Skeletal Writings

First of all, I will get it out of the way: I am/was a genre loyalist (of sorts) myself.  Not that I haven't read much in the way of horror novels since the big publishing company went in a very, very, VERY bad direction (ebooks and trade paperback), but when I DID, I was.  As in, loved, loved, LOVED my horror.  Had to have two or three horror novels in my To Be Read pile.  Would not enjoy novels that didn't have some sort of horror element (although, at this point, urban fantasy was getting extremely formulaic; if it had been awesome and every author's work had been their own, I would've also loved, loved, LOVED my urban fantasy for different reasons).  Here's the biggie:  I did not want to hear people say "Oh, the horror genre sucks!"  I also had problems with this idea that some book reviewers and commenters on their articles said "Only scary people read horror."  Uh, absolutely not.  I think, in the case of this comment, I was justified in being insulted.  But I had genre loyalty and it was BAD. 

This brings me to my point.  Right now, there are a bunch of romance readers and writers up in arms over a woman saying "Romance as a whole is rapey and there is nothing feminist about reading romance." 

I semi agree on point number one and completely agree on point number two, and I promise this is important to my overall point.  I tend to stick with paranormal romance because I like supernatural elements in anything I read, and oh boy is it bad relationships all over the place.  I wouldn't say they're "rapey" as much as "guy calls all the shots."  Even books that are "progressive" where the man and the woman agree to work as an equal unit end up with the guy making most of the decisions and getting all possessive and so on.  Never mind that a lot of these relationships are based on claiming, and sometimes it doesn't even make sense.  I could get the claiming if the man is, say, a part-time creature.  I don't understand it when the man is a god or demon.  As for the second point, I think most women read romance for the fantasy of it.  A few even admit to inserting themselves in place of the female lead at all times.  It just seems like, with all the garbage in the genre (not that all of it is garbage, by the way), you'd want to read it as an escape but say "I'm glad that's NOT me."  Unfortunately, I've never heard THAT from anyone.  Oh well, I have high expectations, so...take from that what you will.

Really, the only reason I read romance is because I can't write relationships.  I've never been in a relationship and it doesn't seem like something that'll happen anytime soon (for various reasons).  There is so much more to this paragraph, but I'll wait a few paragraphs down to make it.

The larger point I wanted to make is this: Romance readers/writers, there are going to be people who hate your genre.  I know, it sucks.  Try thinking you're a well adjusted person, only to be told you can't possibly be a functioning, decent member of the community because you read horror novels.  It's a part of life.  But more importantly, it's okay that people hate your genre.  Not everyone is going to love it just because you do.  In fact, I'd take it a step further and say most people hate the genre, not YOU.  So please, please, PLEASE for the love of everything cute and fluffy stop getting insulted over people saying stuff that may even possibly be true about your genre.  Now, it's different if someone actually does hate you for what you read.  You might be able to make a better case for yourself then.  But from what I've been seeing, it's you folks not being able to handle negative comments because you're such genre loyalists.

And here's some food for thought.  Okay, let's take me.  The two paragraphs above, I say I only read romance so I can write relationships in my own work.  There's more to it.  See, a lot of women read romance for the steaminess and such (which is part of the escape, I guess).  I can't physically/mentally get turned on by that.  I don't know why, I just can't.  I'd also like to add that there are a few book blog websites that have this feature where they post an image of this hot guy.  A lot of people get a lot out of this.  I look at those images and think "Hmmmmm, interesting scenery." or "Odd, I've never seen anyone off the street look like that." or even "Meh."  I do, however, love when these book blog websites post images of locations inspired by the books they read.  Here's another thing: When I read romance, I base my opinion on the book on how the female lead is written.  I like a good female lead (which kind of contradicts my love of horror novels but perfectly explains why I like some urban fantasy).  A book could get a "Oh hey, that was actually really good" because the female lead was engaging, intelligent, someone worth reading about, sarcastic without going over the top, or other related stuff.  The men may be interesting as well, but I do not give books high ratings because of them.  The men just do not do it for me in any sense.  Of course, I read romance novels for different reasons than most (it really is research, and I have learned a lot).  Still, the genre just doesn't appeal to me the way it does to others.

I'd like these genre loyalists to consider that.  Maybe their favorite genre is just not doing it for others.  It doesn't necessarily mean we hate you (and if someone comes across that way, whether it's me or Mr. Random, feel free to ignore/walk away), it just means we don't like the genre.

On a very related note, I am not, by any means, a scary person.  I have a part-time job that I am reasonably capable at.  I want a much more substantial part-time job, and I know I can do the work.  I will be going to college either this summer or this fall (whichever semester I can get into) on a partial scholarship (that I intend to keep all four years by working my butt off).  I may not look like the traditional girl, but I use good hygiene (please excuse the possible misspelling) and take care of myself.  I live at home at the moment, but I help around the house and take care of the pets (a tortoiseshell cat and tuxedo cat; they are fantabulous, usually).  I am a writer (unpublished as of right now) and although I'd love to write in my favorite genre (which is still horror in spite of not being able to keep up with it at the moment) I can't write my novel the right way for it.  I do not have the right edge, which is actually a good point.            

First of all, the two books are Married With Zombies by Jesse Petersen and Dead City by Joe McKinney.  Each book was in a different genre, but they shared some (good) things in common.  For example, the events leading up to the outbreak/infection that began the zombie-making process was standard and believable, and there were some good zombie/human fight scenes.  However, specific description will show which one came out on top.

