As a writer, at some point you will reach the stage where you will need to have others critique your work. There are many reasons to do so that others have covered before, but as a former computer programmer, one way I like to look at it is: you cannot test your own code. You think you’ve written the program to do exactly what you want, you test it and hand it off to the Beta tester. And they find mistakes. The reason is because they didn’t build it and so don’t know your thinking behind it and do what comes natural to them. Consequently, they take paths you never dreamed of and hadn’t tested for. Yikes!

How does this relate to writing? You think you’ve sufficiently explained motives behind character actions, or have shown the emotional reaction sufficiently because YOU know the character so well and know EXACTLY why they’re doing it and fail to see that it didn’t quite come across the way you pictured it. Oops! A good critiquer or beta reader will find these ‘thin spots’ for you.

Okay, so you’re ready to get critiques? Are you sure? I’d like to tout again this great advice from Writer Musings: How To Get The Most Out Of A Critique, Part Three: if you don’t know the heart of your story, you are not ready for feedback. This is so true because you are going to get a wide array of feedback. And by wide array, I mean some folks will hate a particular line and others will like that same one. Soon, you’ll be wanting to pull out your hair. Or, worse, you’ll take every single suggestion as gospel and water down your story, your voice, to such a state that it will be milquetoast.

The problem is, if you’re doing things right, I think, you’ll have some people not like it. Crazy I know. But I think I’m right. Here’s why. If you have a unique voice or your characters’ voices are interesting and unique, that means some people are not going to like it. It’s just not their thang. And that’s okay. Make it bland, though? No one will find it objectionable, but are any of them excited? Probably not.

So what’s a writer to do? I like to invoke my uncle’s 40-20-40 rule. He got this advice when he became dean of a department — 40% of the people are going to like you no matter what, 40% will not like you no matter what, it’s the 20% in the middle you need to worry about. This rule is so handy and applicable that I’ve quoted it many times for different scenarios. It’s why politicians are really in trouble if they drop below 40% in the approval ratings, because they’re losing folks that would normally support them no matter what.

When writing, use this rule, too, during your critique period and also when it’s published. Make sure you show your draft to people outside of your 40%-guaranteed likes (i.e. your family and friends). One excellent place to get a wide sampling and great advice is my favorite critique forum: Critique Circle. It runs by a credit system — the more you crit others, the more credits you earn and so the more you can post for review. The other part I like is that it is broken up by genre and there are only a certain number of slots for each, so you’re guaranteed to get crits, unlike other sites where you join a huge long list and folks have to wade through. The more crits given in a particular genre for that week’s cycle, the more slots available for that genre for the next week. Check it out.

But then be prepared for diverse opinions! It can be very overwhelming and it’s tempting to take every single piece of advice. Make sure you evaluate each one, even if it’s contrary or hard to swallow. They may have an excellent point. Take a few days and let it sink in. If it will make your piece stronger, use it. If it resonates with you as the writer and fits with your vision, use it. But if it doesn’t, don’t. You’ll get ‘critters’ who don’t like your genre, so of course they’re probably not going to like your piece. Evaluate to see if the critter ‘gets’ what you’re trying to say/tell. You’ll soon get the hang of it. I had one critter in the beginning that was telling me to delete things that were what made my character different. She didn’t like the character and so was watering her down to what she liked. I didn’t take her advice because I knew this was how my character thought, and others were liking this exact aspect of her.

So, I’m going to risk that 40% will not like my character and my story and hoping the 20% in the middle do.

EDIT: A sharp commenter noted that this is a breakdown of the Pareto Principle, known as the 80/20 rule. The lesson is the same: concentrate on capturing that elusive 20% in the middle, and the 40 on either end are the ‘trivial 80%’ noted in Pareto’s Principle!

What has been your critique experience? Do you find this rule applicable as well? Do you think the percentage distribution is right? Or do you feel 30-40-30 is more accurate?

Photo by jared

Tweetables

• Dealing with Critiques or Reviews – the 40-20-40 Rule click to tweet
  
• When evaluating crits & reviews, aim for the 20% in the middle! The 40-20-40 rule click to tweet

And I enjoyed all three! Great world-building, great pacing, great writing, and loved the characters. I won’t go into it much more here and save it for next month on Paranormal Unbound.

