Celebrate Smart Bitches Day with
jmc
and Bookseller Chick
and Kate
and me and this is really fast and how ironic is that because it's all about
Pacing.
See, my warm bath with the oatmeal soak is now running and the second it's ready it's goodbye blog hello sweet relief and also hello peanut butter cup ice cream because today? Not such a great day. Plus - protein, calcium, and don't judge me.
But so I was at the Walgreens picking up the oatmeal bath (and it's 100% pure colloidal [whatever that means] oatmeal and I'll bet anything that I just coulda gotten a box of Quaker Oats and same diff but oh well) and the hydrocortisone stuff and of course the ice cream because that's totally a no-brainer, and there was this guy. He was pretty good-looking. He was lookin at me. I mean it's hard not to look at someone in a red coat, especially when that someone is positively buzzing with the kind of pent-up mania that can only come from not scratching ALL DAY.
Okay, so eyes met, no biggie, last thing on my mind right now is guys-n-stuff. But it was funny, because he was kinda wandering and I was kinda wandering (it's not like I know where to look for itch cream, I generally am more in the market for like nail polish or whatever) and we kept crossing each others's's paths and I kinda sorta not exactly but maybe got the feeling that he wanted to catch my eye again. But I was having none of it because the itching, people, MY GOD THE ITCHING. And it went like -
1. First time we cross paths: the lip goo aisle where I'm looking through the various cold sore ointments in search of the Blistex Pro Sport stuff (which is awesome, btw), but it looks like I'm trying to cure my herpes.
2. Second time we cross paths, I'm browsing what turns out to be the hemmerhoidal creams, next to which is located the hydrocortisone stuff.
3. Third time we cross paths, it's right in front of the condom display. Seriously. We were both just obviously breezing through on our ways to the candy and shaving-needs aisles, respectively.
After that, I started giggling because I passed the book racks and there was a buncha romance novels and I thought Hey, that'd be a pretty funny way to start some goofball contempo chick-lit romance thing that them crazy kids read nowadays, but I don't read em since I loves my historicals, but anyway start it with dialogue right there in the condom aisle and it leads to a one-night st- ooh look ice cream!
All of it leading me to the following train-o-thought: The recent rejection I got said that the pacing in my first novel was too slow. Snooks and I discussed (as we are wont to do) and decided that the pacing was considered too slow because it's like 10 pages until the hero and heroine meet. Also, it's about 50/50 dialogue and narrative. What we notice is that so much of the genre is all dialogue - many quote marks on every page - and wackiness ensues starting at about page two. I mean, they practically start the book in medias res. Not that some writers don't do it well, because they do.
Okay, bath is almost ready and concentration is nearly spent but the thing is that I really don't like that particualr style of writing - I feel like I'm skimming over the surface of the story, page-turn, page-turn, nookienookie, page-turn, crisis!, page-turn, aww happily ever after, NEXT!
But a LOT of readers really love this, and they almost resent that Let's Settle Into A Story approach. They read a novel in a day, easily. I about despise any novel that's so easy to breeze through as that (except for those rare ones that are done well, but holy crap are they ever rare). And this, it seems to me, is the taste that's being catered to. Snookie has insisted "My next novel? Page one coitus, baby. No messin around!"
So I dunno. Do you pick up a romance novel looking for that quick pace? Do you get annoyed if it's not that? I think people have expectations when they pick up a romance, and one of those expectations is the breeziness of it all.
Whaddya think? Please discuss. I'll be back after my soak.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Saturday, January 14, 2006
Actually, the baby shower wasn't all that bad.
Hah hah. Just kidding, Kate.
But there was an unexpected thwap upside the head, so let's start there and see how far we get.
I almost wore my red leather boots with the 3" spike heels. Thought they'd look good with the jeans and classy black dress sweater, and more than that: there is something fantastically appealing about the idea of wearing fuck-me boots to your sister's baby shower at a Wesleyan church in Indiana. I mean it's kind of a no-brainer. But then I decided I'd rather be able to run for my life, if need be, so I wore the sensible but stylish black suede boots instead.
I started by picking up my niece. She's a southsider and I am pretty lost on the south side, so I took a wrong turn and added about 20 minutes to the drive. Which I hate when I take a wrong turn, rar. But then there she was with her long, heavy, brown hair with the thick stripes of golden blonde - and it always has made me smile, to see her physical self match her mental maturity and poise. Not an easy life for her, but she got some kind of grace from somewhere. Certainly not from either of her parents, that's for sure.
Don't get me wrong - she's still very, very adolescent. As will become apparent.
So I hugged my neff (her little brother) and told him I wish I could hang with him, watching cartoons in my pj's on a Saturday morning, but nooooooo. Stupid frikken baby shower. Stupid girls. Stupid ovaries. Then my niece put on chunky-heeled boots which made her not such a shrimp. I never realized how much shorter than me she is. I'm 5'6", so I think she's about 5'2"? Anyway.
So there we were, driving along, I exit onto the Tri-State Tollway and wonder vaguely how many tolls we'll have to go through since I so rarely come this way, and my niece is chattering on about school and friends and "So me and my boyfriend broke up."
Please, put yourself in the car with us. Some Kelly Clarkson song is on the radio. I am there in my red coat, sassy hair shining in the blinding sun. Skies are beautiful blue. My charming niece inspecting her freshly painted fingernails and talking in that up-speak. I have a smile that I'm hiding because Omigod The Drama, Auntie Beth. She talks in this veryveryfasttalking way, inherited from Yours Truly.
