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Bookish Fast 5: Emotional Triggers

Jan20

I am currently in my hurt/comfort/grovel era of romance books.. Currently, the author I’ve been reading and re-reading is Maya Alden. Sometimes I have to walk sideways into her books. They can be very emotional. Sometimes I skip them entirely.

Ienn Bullard is another author who I read that hurts my feelings on purpose. She, as well as Alden, is very vocal about telling the reader that our mental health matters more than page reads for them. Here’s his w they protect us from walking into a reading situation that might affect that me tap health

  1. Social Media. Jenn is vocal on when her books might push a person over the edge. Her Unhinged-verse is extremely unhinged. Based on the trigger warnings, I skipped the last book. I just couldn’t.
  2. Most authors now have Trigger Warnings listed at the beginning of the book. Make sure you read them. You may need to check on their website, some authors tell readers at start of book to go to website for full list of triggers– I firmly believe this is a copout. If you’re
  3. Newsletters. Sometimes, like with Alden, in the newsletter they mention not only trigger warnings, but include an excerpt that will give you an idea of what goes on around the trigger. The feel of the book, if you will.
  4. In book warnings. I am reading Maya Alden’s newest Wildflower Canyon book, and just came to the end of a chapter. Instead of the next chapter, there is a page detailing the trigger warning. It tells the reader to either skip the chapter, or close the book, because our mental health matters.
  5. The last line of defense for readers is our brethren. Check out the reviews on Amazon and Goodreads or wherever you go to get info on books.

Authors– please keep your reader in mind. While it may be necessary for the story, some things should never be thrown on a reader without knowledge before hand.

Readers- take care of yourself. I’m still staring at that chapter break for the trigger warning, deciding if I should continue on. I probably will. It’s not on page, is being talked of in the past.

But it is my decision, as the reader, whether or not to read it thanks to an author taking care of her readers.

Summer Check In: Fast Five

Jul14

Summer is here and the air is sticky! Life has been lifing. Some great, lots of ok and some terrible. But that’s life, right?

Here’s my Fast Five for July (so far)

  1. Writing has fallen off since about Fathers day. Not even a poem a day. I’ve written two in July. Working on getting back on track.
  2. Still reading! Currently I’m reading book #241 of the year. This doesn’t even include the re-reads I’ve done.
  3. I am still circling writing an Omegaverse romance. Part of the problem is that I’m so uncomfortable with writing traditional sex scenes. Almost all of the ones I’ve started and stopped all happen in the same “world”. The book I’m currently reading? #241 above? It’s in the same subgenre (Reverse Harem Omegaverse) and … It’s rated G. It’s building a relationship. I love it!!! I do think the author needs to promote her books as G/PG rated (a lot of her reviews center around that. But they still read it!)
  4. I love fireworks but not masses of people. I am happy to report that I can watch fireworks from my back porch. If I walk down to the back of my property, I can watch two different shows! One on the left (visible from porch) and one in the right (obscured by tree unless I walk down to the alley).
  5. Got the AC in my car fixed (Thank you T-Bo!!)  and went on a mini adventure with my sister! It was so awesome!  So many more that I want to go on. We went to a city about an hour, hour and a half away and visited 2 bookstores (one was a dud one was AH-MAZZING!) Had a wonderful lunch in a Cafe / bakery and LOTS of sister binding time!

That’s all from me for now. I’ve got 9 minutes left of my dedicated writing time, so I think I’m gonna Ng to go okay in my #fafo world.

What fun or interesting things have you done this summer?

Fast 4 Plus 1: All Superheros need….

Jun3

I just finished the novel All Superheros Need PR by Elizabeth Stephens and it was wild. It’s definitely a romance, but I’m not sure if I would categorize it as Monster Romance or Superhero Romance or SciFi Romance.

But it was a great ride! Here’s a fast 4 of things she did absolutely FABULOUS and 1 I’d change.

Fast Four

  1. While Roland and Vanessa have their short comings, they push each other to both do better and be better. Those chemistry is off the charts.
  2. The representation of both POC and LGBTQ+ was effortless. They were fully formed characters and they were brilliant.
  3. As an Omegaverse/Shifter romance girlie, I loved the little nods to that subgenre. It does not fit in either of those boxes, but having something happen and none of the characters know why but I did…. Yah. It was priceless. (He purrs/growls for her and no one knows why)
  4. I am neither a DC nor a Marvel fan, and yet I understood this book. I think most people would get the Lois Lane reference. While I don’t appreciate Superheroes I loved this book. A big part was the characters, but it was also concentrated mostly on the couple aspect not the big superhero.

