Author: katvinson

A Chicken Review

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There are some people who say that virtually all romance is feminist because it’s finally about women getting something they want. I’m going to come out and say it: No, no it’s not. Some of it is still small-minded sexist tripe. And I’m not talking about that horrible rape fantasy crap that some men (and probably some women) write. I’m talking about mainstream romance.

I recently read a novella that I got free from a writing conference. I’m too chicken to actually write a full-on negative review about a book, but I’m going to go through the basics of the story and talk about how disturbing it really is to me, particularly when it’s accepted as normal or even admirable. And the fact is, this kind of story is so common in romance.

The story is a romantic suspense and starts off with the hero trailing a woman, the heroine. Okay, problem #1. Stalking. Maybe there’s a reason, but that’s what it is. Then a van pulls up beside the heroine and drags her inside and the hero breaks into a run to rescue her (he has super abilities so this is feasible).

And we’re supposed to go, Oh, okay, he’s a Good Guy.

But he was still stalking her. I’m really just not okay with that.

In the meantime, she fights back against her kidnappers, so we’re supposed to realize she’s a Strong Woman, which is probably thought to be a feminist thing by some people.

Then, he rescues her and she stares at him, the instant attraction overwhelming. Yet she realizes he too looks dangerous, so she plans to run again. He tells her she has to either come with him willingly or he’ll take her himself.

Um, no, not okay.

She runs and he catches her, because he’s more powerful than she is. Of course. She manages to convince him not to run off with her (again, this is probably something people find proof of her “strength”), but then they get shot at so we know he was Right All Along. He gets her in his car and she accuses him of planning to kill him, all while admiring his sexy lips.

Then he takes her—against her wishes—to the airport and onto a plane, where he secures her to a chair. Once they’re at a safe place they discuss the need for him to tie her up again but decide to have  sex instead. Afterward, she does something that pisses him off and he plans to talk to her later about her lack of “obedience.“

In the end, she agrees to marry him and just “work on” his barbaric tendencies.

The whole idea that he knows better than she does and is therefore justified in making choices for her is just intolerable to me. Taking away a woman’s autonomy and agency cannot possibly be feminist. Just because a woman gets off in a book doesn’t make it feminist.

Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor #4) by Lisa Kleypas

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Crystal Cove book coverI really enjoyed the first three books in this series and was looking forward to this one, the fourth. There were elements of magic in all the other books, but they were very subtle and mostly unique. More magical realism than fantasy. This book embraces the magic of the series and runs with it and feels more urban fantasy than straight contemporary.

Justine Hoffman is a born witch, although she has rejected the lifestyle and instead runs a successful hotel she owns. Jason Black is a super-rich video game developer. They both have major problems. Justine learns that a spell was cast on her when she was born that prevents her from finding true love. And Jason has no soul. In this context it doesn’t mean he’s a sociopath or whatever—it just means when he dies, that’s it for him.

Once Justine learns about the spell, she’s determined to correct the injustice and finds a spell that should correct it. That night, she meets Jason. I don’t like saying it, but the chemistry between them wasn’t that intense. Definitely not up to the standard Kleypas levels. Plus, Jason was a bit of a douche. (I mean, romance heroes often are, but they at least appear to change and he didn’t seem to.)

The book wasn’t bad by any means, but it just didn’t live up to my expectations. There were good moments, though. My favorite was the scene with Jason’s assistant and her family in Toad Suck, Arkansas (even though it was a tiny bit cliché) because that is a real place and I’ve driven right past it before. And how can you not love a scene that takes place in a place called Toad Suck? I also liked the tension in the relationship between Justine and her mom, who organized the casting of the curse.

I also wondered what would have happened specifically with Jason if Justine hadn’t cast the spell before meeting him. Nothing? Something less than satisfying? It kind of surprised me that Justine didn’t wonder this herself.

In summary, I’d recommend this is you’re a die-hard Kleypas (or Friday Harbor) fan, but just expect it to be different from the others you’ve read.

A Beta Read

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Beta reader binder

I just got feedback from a beta reader of the first book (Programmed for Love) in my contemporary romance series about women who work for a tech startup. I’m so thankful to her for taking a great deal of time to provide me with loads of feedback, but man, do I have work to do. She gave me a entire 3-inch binder full of the manuscript printed 1-sided because she frequently writes on the back of pages.

Handwritten feedback on manuscript

I have to hurry to get the book ready to enter in a contest in less than a month. I’m going to enter it in the RWA Golden Heart contest (the Romance Writers of America contest for unpublished manuscripts), which requires the full manuscript,  as well as a few others that require only the first 20-30 pages. Golden Heart Entries are due January 11, so that doesn’t leave me much time to rewrite a 95,000-word manuscript (though it should be shorter, to be fair). I did write 80,000 words in 28 days last month for NaNoWriMo, but I’m tired. And those words weren’t very good, whereas these should be polished. So, I have quite the task ahead of me. Wish me luck.