It's a lovely picture, you must admit. Visualize it. Be there. Observe. Feel for me.
Niece: "He was cheating on me with my best friend! Well not my best friend Evvie but I mean Susan and this is the FIFTH boy she's stolen from me."
Me: "Then I think maybe she's not your friend."
Niece: "No. Auntie Beth. Seriously. I'm totally better off because he's a worthless piece of shit."
[Very slight pause in which she surreptitiously checks me for negative reaction to her profanity. I am poker-faced.]
Me: "Well he certainly sounds like it, the way he brok up with you."
Niece: "And I also found out that like a couple of months ago he was cheating on me with ANOTHER girl and he was lying to me and saying it was his cousin and I'm like hello? Who talks to their cousin like that, because I read the text messages on his phone and she called him 'hun', and why would your cousin call you hun?"
Me, gravely: "Good point."
Niece: "Yeah and even though I call everyone hun but that's different because that's just like how I am and you wouldn't believe what else, okay, do you know what bj is?"
[Cue needle scratch across the record]
And then I drove into a tree. The end.
Okay, not the end. It was something more like -- on the inside? This was me:
OH MY GOD SHE IS ASKING ME IF I KNOW WHAT A BLOW JOB IS MY FIFTEEN YEAR OLD NIECE IS ASKING ME IF I KNOW ABOUT BLOW JOBS OH MY FUCKING GOD AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH
On the outside: "Yeah, of course."
Niece: "Okay, well he gave his friend Joe a bj--"
Me, inside: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Niece: "and he says it was because he was drunk but please I know he wasn't"
Me, inside: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP
Niece: "And his friend Joe has STDs, you know what they are, right?"
Me: "A'course"
Me, inside: how old was I when I knew about blowjobs like eleven it was fifth or sixth grade so yes like ten or eleven so this is normal she's probably known about them forever, I guess, except AHHHHHHH and I would never in ten hundred thousand omigod ever ever ever have said this to an adult much less one in my family but okay this is good that she can talk the important thing is that she at least still communicates, right, so I am trusted and I can't blow this and jesus christ WHY DOES EVERYONE ASK ME ABOUT BLOW JOBS I mean what am I an expert or something does it just say Talk to Me About Blow Jobs across my forehead am I wearing a gold ribbon or something because this is crazy that I get this convo so much in my life it is downright abnormal oh my god what if she has had sex oh my Christ my god oh hail mary mother of god I think I just swallowed my own tongue and will begin seizures in T minus ten-nine-eight because what if she's been having sex AHHHHHHHHHHHHH oh crap pay attention you gotta pay attention NOW.
Niece: "so he got tested for STDs and he's positive and"
[So that sound you heard at about 11:48amCST was the cracking of my heart. In case you were curious.]
Niece: "and Susan my friend or I should say EX-friend is totally a whore and she fucked him after they were going out for just three days, so now she's probably got it too and can you believe that?"
Me, in a shockingly casual tone: "Did you sleep with him?"
Niece: "No, I never did."
Me, inside: Why couldn't she say that no she hasn't slept with him or anyone, ever? Why? Is she trying to kill me?
Me: "Okay, but I mean did you do anything with him at all, because--"
Niece: "No, all I ever did was make out with him."
Me, inside: Yes, but were your clothes on? No, I can't ask that, I mean I'd punch someone for asking ME that, okay so maybe I can ask how, how, how? Ummm, did anything other than his mouth and hands touch you no I can't say that, I'd punch anyone for asking me that, too. Well shit if that's the measuring stick then I can't fucking ask her anything now can I, I'll just have to trust her and she's gotta grow up sometime, just face it. Fucking fuckitty fuckwads HOW DO PARENTS DO THIS AHHHHHHHH.
Me: "Okay, but look - you could tell me and I wouldn't tell anyone. Not that you HAVE to tell me anything ever, but I'm just saying that you know, if you ever need help--" oh dear god don't offer her advice on blow jobs or anything -- "ya know, I mean if you're too embarrassed to talk to your parents or you're afraid they'll like judge you or whatever, then you can always give me a call and I'm cool about it."
Or maybe I wasn't all that eloquent. Because I really couldn't quite hear anything over the mindless, wordless, full-throated AHHHHHHHHHH of distress/denial/dafreakout that was screaming in my head the entire time.
And sorry, the shower stuff will have to wait until later tonight because I'm still kind of reeling from that casually tossed out "Okay, do you know what a bj is?" So I'm going to try to stop wringing my hands long enough to drink a restorative and maybe eat some leftover cake.
Hah hah. Just kidding, Kate.
But there was an unexpected thwap upside the head, so let's start there and see how far we get.
I almost wore my red leather boots with the 3" spike heels. Thought they'd look good with the jeans and classy black dress sweater, and more than that: there is something fantastically appealing about the idea of wearing fuck-me boots to your sister's baby shower at a Wesleyan church in Indiana. I mean it's kind of a no-brainer. But then I decided I'd rather be able to run for my life, if need be, so I wore the sensible but stylish black suede boots instead.
I started by picking up my niece. She's a southsider and I am pretty lost on the south side, so I took a wrong turn and added about 20 minutes to the drive. Which I hate when I take a wrong turn, rar. But then there she was with her long, heavy, brown hair with the thick stripes of golden blonde - and it always has made me smile, to see her physical self match her mental maturity and poise. Not an easy life for her, but she got some kind of grace from somewhere. Certainly not from either of her parents, that's for sure.
Don't get me wrong - she's still very, very adolescent. As will become apparent.
