Thursday, January 1, 2009

The Infamous Book Review

And now, for your reading pleasure, my review of Seize the Night.

Also in this month's issue of Collector Times, my husband Chris Reid has written Chapter 3 of the League of Explorers round robin story. I did some editing work on the chapter, as Chris hasn't written fiction in a few years and wanted me to go over it before he sent it to our editor.

I've been caught up in renovating our game room and getting our house ready for today's dinner and gift exchange with my family, so I've done no writing lately. So much for not losing all of the momentum that I built up on Christmas.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Let me suggest Kelley Armstrong's Broken, which does have the hunky guys - I think that's mandatory in romance novels - but doesn't fall into too many other stereotypes. The paranormal element is werewolves, that both the hero and the heroine are werewolves, so she gets to do her own share of the action.

Anonymous said...

Arrgh! I meant to say Bitten, not Broken. Bitten is the beginning of the series. Sorry! Still a bit mentally fuzzy from my cold.

AJ said...

Susan, I'll look for that one next time I'm at B&N. I'm not a big fan of werewolves, but I do like them better than vampires in general.

I expect romance novel men to be at least moderately hunky. What bothers me is when they're unrealistically hunky and/or they're all cut out of the same mold. For instance, in the Laurell K. Hamilton book that I read (I think it was called Kiss of Shadows or something like that), nearly all of the men had long, flowing hair (often in exotic colors, if I'm remembering correctly) and a penchant for long duster jackets.

Seize the Night also showed a preference for long-haired men. Even the tight-laced general had long hair, which didn't really seem right to me. I would have imagined him with either a severe military cut, or given his taste in clothing (Versace and Armani), a $500 movie-star haircut.

Now, don't get me long. I LIKE long-haired men. I started crushing on them as a teen, and then I married one. But I think that when writing a romance, it might be a good idea to provide the reader with a broader spectrum of sexy men, so that even if the main love interest doesn't float her boat, there's a secondary character that she can swoon after.

Anonymous said...

"I knew that the Goths sacked Rome, I didn't know that the Emos followed in their wake." I love that!

They've got your currently nonexistent domain at the bottom of the page.

Anonymous said...

How old is this book, AJ? I thought that men with long flowing hair were passé, in romance if not in marriage. Of course that last sentence is not supposed to imply that marriage and romance are mutually exclusive.

AJ said...

Marilee, I know, I haven't asked Sheryl to change it to my Etsy URL, because I figure it's good proof that erthefae.com does in fact belong to me, and has for years, if I decide to go the lawsuit route.

Serge, the book is from 2005! And the Hamilton book was also from the 2000s. Could it be that either long hair is not yet passe in paranormal romance, or that it has come back into vogue, much like 70s fashion?

(Of personal amusement to me, as a woman with hair that hangs below her waist, is the constant insistence that hair that ends just below the shoulders is "long and flowing.")