 

All I Ever Wanted by Kristan Higgins

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All I Ever Wanted book coverI’ve been reading Higgins for reasons I previously explained, and I’m still feeling an ambivalence about her books. This book, too, is funny, and there were some great scenes in. But here, as well, was a silly heroine. Now, she wasn’t silly 100% of the time, fortunately. No, she was both very good at her job as a marketing specialist and with children.

The book is about Callie Grey, who’s just hit thirty without being married,* and Ian McFarland, who’s just moved to their small Vermont town to take over the vet practice there. Callie’s reeling because she’s just found out that her long-time crush and ex-short-term-boyfriend (and current boss) is seeing someone else seriously. He insensitively reveals this after giving her a sweet birthday present. She is rather obsessed with him, and (too?) much of the book is spent on him.

Ian is a bit of an enigma, on top of being socially inept and kind of a jerk at times. But we have faith that he’s redeemable and that there’s probably a good explanation for him being the way he is (there is). Callie, on the other hand, is super-friendly and everyone loves her. She offers to help him with PR because his vet practice is at risk of suffering due to his poor people skills.

The setup is fine, but here is some of the silly:

  • Callie makes a scene in the DMV when she’s blubbering over her ex’s new relationship. Also funny, because it’s where she meets Ian, who rudely accuses her of having “verbal diarrhea.”
  • Callie thinks it’s a good idea to buy some over-the-counter herbal concoction to get rid of her “food baby” overnight. This is idiotic. Do people really think you can shrink overnight? I don’t get it. However, also funny, because “food baby.”
  • Callie hits a turkey in her car and thinks it’s dead. She races to Ian’s and gets, well, hysterical about the poor, innocent bird. Her overreaction irritated me. Yet also funny, because the turkey comes back to life and trashes Ian’s place while they run around trying to corral it out (but again, she’s acting a little silly during this, so…).
  • All the women in town (at least those who have a pet) make unnecessary appointments with Ian in order to meet him and check him out, all on the same day. Really? Would that many women do that? Maybe I’m just not tuned into the normal woman (Truth).

So I’m definitely not immune to the humor in the book, even if the silliness grates. Below is a snippet from my favorite scene (Callie is escorting a group of five-year-old Brownies on a visit to the vet clinic, and Ian is hiding in the back before being coerced out to face them):

“Dr. McFarland,” I said, “can you tell us some of the most common operations you do?”

He shot me a grateful look. “Okay, well, we neuter and spay animals so they can’t, um, have babies … Uh, I remove tumors, set broken bones—please don’t touch that,” he said as Hayley began squeezing the pump of a blood pressure cuff.

“Maybe we could move on, Dr. McFarland,” I suggested.

…

We herded the girls back into the hall. “Ian, why don’t you examine Angie and sort of show them what you look for,” I suggested in a low voice. “And if you gave out a souvenir, that would be great.”

“I don’t have souvenirs, Callie. This is not a gift shop,” he said tightly.

“Tongue depressors, Ian. Cotton balls. They’re five. They won’t care.”

He nodded. Swallowed.

I liked this scene because it showed Callie being highly competent at something, and the scene is also very funny.

Higgins definitely captures a great voice for Callie, who is very easy to understand. Like all her characters, she’s self-deprecating and funny. She’s also well-loved by her family, including her extremely grumpy grandfather, who she lives with. The book is told in first person only from Callie’s perspective, but despite that, the other characters are very real. Especially Ian, who was probably a little difficult to write because he isn’t the most charming character.

The book’s dialogue and internal thought is natural and witty at appropriate times:

One does not often see one’s grandfather naked in one’s bathroom, after all. And thank the merciful Christ for that.

Finally, Higgins brings us into the setting with wonderfully placed details so there’s no doubt we’re in small-town Vermont or whatever specific setting the scene is in. And from the sample of Higgins I’ve read, I’ve seen that there’s a fairly consistent medium heat level because everything’s implied. This one is in line with that.

As ever, Higgins delivers a charming book that fans of light, small-town contemporary romance will love.

 

* A big deal to her. Not to everyone.

The Next Best Thing (Gideon’s Cove #2) by Kristan Higgins

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The Next Best Thing book coverI’ve entered a bunch of romance contests. The way these things work is that judges read the beginning of the manuscript (usually between 15 and 30 pages of it) and give you as much feedback as they want. Sometimes you get a lot; sometimes a little. The feedback is always a bit all over the place. I had one entry where one judge said, “If the rest of the manuscript is as good as this, it’s publication-ready!” while another judge on the same entry gave me 60-something points out of 100 and said there was too much description and not enough internalization. So you have to take it with a grain of salt (and look for consistent criticism). They’re looking for things to comment on, after all, not just reading for pleasure.