Which brings me to my other point. Although most of it does revolve around Vanessa and Rolland, there is an outside good vs evil thing going on. For the most part it was on point except for …

  1. The “final boss battle” or climax of the book. I got lost. Too many new characters introduced in too short of a time to keep track of and not all of them were villains. This scene took it from a 5 star down to a 4 star in my Goodreads rating.

So there you have it. I just read and loved a Superhero Romance I didn’t know I needed. What book surprised you?

Checking In: Fast FIVE

Apr10

Oohhhh here we go! This fast five has to do with me, Myself and I. Lol. Just a quick check-in on how the writerly and readerly things are going

  1. Still reading an absolute MONSTER amount of books. Instead of constantly adding to the books read total, these past few weeks I’ve been rereading old favorites. At 140 out of the 350 I put on the 2025 challenge– I think I’m gonna be ok.
  2. I am currently grooving on the Ladies of Horror flash project. You can find it HERE. It explores a darker side that I find I really like. It makes it easier to explore some things– whether social or emotional. You should go and read all the fabulous poems and stories that are over there!
  3. Still doing a poem a day and making it to my 4pm writing date with the absolutely fabulous Rie. She has a substack where she does many types of poetry things. Here is a link to her post about one of my favorite things to hoard– blank note books!
  4. I’m getting better… I’d had a brutal  case of bronchitis and am slowly getting everything back on track. I’d let a lot of things slide while sick: housework, writing, all the stuff.
  5. Including my OTHER creative outlet– the planner journals. At first I started writing it in a journal but then stopped that too. And I’m not starting back up because it seems like so much work to back plan a MONTH. Maybe though… Maybe I should do what I do with my writing. Give myself a little bit of grace and start where I’m at. I can always go back and do the other weeks with my journal…

So there’s my current Fast Five. What would your current Fast Five include?

Not gonna lie…. Almost did a 6 but there’s nothing sinful to put on the list!

Ari Writes Again : Top 5

Mar17

We all know by now that I love Ari Wright. She’s one of my favorite romance authors and I have been blessed to be on her ARC team. I only give honest reviews (i.e. the one for Her Knotty List).

Here are the Top 5 Things I Loved about her new book, Once Upon a Pack–

  1. Cinderella retelling. I love me a fairytale, but I love that most of the angst, or the conflict, in the relationship, comes from within the relationship. While there is family drama, it is not the engine driving this book.
  2. Female friendships. It would have been easy to paint Jasmine as “The Other Woman”. Cliched but easy. I hate OW drama. This one… Nope. Her and Ivy (our Cinders character) form a strong friendship and …
  3. The text threads! The ones between Ivy and Jasmine made me howl! I laughed so hard I cried. The ones between the heros are good too (Ari Wright does them so well), but those girl talk ones were hysterical.
  4. Heavy topics are dealt with naturally within the story. In the case of Once Upon a Pack, it has to do with medical debt. No one gets on a soap box and preaches about it. The topic is brought up, and then the characters start dealing with it. It is not a holier than thou or a bashing the rich (princes) type thing.
  5. Characters. Ivy and her pack are all fleshed out. They each have a personal arc that goes into the relationship arc. They are loveable (even if it takes a few minutes to get there– looking at your Dair) and when a guy screws up Ari does grovel right. It’s not a “Let’s go to the bookstore and all is forgiven” grovel. This is, once again, grovel done right. He puts in the work. He doesn’t call attention to it. He doesn’t wait for her to tell him what to do to make it up to her.

So many other wonderful things to say about this book. It is definitely a five star read for me– which means I’m plotting when I’m going to re-read it.

TA my Lovelies! What books and authors do you love?

Importance of voice

Dec4

Especially in dialog.

Took a family trip to San Fran and the beach yesterday. It was lovely.

And personally I found it HILARIOUS that not one of the 3 iPhone users remembered a charging cable. We had 3 for androids and only 2 in use.

