Cthulhu in My Mind

by Jean Roberta

Calls for submissions for themed spec-fic/erotic anthologies have sent me back to reread books I first read many years ago, and to fill in the gaps in my knowledge of the “classics.” In the last few years, I’ve been amazed at the number of editors who have asked for stories in the imaginary worlds of Lewis Carroll, William Shakespeare, Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, and traditional ballads by Anonymous -- not to mention Tolkienesque calls for stories about elves in forests.

When I went looking for Jules Verne’s mid-nineteenth-century French novels in English translation, I found a drastic discrepancy between adventure stories aimed at a Young Adult market, and more-or-less contemporary translations that not only foreshadow modern technology in a way that now looks uncanny, but which include droll humour and social satire. When I have a spare moment, I intend to keep looking for the most accurate translations I can find.



I am now deep in the misty grey New England of H.P. Lovecraft as the deadlines for several (not just one) calls-for-submissions are swiftly approaching. (The calls are listed at the end of this post.) I bought an excellent used paperback, The Best of H.P. Lovecraft, on Amazon, but now I would like to have the Complete Works, even if I can’t read them all by the end of this month. I found a Complete Works for a very reasonable price on Amazon, but I was told that none of the used copies could be sent to me from the U.S. I’m wondering if some eldritch supernatural force is preventing this book from crossing the Canadian border.

Lovecraft was born in 1890 and died in 1937 (too young, as you can see), but he wrote a substantial number of horror stories, plus several short novels, in the 1920s and 30s. His stories incorporate several gothic tropes, including the evil power of rare, outlawed books on “blasphemous” topics. Probably the best-known of these old, leather-bound volumes (which never existed in the real world) is the Necronomicon, written by a “mad Arab,” and presumably preserved to the present day in various private collections.

Here, in the opening passage of a long story, “The Call of Cthulhu,” is a characteristic warning about dangerous knowledge:

“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”

So far, I haven’t found any explicitly Christian messages in Lovecraft’s stories, but every story implies the existence of forbidden knowledge that the too-curious seek out at their peril. Mind-control (very close to demonic possession) by alien beings happens a lot in these stories, along with hints of an ancient religion involving cannibalism which has survived in the form of a secret cult.

Apparently Lovecraft had all the prejudices of his time, and his sympathetic characters are all white men with English-sounding names who are horrified to discover monsters beyond “civilization” as they know it. All this should seem more dated and cheesy than it does.

How does Lovecraft, barely emerged from the Victorian Age, and a forerunner of the script-writers of the 1950s horror movies that now make us laugh, still manage to cast a spell? The narration is part of the trick. Most of the stories involve articles and letters sent from eye-witnesses to skeptical narrators who are inclined to disbelieve what they read until they have proof, which arrives in some tangible form.

Part of the trick is Lovecraft’s way of implying that some of the looming horror is so far beyond the human ability to perceive that it is simply indescribable. In “The Colour Out of Space,” a meteorite lands on an isolated farm, and affects the land so much that all the flowers, fruit and vegetables that grow in it have colours that no one has ever seen before, and of course they are poisonous to eat. The concept of an indescribable colour is not unbelievable. Actual birds of prey (eagles, hawks, falcons) are said to have better eyesight than humans, with an ability to see a wider range of the light spectrum which we perceive as the colours we know.

Lovecraft’s aliens are much more alien than the various humanoid races in any of the Star Trek series, and they all come from unexplored depths in the ocean or from underground caves, where they have lived for millennia after arriving from a distant planet. Even if these strange beings in inhuman bodies are really stand-ins for the “aliens” in Lovecraft’s actual world (women, “people of colour,” non-Christians), how do we know what might be living in unexplored spaces?

I don’t know whether I can ever write something set in that milieu, but it’s an interesting challenge.

