binoche in THE ENGLISH PATIENT, which is a beautifully shot movie with great actors telling a horribly depressing story.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
What is the most amazing, over-the-top Fabio romance cover OF ALL TIME?
We are talking about Fabio here, so there is an embarrassment of riches.
How can we pick one masterpiece when everything the Italian Master of Romance has done with the cover of novels is so good?
I wanted to do crazy sci-fi and fantasy covers first. But they are surprisingly monotonous, with the difference between (1) a great cover and (2) a campy cover and (3) an insane cover being a matter of taste, really, and of what cup size you want your robot / elven princess / barbarian warrior woman to have, and whether she should be a loyal sidekick, at the feet of the male hero, or the heroine who’s busy cutting off the heads of trolls or whatever.
The other options for sci-fi and fantasy covers include:
Old Bearded Man in a Robe with a Magical Staff,
Young Man Playing with His Magical Sword, or
Spaceships and exploding stars (dinosaurs are optional).
Frankly, they kind of bored me, though I will search harder for amazing sci-fi and fantasy covers, especially of spaceship riding dinosaurs.
Alexandra popped a steaming potsticker into her mouth and bit down. The crisp bottom skin gave way and thick, salty pork stuffing spilled (“thick, salty pork stuffing spilled” is a whole lotta modifiers and alliteration) salty pork spilled onto her tongue. She waited for the spicy heat of the sriracha to start burning up the back of her throat, but it didn’t come. Chewing, chewing, chewing, and no heat. Without a thought, she plucked the skillet from the heat and dumped the rest of the plump, white puffs into the trash. with a sliding sizzle (More alliteration brought to you by the letter S, which is too much for the same paragraph)
Shesnapped (snapped is bitchy) turned around, coming face to face with the new prep cook, Marcus, who waited on her response. His brown eyes round (I believe most eyes are round instead of square ), he stared back in unblinking silence. Lexi (Hold up: is this a new character, or the same one? Let’s pick a first name for the heroine and stick with it) slammed the skillet onto a cold burner and sucked in what she hoped was a menacing breath.
“How much hot sauce did you use? Precisely.”
Marcus stammered,. He picked up the wrinkled,hand-scribbled (Do people scribble with toes or put notecards in their laser printer?) notecard, and skimmed it. (Three commas in that little sentence is maybe three commas too many. Two short sentence with no commas is better.) “I followed the recipe.”
“You eyeballed it.” She drew closer to him, suddenly aware of how much she towered over his willowy frame. (Wait, is this a little kid, a student? I did not sign up to read LOLITA meets HELL’S KITCHEN) A quick twinge (Of what, chest pain?) almost made her back off, but Fiona’s words rang in her ears: hHow can you teach these kids if you don’t come down on them? How like Fiona (Who is Fiona?) to encourage beating someone into submission. Channel your inner Domme, honey. Easier said than done.
Notes from the Red Pen of Doom
There’s a deep connection between food and sensuality, so even a giant Swede like me can understand where Camryn is going with the whole foodie-romance thing. While Camryn the Rhys is a great writer and a good friend, I will resist the urge to go easy on her. She’s the female version of Batman — she can take it.
It’s well done. Nice mix of action, description and dialogue. Emotions also come through clearly. Camryn can clearly write.
I like the idea of food and romance. Great. And the setup of this heroine — Alexandra or Lexi, whichever name you want to go with — is fine for a romance.
Little things threw me off, especially the kid thing. Do I want to picture a towering teacher being all mean to a scared little student? No. Lexi comes off as a bitch, to be honest. Not sympathetic.
We need to see her save the cat, as Blake Snyder says, before we see her be this snappy and unpleasant.
But forget the little things. Let’s think about the big things for a bit.
Page one is the beginning. How is this character going to change on the page that says THE END?
My wild guess is that she’ll still be tough, if not dominant. That she won’t change that core part of her personality.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe she flips, and becomes submissive in the kitchen and elsewhere after realizing that she put thousands of high school students and ex-lovers in therapy. Maybe she becomes a nun in Tibet after reading a biography of Mother Theresa.