Anyway, one of the judges on one of my entries said my characters thoughts weren’t right and that I should read Kristan Higgins for examples of good internalization. I’ve read her before and know she’s good, so it’s not a great sacrifice. I picked up another four of her books and started in on them.

I’ll be honest, I have sort of mixed feelings about Higgins. She is a masterful writer and that judge was not wrong about her skill with characterization and internal thought. She creates really deep characters you feel for. And she is undeniably funny.

My issue comes in with her heroines. I sometimes find them too silly. I know that’s part of the humor—the ability to laugh at oneself is definitely appealing and relatable. But there’s a limit for me. It’s not unattractive for a woman to be a capable person. She can still have a big love wound of some type.

So I started The Next Best Thing with reservations. And in this case, I was happy to be presented with a heroine who is definitely very capable, at least in one area of her life. Lucy is a very skilled (and professionally trained) baker. It’s true that she could learn to stand up to her family a bit more, though. problem is that the love of her life was killed in a car crash after just 8 months of marriage. She is still very close to her husband’s family, including his younger brother, Ethan. Who she happens to be sleeping with.

The book is told entirely from Lucy’s perspective, so we don’t get Ethan’s view on things. But it’s pretty clear he’s in love with her and that she’s oblivious. After her sister has a baby, Lucy decides it’s time for her to move on from her husband and find a new one. However, she wants a man who she can’t love as much as she loved her husband. She can’t risk that kind of loss again. And she likes Ethan enough that she worries she could fall for him more than she’s comfortable with. So she breaks off their friends-with-benefits thing.

Ethan’s obviously not happy with this, but he’s supportive. Lucy is still oblivious. She goes on a few bad dates (okay, these dip into the uber-silly and are not extremely realistic, but that’s some of the humor) and one good date. But part of her problem is she’s in a small town with not a lot of men to choose from. The question throughout is, How long will it take her to realize that it’s worth taking the risk with Ethan?

As I mentioned above, this book definitely had its humorous moments, but it wasn’t as funny as some of her other books—which I really appreciated. I guess I tend to go more for books with serious substance over lighter romantic comedies (I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with light books, just that I don’t find them as satisfying). This book filled that role for me.

So did I learn anything about what to have my characters think? We’ll have to see…

Thoughts on the Genre

katvinson,

A few weeks ago, an article appeared in the New York Times that shook the romance community up a little. Robert Gottlieb gave a somewhat mocking summary of a handful of current romance out now in “A Roundup of the Season’s Romance Novels.” There was also a response entitled “Who Gets to Write About Romance? A Response from the Book Desk,” which dealt with some of the reader emails the original article inspired.

I have to admit that I am often sensitive to talk of romance, because often it is very disparaging. My boss recently found out I write romance and young adult, and he started chattering about it during my last one-on-one, telling me with a laugh that his wife reads romance novels. After informing me that he’s never read one himself, he said, “She tells me they’re historical novels,” laughed and continued, “I say, no, no they’re not.”

This pissed me off. What, he’s a literary expert because he’s never read one? Where does he get his information? Oh, that’s right—our lovely society. The same one that diminishes everything that women* do. Always. I rather ineloquently defended the genre to him. He got a little flustered and repeatedly said, “I didn’t mean to upset you,” while I continued rambling on. It wasn’t my finest moment, but I did avoid saying what was in my head at the time: “Then don’t say stupid sexist shit.” And also, as a matter of course, “Don’t insult something your employee spends almost as much of their free time doing as they spend at work.” Know what this guy’s hobby is? He rides a motorcycle. You don’t see me going around pointing out that I also liked to play on bikes—when I was nine.

Argh.

So I’m going to look at Gottlieb’s article. First off, I have to say that I find it difficult to imagine him wrapping himself in a plaid throw while curling up on a wingback chair in front of a crackling fire to devour the ten or so novels he references from start to finish. However, it’s clear that he at least skimmed all of them because he was able to identify the sex scenes. And despite the accusation of formula, it’s not true that these scenes always appear at designated points in all novels. It can be hard to find them if you don’t know (or remember) the story well. So I’m a little more willing to listen to what he has to say.**

What he says, basically, is that romance novels coming out now are ridiculous, partially because they include detailed and explicit sex scenes. But he also mocks the plots for being unbelievable, trite, and predictable. He says:

Whichever of these heroines you may be, you are guaranteed to end up in marital (often ducal) heaven, after dealing with one or another of the ingenious obstacles that create whatever suspense the genre can generate.