And it was due to that blog that I picked up the other two authors. I’d been wanting to read JR Ward and as noted in an earlier post, got completely obsessed with the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. So when I saw one of her books for a different series at a library sale, I snagged it without reading what it was about. And because I’m an obsessive series reader, and the one I got was not the first, I filled out the series at used bookstores and online. Nalini Singh was also recommended by commenters on Paranormal Unbound, specifically the Guild Hunter series, so I snagged some at said library sale, and rounded it out in the same manner as the other Ward series.

Since I snagged a bunch of other books at that sale, I wasn’t paying particular attention to titles or blurbs, and happily added them all to my To Be Read Hill. So I picked up the first of Singh’s recently, having finished Eden’s series, and finally, you know, looked at the friggin’ title, and lo, it’s Angels’ Blood. And wow, folks weren’t lying about how great the writing is. Very fresh voice and unique world-building. I was immediately sucked in, and it didn’t hurt that Raphael was one hunk of an archangel.

I’m currently enjoying a 3-day beach vacation with family and so when I packed Saturday, I headed to my Hill, and grabbed the rest of the Singh’s and all the Wards (in case I finished Singh’s, LOL) and have been having a wonderful and relaxing stay, reading on the beach, reading by the pool, reading on one of they many screened in porches on the beach house. Yesterday I finished Angel’s Blood by the pool, and said to my cousin, “One book down, grabbing another!” I went to my pile only to discover I hadn’t successfully filled out my series and didn’t have Book 2. So thankfully I’d overpacked books (which is always wise to do on a vacation or trip) and grabbed the first one of Ward’s other series (Covet) and scampered back to the pool. And imagine my surprise when I saw it was about, yep, angels–in this case fallen angels, like Eden’s.

So I guess I’m on an angel kick!

And enjoying the ride…

What about you? Do you find yourself, either accidentally or planned, reading about one paranormal creature for a while? Do you find angels yummy too?

Case in point

Yesterday, a fellow writer posted this some-ecard with the quote from Stephen King on Facebook and I wrote the following comment:

I don’t know– I think there’s an exception–if you’re only using words you find in there that you already know well and have just forgotten it, and so you’re like “oh, yes, that’s a good one.” Problem is when people use it to use words they don’t know and so potentially use it in the wrong context or it has a shade of meaning they are unfamiliar with. Or are just trying to use ‘impressive’ words. I sometimes (I’m of a certain age) find that I also forget nice simple words too.

And then I proceed to fire up the old Kindle to read a new book that should be right up my alley–a quirky, nerdy heroine stumbling toward love. It was recommended by another writer in a blog post as a refreshing, new voice and I just had to check it out. It started out great (voice, check), and I do really like the quirky, nerdy heroine (check), but soon I started cringing.

The problem?

The writer is using a vocabulary wider than her own. It clearly suffers from thesaurusitis and while the heroine is supposed to be über smart and nerdy, and so it would seem to be appropriate for the heroine to have a great vocabulary and use big words, the problem is, the writer doesn’t have the same vocabulary as the heroine she’s trying to write and so is using words that she thinks portrays the synonym for the word she looked up, but the shade of meaning or context is completely wrong. Making for some unintentional funny moments. Frankly, it’s spoiled the book for me, though I’m still going to continue reading it today just because I do like the heroine and her situation. But I won’t be recommending it to anyone. My co-worker asked if it was supposed to be intentional, but I don’t think so–this character isn’t being portrayed as someone who thinks she’s smart and using words in the wrong context to provide hilarity, she’s actually supposed to be smart.

And is this irony or just Alanis Morissette irony?

I hate to admit this, but I struggle with whether something is true irony, so help a girl out. Is the fact that I wrote that comment on Facebook saying there is an exception and then on the same day I start a book that illustrates the other half of my comment:

Problem is when people use it to use words they don’t know and so potentially use it in the wrong context or it has a shade of meaning they are unfamiliar with.

Is that true irony? Because I rarely read a book that suffers from thesaurusitis and it was kinda freaky for me to start one on the same day that did.

Do you agree with Stephen King re: thesaurus usage? Or, do you use one? And if so, how?