So I hugged my neff (her little brother) and told him I wish I could hang with him, watching cartoons in my pj's on a Saturday morning, but nooooooo. Stupid frikken baby shower. Stupid girls. Stupid ovaries. Then my niece put on chunky-heeled boots which made her not such a shrimp. I never realized how much shorter than me she is. I'm 5'6", so I think she's about 5'2"? Anyway.
So there we were, driving along, I exit onto the Tri-State Tollway and wonder vaguely how many tolls we'll have to go through since I so rarely come this way, and my niece is chattering on about school and friends and "So me and my boyfriend broke up."
Please, put yourself in the car with us. Some Kelly Clarkson song is on the radio. I am there in my red coat, sassy hair shining in the blinding sun. Skies are beautiful blue. My charming niece inspecting her freshly painted fingernails and talking in that up-speak. I have a smile that I'm hiding because Omigod The Drama, Auntie Beth. She talks in this veryveryfasttalking way, inherited from Yours Truly.
It's a lovely picture, you must admit. Visualize it. Be there. Observe. Feel for me.
Niece: "He was cheating on me with my best friend! Well not my best friend Evvie but I mean Susan and this is the FIFTH boy she's stolen from me."
Me: "Then I think maybe she's not your friend."
Niece: "No. Auntie Beth. Seriously. I'm totally better off because he's a worthless piece of shit."
[Very slight pause in which she surreptitiously checks me for negative reaction to her profanity. I am poker-faced.]
Me: "Well he certainly sounds like it, the way he brok up with you."
Niece: "And I also found out that like a couple of months ago he was cheating on me with ANOTHER girl and he was lying to me and saying it was his cousin and I'm like hello? Who talks to their cousin like that, because I read the text messages on his phone and she called him 'hun', and why would your cousin call you hun?"
Me, gravely: "Good point."
Niece: "Yeah and even though I call everyone hun but that's different because that's just like how I am and you wouldn't believe what else, okay, do you know what bj is?"
[Cue needle scratch across the record]
And then I drove into a tree. The end.
Okay, not the end. It was something more like -- on the inside? This was me:
OH MY GOD SHE IS ASKING ME IF I KNOW WHAT A BLOW JOB IS MY FIFTEEN YEAR OLD NIECE IS ASKING ME IF I KNOW ABOUT BLOW JOBS OH MY FUCKING GOD AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH
On the outside: "Yeah, of course."
Niece: "Okay, well he gave his friend Joe a bj--"
Me, inside: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Niece: "and he says it was because he was drunk but please I know he wasn't"
Me, inside: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP
Niece: "And his friend Joe has STDs, you know what they are, right?"
Me: "A'course"
Me, inside: how old was I when I knew about blowjobs like eleven it was fifth or sixth grade so yes like ten or eleven so this is normal she's probably known about them forever, I guess, except AHHHHHHH and I would never in ten hundred thousand omigod ever ever ever have said this to an adult much less one in my family but okay this is good that she can talk the important thing is that she at least still communicates, right, so I am trusted and I can't blow this and jesus christ WHY DOES EVERYONE ASK ME ABOUT BLOW JOBS I mean what am I an expert or something does it just say Talk to Me About Blow Jobs across my forehead am I wearing a gold ribbon or something because this is crazy that I get this convo so much in my life it is downright abnormal oh my god what if she has had sex oh my Christ my god oh hail mary mother of god I think I just swallowed my own tongue and will begin seizures in T minus ten-nine-eight because what if she's been having sex AHHHHHHHHHHHHH oh crap pay attention you gotta pay attention NOW.
Niece: "so he got tested for STDs and he's positive and"
[So that sound you heard at about 11:48amCST was the cracking of my heart. In case you were curious.]
Niece: "and Susan my friend or I should say EX-friend is totally a whore and she fucked him after they were going out for just three days, so now she's probably got it too and can you believe that?"
Me, in a shockingly casual tone: "Did you sleep with him?"
Niece: "No, I never did."
Me, inside: Why couldn't she say that no she hasn't slept with him or anyone, ever? Why? Is she trying to kill me?
Me: "Okay, but I mean did you do anything with him at all, because--"
Niece: "No, all I ever did was make out with him."
Me, inside: Yes, but were your clothes on? No, I can't ask that, I mean I'd punch someone for asking ME that, okay so maybe I can ask how, how, how? Ummm, did anything other than his mouth and hands touch you no I can't say that, I'd punch anyone for asking me that, too. Well shit if that's the measuring stick then I can't fucking ask her anything now can I, I'll just have to trust her and she's gotta grow up sometime, just face it. Fucking fuckitty fuckwads HOW DO PARENTS DO THIS AHHHHHHHH.
Me: "Okay, but look - you could tell me and I wouldn't tell anyone. Not that you HAVE to tell me anything ever, but I'm just saying that you know, if you ever need help--" oh dear god don't offer her advice on blow jobs or anything -- "ya know, I mean if you're too embarrassed to talk to your parents or you're afraid they'll like judge you or whatever, then you can always give me a call and I'm cool about it."
Or maybe I wasn't all that eloquent. Because I really couldn't quite hear anything over the mindless, wordless, full-throated AHHHHHHHHHH of distress/denial/dafreakout that was screaming in my head the entire time.
And sorry, the shower stuff will have to wait until later tonight because I'm still kind of reeling from that casually tossed out "Okay, do you know what a bj is?" So I'm going to try to stop wringing my hands long enough to drink a restorative and maybe eat some leftover cake.
Friday, January 13, 2006
In which I do that annoying thing that bloggers do: post a chat transcript
Because it made me giggle really a lot, so there ya go.