That does sort of sum things up, I’ll admit. But the implication is that it’s a bad thing. That a “lack of suspense” is a problem. I would argue that there is suspense, even if it’s not for the overarching plot. We do know they’ll get together. But the suspense comes from wondering how they’ll make it work. What solutions will be found and compromises made to resolve the competing differences they have? It’s not always clear what those will be. Furthermore, romance readers are voracious, book-devouring monsters, right? They read fast and often consume multiple books a week. So is it any surprise that there is a bit of repetition and difficulty coming up with something totally new and different without slipping into the slightly absurd every once in a while? And does it matter? Books are supposed to be entertaining, and if romance readers are entertained, who cares?

Some readers like to be deeply challenged. They liked to be made to learn something shiny and new, or think about something from a novel perspective, or at least be fundamentally surprised. And that’s fine. There is a lot of literature out there that does that. I used to read predominately literary novels because I always wanted deep characterization and I liked it when (emotionally) horrible things happen to characters. I also liked it when there was at least a chance that things would end badly. And I really hoped it would make me cry at some point.

However, now, I almost exclusively read romance and young adult (almost always contemporary in both). I write in these two genres and feel obligated to do my best to stay up-to-date and of course I have limited time to allocate to reading. I struggle with reading historical romance novels because I generally find them either sexist or anachronistic. My first BA degree was in history, so blatant inaccuracy bugs me. But it does not make me happy to read period-appropriate treatment of women, either.

Basically—and this is important—the whole point of novels is to take the reader on an emotional journey. Anyone who’s every gotten swept away by a book knows that everything in it is relative. You do suspend disbelief. So all those sex scenes that Gottlieb mocked? A lot of things are ridiculous out of context. I can see how the excerpts printed in the article are a little laughable when read cold. But if you take any emotionally charged moment (fiction or real life) and just dump it in someone’s face with absolutely no context, of course it will seem ridiculous. It’s totally unnatural. But love scenes in romance aren’t like that. No—there’s build-up to get the reader entrenched in the increasing emotional intensity of the moment, so that it flows and the reader goes along with the emotion.

Basically, my point is that not all art needs to challenge people to their core. There is nothing at all wrong with art that purely entertains. And whatever you think of it, romance novels do that.

 

* Actually, this should read “people who aren’t white cis-gendered dudes,” but I’m only talking about what I have more direct experience with.

** It is true that someone else could have done the skimming/reading and just given him the snippets to talk about. But I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Bountiful (True North #4) by Sarina Bowen

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Bountiful book coverI’m a total Bowen fangirl, I know. Bountiful is the fourth book in the True North series, which continues to deliver. I’m already looking forward to the next one, even though I’m not sure who it will be about (though I have my suspicions).

This one follows Zara, Griff’s ex-hookup. She manages the local bar, The Mountain Goat, under the theoretical watchful eye of her grumpy uncle. But really, she runs the place almost single-handedly.

She was still hung up on Griff when a hot stranger named Dave came to town for a few weeks. They found each other irresistible and hooked up numerous times during his time there. She insisted on keeping things on a first name basis only. Dave was okay with that, being averse to anything long term, though he was a little more drawn to her than to most women.

This was going on at the same time as the events in book 1, Griff’s and Audrey’s story. In a way, Dave helped Zara get over Griff and they kept each other entertained, all while keeping all personal information off the table. Zara turns up pregnant at the end of that book, well after Dave’s left, and who the father is is a big mystery to the town, but she isn’t telling anyone.

Fast forward a couple years, and she’s got a toddler named Nicole who has red hair just like her father. She still hasn’t told anyone who the father is, because the truth is, she doesn’t really know. All she knew was that he lived in Brooklyn and was rich. He’d casually mentioned his last name once, but when it mattered, she couldn’t remember it. So despite searching for him, she’d given up on ever being able to tell him.

And that’s when Dave returns for another short vacation, having nothing but fond memories of his time in Vermont two years earlier. By this time, Zara’s running a coffee shop with Audrey. Dave runs into Zara not too far into the book and she tells him about Nicole. The sparks are still there, but now they have to figure out how each of them can get over their own emotional blocks to figure out how to make things work. Especially after learning that he’s a high-profile hockey player, Zara is convinced that Dave could never be serious with her and would eventually disappear, just like her own father had. Dave believes that he’s incapable of a healthy relationship due to his own troubled childhood. An additional challenge is that they both have strong ties to where they’re living, with no easy way to compromise without someone giving something up.

This book is as steamy as you’d expect, though I admit I found Dave a little too bossy at times. But I guess some people like that. Still, Zara and Dave are both complex and interesting characters and it was a lot of fun to see cameos of characters from the earlier books.