Tweetables:

• Today @AngelaQuarles asks: Are you using a thesaurus correctly? And is this irony? click to tweet
  
• Is a thesaurus useful or do you agree with Stephen King that a writer should never use it?  @angelaquarles click to tweet

Reblogged from Paranormal Unbound:

I'm a huge fan of Katie MacAlister and also a big fan of timey-wimey stuff, so when I saw that Time Thief, book one in a new series, was coming out (May 7), I just had to snag it. I can always depend on Ms. MacAlister to give me a light, fun read with sparkling dialogue and yummy heroes and she doesn't disappoint.

Read more… 483 more words

I’m so excited to have one of my Beta partners on my blog today, Kate Meader! Her debut novel released just last week from Grand Central’s Forever imprint, and boy-howdy is it awesome! I first came across her in the blog hop Six Sentence Sunday, and as soon as I started reading her snippets, I was hooked on this story! Not only did it have a scrumptious hero, but it had fantastic humor; my kind of read! So we struck up an online friendship, and I Beta read Feel the Heat, and she Beta read Must Love Breeches and have been Beta partners since. Given that her brand of humor is what attracted me to her writing, I asked if she could touch on humor in her writing. So take it away, Kate!

*****

Thanks to Angela for hosting and letting me talk about Feel the Heat, the first book in my Chicago-set Hot in the Kitchen series about an Italian restaurant owning family and the sizzling, sexy chefs who love them.

Have you ever read those “survey” results in Cosmo or the like where a woman will rate what she thinks is most important or sexiest to her in a man? They never say that he has to be built like Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson or that he has to have more jaw than necessary. Sure we won’t throw that guy out of bed for eating chips but invariably, it’s intelligence, compassion and—ding ding ding!—a sense of humor that rises to the top of the list. Every woman (and plenty of guys) want a man who can make them laugh. The fantasy guy of romance novels might be the brooding alpha who’s so tortured and possessive that he makes his lady’s life miserable, only compensating for his assholic behavior by burning up the heroine between the sheets. But for women IRL, a guy who brings the funny gets us every time.

Well, lucky for you, dear reader, the hero of my debut foodie romance, Feel the Heat, brings the best of both worlds—I had to make him a little arrogant after all. And British. (Same difference, I hear some of you say.) Jack Kilroy is an amazing chef, a born leader, a man who has women eating out of his hand. Often literally. So he also has a few insecurities, mostly about whether people want to use him for his fame and his wealth, but he’s what I call “happy alpha”. He doesn’t dwell on his problems too much and he certainly doesn’t hesitate when it comes to Lili DeLuca. Jack is sure he wants to date this smart mouth woman—and viral videos of steamy kisses, butts with their own Twitter accounts, and his bitch fork-wielding fans are not going to stand in his way.

What makes these two so perfect for each other is that Lili is rather unimpressed by Jack’s fame and is unafraid to take him down a peg or three. Oh, his assets are undeniable but if he thinks he can sway her with those gorgeous green eyes and his disruptively handsome cheekbones, he can think again. When they first meet, Jack has made a shambles of Lili’s restaurant kitchen, so she jumps into clean-up mode—and takes a jab at Le Kilroy while she’s at it.

She glanced down at his hand resting on her golden skin. By the time her eyes had made the return trip, she was shooting sparks. Back off. Hooking a stray lock behind her ear, she returned to her task—cleaning up his mess and making him look like an arse. A cloud of unruly, cocoa brown hair pitched forward, obscuring her heart-shaped face and giving her a distinct lunatic vibe.

It would take more than a death stare and a shock of crazy curls to put him off. Teasing her was too much fun.

“I’m pretty fast, love, and if you can move with superhero speed, we’d get it done in a jiffy.”

Another push back of her hair revealed a pitying smile. “Don’t ever claim to be fast, Kilroy. No woman wants to hear that.”

Ouch.

Best of all, he’s not afraid to look silly to get her attention. Here, Jack shows up at Lili’s apartment after screwing up royally (as only a guy can do):

The sound of a scuffle bounced through the intercom followed by more foreign babbling. A full minute passed.

“All right, you’re going to be sorry,” he said, inducing a flap of panic in her chest. Would he try to break in? Bang on her door until one of the neighbors called the cops?

If only. It was worse. Much worse.

Jack Kilroy started to sing.

The caterwauling made by the most deluded of wannabe contestants on American Idol had nothing on this. Hearing such a sound blasting from her TV was one thing; listening to it through her intercom was quite another. His voice had not improved any since the last time she’d heard him mangling a tune, right before she clocked him with a frying pan.

