Where have you gone Laura Kinsale?

Oct 18, 2007 | Books, Reading, Writing | 14 comments


I'm thinking of Simon and Garfunkel, of course, and replacing Joe Dimaggio with LK.

I received an order from Amazon yesterday, and as I greedily handled the books I'd ordered, I realized something. There was only one historical in the bunch. (And only one straight contemp that didn't feature suspense or some version of a vampire, demon, shapeshifter, whatever, but that's another story.)

What happened to the long, lush, character driven historical romances of yore? Where is Laura and why isn't NY throwing petals at her feet? I know she burned out, I know she had trouble, but my God, the woman came back with Shadowheart. This is the woman who wrote Flowers from the Storm, Seize the Fire, and The Shadow and the Star. Not to mention The Prince of Midnight, The Dream Hunter, and For My Lady's Heart. (Okay, my command-copy-paste fingers are getting tired. Go to Amazon. Search for Kinsale.) 🙂

She wrote a book with dialogue in Middle English. She wrote some of the most lush prose ever. She made me weep with longing to write like that. She also depressed me because I knew I never could.

I didn't like all her books. I wasn't a Midsummer Moon fan. It wasn't the prose or the storytelling so much as it was the ditzy heroine. I just couldn't connect with her. But, damn, I still admired the craft. Disliking characters is better than being indifferent to them. 🙂

I started thinking about this because of a discussion over at The Soapbox Queens the other day. Brenda Chin was talking about her first romance novel and how it changed her life. Woodiwiss cropped up quite a lot in the comments, and deservedly so. But, if I'd thought more about it at the time, I'd have realized that it was Kinsale who affected me the most.

I miss the woman. I checked out her website, found a post from nearly 2 years ago where she stated she wasn't selling her latest book because NY wanted dark and she'd written light for a change. She had offers, but they weren't what she wanted, so she shelved it. That, my friends, is a tragedy.

My fabulously talented critique partner and I have been discussing this for a while. She's sick of suspense (though she sweetly reads my stuff anyway and offers great suggestions). She wants big contemps that are character driven — the SEPs and Rachel Gibsons — novels without a car chase, dead body, or explosion (oops, the current WIP has all three).

I agree. There's room for a lot more variety than we're getting right now. I do seem to be picking up a lot of paranormal these days, but is that because they're there or because I'd pick them up anyway? Not sure, though I do enjoy the good ones. Just like I enjoy any good romance.

How about you? Is there any writer you miss? Are you sick of certain trends? Or do you think they'll continue?

(No 70 days update tonight as I'll be going to dinner and a concert with hubby and parents. But, so far today, I've made half my word count…)

Edited to add: All this talking about Kinsale got me distracted into searching up stuff on her. I found two posts over at the Smart Bitches where they do lightning reviews of all her books. Only one book got less than an A grade from them (which, if you follow the SBs, you know is pretty amazing). Go read if you're interested….

Part I
Part II

Sur-PRISE!

Sep 13, 2007 | Reading, Writing | 5 comments

I have a pretty good TBR pile at any given moment. It's because I can't resist the lure of new books. I buy them even when I know I have so many I haven't even read yet. Yesterday, I picked up one that I'd had for a couple of months. It had a nice cover, and it promised me a military hero. It was a single-title mass market book and the spine labeled it as a romance. The back cover copy promised me romantic suspense. Right up my alley!

Things went downhill pretty quickly. I thought that the hero's involvement with whips and chains and sex toys was a cover. Um, no. I started skimming, hoping I was wrong, hoping it would all turn out right. About the time the hero forced the heroine into a sex act involving, ahem, alternative orifices, I'd had it. Naturally, though she protested and didn't want to do it, and he forced her anyway, she found immense pleasure in it by the end. To say I was uncomfortable and a bit furious is probably an understatement.

Now, I am no prude. I will read erotica. I have recently read and very much enjoyed Sydney Croft's Riding the Storm, which is very well written and has a STORY that suits the subgenre. I have Colette Gale's Unmasqued on the TBR pile and I look forward to it. But to force me into reading something that should more properly be labeled erotica when I'm not expecting it?

Angry. And I feel like I wasted my money on a story that I thought was going to be the particular kind of story I like most. Not even close!

Laura Kinsale wrote a historical (Shadowheart) featuring bondage and whipping that was pretty amazingly done. The difference, I think, is that the character who liked to be hurt liked it for a specific reason. Allegreto would never, ever perpetrate pain upon the heroine. Maybe I was more sympathetic to Allegreto because I'd read For My Lady's Heart many years ago and got to see him as a boy first. Though I was still somewhat uncomfortable with the bondage and whipping, I trusted Kinsale to write an amazing story.

And I fully realize that my own biases are coming into play here. I find NOTHING sexy about pain and humiliation. A hero who likes to hurt women, even women who like to be hurt, isn't deserving of the hero label as far as I'm concerned. But that's just me. Others are certainly entitled to feel differently.

You can bet that I won't ever pick up another book by this author. If I could take this one back for a refund, I would. A look over her Amazon comments tells me that people either love or hate her. And those who love her know what she's writing. I didn't, and I'm mad for being duped into buying a book I thought was going to be something else.

There's a place in fiction for this type of story, obviously, but don't fool me into buying it by labeling it as a straight romance. It wasn't and I'm not amused.

Have you ever bought a book that turned out to be something entirely different? Were you mad or did it introduce you to a type of story you might not otherwise have read? If you were me, would you throw this book away, keep it as a prime example of you can't judge a book by its cover, or donate it to the library (anonymously, of course)?

Books

Jun 8, 2007 | Reading, Writing | 5 comments

Long before the world heard of USBs and plug-n-play (well, okay, early 90s — not too long ago, but still), I would walk upstairs to Waldenbooks on my break with a fellow sales associate who also loved books. Inevitably, I'd stand at the window and say, “I wish I could just plug my brain into this store and have all these books inside my head instantly.” He agreed, but since that wasn't possible, we'd go inside and find our favorite sections. Mine were romance and writing and his was sci/fi and fantasy. After spending as long as we could, we'd head for the register with at least one book, sometimes several.

And, dammit, I still can't plug in and download. I have way too many books, and not enough time to read them all. I'm trying to update my Books Read section, and it's really not as pitiful as it looks. But I can't remember all the books I've read since I last updated and so I'm stuck plugging them in piecemeal.

I'm also looking at what I still have to read and wondering if I'll ever catch up. New releases happen all the time, of people I like and want to support, and I hardly ever read the book immediately. If you are published and I've linked to you, believe me I have a book of yours to read. 🙂

Today, I'm reading a book about teaching, a romantic suspense novel, and a vampire romance. What are you reading?