A NaNoWriMo Interlude

katvinson,

No review this week because I’m busy with NaNoWriMo, an annual challenge to write an entire novel draft in the month of November. This is my fifth year doing it and I’m off to a good start. I’m working on a YA novel this time, but a critique partner has my first romance for a beta read right now, and I’ll get back to it in December in order to prepare it for some contests. But still, November’s a challenging month for anything except writing the new book. NaNo tradition holds that you are supposed to work on a brand new book starting November 1 and on that book only, even though the goal is to hit 50,000 words by November 30. I don’t get as much reading done this month.

The next romance I’m going to read is Sarina Bowen’s just-released fourth True North book, Bountiful. I’m very excited (I think this is my favorite romance series) and a review will follow.

Night Song by Beverley Jenkins

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Night Song book coverThis is Jenkins’ first novel, the one that the publishing world didn’t know what to do with and amazed everyone. A story about post-Civil War black people? What? Who’d want to read that.

Apparently loads of people.

It was also my first Jenkins novel, even though I’ve been hearing about her for a while. And when I was at RT, she came into the hotel restaurant while I was having breakfast and stood about 10 feet from me, which was kind of cool.

Specifically, the book is set in 1882. But the prologue occurs 18 years earlier, when 9-year-old Cara Lee Henson watches her free grandfather killed by Union soldiers who beat him to death for not pointing them to a master he didn’t have. Apparently that happened some back then. The Civil War was clearly more complicated than Good vs. Evil. I’d say it was more Kinda-Okay-Sometimes vs. Evil.

Jenkins infuses the novel with history. And actually, the bulk of the book takes place during (or on the cusp of, depending on the historian you choose) what’s considered the nadir of post-Civil War race relations in the U.S. So there is a lot of interesting history that most Americans aren’t familiar with to convey. Some reviews I’ve seen complain about the amount of historical information included in the book, but I enjoyed it. Jenkins has really done her research and it’s interesting to learn more about the post-Civil War period all while reading a good story.

Cara is a 27-year-old Oberlin-trained schoolteacher working in a small town in Kansas. Two years before the story starts, she had a run in with an arrogant—but highly attractive—soldier named Chase Jefferson in Topeka. So she’s shocked to see him leading the procession of the arrival of the Tenth Cavalry, a famous all-black Army unit. She hadn’t known he was that high in rank and certainly never expected to see him again, despite the fact that she hadn’t stopped thinking about him.

Chase, for his part, hasn’t been able to stop thinking about Cara, either. Things proceed from there, with a lot of back and forth between them until Cara finally caves. But it’s not all roses after that (it wouldn’t be a romance if it were).

For me, the historical nature bugs me like historicals always do. The guy’s a womanizer until he meets this wonderful and feisty virginal woman, who totally changes his habits and mindset. She suffers from the strict moral expectations everyone around her forces her to meet (or try to meet), while he cavorts however he wants. And when he marries her, he owns her and she’s okay with that. And there’s loads of prostitution that’s more or less acceptable. I know this is historically accurate, but reading about it stresses me out a little. However, if you’re a fan of historicals, you’re used to it.

One other little thing that I should mention is that Jenkins is a head-hopping writer (we get into multiple characters’ heads in the same scene, in this case just Cara and Chase). Nora Roberts does this, too, so obviously this is an acceptable thing to millions of readers. I always find it jarring.

Still, Night Song is an interesting novel focusing on the late 19th century, a period a lot of historical romance readers might not have been exposed to. So it’s probably worth giving it a read. Plus, it’s by a legend of the genre and if you’re a romance reader, you should have read Jenkins.

Good Boy (WAGs #1) by Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy

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Good Boy book coverGood Boy is the first in a spin-off series from the Him and Us books by the two authors (about Jamie and Wes), which I previously reviewed. Two of the side characters in Us, Blake (Wes’s teammate) and Jess (Jamie’s sister) reappear in this book as hero and heroine. Blake was probably the most significant secondary character in Us and I have to admit I found him a wee bit annoying. He’s a bit on the effervescent side and is always making up words that make little sense and just being silly in general. It probably says something about me that that annoys me, but whatever.

In Us, we find out that while Jamie is down for the count with a bad flu and Jess is supposed to be 100% focused on taking care of him, she instead hooks up with Blake, who has inserted himself in Jamie and Wes’s lives again.

In Good Boy, Jess is back in Toronto to plan and coordinate Wes and Jamie’s wedding, which brings her back in touch with Blake, who’s the best man. She’s a serial career-changer and although she was sure wedding-planning was going to be her permanent gig, actually carrying it out make her realize she doesn’t ever want to do it again. She has an epiphany based on when she was taking care of Jamie—she wants to be a nurse. So she moves to Toronto and starts nursing school there. She spends a lot of time with Jamie and Wes, which brings her in regular contact with Blake, as well.

He’s as interested in her as he was that afternoon in the chair in Wes and Jamie’s apartment. But she regards him as a mistake. She’s trying to get herself into proper adulthood and messing around with a giant goofball doesn’t seem the right thing to do. Actually, messing around with anybody seems the wrong thing to do. She’s trying to earn her family’s respect, after all.

