Hold the cringe-worthy please!

Do not read this post if you are a child or very immature!! Contains sexual references!





Okay. Picture this. You’re reading the latest book from one of your favourite authors. You’re loving it, the heroine is someone you can root for, the hero melts your heart and set your loins afire until you’re wishing for a hunk like that of your own... And then this happens.

She felt him plunge deeper, deeper than ever before, so deep she could almost feel him in the back of her throat.

I’m not going to quote and I’m definitely not going to name names but seriously. Something like this was in a historical I was reading, only a couple of chapters after the heroine takes the hero into her mouth and then into her throat. It made me wonder if the author (fantastic woman and great books) has been watching porn. With each novel lately the sex scenes get longer and longer and longer. I don’t know about you, but for me, writing a sex scene is about the sensual touches and the lead up, it’s about the connection you can only get by being one with another person. Sure I have sex in em, I’ve got two blazes on the hard drive, but none of my women would ever think like this, especially not during the act. Whatever happened to the simple stuff?

But then you get stuff like this...

(This is coming...) Bit anti-climactic but I was going to put a paragraph from True Blood, the first book. An awesome bit about a lamb and a wolf but I can’t find the book...

And your faith in good writing from a fairly new author is renewed. (or would be if I could find the damn thing!)

But isn’t that what it’s all about? You like this, I like that, I hate this and you absolutely love that. I’ve met so many people who hated Twilight (mostly because they watched the movie and just didn’t get it) but then I can’t read a John Grisham or a Nora Roberts or a Danielle Steele. I’m firmly seated, front row on the Twilight bandwagon. Every time I see the trailer for New Moon, I have to remind myself that the book is in the room with a light-sleeping two year old and that I have other things to do.

Yes! I do have some will power.

What makes you cringe? What would you as a writer never write? I could never write sweet. I can’t read them, I can’t even look at them. I get angry just thinking of the last one I read so I just don’t go there. I certainly will never bag anyone who does because we are all just so lucky that so many writers and readers have differing tastes. How boring would it be if we didn’t? Selling a book would be easy, writing one wouldn’t be so hard and they would be as cheap as chips. But where would that leave me? I’ve spent the last eight months (not so long when you add up the hours instead of the days) slogging my guts out over my historical. Imagine my horror of if I only got paid peanuts for it and then everyone said, ‘Yeah, I liked it’.

Well, I love it! I love my story, my characters, my setting. I want to get paid good money for it and then I want to share it with women (and some men) everywhere. Writers don’t write for peanuts and for good reason. What we (yes I’m throwing myself in this basket) do is freakin hard! Selling what we have, getting your heel in the door, it’s even harder. Every day I have to convince an agent or a publisher that what I have is unique, that my story hasn’t been done before or it’s a fresh twist on something that has.

It’s exhausting. My eyes hurt. I’m sitting here at the crack of dawn after finishing work at 11pm last night writing my blog so I can get my name out there. I get RSI in my arms because I don’t sit properly but you know what? I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is my love. It took me 25 years to figure out my place in the world and now I’ve found it. I’m going to be an author. I’m going to have my name printed on the front of a novel and I’m going to be damn good at it!

*grins and shrugs sheepishly*

Now I just have to convince one of the two agents who have my partial in their trays that I’m passionate and I can do it.

Maybe I’ll send them a copy of the blog...