but habitual readers will learn something, even if it’s a masterclass in what not to do.

I don’t know when or where formalized trigger warnings started in earnest (not the rare “The following film contains scenes that some viewers may find disturbing. Viewer discretion is advised.”), but I first saw them on the e-publishing sites in the mid-aughts.

Some took themselves very seriously and come from a place of concern (but this is not on the Kindle buy page):

This series deals with parental loss and terminal diagnosis of a loved one. I’ve been through it myself, so I hope it is dealt with appropriately – with real sensitivity and empathy.

Some could marginally be classified as spoilers:

This is a dark romantic suspense and psychological thriller of 80,000 words, featuring a main character with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Trigger warnings for abuse, self-harm, CSA, pregnancy-related issues.

Some were cheeky extensions on the blurb:

CAUTION: This title contains the jarring and bizarre juxtaposition of explicit sex and overt religion. As an added bonus, there’s quite a bit of libertarian/objectivist philosophy, politics, money, and cursing—the really bad kind. I also threw in a smattering of violence, nude art, the criminal use of mint chocolate chip ice cream, rampant armchair psychoanalysis, a slew of shoulda-coulda-wouldas, and a cat named Dog.

There are arguments for and against, of course, and I am firmly on Team No in terms of warning about problematic or disturbing content.

For one, if they serve as spoilers, there is no point to reading the book if you know what happens before you can click BUY. Whether you turn to the back of the book before you start reading is your problem, not the problem of a potential reader who resents being spoiled without warning.

For two, and this is my biggest WTF objection, don’t read what is clearly marked and shelved HORROR and then complain about what you get.

Somehow trigger warnings spread to academia and classic literature, including Shakespeare, riding on the coattails of safe spaces.

Students in America have been asking for “trigger warnings” to be included on works of literature which deal with topics such as rape or war.

That’s not new. Book banning is a trigger warning on steroids.

I’m not going to go into how people should handle their trauma because that’s not my business. I don’t care about your trauma and you don’t care about mine. That’s as it should be.

I’m also not going to tell you to suck it up. I’m going to tell you how not to suck it up and why you should suck it up.

AVOID IT

SUCK IT UP

If you’ve done the above and you choose to read Book Title anyway, that’s on you.

HOWEVER.

“Trigger warnings” (and I use that phrase loosely) do serve another purpose: Marketing.

That thing you don’t want to read? Somebody else is actively looking for it, so it behooves an author to take that into account and arrange their words accordingly.

This

is not a trigger warning or spoiler. It’s a product description. The readers who pick up this book already know what it is and they are actively looking for it. They want precision as to their taste in tropes.

THE FLIP SIDE.

Calling it “clean” romance instead of “sweet” is damaging and kind of derogatory

It always really grinds my gears when people call it clean romance when it is closed door, fade to black, no mention of sex at all, etc. It implies that sex is inherently dirty or wrong in some way. Calling it sweet on the other hand doesn’t have the same connotations, just that the book isn’t steamy or spicy. It’s also putting down those who might like a different kind of romance.

Emphasis mine.

That’s a you problem.

I don’t love the word “clean”, either, but it has one thing going for it: It’s a very efficient term. [ … ] “Closed door” and “fade to black” only apply to certain books, since some books have no reference to sex at all. I guess “no steam” would work, but I feel like “steam” is slowly becoming less popular than “spicy”, so I’m not sure if it will hold up long term. TLDR I’m okay with “clean” because everyone knows what it means.

Emphasis mine.

THE SOLUTION.

If you’re an author who doesn’t like trigger warnings, but still need to be precise for readers who are looking for exactly what you’re selling, the solution is very simple:

It’s efficient.

Just … don’t be this guy:

A lot of things really bad and really good have happened around Chez Moriah the last couple of years. One of the good things is that XX tax deduction has learned how to drive and is getting out and about on her own. She works only a few minutes away, so we got used to her driving to work and back. But she has an internship 20 minutes away from home, all freeway, heavily trafficked, and sometimes very windy. Today was her first day driving it by herself, and I am nervous and scared.

Generally speaking, I tend to “borrow trouble,” as Ma Ingalls would say. I spin up scenarios in my head of all the bad things that could go wrong, and then I ruminate on them. I have tried very hard not to do that, because I found out during the Great Mojo Prepper Panic of 2008 that living that way is soul-crushing. Self-help/inspirational/affirmation memes all warn of doing this. But I do it anyway, just on a smaller scale.