*
Beth: I don't wanna go to no stinkin baby shower waaaaah
Chas: nownow
Beth scowls
Chas: You must be brave
Chas: Think of Aragorn
Beth: Aragorn wouldn't go to a baby shower
Beth: As a great ruler, he probably abolished them from Gondor
Chas: The day may come when we shall avoid baby showers and watch movies all day, but it will not be this day.
Beth imagines coming to the shower with a sword
Chas: my kind of shower
Chas: Remember. Everything's better with Conan
Chas: or in your case Aragorn
Beth: I repeat: Aragorn wouldn't go to no stinkin shower
Beth: Baby shower attendance is not becoming of one of the last of the Dunedain
Chas: Well he would if it were important
Beth: The Numenorians would positively WEEP at the thought
Chas: They're kind of whiny anyway
Beth: in fact, I'm pretty sure that's how Aragorn got to be a ranger of the North
Chas: He ran away to avoid baby showers?
Beth: he couldn't stand the thought of going to a baby shower, so he left town and began his life in the wilds
Chas: hmmm
Beth: It's an appropriate response to the threat
Chas: Stranger things have happened
L: He's a guy, nobody would invite him to a baby shower
Beth: Hey, guys get invited to baby showers now, you know
Beth: It's a sick, sick, SICK world
L: yeah but no one expects them to go
Chas: It's unmanly
Beth: of COURSE it's unmanly
Beth: it's an abominatipon, for godsakes
Beth: abomination, that is
Chas: In the eyes of god and man!
Beth: entirely unnatural, yes
Beth: there's gonna be like 50 people there
Chas: If Conan went to a baby shower he'd spike the punch, drink all the punch, throw up on the hostess and steal the silver spoons
Beth: I'm gonna have to listen to stories about being in labor for 2 days, etc
Chas: AAAAIIIEEE!!!
Beth: I guarantee i'll hear the phrase "boppy pillow" at least six times within the first hour
Beth: then come the stories of breastfeeding
Beth shudders
Chas: Tell em I weighed 11 pounds at birth. My mom gets major points with that one.
Beth: No.
Beth: I WILL NOT PARTICIPATE
Chas: The day may come when Beth will participate BUT IT WIL NOT BE THIS DAY!
Beth: as I stand in front of the church (it's being held at a church hall), I'll turn back to my fellows and say...
Beth: "For Frodo"
Chas: yeah!
Beth: and then we shall charge
Chas: yeah!
Beth: freaking orcs
Chas: imagines orcs attaking a baby shower at a church
Beth imagines finding a mithril shirt in infant sizes
Chas thinks he and Beth may have watched LoTR too many times...
Beth: see, i think the definition of "too much" is highly subjective
Chas: Indeed
Beth: and i mean Aragorn.
Beth: Strider
Beth: Heir of Isildur and all
Beth: there's no such thing as too much Aragorn, that's all i'm sayin'
Chas: Just remember that you are a Shield Maiden of Rohan. Showers shall not be your fate.
*
Amen to that, Chas my friend. Ay-men.
Because it made me giggle really a lot, so there ya go.
*
Beth: I don't wanna go to no stinkin baby shower waaaaah
Chas: nownow
Beth scowls
Chas: You must be brave
Chas: Think of Aragorn
Beth: Aragorn wouldn't go to a baby shower
Beth: As a great ruler, he probably abolished them from Gondor
Chas: The day may come when we shall avoid baby showers and watch movies all day, but it will not be this day.
Beth imagines coming to the shower with a sword
Chas: my kind of shower
Chas: Remember. Everything's better with Conan
Chas: or in your case Aragorn
Beth: I repeat: Aragorn wouldn't go to no stinkin shower
Beth: Baby shower attendance is not becoming of one of the last of the Dunedain
Chas: Well he would if it were important
Beth: The Numenorians would positively WEEP at the thought
Chas: They're kind of whiny anyway
Beth: in fact, I'm pretty sure that's how Aragorn got to be a ranger of the North
Chas: He ran away to avoid baby showers?
Beth: he couldn't stand the thought of going to a baby shower, so he left town and began his life in the wilds
Chas: hmmm
Beth: It's an appropriate response to the threat
Chas: Stranger things have happened
L: He's a guy, nobody would invite him to a baby shower
Beth: Hey, guys get invited to baby showers now, you know
Beth: It's a sick, sick, SICK world
L: yeah but no one expects them to go
Chas: It's unmanly
Beth: of COURSE it's unmanly
Beth: it's an abominatipon, for godsakes
Beth: abomination, that is
Chas: In the eyes of god and man!
Beth: entirely unnatural, yes
Beth: there's gonna be like 50 people there
Chas: If Conan went to a baby shower he'd spike the punch, drink all the punch, throw up on the hostess and steal the silver spoons
Beth: I'm gonna have to listen to stories about being in labor for 2 days, etc
Chas: AAAAIIIEEE!!!
Beth: I guarantee i'll hear the phrase "boppy pillow" at least six times within the first hour
Beth: then come the stories of breastfeeding
Beth shudders
Chas: Tell em I weighed 11 pounds at birth. My mom gets major points with that one.
Beth: No.
Beth: I WILL NOT PARTICIPATE
Chas: The day may come when Beth will participate BUT IT WIL NOT BE THIS DAY!
Beth: as I stand in front of the church (it's being held at a church hall), I'll turn back to my fellows and say...
Beth: "For Frodo"
Chas: yeah!
Beth: and then we shall charge
Chas: yeah!