But the van had a dvd player. I was sitting up front so I didn’t see the movie, but I could hear it. And after a while, you learn to tell the difference between characters because of their voices. But also the way they speak.

In writing, we don’t have the audio playing but we have to get it playing in the readers imagination. There’s the “she hissed” and “he growled” type tags, but…

Maybe the point is to make the dialog read like you imagine it sounds. Like a person is actually speaking. So if someone is hissing, you’d put in many s words “Sadies still not stopping?” (Which is off the cuff and horrible but you get the idea.)

What is we took that sentence, and gave it some action? “Sadies still not stopping?” Melanie whispered, grabbing my arm.

Eh, not quite there. But closer. The point is, each character is going to talk differently, have different rhythms and patterns to their speech. Just like us lol.

Character Voice becomes especially important when you write first person from multiple POVs. If readers are to believe that these are from different perspectives, we have to put in the work. A psycho, musician, a businessman and a soldier of fortune will all not only speak differently but think differently as well. And if they don’t, then the author has to stop and evaluate why there are two characters instead of one. If they think and talk the same…. They are the same to the reader. They won’t be able to differentiate between them so the characters will get lumped together.

Funny story — I started this blog post over a year ago, when I still lived in California. We had just left the beach (my farewell tour lol). Back then, I read traditional romance and speculative fiction. Now, I read across the spectrum, including non-traditional romance including poly romance (RH) where making characters have distinct voices is imperative. Otherwise, they are related to only being in the mix because of a need for their body parts.

We need to make sure that every character who gets screen time (POV scenes or chapters) has the personality and individuality to pull it off.

Writing

Sep17

I have been writing again. Consistently for the past little bit, and I’m very, quietly excited about it. As well as reading an obscene amount of books. But here’s the thing about reading so much…

You learn what tickles your writing fancy. But it’s also how you learn to handle things like.. a huge info dump.  How to take a severely flawed character and make them likeable. Reading is how we learn the nuts and bolts of both the art and craft of our genres.

When I was a baby writer, I read and read, then when I went to write it came out a bit like what I’d just been reading. Blue Sword Duology, anyone? Those stories, short and otherwise, will never see the light of day and even though I might not make money from them they were valuable.

Their value was in the practice. The practice of sitting down and writing. The practice of dialog, plot, setting. Yes, I was following a formula laid down by someone else, but it worked. I learned.

And even when I couldn’t write I was still learning the art of story, just from the consumer’s perspective.

Right now I’m trying to figure out if one of my characters is a villain or a dumbass. And if he is a dumbass, can he be realistically redeemed?

If it was me? Hell no. But my other characters aren’t me. So now I’m trying to find empathy for a character who I not so proudly claim is a dumbass. I know what the confrontation is, the start of it. It’s a ways off, so I’m going back to some of my fav authors and seeing how they handled it.

Wish me luck!

Suspension of (dis)Belief

Aug23

I wrote a whole romance story in my little Mead spiral notebook when I was in 4th grade. I don’t remember the particulars, but I do remember the female main character having a broken arm and leg, hopping on a motorcycle and riding it down the face of a mountain. Not very believable. It tracks, tho, for my age at the time.

You all know I don’t name and shame when I find something I so passionately disagree with in a book that I’m willing to write about it here. I spoke, at length, to my BFF last night (who is NOT a reader) about the problem I had with the book & problem we are going to discuss. I basically gave a TED talk.

When I went back to see the reviews I kept coming across the acronym TSTL in reference to the female main character (FMC). I’m a little old, and oblivious, and my first thought was “What’s a T St Louis?” No, Dear Reader, it does not have anything to do with the city. It apparently means TOO STUPID TO LIVE

Roughly 4 months pregnant, she hops fences, gets drugged 3 or 4 times within a couple of chapters, mounts a rescue with a teen girl, oh … The same teen girl who tried to help her escape the hero. And The “hero” choked her out and left bruising and chafing around her neck. This wasn’t sexual. It was abuse. And all the heroine would say was “It’s complicated.”

This FMC is the one in a horror story who would say “Hey, what’s that noise in the basement? Oh, look, it’s a werewolf should I pet it?”