I have a great deal of respect for the stoic philosophers, though, and as I learn more about them, I try to incorporate their thinking into my own. Well, today I learned of “premeditatio malorum” or, to be more specific, borrowing trouble.

On purpose.

Seneca had this to say:

What is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster. This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise. We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events… Rehearse them in your mind: exile, torture, war, shipwreck. All the terms of our human lot should be before our eyes.

Let me emphasize this:

What is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, being mentally prepared for disaster has its advantages. You know what you should do and in the heat of the moment, you’re not making stupid decisions. On the other hand, that’s kind of a stressful way to live. If I go into a Tuesday (because Tuesdays are always bad) expecting bad things to happen, bad things are going to happen and/or I’m going to look at every wrinkle as A Bad Thing That Happened and if enough of those wrinkles are there, it is going to have been A Bad Day.

Except … yesterday was Tuesday and I took note of all the ways in which my day was easy: all my lights were green, all my lines were short, most of my errands were effortless, I got (good) things I was expecting. The worst thing that happened was that I forgot to tell Arby’s not to put tomatoes on my gyro. I was braced for a bad day because it was Tuesday, but when the day was over with I noticed that everything went my way and I was grateful for that.

I’m contemplating the role of this Stoic concept in my life. It’s something I already do but have been trying to break myself of, but now it’s been approved by philosophers I look up to. Where and how does this fit with my concomitant contemplation of boredom, contentment, happiness, and gratitude?

★★★

For a fictional treatment of Stoicism and one of my favorite novels ever, and one that informs just about everything I write, try Tom Wolfe’s A Man in Full.

May all your lights be green and all your lines be short.

Title: STILL LIFE WITH STRINGS
Author: L.H. Cosway

★★★

The last Cosway book I read (which was the last book I read at all) was (I think) the author’s first and it showed. But though Painted Faces was rough, I enjoyed the author’s voice, so I dove into the next one.

This book was beautiful. There were so many things I loved about it, including these quotes:

“ … when everything else in life fails, there is still music.” Goodness, how I love music, how it makes me dream and hope. Also, how its angst is cathartic.

In re dogs (which I hate): “They never have any shame about letting you know just how much they’ve missed you.” Also, toddlers (which I also hate except for my own) and clingy 11-year-old boys, which are the most wonderfullest things in the world. All that was to say it made me look at my children in a different light.

Anyway, the thing that took away from the book: too much time spent on the sex. At some point, it doesn’t add to the plot or characterization, which it stopped doing about 5/8ths through the book (yesisaidthatshutup).

So, the wonderful things:

• The descriptions of the music playing as flights of fancy (this isn’t an accurate-enough term and it’s far too whimsical for what’s in the text, but it’s the best I can come up with). It’s absolutely brilliant, how it’s done. I can’t hear the music, but I can see it.
• The first sexual encounter was also approached brilliantly. It had depth with no trace of sleaze.
• The portrayal of Jade’s life as a lower-working-class girl was spot-on. I admired her for her easy stoicism, which was more than I could muster with dependents.
• Both characters’ motivations were reasonable and logical given their backgrounds and circumstances.
• In both books, the characters’ codependence is obvious, but I don’t have a problem with it as long as it’s healthy and I do think their relationship is healthy. I think it will remain so because they are both strong people.
• In spite of Jade’s poverty, I could feel her innate optimism and, dare I say, happiness. This spoke to me like the quotes above.

Aside: I wish there were a playlist for this book. I’ll have to look.

Aside 2: I LOVE that these are set in Dublin and have local vernacular instead of Anytown, USA, with dumbed-down vernacular for stupid Americans.

Well done, Ms Cosway, well done.

I.

Except for those little moments relieved by the occasional huge moment, everyday life can be a drudgery. Whatever you are engaged in, be it work (no matter how glamorous or lucrative it is) or raising a family or fulfilling your calling at church or attaining some long-held goal (usually all of them at once), at some point, you’ll find yourself slogging through it and wondering where the magic is.

The truth is, there is very little magic, except that which we grab for ourselves. When in the midst of this drudgery, few women¹ think to themselves, “How awesome am I? Super-awesome, is what!” While she is in the midst of drudgery, she can be beset with feelings of inadequacy, hopelessness, and irrelevance, even if other people find her admirable or even inspirational in performing said drudgery.