Beth: freaking orcs
Chas: imagines orcs attaking a baby shower at a church
Beth imagines finding a mithril shirt in infant sizes
Chas thinks he and Beth may have watched LoTR too many times...
Beth: see, i think the definition of "too much" is highly subjective
Chas: Indeed
Beth: and i mean Aragorn.
Beth: Strider
Beth: Heir of Isildur and all
Beth: there's no such thing as too much Aragorn, that's all i'm sayin'
Chas: Just remember that you are a Shield Maiden of Rohan. Showers shall not be your fate.
*
Amen to that, Chas my friend. Ay-men.
Monday, January 09, 2006
Celebrate Smart Bitches Day with
Sandy
Tom
BSC
jmc
and Kate!
(In the grand tradition of Bethblogging, mine is long and rambling and gushing and completely unedited because I am tired and gotta go sleep now okaybye.)
Uncertain Magic, by Laura Kinsale
Okay, so from the age of like I dunno ten or so (or eleven - I think it was 6th grade, and Dawn can set us straight if I'm wrong, since she has a better memory of these things from our childhood) I just gobbled up Romance novels. It started with contemporaries - Harlequins, how I loved ye - and moved on to historicals, all of which I mentioned in my first-ever SBD. But I read and read and read these books like nobody's business.
I quickly tired of the Harlequins. After about a year, even a twelve-year-old could figure out every possible "plot twist" and I think I considered Paint By Numbers to be more mentally enriching. But I stayed stuck on historicals until about age 15-ish. The thing about historicals was that
(a) There was nookie.
(b) I also learned a lot of history, which mixed things up and made it exciting.
(c) There was nookie.
But after a while, even the historicals were hum-drum. It was all the same I hate you, you heartless bastard whom tI was forced to marry lest I lose my lands! I hate you! Except now I am dying to give you a blow job… Now we have made love and I love you! No - I hate you again! Yawn. The only thing that ever changed was the monarch, the war, and the clothes.
Plus, I was becoming a literary snob. That's because I was discovering some really great writing and began to develop taste, and all that. So I turned my nose up at the whole genre, that was the end of that. And in my defense: this was the 80s. If ever there were a decade in Romance to make one humiliated to be associated in any way with the genre, it was the 80s. Oy.
But I would occassionally (rarely) indulge in eine kleine fluff-reading throughout my high school years. Like I remember how I had to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which I actually loved but I had to read it all AND write a paper on it in the same weekend, so after 48 hours of cramming a buncha depressing Hardy into my head, all I could think was sweet jesus, someone give me a Harlequin NOW. And maybe once every six months or so, I'd read a romance novel and laugh and remember why I stopped reading them.
Then I was eighteen and trapped at home for the day for some reason and asked my (now ex-) sister-in-law if she had anything to read. She was an avid romance reader (loved Bertrice Small, eeek) and that's what she had on hand. So I shrugged and said - "Eh. It'll pass the time. Whatcha got?"
She held out a nondescript, pinkish-hued book and said: "It came as a freebie with my [Joanna Lindsay, maybe?] bookclub book. It's different, but I don't think I like the hero, and it ends all wrong."
Note: The previous statement was not the first, but certainly the most definitive, evidence that this sis-in-law was utterly and completely whacked in the head.
So I read it. And like on page one, I fell completely in love. It opens with the heroine - Roderica, but they all call her Roddy - dressed as a stableboy at a horserace. And she's feeling what the horses feel as they run. And she knows this one horse is going to collapse and she can't break away from this kinda mental bond with the animal that she has going and see just thinking about it makes me happy because I LOVE THIS BOOK.
Anyhoo, so she's got ESP. Or whatever. She's psychic and stuff. It's her curse/gift and she has 3 older brothers and an indulgent/guilt-ridden father and a long line of Delamore females in her family tree who all went starkers from the Sight (because being exposed to the crush of too many thoughts/minds makes you crazy) and she's determined to have some kinda life, so there she is at the horseraces dressed as a very unconvincing stableboy. And the horse finishes the race and they're talking about putting him in the next heat and she runs out and starts yelling at them that they can't race him again or he'll die. (She knows - she can feel what the horse is feeling and it's a weakness of the heart, she's worked in her father's famous stables so she recognizes the symptoms, yadida yadida.) Then like on page three, as she's yelling that no way can they race this horse and she's using all her psychic abilities to scrap with the groom (which PS: how cool is that, to know when and from where the punches are coming, huh? way handy, that curse/gift) and read the minds of the people around her, here comes the owner of the horse.
Faelan Savigar. Lord Iveragh.
Coolest. Name. EVER.
And so he shows up and I dunno, I was describing this once to someone who said this is actually a kinda common thing in Fantasy, but I don't know from Fantasy, so for me it was like SO COOL that Faelan is a blank wall to Roddy. She can't read him. Even a little bit. And that's never, ever happened before.
So she decides she's gonna marry him. That way she can have a kinda-normal life, because how can you have a normal life if you can read every thought in your husband's head? You can't. Because if there's one thing that Roddy knows, it's how her "gift" affects the people around her. People can't stand to look in her eyes. She's upsetting, just the presence of her. Her very existence makes people uncomfortable for reasons they can't figure out. Her family (and kudos to Kinsale for pulling off a heroine with a set of living parents!) is very loving and understanding - and they all know about her gift - but still.