I do know this: whatever genre the story may be, the best stories make characters take long, interesting journeys. Not as tourists snapping photos. As people.
For any romance, the ending is up, right? The man and woman wind up together.
So for a big journey, the hero or heroine should be alone and unloved on page 1.
And if we’re doing a foodie-romance, the end has the hero or heroine eating delicious food with a yummy love affair cooking on the front burner. Let’s think of the biggest possible journey: if the end is her being in control, in love and in touch with all her senses, then Page 1 should start with her being submissive to a fault, out of control and out of touch with her senses.
So: I’d like to see this Lexi change and learn and grow. Is this a flat character that goes on a series of romps, or is there a real journey? Page one is where that journey starts.
What if the person on Page 1 lost their sense of smell and taste in an accident, and had to rediscover cooking and kissing and all of that? Hmm. That would be a big journey, wouldn’t it?
The Verdict: Good writer, good writing. I worry about the head fake toward LOLITA meets HELL’S KITCHEN, and I want to see Alexandra/Lexi/Fiona or whoever actually change and grow from Page 1 to THE END.
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Guy – Photo by Suhyoon Cho
Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that was a finalist for some award.
A classic post from my old blog. For new folks, enjoy.
Let it be known: we men must rethink our natural manly instinct that romance novelists are something to avoid, like SEX AND THE CITY 2, which is indeed worthy of scorn, and woe unto any man whose girlfriend or wife coerced them into wasting two hours of their life to see that stupid thing. No bribe is sufficient.
Published romance novelists are not only talented and funny, but many can write circles around the 6.57 gazillion reporters, writers and novelists I know. Also — and most importantly — they CELEBRATE AND ADORE MEN, which we should encourage.
I have thought about this, and it makes sense. These women are more talented than most folks writing about elves and spaceships, or elves riding spaceships, because there is so much freaking competition with romance novels.
It’s like throwing 10,000 authors into the Thunderdome, tossing in a single chainsaw and refusing to unlock the door until there’s only one woman left. By definition, that woman is going to kick tail. She will be a writing goddess.
And I was wrong to ever believe that romance novelists might be writing 80,000 words about shoes or amazing handbags. They focus on writing about men, though they apparently want us to be as allergic to shirts as Lady Gaga is allergic to pants. They also spend a lot of time writing steamy scenes encouraging women to do natural things with men. This is a Good Thing, and should be encouraged, and celebrated throughout the land, unless we men have been busy taking Stupid Pills.
The trifecta: no shirt, mullet and sword.
Also, they want us to be packing swords, if not guns, and sometimes guns and swords. Any man can learn this from googling “romance novel covers.” IT IS AN EDUCATION.
Do they want us to be office drones, worried about TPS reports? No. Do they want us to talk about our feelings to a shrink and cry when we see a sunset? No.
Women want us to have one of three manly jobs: Viking, pirate or Native American warrior.
Fabio covers two of the three manly jobs that women want us doing. He's missing Native American warrior, but we can forgive him for that, because he has the mandatory sword.
Aside from piracy and swordsmanship, they specifically want us to punch things that need punching and spend our time with a beautiful long-haired woman who happens to be heiress to a billion-dollar fortune but does not know that, because her evil uncle has hidden this fact from her so he and his plastic-surgery obsessed witch of a wife could keep all that money for themselves, and it is our job to dropkick the evil uncle into the next century. If that doesn’t work, hey, all men are required to carry a sharp sword.
Check out Fabio’s covers again. Shirt? Optional. Sword? IT IS REQUIRED.
I have never read romance novels, or even checked the covers until now. Yet we men should secretly pool our resources to fund these female authors, because they are an army of dedicated women doing a $16.5 billion public relations campaign on our manly behalf.
So, romance novelists: I am holding a mug of Belgium beer, and I raise it in your direction.
Keep up the good work. We men may not know it, or admit it, but we owe you a huge favor.
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