And this is what TV and movies and books and games are for: little moments of respite from the drudgery. People decry “escapist” fiction, but who really wants to read about other people’s drudgery while in the midst of one’s own?²

Fictional characters are not immune to drudgery. The writers just choose not to show you that part because … why? It’s boring.

Giselle slogs through her neverending days of law school classes and shitty second-shift transcription job and church attendance after being stripped of her precious bookstore she can’t rebuild. She has little to lighten her load or brighten her days. Who wants to read about how tired and hopeless she feels?

Eilis slogs through the neverending stress of building a business, fighting off enemies alone, and seeks her magic in meaningless sex with strangers which she never finds and leaves her feeling worse than she did before.

Justice slogs through neverending farm work, housework, college, and then law school with absolutely nothing but the goal of becoming a prosecutor. Even then, her options are limited to the two counties she can actually drive to every day because she has a piece-of-shit car and no money to buy a decent one.³

And why do they do this? Because they’re just trying to survive: financially, emotionally, and intellectually. It has to be done and there’s no one else to do it. Just like everyone else.

You, the reader, may not think about it much beyond the feeling that, “Hey, that’s a lot more than I do.”

No, it’s not. You do plenty. It’s just that you can’t see it and you probably don’t want to think about it because it’s depressing as hell. I don’t care where you are in your life, every once in a while, you stop, look around, and wonder what the hell you’re doing all this for.

And sometimes, you can’t answer the question.

But you keep going anyway.⁴

II.

Which brings me to one of those hot-button topics in genre romance: the “placeholder heroine,” wherein the heroine is void of personality or otherwise uninteresting, whose role is to be the foil for the hero as well as a way for the reader to insert herself into the story and thus, in the hero’s arms. The heroine as written serves as the reader’s avatar.

These characters frustrate me. When I read, I want to experience someone else’s life. I do not want to be obliged to construct my own character out of the bare shell the author has given me. Nor do I want to put myself in that shell. I already live my life.

The most egregious example in my recent memory is Bella Swan from Twilight.

Bella is the epitome of the placeholder heroine in that her personality is a void, her opinions are nonexistent, and she does not act. She is acted upon. One could argue that because she is seventeen years old, this is normal. Seventeen-year-old girls have no power and so Bella’s reactivity is not untoward.

Then along comes Edward, who gives her things any seventeen-year-old girl craves: the complete acceptance by, doting attention of, and fairy-tale romance from a truly powerful male. Thus, I would expect that female adolescents and young adults to find this storyline attractive.

What has always baffled me, though, is why this is attractive to so many millions of adult women with husbands and families of their own unless the “placeholder heroine” isn’t just a theory [dead link].

I nearly cried when I noticed my husband changing a light bulb. Watching him perform this menial task with so little grace and elegance, so un-vampire like, was a depressing reminder that there was no Edward in my life. My husband didn’t float on air, change the bulb at breakneck speed or pounce off into the forest to protect me. Instead, he fumbled and ultimately dropped it on the floor where it shattered. The whole episode sent me into a depression.

A kiss from my husband is simply a kiss; there’s no woozy feeling or butterflies fluttering in my stomach. We don’t get lost in each other’s eyes while discussing our son’s report card or arguing over bills. Anyone who thinks otherwise has never been married. Bella and Edward live each moment in their own private world, with little else to divert their attention … ”⁵

Twi-Moms aren’t just reading about Bella, we are trying to be her. We experienced her shock at the depth of Edward’s love, and her crushing anguish when he left her. Stephenie Meyer captured the longing, the desire and the total devotion that is a faint memory for most married women.⁶

But why a seventeen-year-old sparkly vampire?⁷ Surely there are enough hot, rich, controlling, stalker alphahole types in adult genre romance to give women their fix of the woozy.

But Edward himself is neither here nor there, really. The point is to escape the drudgery of life, as this article so explicitly states, into the arms of an Edward. The placeholder heroine is, in fact, an avatar for the reader.

Or is she?

III.

So I got to thinking about this one day, and it occurred to me that the vapid heroine might not be an avatar for the reader, but a reflection of how the reader sees herself.

First there are the women who have little enough identities of themselves. For whatever reason they have given their own goals, dreams, and desires over to someone else: husband, children, boss, church, clubs, volunteer organizations. They define themselves in someone else’s terms:

• “I am my kids’ mom.”
• “I am my husband’s wife.”⁸
• “I am my deity’s creation.”
• “I am my organization’s member.”
• “I am my mother’s caretaker.”
• “I am my boss’s employee.”

