So, yeah, I got to over 50k words in 15 or 16 days. Unsurprising, to be honest. So, it’s National Novel Writing Fortnight.
But… While it was going fairly well, the ending I have planned is looking weak and I’m beginning to come to the conclusion that I suck at writing “romance.” I think I’m okay with it when it’s a sort of side issue to the rest of the story, but if it’s a major component… Ho hum. Can’t be good at everything.
So, Night’s Daughter is going on hold for at least the next few days while I look at something else which also may or may not end up being worthy of publishing. I’ll probably take another crack at things again; I have about two things fluttering around in my unwritten books files which I keep coming back to and never get finished, and this is one of them.
Still aiming to get back to Guardian by the end of the year, but for November I’m on a quest to try new things! One of them coming out good would be nice.
Witches and Ray-Guns 
love the latest fox book, and that sister surperior is so naughty, more of that please ….
Oh, Naomi’s not going anywhere. Though Fox has a terrible record with relationships…
Didn’t Fred Wedlock do a song about that?
http://www.deezer.com/en/track/124448472
Quote:
“I got insurance this time!”
I believe in you.
A “guy” opinion of a typical romance book:
First third of the book two people meet.
Second third of the book some overused plot device is inserted to challenge the blossoming relationship.
Final third of the book the emotionally brave couple overcomes all obstacles and falls in love (insert the obligatory overwritten steamy sex scene.)
Yawn.
You do it best. Two interesting and often non-traditional people meet while doing amazing stuff like fighting aliens/demons/mad scientists while saving a world or three and a relationship happens to develop. (insert smokin’ hot sexy time.)
… Come to think of it, I’d love to read your take on a romance novel.
Well, yeah, I’m not following your ‘traditional romance novel’ pattern there. I’m also not entirely giving up on this thing, so you might see it yet.
Whenever I think of romance novels I think of the same thing, and I’d automatically say “I hate them. They are all stereotypical rubbish”.
But then I remember that most of my absolute favorite novels – from Tolstoy’s War and Piece to Murakami’s Wind-up Bird Chronicle to Powers’ Gold-Bug Variation of course are all also at very least to a significant portion romance novels.
So then I need to correct myself and say I hate stereotypical romance, but (apparently ^^) like well-done romance, and have no issue having entire books about it so long as it’s well done. But of course that’s where the challenge is. And it’s really tough figuring out why it works in X and not in Y.
One of my favourite series (on audio; the performance is awesome) is the Nice Girls/Jane Jameson/Half-Moon Hollow series by Molly Harper. At the core, they’re supernatural romance, but you have a well-designed setting, great characters, plenty of wry humour, and some scenery-destroying sex scenes.
But I’d generally say that the last thing I’d want to read is a romance. This is why we have variety. 🙂
True. I think why I resent romance so much is because authors often make decisions that just annoy me when it comes to it – my “favorite” example is Feist’s/Wurts’ Daughter of the Empire series.
The entire first novel seems to be about demonstrating what a capable, ruthless, independent, ambitious heroine the series has. Then in the second novel she kinda falls in love and suddenly she needs to be saved all the time (because obviously that’s what love interests do). It’s not even just physical stuff (which arguably might make sense) but also all her intellectual scheming and so on is suddenly practically gone.
Now maybe it’s wrong to “blame” romance on it. But this sort of stuff seems most likely to happen when it’s involved ^^
So, yeah, when it comes to scifi/fantasy novels I’m usually “let’s not do any romance. The risk is too great!” Or delegate it to some minor plot point that is quickly resolved and has no further relevance.
But, I mean, I don’t need to know amazon sale numbers to know that readers absolute love romance. So, of course, it’s there in nearly stories in one form or another. Can’t really blame the authors and publishers for giving people what they want, I guess. But it still drives me nuts at times.
With you on that. I’m spending a lot of time listening to audiobooks of the Hollows series by Kim Harrison. In the early books, the heroine is strong, kickass, intelligent (mostly), but as the series progresses she seems to make increasingly poor decisions and get into dumber situations which seem to be largely based on giving the plot a reason to complicate her love life.