Writer-thing: One of my favorite things in this book is a very, very short scene - not even a scene, really. Just Roddy remembering at the end of the I think first chapter, thinking back to when she was a kid of maybe five years old, and asking her mother not to go out one day. Don't go to see the man at the spinney, Mama, or something like that. And her mother, in a reflexive move, slapped her. (Because mama was having, or at least contemplating, a fling.) Then mom said she was sorry and cried and begged her little daughter not to say anything. It's like maybe 4 paragraphs recounting about 3 minutes in her life, and it explicitly sets out exactly what it's like to be Roddy, and the things that define her and the things she fears and what her whole life has been like.
And here's the key to it, for all the writers who read this: That's all it is. A few paragraphs in chapter one. The author doesn't replay it several more times, or refer to it mulitple times, or lay out several more scenes like it. She doesn't have to, because she had the confidence and the good sense to create one quick jab-at-the-gut scene and leave it there. Fifteen years later I still can feel the slap across my face as though it was me it happened to, because to write a memorable thing, you hit hard and fast and you end it. Saying more about it would dilute the intensity, and WHY WHY WHY don't writers ever get that? Why??? Read Kinsale and learn, I beg of you.
Okay, so where was I? Oh yeah - so Roddy decides that this may be her only chance to have kids, and to have a life outside of her sheltered family. Faelan is penniless and considered barking mad, so no one else is gonna marry him. Plus she comes with a fab dowry, so he's in. And they get married and they're off to Ireland. There's a ton of stuff that happens in this book, so let's see if I can hit the important points:
1. You're in Roddy's POV for the whole book. Because of that:
2. Honest to god, you really aren't ever sure if Faelan is a raving lunatic or not. The whole time. You're very firmly in Roddy's head and you have the same doubts about him as she does, and the same fears, and you gotta take it on faith. Which is really hard to do when, like, dead people start showing up.
3. And you don't get to really know ANYTHING until the very very end. Which, contrary to what my crazy log-gifting ex-is-in-law says, is fookin BRILLIANT and perfect and absolutely filled with grace and beauty.
4. There's the Irish Revolution going on which isn't at all boring but even better - there are a good handful of political discussions which honestly probably helped form a lot of my more practical and realistic political notions. Which might sound dumb, but every time some High Ideal is tossed out there, Faelan meets it with a Hard Reality and a good dose of cynicism. And at the end of the day, laws and guns and revolutions and rights should (he insists) not interfere with oh say actually feeding starving people.
5. There's a pet pig. Which is so not cutesy-precious and yet is completely adorable.
6. There are fairies! Fairy folk! Finvarra and shit! This was like the best thing in the universe for me because I grew up reading and loving Irish fairy tales.
7. The nookie is like lethally hot. Suh-heeeeeeriously.
For those who've read it, here are like my fave things that actually make me coo and/or hug the book as though it were a person and I just love it SO MUCH that I must demonstrate the affection (and I swear I do that and anyone who doesn't do that with books on occasion is reading the wrong things or else has a heart made of sawdust).
~Just before Faelan "proposes" in public, his hand hesitating and then moving firmly to her shoulder. (I get goosebumps.)
~That his middle name is Vachel.
~After they help the mare and he says Volunteer wheat, what's that doing here? and she splutters, You're not a rake! Why, I believe you're a bloody FARMER! and then he kisses her and says they'll suit well. (OMG I AM SUCH A GIRLbut it's just so awwwwww!)
~Faelan eating pastries.
~When she wants the godawful ugly music box.
~When she finds the sandalwood music box in the fire.
~When he finds her in the hut.
~The scene when he comes back and she thinks he's betrayed her brother and Geoff.
Oh jesus, forget it, there's too many. And that's without even digging out the book. But man, at the end? The intensity of that last chapter? And the last sentence? Well, I can't help it, the only thing I can even say is it's Laura FREAKING Kinsale doing what she does best. And bitch probably just tapped it out one day before breakfast and called it "passable". Not that I'm, like, seething with jealousy or anything.
So go find it somewhere - I think you have to get it used. If I'm wrong, someone please correct me, but I think it's out of print and if there are plans for a new edition, it's news to me.
***EDIT: It was reissued and look you can buy it right here, so now you have NO EXCUSE not to read it. ***
It's worth finding. I think maybe because it's still really old-skool in form, but not in content or execution - I tend to think any romance reader would love it. I obviously can't imagine anyone not loving it. Ya know, aside from pinko commie bastards and whathaveyou.
But to end on the personal note -- reading this book was this kind of mind-blowing experience for me. After reading countless romances in my early teens, I really thought that was it. And then I read this and I had to wrap my brain around the idea that a romance novel could acteally be good; "revolutionary" seems too small a word. And it really was life-changing, because I'd completely given up on the genre. Completely. But then after reading this, I decided if ever I got in the mood for another, I'd remember the name Kinsale. And a year or two later, I picked up The Shadow and the Star, and I was firmly back in the land of genre fiction.
Thank christ she's still writing, or I can't promise I wouldn't have given up again some time in the last decade, because my high standards for reading material came right along with me, too.
Sandy
Tom
BSC
jmc
and Kate!
(In the grand tradition of Bethblogging, mine is long and rambling and gushing and completely unedited because I am tired and gotta go sleep now okaybye.)
Uncertain Magic, by Laura Kinsale
Okay, so from the age of like I dunno ten or so (or eleven - I think it was 6th grade, and Dawn can set us straight if I'm wrong, since she has a better memory of these things from our childhood) I just gobbled up Romance novels. It started with contemporaries - Harlequins, how I loved ye - and moved on to historicals, all of which I mentioned in my first-ever SBD. But I read and read and read these books like nobody's business.