Women who have few enough identities of themselves may feel that they are already ciphers and so they understand Bella’s really rather subconscious feelings of emptiness, aimlessness, and hopelessness acutely. Her emptiness makes her identifiable.⁹

Whether Edward is good for her or not, whether he’s carving out her personality or not, he’s taking her somewhere because a) she doesn’t know there’s a there there and b) wouldn’t know how to get there if she knew because she doesn’t have anything of her own.

But what about the women who do have an identity, love those identities, and take pride in those things?

• “I write.”
• “I practice law.”
• “I raise productive human beings.”
• “I save people’s lives.”
• “I live off the land and am self-sustaining.”
• “I teach people to read and think.”
• “I feed and succor the hungry and hopeless.”

No matter how much we love our work (I defy anyone to tell me women don’t find their identities in our occupations and/or work we love every bit as much as men), drudgery will be involved. And in those moments when we are drowning in the boredom, the slog that feels neverending; when we are straining for that next big job to pay for unexpected expenses; when we are alone with our tasks that no one else can do because we’re unique; when we are exhausted and wondering what the hell we’re doing this for, we may feel as empty and colorless and vapid as any Bella: Thus we identify with her as a reflection of where we are at the moment, not a container for who we wish we were.

We are all Walter Mitty, if only for a moment.

Is ‘devouring’ books a sign of superficiality in a reader? Amongst romance readers, of course, this question is fightin’ words.

Novels particularly were associated with such habits of consumption, for they became a symbol of the newly accessible literary market. Commentators described them as feeding unwholesome appetites. In turn, certain readers were linked to novel-imbibing habits, particularly women. Describing their reading as consumption was a way of denigrating them, for it positioned them as vulnerable, ignorant and morally contagious. Gustatory metaphors often implied that women read according to the flesh, in contrast to the disembodied realm of ‘rational’ masculinity.

Countered by slow reading. These (to a fiction reader) are also fightin’ words:

But Lancelot R Fletcher, the first present-day author to popularise the term “slow reading,” argues that slow reading is not so much about unleashing the reader’s creativity, as uncovering the author’s. “My intention was to counter postmodernism, to encourage the discovery of authorial content,” the American expat explains from his holiday in the Caucasus mountains in eastern Europe. “I told my students to believe that the text was written by God – if you can’t understand something written in the text, it’s your fault, not the author’s.”

Emphasis mine.

I have several opinions on this, all conflicting, except that postmodernism does tend to drive me up a wucking fall because invariably the term “intersectionality” and others like it enter the conversation. They’re rabbit trails that may or may not be as interesting as the original text.

One literature professor, Pierre Bayard, notoriously wrote a book about how readers can form valid opinions about texts they have only skimmed – or even not read at all. “It’s possible to have a passionate conversation about a book that one has not read, including, perhaps especially, with someone else who has not read it,” he says in How to Talk About Books that You Haven’t Read (2007), before suggesting that such bluffing is even “at the heart of a creative process.”

See: Born Yesterday. No, seriously, I’m telling you to see the movie. It’s not Great Art (nominated for a Raspberry),¹ but there’s a pivotal scene with Nora Dunn’s character that is the thematic heart of the whole movie, when she’s surprised that Melanie Griffith’s character read the entirety of Democracy in America. She tells her that nobody ever reads those books. They just know enough about it to look smart at parties.

Equivocations:

1. There are way too many books to be read to spend one’s life slow reading each book you pick up.
2. How many times have you devoured a book, then gone back for the express purpose of picking up details you know you missed the first time because you were so engaged with the story?²

I have some things on my mind I’ve wanted to discuss, but my attention span these days is pretty rotten. I’ve been tweeting (and then Facebooking) way too long to be able to put a small essay together in a coherent fashion.

