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Monthly Archives: September 2005

Annoying Article!

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I just read this article in the American Chronicle:

“Our Flirtations with Regencies”, by Sonali T. Sikchi, and I can’t decide whether to be amused or annoyed. No, it’s annoyed.

This thing is full of the most ridiculous broad generalizations about Regency Romances: what could be culled from reading several Barbara Cartlands and assuming the rest are exactly the same.

A few examples:

“…Regencies rarely make even a pretense of incorporating historical events and elements in their stories.”
“The women in the Regency Romance stories are always young girls in their late teens or early twenties.”
“The women gorgeous and unique, sexually innocent and passionate; the men striking and arrogant, sexually experienced and passionate.”
“The stories follow a formula…”

OK, so here are some of my favorite counter-examples, in no particular order:

LOVE’S REWARD, by Jean Ross Ewing (Napoleonic war hero, espionage/intrigue plot)
THE CONTROVERSIAL COUNTESS, by Mary Jo Putney (espionage/intrigue, unconventional heroine)
THE RAKE AND THE REFORMER, by Mary Jo Putney (older heroine who is too tall, with mismatched eyes! alcoholic hero)
THE CAPTAIN’S DILEMMA, by Gail Eastwood (French POW hero)
AN UNLIKELY HERO, by Gail Eastwood (adorable virginal hero)
THE VAMPIRE VISCOUNT, by Karen Harbaugh (paranormal)
KNAVES’ WAGER, by Loretta Chase (unconventional heroine)
SNOWDROPS AND SCANDALBROTH, by Barbara Metzger (another great virginal hero)

In my own September book, LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, the plot revolves around London’s Foundling Hospital (gasp–a real historical institution), the heroine is in her thirties and not a virgin, and the hero is sexually inexperienced. (But he catches on fast.)

But the author of this article seems to be implying we’re a bunch of hacks cranking out endless stories according to a prescribed formula. Grrrr….

Posted in Rant, Reading, Regency, Writing | Tagged | 9 Replies

Critical Opinion

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“Just the omission of Jane Austen’s books alone would make a fairly good library out of a library that hadn’t a book in it.” — Mark Twain

“Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.” —Dorothy Parker’s Book Review of The House at Pooh Corner.

“People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like.” — Abraham Lincoln, in a book review

Reviews. The thought of them can strike terror into an author’s heart. Will the reviewer appreciate the sly wit and clever heroine? Find the hero dreamily attractive and powerful? Or will she point out that if the hero and heroine had only cleared up one little misunderstanding, the book would have been over after fifty pages?

My first book comes out on Tuesday, and it’s already received one review, a complimentary one from Romantic Times. When it reaches the general reading public, chances are good it’ll get some bad reviews, too–after all, I made one huge historical inaccuracy, which will bother some people, my heroine can be perceived as snotty, and the plot, well, is not so layered.

I welcome any and all reviews. Prior to writing fiction, I wrote music reviews for 15 years for two different music industry publications. I fielded many, many calls from musicians and record labels who wanted reviews, people who disagreed with my, and my staff’s, reviews, and people who thought our magazine had been accurate in its subjective opinion. So for me to dismiss any bad review out of hand would be hypocritical.

What I do not like, at all, are sycophantic reviews. You do romance authors and their potential audience no favors when you gush about a book, or an author, with no degrees of assessment. For example, I love Anne Stuart. Do I think Shadow Dance is as good as To Love A Dark Lord? No. That doesn’t mean I’m not supportive of her work, don’t love her as an author, won’t buy her books in the future. A few posts ago, Elena posted about Laura Kinsale, an author who inspires fanatical devotion from her fans. If a fan of her dark books didn’t like her light books as much, would that mean she was somehow disloyal? No.

And yet, it is a peculiarly romance genre thing to insist on blind devotion. The New York Times Book Review usually features reviews written by one author about another’s work. Is that author accused of disloyalty if they don’t like the book? I should hope not. It’s an opinion, a subjective one that, if written well, should demonstrate exactly why the reviewer didn’t like the book. It doesn’t mean the reviewer isn’t a nice person, or isn’t appropriate to review the book in question, or has a personal vendetta against the author. It simply means that, in the reviewer’s opinion, the book wasn’t that good.

When I first started writing romance, I also started writing romance reviews for the website All About Romance. I was proud to review for them because I got to state my opinion, recommending plenty of good books and advising readers to avoid some others. Although I don’t write for them any longer, I still go to AAR for reviews, and lately I’ve taken to visiting readers’ blogs to find recommendations (I’ve got a sidebar full of links on my Writer’s Diary page: (www.meganframpton.com/diary.html).