I quickly tired of the Harlequins. After about a year, even a twelve-year-old could figure out every possible "plot twist" and I think I considered Paint By Numbers to be more mentally enriching. But I stayed stuck on historicals until about age 15-ish. The thing about historicals was that
(a) There was nookie.
(b) I also learned a lot of history, which mixed things up and made it exciting.
(c) There was nookie.
But after a while, even the historicals were hum-drum. It was all the same I hate you, you heartless bastard whom tI was forced to marry lest I lose my lands! I hate you! Except now I am dying to give you a blow job… Now we have made love and I love you! No - I hate you again! Yawn. The only thing that ever changed was the monarch, the war, and the clothes.
Plus, I was becoming a literary snob. That's because I was discovering some really great writing and began to develop taste, and all that. So I turned my nose up at the whole genre, that was the end of that. And in my defense: this was the 80s. If ever there were a decade in Romance to make one humiliated to be associated in any way with the genre, it was the 80s. Oy.
But I would occassionally (rarely) indulge in eine kleine fluff-reading throughout my high school years. Like I remember how I had to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles, which I actually loved but I had to read it all AND write a paper on it in the same weekend, so after 48 hours of cramming a buncha depressing Hardy into my head, all I could think was sweet jesus, someone give me a Harlequin NOW. And maybe once every six months or so, I'd read a romance novel and laugh and remember why I stopped reading them.
Then I was eighteen and trapped at home for the day for some reason and asked my (now ex-) sister-in-law if she had anything to read. She was an avid romance reader (loved Bertrice Small, eeek) and that's what she had on hand. So I shrugged and said - "Eh. It'll pass the time. Whatcha got?"
She held out a nondescript, pinkish-hued book and said: "It came as a freebie with my [Joanna Lindsay, maybe?] bookclub book. It's different, but I don't think I like the hero, and it ends all wrong."
Note: The previous statement was not the first, but certainly the most definitive, evidence that this sis-in-law was utterly and completely whacked in the head.
So I read it. And like on page one, I fell completely in love. It opens with the heroine - Roderica, but they all call her Roddy - dressed as a stableboy at a horserace. And she's feeling what the horses feel as they run. And she knows this one horse is going to collapse and she can't break away from this kinda mental bond with the animal that she has going and see just thinking about it makes me happy because I LOVE THIS BOOK.
Anyhoo, so she's got ESP. Or whatever. She's psychic and stuff. It's her curse/gift and she has 3 older brothers and an indulgent/guilt-ridden father and a long line of Delamore females in her family tree who all went starkers from the Sight (because being exposed to the crush of too many thoughts/minds makes you crazy) and she's determined to have some kinda life, so there she is at the horseraces dressed as a very unconvincing stableboy. And the horse finishes the race and they're talking about putting him in the next heat and she runs out and starts yelling at them that they can't race him again or he'll die. (She knows - she can feel what the horse is feeling and it's a weakness of the heart, she's worked in her father's famous stables so she recognizes the symptoms, yadida yadida.) Then like on page three, as she's yelling that no way can they race this horse and she's using all her psychic abilities to scrap with the groom (which PS: how cool is that, to know when and from where the punches are coming, huh? way handy, that curse/gift) and read the minds of the people around her, here comes the owner of the horse.
Faelan Savigar. Lord Iveragh.
Coolest. Name. EVER.
And so he shows up and I dunno, I was describing this once to someone who said this is actually a kinda common thing in Fantasy, but I don't know from Fantasy, so for me it was like SO COOL that Faelan is a blank wall to Roddy. She can't read him. Even a little bit. And that's never, ever happened before.
So she decides she's gonna marry him. That way she can have a kinda-normal life, because how can you have a normal life if you can read every thought in your husband's head? You can't. Because if there's one thing that Roddy knows, it's how her "gift" affects the people around her. People can't stand to look in her eyes. She's upsetting, just the presence of her. Her very existence makes people uncomfortable for reasons they can't figure out. Her family (and kudos to Kinsale for pulling off a heroine with a set of living parents!) is very loving and understanding - and they all know about her gift - but still.
Writer-thing: One of my favorite things in this book is a very, very short scene - not even a scene, really. Just Roddy remembering at the end of the I think first chapter, thinking back to when she was a kid of maybe five years old, and asking her mother not to go out one day. Don't go to see the man at the spinney, Mama, or something like that. And her mother, in a reflexive move, slapped her. (Because mama was having, or at least contemplating, a fling.) Then mom said she was sorry and cried and begged her little daughter not to say anything. It's like maybe 4 paragraphs recounting about 3 minutes in her life, and it explicitly sets out exactly what it's like to be Roddy, and the things that define her and the things she fears and what her whole life has been like.
And here's the key to it, for all the writers who read this: That's all it is. A few paragraphs in chapter one. The author doesn't replay it several more times, or refer to it mulitple times, or lay out several more scenes like it. She doesn't have to, because she had the confidence and the good sense to create one quick jab-at-the-gut scene and leave it there. Fifteen years later I still can feel the slap across my face as though it was me it happened to, because to write a memorable thing, you hit hard and fast and you end it. Saying more about it would dilute the intensity, and WHY WHY WHY don't writers ever get that? Why??? Read Kinsale and learn, I beg of you.