The one problem? Their chemistry is off the charts. So eventually they do start hooking up but it’s not intended to be a long-term arrangement. How that comes about is a joy to watch. As always with Bowen and Kennedy, the writing is superb. They deliver with all the feels, dialogue, strong characterization, and hot sex that you would expect from them.

ECWC 2017

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I spent this weekend at the Emerald City Writers Conference in Bellevue, WA. It’s run by the Greater Seattle chapter of the Romance Writers of America every October. This is the third time I’ve gone and the second time I’ve gone as a chapter member. It’s a good conference, with lots of people taking over the Westin for three days.

There were three keynote speakers: Darynda Jones, Sarah MacLean, and Rebecca Zanetti. To my shame, because I’m still new to the genre and not extremely well-read in it yet, I didn’t know them. But they all impressed me and I’m looking forward to reading their books.

Darynda’s talk focused on aspects of being a writer—the challenges and demands and the need to constantly improve craft. She reminded us that even if we aren’t published, we’re still writers—it’s not a hobby. She also reminded us that it takes work, since “You can’t plow a field simply by turning it over in your mind.”

Sarah’s talk was mostly about how romance has a reputation for being silly and how stupid, insulting, and misguided that is. People dismiss the genre for many reasons, but often it’s because of the sex—but as she pointed out, sex is all about power. And in romance novels, women actually have power for once because they get to call some of the shots and enjoy themselves. Yay, feminism.

Rebecca reminded us that the work we do can be important, something that came up in the earlier talks, as well. We actually do impact people’s lives. We might not be the doctor giving the treatment, but we could be the author of the book someone using to comfort herself as she goes through that treatment. Helping people escape matters. She also pointed out that the best way to have success as a writer is to write the best book, which sells your next book.

All in all, the keynotes were inspiring but all the speakers felt relatable despite their levels of success. That’s one of the nice things about this conference—it makes everything seem attainable.

Besides the keynotes, I went to several good sessions. And then, I signed up for two pitch sessions and pitched my YA (written under a different name) to one agent and one editor because I’m still trying to get that one going. The agent liked it and asked for a large partial (up through the inciting incident, which is a little deeper into the book than some because there’s a faux inciting incident earlier on). The editor ended up asking for a full, but there was an awkward moment since I had misunderstood and they really only publish romance (there is a significant romance in the book, but I wouldn’t classify the novel as one). However, the definition’s a little flexible in YA and she liked my pitch so she decided to look at it anyway.

I tried to get a get a third pitch session with an editor at Penguin Random House to pitch my first romance. The manuscript was with my developmental editor for a second pass (though I got my feedback in my email during today’s keynote). I’m going to make necessary changes and send it to my line editor and then enter it in the RWA Golden Heart Contest, which is due in January. So, it’s close to being ready to send out. Consequently, I figured it’s time to start considering pitching it, even though I’ve been going back and forth about whether to go with self-publishing or try traditional. I worry about the expectations on authors in traditional publishing in terms of productivity (I’ve heard on multiple occasions that they expect you to generate 2 books a year or risk becoming irrelevant). But traditional publishers do at least some of the marketing and distribution work (even though authors are still on the hook for much of it), and that sounds good to me.

Anyway, I wasn’t able to get the extra pitch session. But then the very editor I’d wanted to talk to came into my last session of the day Saturday and sat next to me. We ended up chatting a bit during a break and I mentioned my reservations regarding productivity expectations. She was surprised and said that she’d heard that from someone else at the conference but that it wasn’t really true. In the end, I managed to tell her I’d hoped to pitch to her and she nicely asked what I write, so I actually did get to pitch to a third person. And she asked me to send the first 5-6 chapters once it’s ready to go. So that was pretty cool.

Five Ways to Fall (Ten Tiny Breaths #5) by K.A. Tucker

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Five Ways to Fall book coverI have mixed feelings about this book. Reese, the heroine, is awesome—I love her. She’s strong, smart, but a little lost. After getting royally screwed over by her husband of a few short months—she catches him screwing his ex in their shower—she starts to get herself together. Her former stepfather, who’s a better parent than her own mom and dad ever were, is helping her get back on her feet. She’s got a good friend who serves as a good secondary character. And she’s only twenty-one, so you wouldn’t expect her to be all the way set up in life.

The book is funny and the voice is great. Tucker has a real way with words, that’s for sure. Reese and the hero, Ben, have a sarcastic relationship that’s entertaining to read. The dialogue and descriptions are vivid and very real. You really see all the characters and the environments they’re in. And the characters are complex and layered, including the secondary characters.