Here is a link for Inclusive Cthulhu: https://duotrope.com/listing/18388

Here is a link for stories based on the Lovecraft story "The Cats of Ulthar" (available on-line): https://horrortree.com/taking-submissions-kill-those-damn-cats-2/

Reading in the Borderlands

by Annabeth Leong

I always like to list the last several things I’ve read because I like to read all over the place genre-wise.

Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim

You know a book is good when you have lunch with someone and spend the entire time just telling them about the book, story after story. This is a memoir about Suki Kim’s experience teaching at a school in North Korea (it’s a really big deal that she was there, because outsiders are rarely allowed in).

It captivated me utterly. Her love for her students is obvious, even as she fears them, knowing that at any time one of them could report her for saying something that breaks the many spoken and unspoken rules of the place. Her depiction of North Korea is fascinating and disturbing. I am a fan of dystopian fiction, and I’ve never read about a real place that seems like it would fit so well in a dystopian novel. At the same time, my fascination feels voyeuristic and weird since this isn’t fiction. I was compelled by her portrayal of the psychological effects of watching her words and action as carefully as she has to while she is there. Finally, her discussion of the history of the split between North and South Korea, both informative and personal, moved me deeply. I didn’t know much of anything about that before reading this book, but exile, diaspora, and separation are themes that always speak to me.

Her writing style is of the spare and poetic variety that I love the most.

I can’t recommend this one enough.

French Kissing by Harper Bliss

I downloaded the pilot episode of this for free so long ago that I don’t even remember doing it, and just never got around to reading it. Then I found myself waiting around somewhere with only my Kindle to entertain me and rediscovered it. I would describe this book as “lesbian drama in Paris,” and it’s set up as if it were a television series. It was just the sort of light, absorbing read I needed at the time. I started reading casually, but then my pace and obsession picked up, and before I knew it, I had devoured both seasons (and am now eagerly awaiting the third!).

There are not incidental resemblances to The L-word series. I picture Bliss’s Steph as played by Kate Moennig, absolutely (in other words, like The L-word’s Shane). Bliss’s Nadia and Juliette feel like the Bette and Tina of French Kissing.

However, Bliss makes all that her own, and doesn’t fall into the sorts of missteps common to long, dramatic stories. Steph is a womanizer, but her arc is really about true love. The L-word never used Shane so well.

I often find that drama gets either too tense or too repetitive for me. French Kissing, however, is excellently paced, and its conflicts feel fresh and distinct.

I’d recommend it for anyone to whom the idea of lesbian drama in Paris appeals. And you’d better believe I’ll be downloading season three later this month!

Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel José Older

This is a solid urban fantasy with some twists that make it better than usual. Older’s voice is refreshing and musical. He’s going for a stylish noir, and he makes that his own, both checking the classic boxes and creating something different and satisfying in its own way.

A big part of that for me had to do with race. I was pleasantly surprised to see quotations from Gloria Anzaldua’s Borderlands introducing the book. As a mixed-race person who never feels like I belong anywhere, this book’s themes spoke to me deeply, and the Anzaldua quotes told me right off the bat to expect that.

The main character, Carlos, is halfway between living and dead, and Older uses that to explore all sorts of halfways. Being brown. Being open to emotion, but also sort of broken. Being weak and strong at the same time. This is the world I live in and know, and it meant a lot to me to read it. I loved his racial descriptions and observations because the US can be so literally black and white about race that I rarely encounter work that recognizes more complexity.

Though I was sold on the voice immediately, it took me a bit to get into the story. Once part three hit, however, I was in that state where you’re trying to wave people away so you can get back to reading. I’ve ordered the next Bone Street Rumba novel, and am looking forward to it.

Carol by Patricia Highsmith

I saw the movie, and (heresy time) did not love it as much as my favorite queer websites seemed to think I would. To me, there was a sterility between Cate Blanchett’s Carol and Rooney Mara’s Therese that made the love story difficult to accept. I also felt uneasy with their age difference—that’s a thing that tends to bother me.