Okay, so where was I? Oh yeah - so Roddy decides that this may be her only chance to have kids, and to have a life outside of her sheltered family. Faelan is penniless and considered barking mad, so no one else is gonna marry him. Plus she comes with a fab dowry, so he's in. And they get married and they're off to Ireland. There's a ton of stuff that happens in this book, so let's see if I can hit the important points:
1. You're in Roddy's POV for the whole book. Because of that:
2. Honest to god, you really aren't ever sure if Faelan is a raving lunatic or not. The whole time. You're very firmly in Roddy's head and you have the same doubts about him as she does, and the same fears, and you gotta take it on faith. Which is really hard to do when, like, dead people start showing up.
3. And you don't get to really know ANYTHING until the very very end. Which, contrary to what my crazy log-gifting ex-is-in-law says, is fookin BRILLIANT and perfect and absolutely filled with grace and beauty.
4. There's the Irish Revolution going on which isn't at all boring but even better - there are a good handful of political discussions which honestly probably helped form a lot of my more practical and realistic political notions. Which might sound dumb, but every time some High Ideal is tossed out there, Faelan meets it with a Hard Reality and a good dose of cynicism. And at the end of the day, laws and guns and revolutions and rights should (he insists) not interfere with oh say actually feeding starving people.
5. There's a pet pig. Which is so not cutesy-precious and yet is completely adorable.
6. There are fairies! Fairy folk! Finvarra and shit! This was like the best thing in the universe for me because I grew up reading and loving Irish fairy tales.
7. The nookie is like lethally hot. Suh-heeeeeeriously.
For those who've read it, here are like my fave things that actually make me coo and/or hug the book as though it were a person and I just love it SO MUCH that I must demonstrate the affection (and I swear I do that and anyone who doesn't do that with books on occasion is reading the wrong things or else has a heart made of sawdust).
~Just before Faelan "proposes" in public, his hand hesitating and then moving firmly to her shoulder. (I get goosebumps.)
~That his middle name is Vachel.
~After they help the mare and he says Volunteer wheat, what's that doing here? and she splutters, You're not a rake! Why, I believe you're a bloody FARMER! and then he kisses her and says they'll suit well. (OMG I AM SUCH A GIRLbut it's just so awwwwww!)
~Faelan eating pastries.
~When she wants the godawful ugly music box.
~When she finds the sandalwood music box in the fire.
~When he finds her in the hut.
~The scene when he comes back and she thinks he's betrayed her brother and Geoff.
Oh jesus, forget it, there's too many. And that's without even digging out the book. But man, at the end? The intensity of that last chapter? And the last sentence? Well, I can't help it, the only thing I can even say is it's Laura FREAKING Kinsale doing what she does best. And bitch probably just tapped it out one day before breakfast and called it "passable". Not that I'm, like, seething with jealousy or anything.
So go find it somewhere - I think you have to get it used. If I'm wrong, someone please correct me, but I think it's out of print and if there are plans for a new edition, it's news to me.
***EDIT: It was reissued and look you can buy it right here, so now you have NO EXCUSE not to read it. ***
It's worth finding. I think maybe because it's still really old-skool in form, but not in content or execution - I tend to think any romance reader would love it. I obviously can't imagine anyone not loving it. Ya know, aside from pinko commie bastards and whathaveyou.
But to end on the personal note -- reading this book was this kind of mind-blowing experience for me. After reading countless romances in my early teens, I really thought that was it. And then I read this and I had to wrap my brain around the idea that a romance novel could acteally be good; "revolutionary" seems too small a word. And it really was life-changing, because I'd completely given up on the genre. Completely. But then after reading this, I decided if ever I got in the mood for another, I'd remember the name Kinsale. And a year or two later, I picked up The Shadow and the Star, and I was firmly back in the land of genre fiction.
Thank christ she's still writing, or I can't promise I wouldn't have given up again some time in the last decade, because my high standards for reading material came right along with me, too.
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Oh yeah - so this occurred to me like 3 months ago but I completely forgot to write it - a better analogy than food for the whole Quality In Writing thing (which like everyone in the universe linked and now I feel really dumb because talk about an incomplete thought and meandering pile of whatever).
Crap Food vs. Quality Food isn't quite right, because so MUCH of food is pure opinion. It's all in the tastebuds.
Instead, it's more like crap-or-quality clothes. See, I can say a beautifully tailored suit is not to my taste (a.k.a. Not My Cuppa) because:
And my designer shoes from Italy are higher quality, more well-made, and inherently better than anything from Payless. So there.
And there, months later, is my better explanation of Good vs. Bad writing.
Crap Food vs. Quality Food isn't quite right, because so MUCH of food is pure opinion. It's all in the tastebuds.
Instead, it's more like crap-or-quality clothes. See, I can say a beautifully tailored suit is not to my taste (a.k.a. Not My Cuppa) because:
- it's too structured (for my tastes)
- that color is repulsive (according to my tastes)
- pinstripes are out (according to my tastes)
- it just doesn't have enough flair (for my tastes)
- it makes my ass look bigger than Wyoming (ooh, fine line - but that's an aesthetic issue, yep, and therefore a matter of taste. Sure, taste in ass-size, but still.)
- the seams are crooked (fact)
- the fabric starts disintegrating after like a month (fact)
- it's defective and one sleeve fits perfectly but the other is like the diameter of a drinking straw (fact)
- the buttons and zippers and hems all fall out after one wearing (fact)
- it's all misaligned (you know those? where like the shoulder seams are inexplicably halfway to your elbows, but the sleeve falls at the wrist just right and I mean your shoulders can't be THAT much at fault, for godsakes, it's not like anything else ever hangs this wrongly on you, etc? That's a fact, too.)
And my designer shoes from Italy are higher quality, more well-made, and inherently better than anything from Payless. So there.
And there, months later, is my better explanation of Good vs. Bad writing.
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