RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
Author: Jeffe Kennedy
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This week at the SFF Seven is a topic of our choice – whatever is on our minds. So, I’ve decided to tell a story I haven’t publicly told before. There’s been a lot of conversation in publishing this last month about sexual harassment in the industry, largely springing from this article in the School Library Journal and the followup survey by Anne Ursu. This is my #MeToo story.
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A new power is at work in the Twelve Kingdoms, unbalancing the fragile peace. For the High Queen and her sisters, it might mean a new alliance—or the end of the love of a lifetime…
As a howling blizzard batters the mountain keep of Windroven, Ami, Queen of Avonlidgh, and her unofficial consort Ash face their own storm. Their passion saved them from despair, but Ash knows a scarred, jumpy ex-convict isn’t the companion his queen needs. He’s been bracing himself for the end since their liaison began. When it finally comes, the shattering of his heart is almost a relief.
With a man haunted by nightmares and silent as stone, Ami knows only that Ash’s wounds are his own to hide or reveal. She can’t command trust. But just as they are moving apart, a vicious attack confines them together, snowbound and isolated with an ancient force awakening within Windroven itself. If they truly mean to break their bond, Ami and Ash must first burn through a midwinter that will test every instinct—and bring temptation all too near…
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This week we’re giving a valentine to the books of years’ past and sharing a title from our backlists. A little love for those publications that might even predate the creation of this blog!
For mine, I’m sharing my first standalone fiction publication. It was my first sale as a novelist, even though it’s technically a novella at 81 pages, and I originally published it with Loose ID. (Now sadly going out of business.) It’s an erotic fantasy – a BDSM Beauty and the Beast – and is still one of my best-selling titles ever. Also, I originally published it under the pseudonym “Jennifer Paris,” the one time I used that name. When I got the rights back and self-published the book (also my first venture into self-publishing), I did it under my own name. A bit of history there.
In exchange for her father’s life, Amarantha agrees to marry the dreadful Beast and be his wife for seven days. Though the Beast cannot take Amarantha’s virginity unless she begs him to, he can and does take her in every other way. From the moment they are alone together, the Beast relentlessly strips Amarantha of all her resistance.
If Amarantha can resist her cloaked and terrifying husband, she gains his entire fortune and will be allowed to return to her family and a normal life. But the Beast seduces her at every turn, exposing, binding, tormenting, and pleasuring Amarantha until she no longer knows her own deepest desires. Increasingly desperate to break the curse that chains his humanity, the Beast drives Amarantha past every boundary. But her desire for a normal life may jeopardize the love that will save them both.
As an interesting aside, here’s this article on how Facebook is “flattening” content and reducing the ability of creators to share quality stuff. I’m trying to share it widely in places that AREN’T Facebook.
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Another photo of the lunar eclipse as the full moon set over Santa Fe.
Our topic this week at the SFF Seven is “Why do you think people DON’T write?” Come on over for my take. Warning: brutal truth, but there is hope!
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I woke up this morning and got some photos of the full moon setting during a lunar eclipse, the second full moon this month, and during the supermoon cycle. That makes it a super blue blood moon, which is a mouthful. Because our bedroom window looks west, we were able to lie there when we woke up around 5:40am, and watch the shadow cross the moon until totality. I live in a magical place.
Yesterday I started on a draft of THE ARROWS OF THE HEART, the next book in The Twelve Kingdoms/Uncharted Realms saga. For those familiar with the series, this will be Zyr and Karyn’s book. And, for those who get my newsletter – if you don’t, and want to, sign up is here – you know I did a survey on whose point-of-view (POV) to tell it from. Because, clearly, I’ve been wrestling with this issue for a long time.
These results were fascinating and unexpected – especially that so many readers were good with alternating first person. But they also didn’t give me a definitive answer. All you people who trust me to just tell a good story! I love you, I really do. BUT YOU ARE NOT HELPING.
See, normally, POV is not a question for me. The traditional advice – and I think it’s good advice – is to take the POV of the character with the most at stake in a scene. This works much better with alternating POVs, however, when there’s freedom to choose a POV based on stakes. And which gives weight to alternating first person POVs.
In this series, however, I’ve always done a single First Person POV. I think there’s something to be said for sticking to a single form. Like, Shakespeare wouldn’t start writing plays in rhyming verse instead of blank verse. Not that I’m Shakespeare! But I do believe in creating coherency in a series, for a common feel. In addition, each novel in this series has been from the heroine’s POV. I’ve always felt that’s important, as it seems so much fantasy dwells on the male gaze. (Some of the novellas have been in the hero’s POV, or even in third person alternating, but I see those as subsidiary to the main arc.)