The issue I have is with Ben. Yes, he’s charming. Yes, he’s really good-looking. And confident. And funny. And on the cusp of having lots of money due to his just-completed law degree. Yippee, great.

But he’s a total ass. He’s a huge playboy and call me a cynic, but I don’t think he’s believably redeemable. I mean, I suspended disbelief long enough to read the book because I wanted to see what happened to Reese. But I kept thinking, “You can do better.” At least for long-term. I mean, it makes total sense for them to hook up, which is how they meet. But I just don’t buy the “he’s totally changed” thing.

They first meet on vacation in Cancun. It’s Ben’s last day before he goes back to start his real adult life at a law firm. And Reese is there with a couple friends to get over the demise of her marriage. Her friends want her to hook up with somebody—anybody—and she and Ben end up back in his hotel room, where something unexpected and mortifying (but still pretty funny) happens. Reese sneaks out of his hotel room later without saying anything and they both expect to never see each other again.

But that wouldn’t be a book. So instead, the job her stepfather helped her get (and which she has become very good at) is being a paralegal at his firm. And that firm also happens to be the one Ben’s starting at, because he’s buddies with Mason, Reese’s ex-stepbrother. Ensue awkwardness.

Anyway, I did really enjoy the book all the way to the end and will probably check out some of Tucker’s other books because she’s an excellent writer. Perhaps I should just get over my reservations about Ben. Romance is basically fantasy, after all. And the long-held fantasy that a woman can change a man into a better person is still going strong in the real world, so why not in books?

I guess I still just prefer betas.

Grin & Beard It (Winston Brothers #2) by Penny Reid

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Grin & Beard It book coverThis book is a little unusual because it features a charming heroine who is both ridiculously famous as a comedic actor and overweight. I’m not particularly interested in famous people, so I thought I might not enjoy this one as much as some of Reid’s other books. But Sienna Diaz is an engaging character a little at odds with her status. And Jethro Winston is completely oblivious to and not remotely interested in who she is to the rest of the world, which is one of the things that draws her to him.

I mean, how they meet is a tad cliche—she’s out driving in rural Tennessee and gets lost. But many of us can relate to this. I’m terrible in rural areas; I can’t tell the difference between roads and driveways sometimes. So, it works for me. And Jethro is the park ranger for the national park Sienna keeps driving circles inside. In the end, they give up and he gives her rides to and from the set, which works out for both of them and lets them get to know each other. Of course, most of the time Cletus is there in the truck with them, with his comic relief.

Not that we really need him for that—Sienna herself is funny with a small side of snark. That’s the main reason for her fame, and Reid manages to pull it off and then some. When she’s thinking about the “other woman” (Jethro’s best friend’s widow) being beautiful, she thinks:

She was fuckingly gorgeous. She was so gorgeous, her beauty deserved the f-bomb used as an adverb.

I also like the fact that she’s fat (not just by Hollywood’s definition) and still manages to outshine the rest of Hollywood in a way that is believable, at least for the duration of the novel. Overall, I really liked Sienna and was interested in seeing how she worked out what she really wanted to do while dealing the all the pressures of being famous Sienna.

Jethro is also an appealing guy. If you’ve read the first book, you know he’s got a sketchy past. That comes out here as significant in how he sees himself and any kind of relationship he might be able to have with Sienna. He’s also not remotely concerned with who she is in Hollywood, as he’s not into such things. They connect on a different level, one Sienna would love to be able to exist at. Jethro’s sweet and classy in his own way. When they’re having dinner on night and discussing the word “buxom,” and how it describes what she’s got going on in a certain area, he says:

‘Just like, the word clever describes what you have going on here,’ he motioned to my brain, ‘and the word beautiful describes what you have going on everywhere.’

Love it.

Things are up and down for Sienna and Jethro, but the resolution is nice. The book delivers with Reid’s trademark humor and her slightly-steamy heat level. Read it if you’ve enjoyed her other books, or if you haven’t.

Bad Boys Do (Donovan Brothers Brewery #2) by Victoria Dahl

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Bad Boys Do book coverBad Boys Do is the second in the Donovan Brothers Brewery series. Jamie, the hero of this book, was portrayed as a total playboy in the first book, which I previously reviewed. He’s the bartender at his family’s brewery and got them in a lot of trouble with one of his sexual escapades. He hooked up with the daughter of a businessman for an airline they were trying to sell to, which ultimately resulted in a break-in because their alarm code was compromised. I don’t have a lot of patience for men like that, so I figured I wasn’t going to like this book as much as the first.

However, Jamie ended up being a much more sympathetic character than I expected in Bad Boys Do. There’s a lot more to his story than what we got in book 1. In fact, this one ended up being my favorite in the series. We do get to see a lot more of Tessa and Eric, the siblings he runs the brewery with. Tessa was featured in book 1 and Eric’s got book 3. They’re a close family but there is a lot of tension there, some for good reason, that doesn’t get entirely resolved until book 3. Eric, in particular, is really hard on Jamie, unable to get that he’s moved beyond his playboy days.