Oh, plus I think she’s going to end up with the guy I desperately didn’t want her to end up with. He was just so obvious that I really hoped it wouldn’t be him. In a way, the entire umpteen-book series seems to be now following the above ‘bad romance novel’ plot. Disappointing, but I’m hoping for blood and explosions along the way.
Oh, yeah. The Hollows! I actually stopped reading that series because of the romance.
I think the first – 4-5? novels where OK. The romance was the typical urban fantasy cheese, but at least there were twists to it. And they never took over the plot.
But I absolutely agree; at book 5 or 6 or something (I really don’t remember, it’s been years) it became really obvious she’d for unfathomable reasons end up with the antagonist (who if I remember that right threw her into a dog fight at some point. How romantic!), and the interesting tension with her room mate (friendly or romantic or vampiric ^^) just disappeared into nothing.
So I decided to rather quit before getting to the point where I’d be really annoyed with it. But people love it (one look at the reviews tells me so ^^).
Admittedly, I didn’t read until anything actually happened so I might just be wrong, which would be embarrassing. Maybe the author decided on a different route after all or sold the romance so well it would have totally convinced me, I don’t actually know.
And it has happened before! For example, I recently read Indranan Wars – this is about a sassy heroine, who has run from her duties as heir to some interstellar throne, but when her family gets murdered, a capable, understanding, patient, handsome, protective bodyguard turns up to bring her home. Nobody can handle her – except for him!
So, as “experienced reader”, I of course immediately decided that that’d be horrible “bodyguard romance” where the sassy heroine gets everyone into trouble all the time and the patient bodyguard gets her out of it until they end up making out in the middle of a chase scene or something equally stupid.
Spoiler: turns out the bodyguard is gay and married and there’s no romance anywhere in the series and their relationship goes down an entirely different route altogether ^^;
So the author here did nothing wrong, but I very nearly didn’t read her novel because of what others before her did. That really made me question my assumptions – but unfortunately they are still more often true than not 😉
The thing about clichés is that they are, unfortunately, there for a reason. Some people (Hell, a lot of people) actually like them.
Ive actually picked up a few romance novels over the years on accident, authors selling it as sci fi or something when its really just a straight up romance novel (hate that crap) and finished them out of curiosity to see just how bad they would get by the end, and I had a girlfriend badger me into reading a couple that she claimed were good stories since she was big into them. My conclusion on why they were all horrible is that if the plot revolves around just the romance, it sucks. I really do not mind a major romance plot line in a story so long as everything else in the book isnt just there to set up that one thing. If it makes sense and the people involved are at least acting in a way consistent with the character, its fine.
Also, I hate the damsel in distress cliche where otherwise strong characters just fall apart or make horrible decisions for no reason other than to be rescued. As a friend of mine put it once, why do romance authors who claim to be writing strong female characters tend to make them idiots who need to always be rescued because they cant chew gum without breaking a heel and falling over on the train tracks in front of a run away locomotive. She dropped the F bomb pretty much every other word though.
I was reading the comments about romance novels and I started to laugh. The reason I read Naill’s writing is because it’s not predictable, you never know where a sex science will turn up but with other romance writers the sex scene is always the same place in very one of their stories, ” half way through”. And Naill’s writing never has the carp “oh she’s too good for me or I’m not good enough for her. Lol keep up the excellent writing and I’ll keep buying it.
That works. I’ll keep writing as long as people keep buying. 🙂
Romance in and of itself is not bad to me. Linnea Sinclair and Lisanne Norman managed to make reasonable good books out of mixing romance and sci-fi. For some variable definitions of ‘good’ anyway.
I like what’s called a “kick-ass-heroine” One who does NOT wait like the damsel in distress for a knight to rescue her. And I think, Niall did that type of protagonist well several times. That does not mean that she can’t have a love interest (which may be male, hint, hint), but they need to see each other eye to eye, each accepting the other’s strength.