“Lili, I just met a girl, she’s called Lili…” This, to the tune of “Maria” from West Side Story.

Someone on the street cheered. Encouraged, Jack raised his voice a couple of inadvisable octaves. Another voice punctuated the lyrics with shouts of “Lili” a half-beat late. There was a pause as Jack told his accompanist in no uncertain terms to shut the fuck  up.

Who doesn’t love a guy who will sing for his woman on a busy Chicago street? Jack is a balls-out passionate guy and his single-minded focus combined with his great sense of humor slowly breaks down Lili’s defenses. So we won’t say no to the handsome lug but if he isn’t making us smile, then forget about it!

Tell me about the funniest guy you ever dated. Did you keep him or did you let him get away?

During the Feel the Heat release tour, I am giving away foodie-related swag: one Grand Prize and five smaller prize packs! Details and pics on my website. Enter using Rafflecopter!

*****

FEEL THE HEAT by Kate Meader

Hot in the Kitchen, Book 1

IF YOU CAN’T STAND THE HEAT . . .

Photographer Lili DeLuca spends all her time managing her family’s Italian restaurant, instead of following her dream of getting an MFA. When famous British chef Jack Kilroy unexpectedly challenges her father to a cook-off, Lili decides she’s tired of playing it safe and vows to seduce the tempting Brit. But once a video of her and Jack kissing goes viral and her luscious butt starts trending on Twitter, Lili fears she’s cooked up a recipe for disaster.

GET INTO THE BEDROOM

Jack Kilroy’s celebrity has left him feeling used and used up. While Lili’s oh-so-sexy moans when she tastes his delicious creations turn him on, he’s even more aroused by how unimpressed this beautiful, funny woman is with his fame. He knows they could be amazing together, if she could only see past his bitch fork-wielding fan base. Now, as he’s about to start a new prime time TV cooking show, can Jack convince Lili to realize her own ambitions – and turn up the heat in his kitchen?

Amazon - Barnes & Noble

About Kate

Kate Meader writes contemporary romance that serves up delicious food, to-die-for heroes, and heroines with a dash of sass. Originally from Ireland, she cut her romance reader teeth on Catherine Cookson and Jilly Cooper novels, with some Mills & Boons thrown in for variety. Give her tales about brooding mill owners, oversexed equestrians, and men who can rock an apron, and she’s there. She has a bachelor’s in law (useless), a master’s in history (not as useless), and another master’s in library and information science (yay, using). When not writing about men who cook and the women who drool over them, she works in an academic library. Her stories are set in her adopted home town of Chicago, a city made for food, romance, and laughter – and where she met her own sexy hero. For news, excerpts, and recipes, check out her website at www.katemeader.com.

Ways to stalk her:

Facebook -  Twitter - Goodreads -  Blog

I thought I’d take a moment to eulogize Darcy, who had to be put down yesterday. By my calculations, he was probably born around now two years ago. The above photo I just pulled from my blog’s archive, and it was the very first photo in it. I guess I must have set my author bio page up first. Anyway, I don’t want to dwell on it too much in this post because anyone who’s had a pet knows what it’s like and there’s no need for me to go into it here (and how wonderful he was), but it felt wrong not to mark it in some way on the blog, because he is a part of my bio, and just deleting him felt wrong. I still don’t know if Bingley will remain there or not. I’d also posted a blog post about him once, about his new-found skill in turning on a floor lamp in Kitteh Too Smart, and they’re both integral to Ack! I’m One of THOSE Now–How I Trained Myself to be a Morning Person…

This photo I also used with an agent I pitched to at RWA Nationals as my ice breaker because I knew she’d love it (and she did) and that agent later tweeted about it and was one of the ones who offered me representation.

Since my bio will change, I’m posting that paragraph here, so that it won’t just disappear into the ether:

I hate to admit it, but I do match the stereotype of a Romance writer by having cats. They are Darcy and Bingley, and they are two perfectly matched grays, how appropriate is that? Unlike their namesakes, they are brothers—a visiting cousin rescued them from a parking lot and I couldn’t resist keeping them. You actually can tell them apart–Darcy is slightly darker and hardly talks, and Bingley is a talker. Both are sweet and loving. Aptly named, no?

