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However, I’ve got a few things on my plate and I really want to get back into the swing of regular reading. So I’m still working on The Hole. My pal Phil Persinger (who was not my pal when I reviewed his book, but has since become—funny how friendships come about, eh?) suggested I read The Master and Margarita, so I went henceforth and found it on some random free e-book site (that’s a story! and I will tell you it later).

So I’m gonna post my list here, in case anyone cares in the least bit what I read.

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Waiting for Spring by RJ Keller

Currently reading. Excellent, excellent work.

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The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom, & Their Lover by Victoria Janssen

Started. I wanted to read this book but then saw the ebook price ($11.30! for an ELECTRONIC book!!!), bitched about it, then was offered a copy if I would review it, which I will. I will admit, however, that I find myself reading it through the filter of some blogging unpleasantness elsewhere.

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The Hole (Draft) by Aaron Ross Powell

Started. This seems more of a visual novel to me (I’m a visual reader) and I have to have some quiet time to do it. Between the DDJ (damned day job) and the Tax Deductions, finding sufficient quiet time has been difficult.

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To clarify: C means neither good nor bad, but average.

To me, an average book = meh = forgettable. In my opinion, if a book is forgettable, it didn’t finish the job it started. What I haven’t figured out yet is if a book is so bad it’s not possible to forget, did it do its job?

I’m trying to distill this out for myself, but I’m reading a lot of books lately that are meh. In fact, they are so meh I forget I was reading them the minute I turn my ebook reader off to tend to other things. As I said on the Dear Author thread, I found a dozen books by bestselling authors that I didn’t remember buying and, worse, that I didn’t remember reading until I scanned the blurbs. Mind you, these are books that got high marks at Dear Author and Smart Bitches (I know, ’cause I went back and looked).

Now we have DocTurtle reading a Harlequin Blaze as a challenge by Smart Bitches to read a “real romance” and see how wonderful it is. Turns out he’s having fun, but not of the type everyone expected. He seems to read in fits and starts, so obviously it’s not keeping his eyeballs glued to the pages, unless that’s the type of reader he is, which I don’t know.

So what is this meh? Where’s it coming from? One of the last non-meh books I read was Ann’s because it was so damned different. What made it different?

I’ll tell you what made it different. She broke all the “rules.” Somewhere, somehow, with the evolution of RWA and its sister organizations and their writing workshops, easier access to agents and editors, more stringent-yet-vague criteria on how to write a query letter, and more propagation of some writing “rules” (the ones that would get you a D in any college creative writing course–ask me how I know), there’s been some weird homogenization. (And I started noticing this really begin to gather steam in the early ’90s.) Yeah, you can have unique plot devices or tried-and-true plot devices done differently, but essentially, the voice has become the same: same meter, same literalness (thanks, RfP) to supposedly make for clarity, and same explanation of things that I (Random Reader with a modicum of intelligence) don’t have to be told and would have rather inferred or been left wondering.

Tired, y’all. I’m tired of reading the same stuff over and over again. Even the stuff I’m getting mad at and simply not finishing–one reason is because the voice is tired on top of other problems. Everybody’s taking voice lessons from the same singing teacher out of the same songbook. The only reason I remember any of these books is to say, “Oh. That.” And off it goes to be archived on CD or in the box to take to the used bookstore–without finishing. One book I’ve been looking forward to reading and bought on its release date (because I had it on my calendar as a reminder) was a real let-down.

This “write from the heart and you’ll get sold if you try hard enough” cheerleading? Bullshit. Don’t write from the heart; write from the rules. Write what the gatekeepers tell you to write and, more importantly, how they tell you to write it. Obviously, lots of people love it, and I am the High Priestess of Capitalism, so I’m not arguing with an established market.

But…if everyone’s following the rules, how do you know the reading public wouldn’t like what you wrote from the heart? I know how you know. The gatekeepers won’t buy it because why mess with the homogeneity of voice? People like it; people buy it. [Insert philosophical plug for doing things independently, but that's not what this post is about.]