I can’t tell you how it ends because I gave up on the series somewhere in the middle of book 2. I couldn’t suspend my disbelief. Now, I’m not trying to yuck someone else’s yum. If you like books that veer more towards bruises that’s ok. Your reading taste does not have to be the same as mine. 

But what I really can’t abide is how stupid the FMC was.  And how cavalier she was with the lives of not only her unborn babies but the teen girl and her brother. She was “so good with them”, and yet she kept making choices that any dumbass would know were going to have high consequences. For her and them.

And she kept making the same mistakes.

It’s ok to write a character who is TSTL. But as authors we need to write some kind of growth (unless it’s a horror book). Or at least new ways to be stupid.  The FMC was not exhibiting any signs of growing the F up, and the hero was devolving. As a reader I was skipping whole parts and as a writer I knew…. When that starts happening, it’s time to skip the book altogether.

What’s your reading TED Talk about, Dear Reader?

Please Don’t: Writing Edition

Aug15

Dear Author;

Thank you for writing your book! I love it! There’s just this tiny little thing…

Please Don’t: have you heroin kidnapped, roughed up and freezing cold and when you have her saved the police are there but not an ambulance? Or even the hero taking her to a doctor? Whaaaa???

Please Don’t: Lose track of who is who. Because after the bad guy has been revealed to the world, he probably is not having dinner with the main characters. Unless the main character is killing him. Or her.

Please Don’t: make it a duology if the second book is just the hero(s) trying (and failing) to make up to the heroine for what a douche canoe they have been. I say this mainly because book 2 will have none of the angst and tension that book 1 had. You will lose readers over this pacing/theme problem. If Book 1 is a ripper of a ride that ride has to continue in Book 2.

And a related Please Don’t: Be careless with your brand. Yes, your brand. If you are asked to write a NOVEL/ NOVELLA in a shared world, please make sure their writing level is in sync with your own. I personally came to a “shared world” series because it was connected to one of my favs. But had I tried some of the others first, not knowing the caliber of my favs writing? I would never have given her a chance. (Anthology writing is different– people expect to get a few stories they don’t jive with and the editor normally… Weelllll… Edits the stories.) Your name is your brand. Protect it. Protect your readers.

There’s only one more thing and it’s a huge ask. I know  it is, but I have faith in you.

Please don’t give up. The world needs your stories, your voice.

I Would Have Written It…

May1

Differently. We all have those books. We’re reading along, there might be some inconsistency in the writing but we’re still in it. Until that moment when we think “No, this that and the other thing needs to happen right here.”

And as writers, our brain sets off like a freight train.

I just had that happen recently in the middle of a book. And my brain is chugging along. I have several ideas that haven’t got the steam on their own, but maybe if I smash them together I can get somewhere.

Spoiler Alert: I’m working through this as I’m writing. I will tell you there will only be generalities about the stories because, whelp. It’s not that I believe someone will “steal” my ideas. You and I could be given the same setting, plot and characters and write completely different stories. It’s because if I write too much or discuss a story my brain is over it and I lose all interest in writing it.

So first off, the book stat I was reading (and DNF’d) was trying very hard to be a mafia romance. And for some odd reason it made me think of a story I had started and stopped quite a few times– it deals with witches & warlock vs mage ability. What’s the difference and what happens when you are one but everyone assumes you are incompetent at the other? This idea is hands down 100% fantasy so obviously no mafia. But warring factions? We can do that.

The part I put it down at was a “meet the head of the family” type of moment and it was not going well. Whelp. Last year I started watching those super short shows– you know the ones. Rich guy drops his wife who is a secret billionaire who is now gonna make his life hell. Ok, so take part of that– the part where they really have NO IDEA who the heck they are dealing withand smash it with witch/mage thing.

I really want a sentient house in there too. I love them. When the house is a character it can go either really really well or very badly for the people involved.

But then I’ve been leaning towards shifter romance, although none of the ones I’m seeing are catching my eye and/or imagination. That might A. Be one step too far or B. Just be a reading thing. I know I tend to not read what I’m writing or what I’m hearing up to write so I might just go back to some old favorites of that type and see if that scratches that.. oh that’s in poor taste.

So. There you have it. My creative brain run around and proof that even the books we don’t finish can be worth it for us.

Ta, my lovelies! I’m off to write a bit now!