In the book, however, it’s not sterility. It’s a sort of spareness and restraint filled with longing and questioning. It takes me back to when I loved a woman but didn’t really understand that it was possible to love a woman, when I had desires that made no sense to me because I had no context for them.

There is a strong literary sensibility to this book. There are scenes that feel significant but you’re not sure why. There’s a sense of mystery to everything that happens.

The writing surprises me. I notice inconsistencies of plot and detail, but somehow I forgive it all. I wonder how some of these things made it through editing, but they don’t seem to take away from the way the story captivates me. There is something so private and internal about this book that I’m not surprised the movie didn’t work for me.

I’m still reading this one and am about halfway through. I’m curious how I will feel in the end. In the movie, the end felt empty to me. I didn’t really want Therese and Carol to be together. I suspect it may be different for me with the book.

Your writing: For Coming Together: Positively Sexy

And finally, there’s what I plan to be reading over the next six months: submissions for the new book I’m editing. It’s for Coming Together, it’s a collection of erotica about characters who have STIs, and it will benefit the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health. You can read more about it here. Definitely ask me if you have any questions!

MIsogyny 1,2 and ... NOT

by Daddy X

Reviews of two captivating books I mentioned several posts back. Then on to the Not, which is also … Well …captivating.

First up, Norman Mailer’s “Harlot’s Ghost”, then “Call Me Burroughs” by Barry Miles. I had mentioned these works weeks ago in the context of size, @ 1300 and 700 pp respectively. Probably combined, ten pounds o’ book, since “Harlot” was hardbound. I think at one point it put my back out.

Seeing that Mailer is considered a woman-hater and Miles wrote about Burroughs, another notorious misogynist, I thought to at least address that element first.

I don’t look for perfection in artists. I try to allow myself the positive aspects of an artist’s work, even if they’re an asshole. Many of the world’s most interesting people are assholes. I don’t appreciate Picasso because I think he was a nice guy. I don’t care how he lived his private or even public life. I want the breadth, beauty and scope of his art.

The greatest artists can rise above human frailties to create. Sure, if I picked at “Harlot’s Ghost”, looking for Mailer’s’s distrust of women, I could probably find it. But that’s not what the book is about. Not why I read it. If misogyny truly exists in “Harlot’s Ghost” then it works just fine within the premise of the story.

Read “The Executioner’s Song” and see if you don’t fall in love with Gilmore’s girlfriend, Nicole. Mailer won the Pulitzer for that one. (Only a thousand pages).

Harlot’s Ghost

by Norman Mailer

Some interesting notes on this HUGE tome:

“Harlot’s Ghost” begins at the disastrous end then supplies details using years of flashback, narrative and correspondence. “Part One” begins on pp 110. :>) The book closes with the line: “To be continued.” Unfortunately, Mailer never finished the sequel. I have to wonder how big it would have been.

A low-level operative, Harry Hubbard, joins the CIA. His boss, Hugh Montague—code name “Harlot”—becomes his mentor. Said operative falls in love with boss’s wife Kitteridge, also an operative. Much of the story is related in correspondence between the first person MC, Kitteridge, and her feared, revered, distrusted, yet loved and indispensible husband. 

While the principals seldom get together physically, though we learn that they eventually get married. Throughout the book Harry never has sex with Harlot’s wife. Indeed, they don’t see each other or even communicate for years at a time. All this tied together by code names and identities that frequently change. Characters assume new names, new assignments. All very CIA vague—through posts in Berlin, Montevideo, Florida and Washington DC.

Can you imagine how difficult it would be to conduct an affair within such an information-based structure? Mailer’s the one to convince us it can be done. And how.

See the CIA evolve out of the OSS through the 50’s. Witness scenarios with the Mafia, the Kennedys (and their lovers) through the laughably and tragically bumbled Bay of Pigs invasion. Various takes on JFK’s subsequent assassination are investigated.

“Harlot’s Ghost” is a book to savor. Sink into it. Allow it to take you under its spell. Fifty pages fly by in one fleeting sitting, not because the writing is simple, but because it’s encompassing and engrossing.