• Sunita has me thinking about productivity protocols and stationery.
• An ancient Twitter conversation has me thinking about doorstopper books.
• Victoria and Emilio have me thinking about how / why I eat.
• Mike Cane has me thinking about the citizens of the world v their respective governments.
• A whole bunch of people [@avidmysteryfan, @BookThingo, Julie] have me thinking about what to read when I’m out of writing mode.
• Author friends I made [RJ Keller, Todd Keisling, Will Entrekin] when I first began this self-publishing journey have me thinking about author life post-debut title.
• Various Twitter conversations have me thinking about feminism, racism, privilege, and tolerance.
• Liz Harrison and Missy Bourdius have me thinking about each week’s Conservative Feminist radio show, which should be renamed the Kinkservative Feminists.
• Chris Henrichsen and Lee Stranahan have me thinking about newsletters. (The universe just threw up in its mouth a little, those two names in the same sentence.)
• Minx Malone has me thinking about Google+.
• Emilio (see above) has me thinking about picking up an embroidery needle again.
• Mike Cane also has me thinking about power, from an original article by Leftsetz.
• Dave Grohl has me thinking about following your bliss.
• Various other conversations here and there have me thinking about really good movies I’ve seen.

I used to blog a lot. Building my brand. I got tired. The catchy titles that now read way too cutesy, trying way too hard. I thought I ran out of things to say, but I was saying them on Twitter in 140 characters because why blog asides and snark and memes? Then Tumblr came along and that’s what Tumblr’s for. And porn. People told me to get on Facebook and indeed! That is where the fans are, but I’ve covered that topic. Pinterest lets me post a crap-ton of pretty pictures, but I don’t think people browse other people’s pinboards just to see what they like.

But I decided to blog asides and snark and memes, along with things I’m thinking about because I need to get back into the discipline of essay writing. It’s always been my pet medium and I’ve neglected it terribly.

So to those of you who’ve got me in your RSS feeds and follow my mirror posts on Goodreads, you may have a deluge of posts for a while.

Between this and the incessant banging on the marketing drum, I’ve pretty much had all I can take of the business side of being a writer. (Note: Being a publisher is an entirely different thing.)

Monday morning I went whining to a couple of people, one of whom was utterly unsympathetic and the other who sent me to Cliff Burns’s latest blog post. Lo, there not only did I behold my own frustrations laid out in more articulate language than I’ve been using lately, but on the same day I was having my existential crisis.

Building character through self-flagellation | Cliff Burns – “Books not selling, readers indifferent, preferring to spend their hard-earned shekels on dry-humping teen vampires and spank me-fuck me fan fiction. Not a brilliant stylist, so I can’t even hope for the consolations of posterity.”

Then a friend, who thinks something must in the water:

The rise of the published first draft | VacuousMinx – “I fully agree that TBTSNBN has an alchemical appeal for readers, one that transcends its many flaws. But while its appeal cannot be copied, any more than you can catch lightning in a jar, the (lack of) process can and will be. […] So we will get more barely-altered fanfic and more un-self-critical writers who are proud that they can write 100,000 words in a month and send the resulting manuscript off to a publisher.”

sent me to yet another writer writing at the same time:

Striving for a WIP that’s actually “in progress” | KZ Snow – “Does it even pay to write well? Maybe I should follow the lead of some of my peers and strive for quantity, compose a few tearjerkers or sex romps or chuckle fests every couple of months. There’d be nothing wrong with that. Readers seem to enjoy the output of speed writers as much as or more than that of poky writers.”

I’d already decided to do the Dunham serial a couple of weeks ago, so I did feel as if I were actually taking action and could prove to be a boon. We shall see, but at least I was trying something different, doing something with the words I’d written that otherwise wouldn’t see the light of day for another year. I’d also already decided to rebrand the Dunham series with new covers and new classifications and unveil them all next year with the release of Dunham.

So between the time I announced the serial and the time I got to Cliff’s post, I had spent hours revamping my websites, which I find oddly relaxing. And because I do like this thankless, background, zero-revenue activity so much, I slowly came to the realization that writing novels and the act of publishing them is a hobby. Given that I hold my hobbies sacrosanct, this wasn’t a step down, but a step up. In that respect I also decided to get out of the business of publishing other people. I needed to let go of the pressure of selling, the pressure of sales (or lack thereof, as measured against those of the snake-oil salesmen of our business), and the pressure of bookkeeping. I needed to rejuvenate my love for creating and disseminating my own work. The constant marketing of myself and publishing other people is not part of the hobby and not part of the love.

So now it’s Friday. Nothing about the situation has changed except that I feel as if I have taken some action AND changed my outlook. My frustration level is way down and I can once again stop to see what I have: a wonderful family, a good job that pays the bills, a nice house with a gorgeous porch* upon which I sit with my Tax Deductions and discuss the nature of God—and a hobby I’m mad about and am excited about sharing over the next year.

That’s far more than a lot of people have.