Nothing, but nothing, makes me realize how homogenized the romance voice has become until I read something different. Kristan Higgins’s books were different and I enjoyed them muchly (although I heard some whisperings they weren’t romance so much as women’s fiction/chick lit and honestly I don’t know what the hell difference it makes). Ann’s, of course. Laura Kinsale, always.  Eva Gale, who came here as a poster (never heard of her before that), whose voice (albeit short pieces) just pushes all my right buttons (not talking about the erotic aspect, either).

Remember, I’m not talking about archetypes, plots, and themes. I’m talking about rhythm, word choice (e.g., the obsessing over avoiding “be” verbs and adverbs that spawns ridiculously tedious prose), dialog tags, over-explanation, and, yes, punctuation, which is one of the biggest tools in keeping your rhythm and singing in your own voice.

RfP said it best over at Racy Romance Reviews:

My most frequent complaint lately is that genre romance has no voice: it’s overly literal and can over-explain mundane detail to the detriment of style. Some of my favorite novels include more impressionistic passages in which I’m not sure exactly what’s happening, but they’re wonderfully referential and evocative.

I mean, come on. If I’ve noticed it and other people have noticed it enough to remark upon it and complain about it (and we’re only a fraction of a percent of the reading public), maybe there are a lot more people tired of it than the gatekeepers think.

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The Mysterious They say that contemporary romance (you know, without vampires, shapeshifters, werebeasts, ghosts, phantoms, and mimes) is dead. Yeah, I know. ’Swhy I wrote one. Sorta.

I have a very low tolerance for romantic suspense, paranormal romance makes me roll my eyes, and m/m doesn’t float my boat (although I can tolerate it in menage). Give me alternate reality or steampunk or post-apocalyptic or anything that could happen, and I’m good to go. Better yet, give me contemporary.

Okay, so in doing my part to save the whales–uh, er, straight heterosexual contemporary romance (because “straight contemporary” is taking on a whole new connotation these days), I’m going to plug the competition: Flat Out Sexy by Erin McCarthy, as reviewed on Dear Author.

Obviously, I haven’t read this puppy, but I plan to when it comes out and so I’m going to plug it in advance. Why?

I’m dying for a straight contemporary that’s more than 150 pages long (i.e., category length). That’s a snack (and besides, I stocked up on early ’80s Carole Mortimer Harlequin Presents at the thrift store Saturday). Okay, it’s 304 pages, not exactly a feast, but it’ll do in a pinch. I want to support straight heterosexual contemporary the way I want to support independent publishing.

Plus, the heroine is a cougar (not the werecat kind) and we could all use a few more cougars in romance.

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Yeah, so I’m not really all about the bisexual historical romance (“a man in love with his wife and his boyfriend”), but what I am about is when self-publishing serves its purpose, which is to say, it gained an audience and a traditional NY publisher’s attention.

Woman’s got guts and somehow got the attention of people who usually don’t review print-on-demand. Again, it’s something I’ve been seeing for a while now, that POD/self (not necessarily to be confused with vanity/subsidy) is gaining more credibility as the writing community decides to believe in its product and go forth alone. I think as more quality work comes out from the fringes of Traditional Publishing, more of the reading public will begin to pay attention.

As for having been picked up by a traditional NY publisher, I’m not sure I’d'a gone that route once I’d gone through all the trouble to self-pub, but there’s no doubt she’ll get a wider audience for her story and that is, after all, what most writers are after.

What I’m also about are the niche markets that are underserved. Once I heard a story about a taste tester for a fast-food chain and that its choice of BBQ sauce was based on what was least offensive to the most people. Whell. Look on any grocery store shelf and you’ll see that any numbers of taste/heat levels are offered; it’s just a matter of the customer finding which one he likes. On the other hand, if the customer doesn’t like any of them, he’ll just have to go make his own.

Oh, hey, kinda like Joseph Smith, right?

(Speaking of reviews of POD books, I read Mrs. Giggles’ reviews [particularly since her reading taste and mine seem to overlap a bit] and just for fun, did a survey of her average scores of traditionally published books, ebooks from small epresses, and self-published/POD. I included the most current 14 books in each category. Traditionally published books scored an average of 67.5/100, ebooks from mostly Samhain scored an average of 76/100, and self-published/POD scored an average of 71.4/100. There’re a whole buncha hypotheses one could draw from the data I looked at, but it’s kinda fun to let the numbers roll around in your head for a while.)

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