As I’ve implied, I loved Jamie, but I also loved Olivia. She’s a college professor, which I enjoy because I’d always thought that’s what I’d end up being (didn’t happen). She has an ex-husband who’s a total douche, not surprisingly. And she’s really struggling because she let herself be completely enveloped by his web and tried to be exactly what he wanted, losing herself in the process. So she’s struggling to redefine herself as a woman on her own again.

Jamie is secretly (secret from his family) taking a business class because he has some ideas on how to take the brewery in a new direction and wants to learn how to do it properly. It’s something that makes him a very sympathetic character because we know his family won’t take him seriously even though he’s passionate about his ideas.

They first meet when she attends a “book club” meeting that’s really just a girlfriend gathering at the Donovan brewery. She’s already uncomfortable because of the content of the meet up (sexual escapades and whatnot) and when the women she’s with make a big show of openly flirting with Jamie, who wears a kilt (which apparently a lot of women find very appealing*). Still, Olivia admires him along with the other women. And then her newest semester starts out—and it turns out Olivia is teaching the class Jamie’s taking.

When they do start dating (and it takes some work on Jamie’s part for that to happen), Olivia’s ex-husband threatens to out her to the administration, which might have a problem with her dating a student. So there’s concern about that, along with the fact that Olivia’s a little uptight, self-conscious, and a few years older than Jamie. It’s not clear how things will truly work out between them. Additionally, to complicate things among the Donovan siblings, the fallout from the break-in the brewery experienced (and Jamie’s ill-advised rendezvous) continues and finally gets explained. Olivia’s problem with her husband also get resolved satisfactorily. All in all, this was a great story with a lot going on, plus Dahl’s trademark high heat level.

 

* Okay, so a quick story about a man in a kilt. Men in Scotland really do wear them frequently, especially when expressing some kind of national pride, like when Scotland’s playing in a soccer match (though they wear them for about any soccer match…). One day when I lived in Glasgow, I was walking home through the city center at four a.m. after a bar shift, and I glanced over at a Chinese place that was still open. There was a man in a kilt manspreading in a booth, and I could see everything. They really don’t wear anything under those things.

The Bollywood Bride by Sonali Dev

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Bollywood Bride book coverAlthough I previously reviewed A Bollywood Affair (the sequel to this one), this is the one I read first. And it really sucked me in, with its troubled characters and their fascinating backstory (they were so angsty that they could have almost fit in in a YA novel).

It starts with Ria, a Bollywood star living in Mumbai, who’s got some kind of past in Chicago that’s hinted at in the first chapter. She also apparently went through a year when she was very young where she didn’t talk at all, until a boy named Vikram charmed her into talking. Of course, he’s the hero.

In the first chapter, she gets a call saying that the cousin she’d basically grown up with in Chicago is getting married and she needs to go “home” for the wedding. She feels the obligation even though it will bring her back into contact with people she betrayed, especially Vikram.

Since she spent most of her childhood effectively being raised by her aunt and uncle in Chicago, Ria does go back for her cousin’s wedding. The wedding and preparations for it take up most of the book and they’re fun because they’re so involved and different from western traditions. Almost all of Ria’s and Vikram’s interactions occur with that as the backdrop. While in Chicago, Ria kind of escapes her identity as a Bollywood star and becomes just one of the family again, though it’s not a complete break. Life in India interferes to cause trouble, which makes for good story.

Watching Ria and Vikram figure out how to come together—Vikram has to learn to forgive her and she has to figure out how to forgive herself, as well as truly come clean about why she left—was great, because there is so much conflict there. Vikram is understandably really pissed off, because when they were young and he thought they would soon get married, she just up and left him without any explanation. He’s still mad and bitter. One thing that made him less likable than he might otherwise have been was that while I definitely got his anger, he should have given Ria the benefit of the doubt, especially as a more mature adult. He should have know that there was a reason she left, even if he couldn’t fathom what it was. But still, he’s believable and it gives him a good flaw.

The book is full of little details that really bring the setting and characters to life. Ria is a great, troubled character who has a lot to overcome. Her backstory is heartbreaking, and although many of the choices she’s made (and makes) maybe aren’t the best, we definitely understand why she makes them. Vikram is also a good character. He dealt with ultimate betrayal and made the best of things. Additionally, the background cast is great, with lots of parents, aunties, uncles and more, all colorful and realistic (also, a little stereotypical at times, but that’s forgivable). Overall, this is an interesting book steeped in Indian culture that western readers will still be able to understand, all while providing a satisfying love story with a believable HEA.