A. The “write from your heart” blog roundup:

From Smart Bitches: “So if you needed inspiration today, make art! Write something. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you romance novels aren’t art – they are to me.”

I’m going to paraphrase that from “romance novels” to “romance that do not have anything in common with what’s on the bookshelves.”

B. The write what will make you a living.

From Dear Author: “Where have all the good contemporary romance authors gone?”

Well, you can read the thread and the answer to the question is: Midlist. There are a few names that keep cropping up, but those authors can only write so fast. The consensus seems to me to be that

A∩B
What the readers will actually read.

The question going around the writing world (at least for the last 50 years) is: What do readers want?

This is the wrong question.

The right question is: What will readers read and like if presented with it?

Likewise, there’s another Venn diagram of reading themes going around a few of the same blogs.

A∩B

I regularly hear the arguments that reading fiction can teach you empathy or give you a peek into someone else’s world. In other words, fiction is good for you. Like eating your vegetables is good for you.

Except … romance, which is porn for women. And young adult, which is too dark and dangerous.

Throughout my life at church, I’ve heard the call to seek out things (books, music, TV, etc.) which are lovely, praiseworthy, and of good report. I’ve gotten hammered for writing explicit sex and dropping the f-bomb. I’ve heard all the arguments about why fictional violence is more acceptable than fictional sex. Then there are the above-linked articles that basically say, “Protect deh wimminz anna childrinz cuz dey doan know no bettah!”

Thus, fiction is bad for you. It makes you experience things you ought not to experience.

Well … yeah. That’s the point. Imagine the following conversation:

Fiction takes you places. It’s a way to explore things you wouldn’t ordinarily explore without the risks involved in or resources needed to actually explore it. Maybe you don’t have a sparkly vampire handy.

You may or may not want to go there, but if you do want to go there (you dirty-minded perv) …

Well, look. It’s a whole lot easier to ’fess up to reading a murder mystery than it is to ’fess up to homicide.

I still don’t know what to do, but I’m losing my patience because I discovered that writers of some of the stuff that’s really bad are giving writing advice. Oy. Stop it. You’re not qualified to give writing advice. Really.¹

In light of this post and this comment,

in light of a recent romancelandia kerfuffle about writers/unpublished authors reviewing,

in light of Mormons’ cultural tendency to say nice or nothing at all,

in light of the fact that I’m a reader first and I’ve spent money on these books and I have a reader’s perspective and want to express it,

in light of the fact that writers reviewing is generally fraught with dangers, not the least of which is shitting in your own nest,

in light of the fact that my work is in no way intended for a Mormon market² …

I’m still conflicted.

Mostly I don’t relish the idea of people like OutAndAbout (and I think I know who wrote that comment) coming to bash me for MY writing. It hurts my feelings. Yes, there. I said it. It hurts my feelings. Dirty little secret: It hurts every writer’s feelings.

On the other hand, there’s a very small minority of Mormons who’d brave my stuff anyway, so the worst criticism I’m bound to get—probably anonymously—is that I’m too graphic and my characters swear and they DNF’d it after the first two pages. Okay. And?

I’ve got several Mormon novels on my TBR list (albeit heavily weighted for stuff that’s been pre-vetted by readers with whose taste I get along). One I’m reading, The Road Show by Braden Bell, is pretty good. It’s not a page-turner and it’s episodic (natch, written by a playwright/screenwriter), but that’s never bothered me unless badly done. It gets a little churchy-heavy-handed in spots, but I like it.

I read Angela Hallstrom’s book Bound on Earth and I loved it. I’m dying to write a review of that, but I have nothing to say other than “I loved it” and respond to some reviews I read on Goodreads. Oh, and that it’s a novel a short-story-writer-who’s-not-a-novelist would’ve written (which is both its weakness and its strength). I’m interested to see if she can write a long work that’s not a series of interconnecting/interdependent vignettes strung together.

So what to do. What to do.

As a compromise, I created a new alter-ego to review, but I don’t like doing that. I’m not cut out to sustain such an act.

The unnamed book I previously linked has been haunting me (not in a good way) for months, because this is what the market base for Mormon fiction, the one that wants clean and good (e.g., my mother), associate with Mormon fiction. They are the people who need to be brought back into the Mormon fiction fold, and they aren’t going to be unless Mormon fiction improves. It can’t improve unless someone just says, “This sucks. It should never have been published. Next!”

Yeah, it’s clean.

But it still sucks.