Still, this hasn’t been a no-brainer on this book. It should obviously be from Karyn’s POV – but I keep thinking about Zyr’s POV and hearing his voice in my head. Many of you – and writer friends I whined to who likely aren’t reading this – said to just go with it! Write it the way you want to!
So, I *did*! I started yesterday and wrote a page or two in his POV and…
………………it’s all wrong.
It’s something, and I’ll keep it, at least for a while, but I think this is a case of pushing through the wall. (I talked about that at a panel recently, nicely summarized by Shannon Moreau here.)
You know what decided me? I started thinking about the cover and working on that with the fantastically talented Ravven, and I only see the heroine on the cover. That says a great deal.
So: opinions from those of you who haven’t weighed in yet?
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Another photo from Meow Wolf. Nnedi Okorafor and I fell in love with this crazy kitchen and had to photograph each other in it. One of the most fun aspects of this “immersive experience” is not only being able to touch and enter the exhibit, but in a way to become part of it as well. I felt like part of this kitchen and wanted to seem like it, too.
Art of all mediums is interesting in the way it interfaces with reality. It’s impossible to recreate reality in art – and maybe not even desirable to do so – but art necessarily reflects and at best deepens our understanding of the real world. Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is the unreliable narrator – whether we love them, hate them, write them or avoid them. Come on over to weigh in!
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Saw this doglike creature at Meow Wolf. I loved how the matte metal body faded into the shadows while its quizzical bright face popped, ears perked. You could press the eyes, too, and make them bobble. One of the great things about Meow Wolf is you can touch everything. I wandered through the place in the excellent company of Nnedi Okorafor and she’s like me – she commented, “It’s not real for me unless I can touch it.” So very true.
I’ve been thinking lately about how I rate the books I read. You know – three stars, five stars, whatever. Everyone has their own set of criteria. Although, I do hear a lot of conversations where people discuss how they assign ratings and wanting to validate their systems in comparisons to others. Some people say it’s like the US Grading system of A, B, C, D and F, with five stars equivalent to an A. Very often these same folks say that three stars is a good rating, even though they agree it’s equivalent to a C.
Probably this goes back to what kind of students we were in school, but I was the overachieving kind who got upset at anything lower than an A.
Still, in school a grade serves to indicate a student’s understanding of the subject taught (or should), while a book rating should convey how much we enjoyed it. Or, it might be intended as a valuation. How “good” is the book?
A lot of things play into this second way of looking at rating a book. How we want other people to view us plays in. We want to be viewed as being discerning, as having the intelligence and taste to know “good” stories from “bad.” I put those valuations in quotation marks because I think a lot of people call something good or bad when what they mean is that they do or don’t like it.
Not the same thing at all.
BUT, calling something we don’t like “bad” gives us a bit more intellectual authority, at least on the outside.
Recently I saw a screed by a Big Name Author (BNA) who said they get in trouble for giving books they liked ratings of 2.5. They went on at some length, justifying how 2.5 was a great rating when they don’t finish (DNF) 90% of the books they read. What went unsaid was the implication that there should be plenty of room to somehow “crown” the truly beloved books with a 5.0.
I also saw a rando Goodreads reviewer give a book a 3.81 rating – which was in the review itself, as Goodreads doesn’t allow for tenths of points, much less hundredths. I didn’t look beyond that, partly because I rolled my eyes so hard I strained an oculomotor muscle and couldn’t focus quite right for a few minutes.
I mean, really?
This is attempting to create an impression of precision where there is none. We are not judges at the Olympics adding or subtracting points for technicalities and difficulty. It’s a story. There are no finite scorable elements like touching a second foot down following a triple axle. Reading is a subjective experience.
So, while I understand the impulse to “reserve” the best scores for the most beloved books, I wonder at what that really accomplishes. And I say that as someone who used to worry about my reputation if I rated a book too highly and other people began to question my motivations or integrity.
I don’t worry about that any more.
After all, I judge for a number of contests and I have plenty of opportunity to apply scoring to decide which books I think deserve the highest accolades. But for general reading? I’ve come to the point where there’s room for an infinite number of five-star books in my world. Five-stars means I loved reading it. What happens if I find a book I loved reading more? Also five stars. I’m not sure everything in life needs to be relentlessly ranked in comparison to everything else.
I’ve also stopped rating and reviewing every damn thing I buy because I’m tired of spending my time in service to retailers, but that’s another rant for another time.
Basically it comes down to that I love books. I love to read. If I love a story, I don’t feel the need to judge it down to tenths and hundredths of points. I’m not assigning a grade to provide incentive to the author to do better.
I’m just saying I enjoyed the hell out of it.