But this post isn’t completely self-indulgent. If you have string or thread laying around, beware! What killed Darcy was him swallowing a long length of sewing thread. Being ignorant of the dangers, when I saw it coming out of his butt, I snipped it off and waited to see if the rest passed. It didn’t. I brought him in yesterday, and when they opened him up, the thread had already wreaked havoc on his insides. The thread went from his tongue, out all the way through, and the swallowing action, plus the bowels trying to pass it, made it pull through his intestines. So the poor little guy had perforations through his intestines and colon.

Reblogged from Paranormal Unbound:

• 

A question that writers get asked a lot is "Where do you get your ideas?" and sometimes the answers can astound you with how deeply the rabbit-hole goes, and other times... not so much. Because sometimes the answer is, "I don't know."

For me, my current release Beer and Groping in Las Vegas barely qualifies as paranormal--it's an erotic geek romance with paranormal elements by way of a matchmaking djinn and a magic slot machine in Vegas.

Read more… 1,691 more words

John Cusack [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

John Cusack

It’s the first Monday of the month and I’m also back to my regular blogging schedule, so what does that mean? It means a new hunk who loves books!

Darling of romcoms, there’s more to Cusack than the aw-shucks looks. Take a look at what books he likes! Oprah interviewed him for her feature Books That Made a Difference, and here’s what she found out:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 made the list. Here’s what he says:

His mixture of artistic sensibilities with journalistic excellence, all to find the core of truth—I thought that was pretty incredible. Mostly, I admired the ferocity of Hunter’s mind.

And living in Alabama as I do, I can’t fault him at all for having To Kill a Mockingbird on the list. Also making the cut were Bob Dylan’s Chronicles: Volume One, The Great Thoughts, From Abelard to Zola, from Ancient Greece to Contemporary America, the Ideas that have Shaped the History of the World, Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, J.D. Salinger’s Franny and Zooey, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, and Modris Eksteins’ Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. The latter he said:

It’s probably got as much insight and wizardry as any book I’ve ever come across. If you read nothing else, read chapter ten, ‘Spring Without End.

Here he is at last year’s LA Times Festival of Books. He was there promoting The Raven, but went on to mention books he’s reading:

In which he mentions his two recent faves are Nick Tosches’ In the Hand of Dante and Mark Layner’s The Sugar Frosted Nutsack. Wow, what a title that last one is! He also mentions having read another Eksteins book Walking Since Daybreak : A Story of Eastern Europe, World War II, and the Heart of Our Century.

So that’s this month’s Hunk Who Reads. Reading is sexy people!

For further opportunities to idolize men and books:

• The American Library Association – Celebrity READ posters.

Do you have any photos of male celebrities reading?

Come back next month to see the next Hunk Who Reads…

Past Hunks Who Read/Related Articles:

• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Dan Stevens*
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Nathan Fillion
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Marlon Brando
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – George Clooney
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Billy Crudup
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Colin Firth
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Keanu Reeves
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Johnny Depp*
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Don Cheadle
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Joe Manganiello
• Monday Hunk Who Reads – Joseph Gordon-Levitt

*previous Ovaries Exploding Award winner

The scores for Romance Writer’s of America’s (RWA) unpublished manuscript contest, The Golden Heart, have been sent and there’s already some discussion on loops about what the scores mean and whether it’s working.

First, some background. The Golden Heart’s mission from RWA’s website is to:

…promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding romance manuscripts

This is a coveted contest final in the Romance world. After finalists are announced, agents regularly give automatic requests for fulls to them. At the national conference, the finalists are announced and winner awarded during the final gala night in an Oscars-like setting.

This is the first year a new scoring system has been used. In the past, the judge gave one overall score based on how they viewed it. There’s been criticism in the past that this wasn’t based on any specific criteria. This year, judges were asked to break down their score into the following categories:

Romance (1-20)
Writing (1-10)
Characters (1-10)
The Story/Plot (1-10)

For a total score of 50.

On the loops I belong to, writers are asking what it means when they get a wide range. Some have said it’s as varied as 11 (as a total score!) to 48, for the same manuscript, and others are reporting the same wide range. I’ve also seen some writers say they received a 1 or a 5 for their Writing category. In the instance of one of the ones who got a 5, I actually Beta read that manuscript and their writing (which should be based on the craft, i.e. grammar, command of language, etc) was not 5, IMO.

It’s a true adage, that in contest feedback, large swings in opinion can mean that you have a strong voice and so you’re alienating some folks who just hate your voice.