At that rate, it’ll still take a month to read.

Call Me Burroughs

by Barry Miles

Burroughs was a junkie and a crank. A novelist, an essayist, a chronicler, an accomplished painter and performance artist. Today, he would have been seen as gun nut who slept with a pistol under his pillow all his life. He embraced then ridiculed Scientology. He shot and killed his wife attempting a drunken William Tell trick in 1951. He remained an unapologetic pedophile who paid for young boys most of his life. He looked down on men who went after children who were ‘too young’, while he felt comfortable with sixteen-year-olds. And I doubt he had many hard and fast rules.

The cat sure lived his lifestyle. His manic, warp-speed life touched many, from the famous to the obscure. Ginsberg remained a friend, collaborator and sex partner for years. Patti Smith had an unrequited crush on him.  He influenced musicians like Ed Sanders, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Madonna and Curt Cobain, among others. Debby Harry was considered a friend till the end.

Burroughs lived life not as we might choose to live ours, but he continued creating and investigating all the while despite glaring difficulties. Such as his use of drugs, combined with the ever-oppressive fact that he had killed someone he’d loved and respected. He never got over that. Not that anyone should.

Miles takes us back to Burroughs’ upper middle-class youth, through years of chaos, drugs and withdrawals, all in the service of groundbreaking creativity. We visit exotic locales around the world where Burroughs lived. The narrative is never sentimental, judgmental, fawning or maudlin. Nor does Miles shy away from horror. “Just the facts, ma’am.” Including eternal and omnipresent contradictions.

The author obviously likes Burroughs. By the end, we think maybe we better understand this literary icon.

And now for the NOT … NOT misogynistic. Quite the opposite!

The Gazillionaire and the Virgin

 by Lisabet Sarai.

Our own Lisabet may have outdone herself this time. I’m about three-quarters through this engrossing read and still eagerly flipping pages in anticipation of what’s to come. I’m not giving anything away by saying this is a bit of a switch on what’s become somewhat of a trope in erotica and erotic romance. Within the first few pages it becomes obvious that the Gazillionaire is a woman and the Virgin is a guy.

Lisabet’s remarkable sense of place and atmosphere is more subdued in this new BDSM work of hers. The setting is Northern California, my home, so I think I’d notice any glaring discrepancies in locale or other geographical contradictions. But the story depends more on the emotional exchange between the main characters than on geography or setting.

The novel is arranged in chronological chapters from alternating points of view, switching between Rachel, the heroine, and Theo Moore, her brilliant and naturally   adroit sexual acolyte. We aren’t subjected to a rehash of previous chapters, but press on in the alternating pov, only using the immediate past as stepping stone in advancing the story.

Beyond the hot sex lies a plot by hackers to infiltrate the source of Rachel’s fortune, a unique place on-line where people’s fantasies are explored in creating new takes on virtual reality. Things go sideways. Legal lines are crossed. The multi-talented Theo heads to the rescue.

Lisabet’s intelligence and integral knowledge of all things tech guide us through these involved machinations, making us actually believe we understand things we actually don’t. I find that a great asset when reading something I know nothing about. Sorta like when somebody uses a foreign language, then is kind enough to supply an English translation. Or when we watched “Star Trek” on TV. We thought we could really engage warp drive and pilot the “Enterprise”.

Makes me think I’m with the program. :>) Thanks for that, Lisabet!

Due to the fact that I haven’t yet finished “The Gazillionaire and the Virgin”, I can’t tell you how this provocative tale ends. But you wouldn’t want me to do that anyway.

Suffice to say you shouldn’t miss this engaging five-star gem.

What I'm Reading by Suz deMello (#iamreading #RegencyRomance #YAparanormal)

Scanning the blogs of my fellow OGG-ers makes me feel hopelessly prosaic, even unsophisticated. Lisabet loves Winter's Tale, a book I found memorable for its lyrical prose but completely incomprehensible. I learned what it was about from the movie. Someone (Giselle?) here wrote she is into Canadian literary fiction. If that includes Margaret Atwood, I guess I'm there occasionally, but not often.

