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Keeping the love alive

Sep30

Ari Wright has a new book coming out early November. She’s one of my favs, and even though I just devoured Book 3 or the MVP Series, I can’t wait for book 4. Although, of course I’m going to have to LOL.

It’s hard to write a series of books that both stand alone and give something a little extra to your faithful readers. I’m excited to find out how Ari pulls it off in Her Knotty List.

But we have until November to find that out (although the blurb gives us a hint) so let’s look at the last three and see how she did it.

In books 1 & 2 (Knot her Goal, Knot her Shot respectively) the female leads are really good friends and are in each book. They are both in book 3, but don’t know the female main character (and if I tell you more it’ll spoil book 3).

In all three of the books so far (#3 is Knot her Fight), the females have insecurity, or issues with feeling like they are worthy. To be fair, that might just be a people issue, but it resonates strongly for me. Even when things look up, sometimes it’s hard to remember it’s real life and you deserve good things.

Meg (Book 1) is a PR person, and happens to work on her packs  football team accounts. When she pops up in book 3, it’s believable because one of the male main characters is on that team. New readers will read it and move on. Personally I read it and went “Why’s Meg being so weird?” There was a reason, and when everything comes to light it makes sense. A little side wink to faithful readers, but not needed to get the plot or the hint. It will be fun to see if any of the previous characters make it into book 4 and how they end up in the book.

In all three of the current books, the female main characters have met their packs very different ways. A job interview, a matching service and a police station. Book 4 looks like it will be a wild meet up as well. A runaway bride? Yes, please!

There is a big difference between the first three books and the fourth. The pack isn’t formed when she meets them. This is going to be fun to read and must have been fun to write.

Some authors have a specific formula they follow religously when they write. And that’s fine — there are times when I know I need a hit of that formula and will seek out a new title by them.

But there are other authors, like Ari Wright, who take a formula and tweak it and tweak it until the book burns brightly on its own.

I can’t wait!

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?

Books: Starting stopping and in-between

Apr14

Normally, when I DNF (Do Not Finish) I never go back. Either something annoyed me, or I didn’t connect, or something was there that I knew. I’d never go back to try again.

I’d find a new home for the book, a friend, the used bookstore, a home.

Right now I’m second guessing myself. Because I started a book and put it down in the first 50 pages. Went to the Tiky Tok to watch some videos (none posted) then I picked up a magazine. Started reading.

Then I just gave in and started a different book. But that first book, it had some good ideas. And it’s physical, so I flipped forward. And it does get good. I just don’t have the patience right now to wait for 100, 200 pages for a book to get good.

That’s one of the biggest differences between genres for me. Between Fantasy and Romance. Except that’s a lie. There are Fantasy writers that grabbed me by the throat and haven’t let me go even during the first book of theirs that I read.

Some even have complex world building. And the one I put aside has enough that I want to read it… Just not right now. Which is confusing because I’m used to either ripping through or DNFing with no regrets.

It’s a reader’s conundrum. How do you deal with it?

Foreshadow like a boss: Shonda Rhimes & Grey’s Anatomy

Apr25

I love Grey’s Anatomy. I have been religiously watching it since I was pregnant with the princeling. I think Bailey and I went through labor kind of around the same time 🙂 Every Thursday night, without fail, I am watching it. My friends know not to call me. My son doesn’t talk to me.

I cried during last night’s episode. Sobbed so hard the princeling came into the room to make sure mommy was ok. Once I had processed it, I still didn’t go to sleep until 11:30 or so…. I kept turning the episode over and over in my  mind. And the writer woke up in me, and I realized what a boss Shonda Rhimes has become. Because that was some beautiful foreshadowing.

Stay with me while I take you through it— and please don’t go all fangirl, beating me up because I don’t have the episodes/scenes in the proper order. My DVR took a crap last Thursday and I LOST THIS SEASON! Dang it! OK, here we go.

1. Not only did Derek leave… It didn’t crush Meredith. As a matter of fact….

2. The Streak: Meredith starts a surgical winning streak as soon as he leaves. She is able to more fully become the person, the surgeon, she wants to be. Is it hard? You betcha! Being a single parent, or in a long distance family situation, is never easy. But she goes on that streak, and the part that annoys her about it? It started the day he left.

3. I can live without you… but I don’t want to”. After Derek’s coming back and telling her how he can’t live without her… this is her response. And really… I cheered for her. I got goose bumps, just like when Christina told her she was the sun. Not Derek.

4. The scene of Meredith and Amelia, talking about the non-relationship. Amelia basically tells Meredith “Until you’ve held the love of your life as he lies dying, you don’t get to judge me.” I watched that scene and cringed, thinking… if anything happens, Amelia is going to be destroyed.

5. When a phone call comes, saying Derek never makes his appointment, Bailey tells Meredith that she can panic at 5pm. Not a minute before, and not in the Operating Room. We watch, with Meredith, as the time ticks away. At the very end of that episode, there are emergency lights reflected in her windows.

And then last night, I sobbed along with multitudes of fan girls, as Meredith told Derek to go, and he breathed his last.

But unlike the others, as soon as the sobbing stopped, I started thinking. Writers pay attention here. Shonda Rhimes just killed off a beloved character. There will be fall out with fans, but within the STORY ITSELF, it was set up to make perfect and utter sense.

It could have gone either way. He could have survived, but that’s not what the story needed at this time. If Meredith, the title character in the series, is going to grow, something had to give. I get that. Really, I do. I killed off a main character in one of my books. It sucks when we have to do that. But it’s what serves the story.

Meredith and Derek could have gone along happily ever after. The problem is, that’s where the story stops traditionally. No one wants to read about Cinderella shopping for dresses all day. Or Beauty spending the day in Beasts library, eating cookies and reading books. They also don’t want to watch too much of it on television, either.

Our characters have to grow. And sometimes, in order for one character to rise to the occasion, we have to rip everything away from them. Meredith had already lost her “person”, as Christinia is a world away. And now her husband has left her, too, albeit through death.

Meredith is about to go through the fire.

And that’s what good fiction is about. But if you’re going to mess with characters in a series, you need to foreshadow like a boss. Like Shonda, in fact. We might not like where it went, but it didn’t come out of nowhere. The audience was prepared.

Now, it’s going to be a wild ride to see where Meredith goes from here.