Golden Heart this year has taken care of some of the unfairness in these large swings by dropping the lowest AND the highest score, but I’m wondering if there’s more to it than this. I judged entries this year and here’s my thoughts:

There was no grading scale given to help orientate the judge on what a 1 as opposed to a 5 or a 10 means (other than that 1 was on the low end, and 10 was a perfect score). Lacking this, I made one up for myself by taking the grading scales used in local chapter contests. So when I judged the entries, this was the criteria I used by taking the 1-5 scale used in local contests and extrapolating it out to:

9-10 Ready to Publish, no changes needed.
7-8 Almost there.
5-6 Several minor problems.
3-4 This area could be strengthened with some significant rework.
1-2 Major problems in this area.

And for the Romance category, I used this:

17-20 Ready to Publish, no changes needed.
13-16 Almost there.
9-12 Several minor problems.
5-8 This area could be strengthened with some significant rework.
1-4 Major problems in this area.

And so I gave my scores accordingly. But do you see the problem here? I did this on my own. Who knows whether this is what the coordinators had in mind? Who knows what other judges used to assign their numbers?

In many local contests that use a scale, they give what the judge should look for in each category. Perhaps a way to improve this would be to give some kind of scale guideline for each category in order to take out this part of the subjective equation. Because yes, every judges opinion is subjective, but how to use the numbering system shouldn’t be subjective.

Also, some folks had high scores in all categories except romance, with their romance number being 7s and 8s, consistent with what they were getting in the other categories. So, it makes one wonder if the judge didn’t realize the scale went up to 20?

I also had an interesting phenomenon happen. I had one entry I judged that I thought was so great, I gave it a perfect score (the only one I gave). The writing was great–sharp writing, sizzling sexual tension (I was literally squirming) and the synopsis was well done in that the plot was crystal clear, plausible and the character’s goals and motivations were all clear and made sense (it was the only one that did). I was surprised it didn’t final and then I saw that it was published, so it must’ve been disqualified. Anyway, I bought it, so I could read it, and the story completely did NOT hold up. The prose was still technically flawless, but man, for the Black moment/final climax, it totally hinged on the character doing something completely out of character as it was written (but which in the synopsis made it sound like it was totally their character) and also the characters never really got fleshed out past cardboard cutouts to serve the plot. Just goes to show how only reading first 50 and a synopsis truly do not help pick the best. Jami Gold’s post yesterday touches on this in her post “Why Is Storytelling Ability So Important?” based on judging a recent contest.

So here’s some thoughts I have on how the contest could be improved for the future:

• Give a scale on what each number means for each category
• If Romance will still count double, perhaps double the score after the scores are turned in. I’m sorry, but there’s some people who just don’t pay attention. How many folks missed out on finaling because they were unlucky enough to get more than one judge who didn’t look close enough to see the scores went to 20 in this one category only?
• Unfortunately, I think asking to read a full will be too much work, so fixing the instance I found where the problems exploded only once the full was read probably can’t be addressed. RWA had a hard enough time getting enough judges this past year

What do you think? I see this as a place to discuss the new scoring system and whether it worked or didn’t. Is it an improvement on the old system? Do you have some suggestions on how it could be improved for next year?

As I step out of this Ward fog, life is still going on around me. And I’m kind of relieved actually. I really have other things I need to be reading, but more importantly–doing. Because when I get my teeth on a series like this, I’m reading when I don’t normally read. Barring something unusual going on, I read every day, but within certain time allotments. But this past month, I was reading in the mornings on weekends, or coming home from work and reading, when I should be concentrating on writing or revisions.

But I also miss the Brothers! I love getting immersed in a world like that, with an author who delivers. I’m not usually someone who tears up reading romances, but man, the emotional rollercoasters she executed were quite something, and more than once had the ol’ tear ducts working. I think my favorites were V and Z stories, and my heart just broke for Qhuinn. And Lover At Last was my first M/M Romance. I think my least fave was Phury’s, which was disappointing because I was really looking forward to his.

Reading them also had a side benefit–they were a great lesson in Deep POV writing. If you’ve been wanting to see Deep POV in action and don’t mind walking on the dark side for your romance, you can’t go wrong reading these.

What about you? Do you chew through a series that grabs you to the exclusion of other things you should be doing? Have you read the BDB series? Which were your faves?