Authors are often advised, "read in your genre," especially when we're starting out, in order to familiarize ourselves with the norms of the genre or subgenre. So when I decided to write romance I started to read romance. I chose to write romance fiction not because I loved it but because it hogs the biggest share of the fiction market. 

http://tinyurl.com/ndljd49 

The only romances I had read before were by Georgette Heyer, and Regency romance remains my favorite reading. I don't write it often, however, which is super-stupid--they sell really well. My one Regency novel, Lord Devere's Ward, is one of my consistently bestselling books. And my Regency satire, The Romantical Groom, actually hit #1 in the Amazon "free parody" category.

I agree with the comments of the other OGG bloggers about the uneven nature of genre fiction. It's a very hit-or-miss thing. As I've become more aware of good writing craft, I've become a pickier reader.

I've read most of the books by my critique partner, Diane Farr, a Regency author. She shares my focus on craft so I love her work, which is also clever and funny. But I'm coming to the end of the line on her books (sob, sob). So I was delighted to find that Courtney Milan is also really, really good.

Another subgenre I love is Young Adult paranormal--think Harry Potter and the Hunger Games. Now that I've seen all the Hunger Games movies, I'll probably reread the series--I was happy to have forgotten them (mostly) when I saw the films. Anyone knows that reading the book before seeing the movie made form it is fatal to enjoying the movie. One is always muttering to oneself (and disturbing others movie patrons) "Oh, they really screwed that up," or "Why'd they leave out that part?"

Right now I'm immersed in Julie Kagawa's books about the Iron Fey. 

Most books about the Fey focus on the conflict between the Seelie and Unseelie (or Summer and Winter Courts). The books by Melissa Marr are well-written and typical. Kagawa posits another group of supernatural beings, the Iron Fey, born of our technological advances.

Kagawa's books are both imaginative and well-written, if a bit repetitive. Destroying the threat that the Iron Fey pose to Faerie is the constant theme, and the "hide then fight" plot, when read over and over, gets old. But in the main, I enjoy immersing myself in the world Kagawa skillfully created.

My guess is that I love to read about alternate realities because I read to escape. Both Regency romance and YA paranormal are escapist fiction. 

When I was transiting from practicing as a trial lawyer and into writing, people (editors and agents) tried to push me toward writing legal thrillers. To do so I'd have to read legal thrillers. Step back into the cage when I prefer to escape into another world?

No, thank you.

#amreading. Really. Sort Of.

Sacchi Green

Sometimes I enjoy reading for research almost as much as I enjoy writing. More, in fact, when the writing isn’t going that well.  And occasionally, not often, I can bring myself to read a book with the intention of reviewing it. For a while, when the Erotica Revealed review site was active, I reviewed a book every month, and didn’t have any choice as to which ones.  It got so I kind of welcomed the challenge of assessing stories according to both the tastes of the intended readership (frequently not me) and the level of the writing (not always, shall we say, top notch.) My proudest achievement was asserting once, with absolute sincerity, that if your taste ran to porn treatments of The Land that Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs, this was the book for you.

Right now I happen to be bogged down on both the research and the reviewing fronts. The review was requested by the publisher, who happens to publish some of my work, as well, and is a good friend, so I do want to do it. The book hasn’t actually come out yet, and I haven’t finished reading it—I’m about three-quarters along—so I’m not going to share the title. It’s not something I would have chosen for myself, since alien-invasion/apocalyptic books are not my favorite genre, but it’s definitely very well-written and keeps me reading, and the grimness at the beginning is at this point being tempered by layer upon layer of unexpected complexities, so I have hopes that most of my so-far unanswered questions will be resolved by the end. I just have to stop reading well before bedtime or the tension will exacerbate my tendency toward insomnia.