I don’t look to reviews to corroborate my own opinion. I look to reviews to help me decide what to read, not to cheerlead. I want honesty, and if someone doesn’t like my book, or books that I like, I won’t take it personally.

Do you read reviews? If so, why? If you’re an author, do you hunt for them, or avoid them? As a reader, do reviews influence your buying decisions?

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged | 4 Replies

Kate Ross

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I was originally going to cover the subject of “What else do you read?” but decided instead to talk about Kate Ross, whom I would have talked about anyway. She’s a writer who died in her early 30s, having only written four books; and she was the sort of writer you wanted to have around for years. She’s not a romance writer, but her books are set in the mid-1820s and feature a dandy and detective called Julian Kestrel (great name!).
I find with a lot of historical mystery series I find myself muttering, “Oh, for God’s sake, check the fingerprints,” before realizing the technology was decades, or centuries ahead. Or frankly, they’re just silly (like the impeccably researched medieval series, I mention no names, that had chipmunks frolicking in the grounds of a medieval abbey). But Kate Ross and Kestrel are just, well, in a word, fabulous. He’s not an aristocrat, but a self-made man who lives on his wits and gambler’s instincts. He reminds me a little of Lord Peter Wimsey set a century earlier–cultured, witty, super-intelligent, and with a frivolous, flippant demeanor that hides a deeply serious and private personality. He moves easily between the fashionable world and its dark side, both beautifully evoked by Ross.
Three of the books are set in England. The fourth, and her most ambitious–I suspect Ross knew time was running out, and stretched herself–is set in Italy, has an extremely and convoluted operatic plot, and finally gives us the truth about Kestrel’s origins.
Ross’ secondary characters are great, too. There’s his manservant, Dipper (slang term for a pickpocket, which was his former profession), and Sally, a whore and thief and his sometime accomplice and lover. Kestrel resists Sally for a time, and then capitulates. This wonderful bit of writing describes his state of mind before they make love for the first time:
So it was over–the struggle and suspense between them. But it was no ending as he had expected, or resolved. Because in that moment his perspective shifted. He had often tried to fathom what she meant to him; he had never once asked himself what he meant to her. Looking into her upturned face, he saw her for the first time, not as a seductress, but as offering him the only thing in the world she had to give.
All four of the novels–Cut To The Quick; A Broken Vessel; Whom The Gods Love; and The Devil In Music–are all still in print. Check them out.
Janet

Posted in Reading | Tagged , | 7 Replies

Mothers!

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Yesterday I wrote a short scene between the heroine of my very new mess-in-progress and her mother. The heroine’s father had to be dead, for plot purposes, but I thought perhaps the mother might prove an interesting character. Well, I tried her one way and another—sympathetic, controlling, whiny, funny—and nothing clicked. So I decided she was just better off dead, too. I may revive her at some point, but only if she has something entertaining to contribute to the story!

I think there’s a reason why heroines of romances often don’t have mothers, or at least not ones who are present for most of the story. The mother/daughter relationship is very complex and can take over from the romance. A mother’s good counsel might keep a heroine from making her own mistakes and learning from them. And depending on the story, having a mom around might destroy the mood.

And yet, is creating orphaned characters an easy (and cheap) way to buy a reader’s sympathy? A problematic mother (like Mrs. Bennett in Pride & Prejudice) can escalate conflict, but wouldn’t it be refreshing to see more positive mother figures in romance fiction?

Most books I recall that included such a mother also featured a hero with bigger problems than the heroine’s, where it made sense that a mother’s support would help her deal with him. Some examples: Julia Ross’s MY DARK PRINCE and Jo Beverley’s DEVILISH.

Can anyone else think of examples of interesting fictional mothers, good, bad and ugly?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com/

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged , | 7 Replies

Great review of LADY MIDNIGHT!

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Amanda McCabe just got another great review for her historical LADY MIDNIGHT — this time at “The Romance Reader” website. Congratulations, Amanda!

The review can be found here:

www.theromancereader.com/mccabe-lady.html

The reviewer refers to her “luscious prose,” and argues that LADY MIDNIGHT belongs more to the tradition of Charlotte Bronte than Jane Austen. (Do you agree, Amanda?)

Cara

Posted in Risky Book Talk | Tagged , | 2 Replies