The research area of my reading is, of course, by choice. I have no one to blame but myself for taking a probably misguided notion to attempt a story for a gay male erotica anthology. That in itself wouldn’t be a big deal—I’ve only written gay male erotica once before, but that one has been fairly successful. The problem is that this anthology’s theme requires research into the gay world of Victorian/Edwardian England, and my own concept for it also requires research into ancient Greece, particularly as revealed by the figures on ancient Greek pottery.

Both of these historical areas should be fun to research, and in fact I’ve already done quite a bit on the pottery element, when I was hoping to write a story for a different anthology but didn’t get around to it in time. Typical of me. Sooner or later I’m sure I’ll use it; maybe sooner. Maybe not.  Anyway, I ferreted out a book in the local library that seems like just the thing to fill me in on gay male life in ancient Greece, about which I may have inaccurate preconceptions, and I’m trying to read it now. A little at a time, every night, until I fall asleep over it. A bit of an antidote to insomnia. Just the thing after I’ve been reading the alien invasion book mentioned above. The Greeks and Greek Love: a Bold New Exploration of the Ancient World by James Davidson consists of seven hundred and eighty-nine indexed, footnoted pages, within which, I’m convinced, can be found all the information I need to be sure no one can challenge whatever I turn out to say about the subject in the course of my short story (which is actually about Victorian England.) It’s really an excellent book, densely detailed, scholarly but not impenetrable, or at least it wouldn’t be if I didn’t try to read it just before bedtime. Nice illustrations, too, many of them involving pottery.

Obviously, research into gay male life in Victorian England would be more to the point. I thought it was a stroke of luck when a writer I respect, who is in fact the editor of the anthology I’m aiming for, posted a review on Facebook of a book published in 1883 titled The Sins of the Cities of the Plain; or, The Recollections of a Mary-Ann, with Short Essays on Sodomy and Tribadism. (Turns out to be precious little Tribadism, but that's neither here nor there.) The tone of his review was on the apologetic side; the book clearly fell into the category of guilty pleasures, with prose of a decidedly purple hue that he would ordinarily despise, but he could forgive all that because of such energy and enthusiasm! So of course I grabbed a Kindle version from Amazon, and read it at once. Well, remember what I said way upstream about the tastes of the intended readership? If I were reviewing this book and wanted to put a plausibly positive spin on my review, I’d say that if you’re looking for a gay alternative to Fanny Hill, this is it. I was very much younger and less world-weary when I read Fanny Hill, but even then the titillation factor wore thin through so much repetition even on a first reading.  Possibly repetition works better for male readers of erotica than for females—I’m sure Fanny Hill was aimed at male readers, and pretty darned sure the author was male—but it’s also likely that I’ve become curmudgeonly in my old age, and have no business critiquing erotica or even calling anything I write or edit erotica. But I will if I want to.

So there you have it. I’m reading, but not exactly for pleasure, and wishing I were writing, but not exactly convinced that I’m aiming in the right direction just now. In this state of ambivalence, I’m incline to take the avoidance route, and just close with a short excerpt from my currently (and perhaps permanently) only gay male story, “The Bridge,” published in Best Fantastic Erotica from Circlet Press and soon to be reprinted in His Seed from Lethe Press. The story is set in England during WWI, and this is the part where my central character muses bitterly on the freedom warriors in ancient Greece had to be open about being lovers.
__________

… In his darkest moments Bernard wondered why had he not been taken, along with all those other thousands. Along with Neal. Why, for him, the special hell of survival, while those he had been forced to lead into hopeless battle died around him?

Two years ago—an eternity—when they were young, Neal had sprawled before the fire in their rooms at Cambridge and read to him of how the ancient Greeks sent paired lovers into battle. Each would be spurred to heroism by the presence of the other, they believed, and would scorn to seem cowardly in the beloved's eyes. Bernard had returned a gruff remark—"So vanity made the world go round even then!" or some such studied cynicism—to hide the surge of tenderness quickening into passion that he felt as he watched the firelight play across Neal's slender face and form. Not that Neal didn't know, by then, every pulse of Bernard's body and mind, and how to rouse them.

The Greeks, Bernard thought grimly, had never dreamed what war would become. Mortar shells and poison gas take no notice of heroism. And, while a Spartan or Athenian might have been compelled to order his lover to advance into sure death, there would have been no dishonor in showing his love. No long months of denial, until, at the last, when Bernard had held Neal's broken body in his arms, the face his lips had touched so tenderly was cold and still.
__________

Doesn’t sound much like erotica, I know, but a measure of healing does come through sex in the story, with the help of the Green Man figure from Celtic mythology. More to the point with regard to my current research, I’m pretty sure a student at Cambridge in the early 20th century might have read what is said here about the Greek paired lovers in battle, but I’m not at all sure that the information was accurate, and that’s something I hope to determine from reading The Greeks and Greek Love in all its extensively researched splendor. So I guess I’d better get back to it. After all, it’s nearly bedtime.


   

 

   

What I'm Intermittently Reading

For someone who wishes to make writing his career, I admit I don’t allow as much time for reading as I should. The nature of working in creative fields is, of course, a tad random. Added to that, the fact most of my cover art clients and author friends are either Aussie night owls or North American folks means a lot of my busiest times are in the last three hours of the Australian day. Consequently, in order not to wake my wife, I tend not to read in bed any more.

I’m in the middle of several books at the moment. One of them is “A City Called Smoke” by Justin Woolley. It’s an Australian post-apocalyptic story, featuring zombie-like creatures, and is book two of the series (book one is “A Town Called Dust”). I’m enjoying the story, but not super-engaged with it. There are some stylistic elements which, to me, seem to be flaws. An overabundance of superfluous thats, for example, of the “that was the thing that she said” variety. It’s also rich with tell, rather than show. Given the genre mix of the story it’s probably not as much of a problem as it would be in, say, romance, but to paraphrase what Giselle said in her blog, the internal editor tends to pop up and tap its pedantic (and metaphorical) foot.

Having said that, I’m enjoying the pacing and the setup, as well as the very Australian references within the story. Though most places aren’t named as we currently name them, it’s clear when the author is referring to Uluru or Alice Springs, for example. It’s also cool that the semi-organised military force is called The Diggers.

There is political and religious intrigue as well, with church and state battling for ultimate control of the uncontrollable. I’m not political enough in real life to truly know, but my feeling is the author is drawing analogies with current conditions to help inform this element within the series.

It’s also interesting to note that within the greater ensemble of characters, the two leads are arguably unexpected. A sixteen-year-old girl of noble birth (or whatever passes for noble birth in the post-apocalyptic world) who essentially volunteered for military service, and a sixteen-year-old boy who seems to me is a high-functioning autistic character (possibly Asperger’s, though no mention of his condition has been made, only descriptions of it).

The other book I’m reading through (plodding through really) is “Written On The Body” by Jeanette Winterson. I’m actually a tad ashamed to admit my plodding pace since it’s not anything to do with the book at all. I find Winterson’s prose engaging and invigorating. This book was, indeed, part of what inspired me to re-work my old story into the recently released “The Last Three Days”. I’d been planning it for ages, but the sumptuous and sensual use of language within “Written On The Body” was the element which kick-started me.*

Part of my enjoyment of this book comes from the ambiguity. It’s written in first person, but unless I missed a few salient points (which is, indeed, highly possible), the gender of our narrator has not been expressly revealed. During this first 75 pages I’ve been certain several times, only to change my mind a matter of pages later. As a side point to that, the narrator reveals many of his/her own flaws and tendencies, and those of the women he/she is involved with. Yet most or all descriptions of physical encounters revolve around descriptions of the partners, of the tactile and emotional experience our narrator gains from those women. Smatterings of how wonderful it all feels to our narrator, but no mention of his or her pulsing genitalia.

To me, this one-sidedness is integral to the character. I sense he/she has a great reluctance to be truly open, and the style of writing essentially becomes a framework to support the character.

I have a great many books still waiting for me to read them, also. Some are kind of high-falutin’, like Paolo Coelho’s “Eleven Minutes”, and an anthology of five John Steinbeck books (two of which I’ve already read many years ago). I also have an e-reader bursting to the brim with stories. I fear that by the time I die, there will be more unread books in my various libraries than read ones. But hey, as long as people are still writing, all is good in the world.

*What’s also embarrassing is the fact I’m only up to page 75 of the book, yet my own story has been out for close to two months, which tells you how infrequently I’m reading.

I'm a Book Snob (or What I'm Not Reading)

by Giselle Renarde

A book snob is not a popular thing to be when you write genre fiction.

In fact, there are a lot of things you're not supposed to admit when you're a genre fiction writer. I write erotica but I don't read it. (Don't tell people stuff like that!) I've never read a romance novel. (Don't!) A lot of genre fiction, even the bestselling stuff, is surprisingly poorly written. (Don't say it!)

At the start of my career, I used to wonder why established authors would say inflammatory things. Didn't they care about their reputations?

Ten years into my writing life, I kinda get it. You get tired of saying all the right things. It's boring.

So here I am, saying all the wrong things.

I love literary fiction. I just finished All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews and it knocked my socks off. Her writing style is is so unique, and the way she approaches difficult subject matter is spellbinding. This book is written with divinely humorous compassion, but the writing isn't lofty. It's not even particularly pretty. But this is a book that had me laughing and crying simultaneously. I am so in awe of Miriam Toews. I am so in awe of her work.

My girlfriend bought me another book while I was reading All My Puny Sorrows.

We were at my local library, looking at the shelf of books they were selling off, and she spotted a thriller she'd read and enjoyed. It was a #1 bestselling book by a #1 bestselling author. So she bought it for me, and we were both excited to share something. We really don't read the same books. She likes Nora Roberts, Stephen King. I'm into Canadian litfic. We both like autobiographies, but she goes for celebrities and I go for random queer people.

I started the thriller Sweet had enjoyed so much, and from the first page it sparked my editor brain.

That's never a good sign.

I had trouble paying attention to the story because I was too focused on awkward sentence structure and crappy word choices. It reminded me of the first revision I submitted on my first ebook. My editor (bless her heart--my book was certainly a challenge!) told me I needed to vary my sentence structure. There was too much. "She did this. She did that. She did some other thing." So I tried to mix it up like "Doing this, she did that" and what a disaster!

I could feel my editor cursing me under her breath as she wrote, "Pushing down her skirt, she pulled up her top? How can she be pulling up her top and pushing down her skirt simultaneously?" 

That's how I felt reading this bestselling thriller. I couldn't look beyond the messy language use to focus on the story.

There were things I appreciated about it. Chapters were short, which made me feel like a fast reader (which I'm not), and each chapter ended in some moment of "Gasp! What's going to happen next?" I always wanted to know right away, so I'd flip the page and read the start of the next chapter, then get swamped down by my editor brain evaluating the language.

I gave up after 54 pages. Maybe I'll go back, but probably not.  It reminded me of the kind of action/adventury crime show I might put on TV and half watch and half enjoy, but when I sit down to read words, the words themselves matter. The order of those words matters.

Now, I don't want anyone thinking I'm saying thrillers are universally BAD or that my taste in fiction is superior to anyone else's. Everybody's got different tastes. And that's great because it leaves room for authors to find a niche. There is a reader for every writer.

I read literary fiction because I like it. It appeals to me. There are terrible litfic books, just like there are terrible books in every genre. Did I ever blog about The Postmistress? Because that book was awful (not that I finished it). But lots of people liked it, so there you go: tastes differ.

So are there good books and bad books? Or are there just books we like and books we don't like?