Married With Zombies had a lot of potential.  It was getting good early press on romance blog websites as well as on the Orbit (publishing company) Twitter feed.  But can we talk cover for a second?  Okay, one of the downfalls was that one of the main colors used was neon pink.  Never mind that that suggests this is a female-oriented read, it's pink.  Bright, neon pink.  Kind of an eyesore, even if you like the color.  The cover's saving grace was that the background color was silver (personal thing, but I love silver backgrounds) and the cover artist used outlines of people instead of stock photos.  So, in spite of the neon pink, the cover worked quite well.  The story, sadly, did not work as well.

First, the good, because there was some genuine good about this novel. I liked that there wasn't a lot of yammering on about scenery, and the author tended to say "These are my characters, these are the zombies, this is where the characters are trying to get to to escape from the zombies."  In other words, this was an accessible novel and if you're in the mood for a short, easy read, I couldn't recommend the book enough.  This was labeled as a fantasy novel, but it's been called a paranormal romance in multiple places.  Well, there's enough action and blood and gore to keep fans of other speculative fiction genres happy.  On a related note, the novel followed a couple who was close to divorce, so there were very few lovey-dovey scenes and the ones that existed didn't feel so much about love as I-just-killed-a-bunch-of-zombies-and-I-need-to-work-out-some-frustration.  I appreciated that.

Now the bad.  There were a few worldbuilding problems with the novel (such as, how did the oubreak spread so fast?) but I'll overlook them because the worst and most glaring part was the characters.  The novel was told in first person by Sarah.  If the novel had to be written in first person by anyone, Sarah is better than David (Sarah's husband, who wasn't significant at all in the novel, even though he had his starring moments), but she was unlikable as a character and unlikable as a narrator.  I found it believable enough that she would be "GRRRRR, I'm tough!" after the zombie issue, but she seemed so hardcore/closed/nasty to everyone before that point (see an early scene where she gets upset at her husband over CDs when that scene doesn't play an important role later on).  I love the fact that she judges other people for their "flaws" (they're too perfect, they're too ditzy, they're too mean, they're too shady/cultist, they hate me) and never once considers she's not perfect either and has no right to do the judging thing.  David, meanwhile, was just...there.  The only thing he seemed to do was blame himself for all the things he may or may not have done wrong during zombie fight scenes or show how much stronger Sarah was than he was.

In all fairness to the author, this is her first novel (if not ever, at least in this series, but I'm pretty sure it's her first ever).  I'm thinking some of the problems (worldbuilding, anyway) will be hammered out the more she writes.  I just hated her main characters to the point that they ruined a potentially good novel.

Dead City was a much better novel overall.  It was initially released in 2006 and was reprinted in 2010, and based on the story I read, I could see why it went into reprint.  Yes, it was good.  Yes, read it.

So, this was a horror novel.  It read like a horror novel.  It had the standard something-we-can't-explain (explained to the readers, of course), scenes of action, blood and gore, and oh yeah, lots of zombies.  It even had the obligatory author beats readers over the head with a lesson on human nature.  Ignore pages 264-268 if you don't like this kind of thing.  You won't miss much.  In spite of having a spiel of sorts on human nature, it really was a good read.

The main character was worlds better than the main characters in Married With Zombies.  He was written very human, like someone your might meet in real life.  He had his flaws (biggest one I saw was grudgingly helping a sort-of friend, with no explanation for why he was constantly annoyed with his friend) but he was someone you could cheer for.  I personally found his "I need to find my wife!  I need to find my son!" irritating after a while, not for the reasons people may think.  It's just, you'd think, if he had a choice between fighting zombies to swinging by the house and picking his family up, he'd choose his family.  But until the end of the book, he always chose fighting zombies.  In context it sounds a lot less horrific, because this is a zombie novel and even if he hurried to meet his family at the house, he'd still encounter zombies on his way.  One good thing about being separated from his family was, he'd think of them and that offered him the motivation to keep going.  Characters need motivation, and I found this character's believable.

In short, Dead City was the winner.  Married With Zombies is light (book size), easy reading, which can be wonderful when you don't want a lot to reflect over, but Dead City had better characters and was much easier to overlook the issues.  All that being said, I recommend reading them both for yourself because, well, maybe you'll see something I didn't.

    

  

 

 

There's this woman I follow on Twitter, and although she's more of a paranormal romance fan and I'm more of a horror fan I like reading what she has to say.  One of her tweets was about how she went to review a horror novel on Amazon and people responded to her with "Oh, you can't review a horror novel.  You're a romance fan."  While I absolutely synmpathize with her rage, because nobody has any right to tell you what you can and can't review, I'm split on how I feel about people reviewing outside of their genre of choice.

And like in any post I make, I'm going to explain why.

First of all, consider if it was me instead of her.  The roles would be reversed.  I read horror (as well as dark fantasy and some urban/contemporary fantasy and once in a while sci-fi) and tend to avoid paranormal romance (unless it's a novel that's a blend of genres, and paranormal romance happens to be one of the genres).  So, I would be more at home reviewing a horror novel.  I may not review it correctly (and the fact that there is a correct way to review something is a subject I intend to journal about later) but I would definitely get some words on screen.  So what if one day I decide "Hey, I read this paranormal romance novel and I really want to review it?"  That's one of the reasons I'm taking her side, because one day I could be reviewing a book outside of my genre.

That out of the way, I wanted to say why I'm not so sure I'd be comfortable reading a review from someone who doesn't usually read or review in that particular genre.  I personally read reviews to know whether or not to spend my hard-earned (usually lousy) money on a new book.  I want the review to be reliable. Well, if the reviewer isn't familiar with the genre, some of the critique might be a little misguided. 

For example, say you are someone who reads non-supernatural mystery novels.  When you pick up an urban fantasy novel, where you're likely to have a mystery as a huge part of the plot but there's all sorts of supernatural twists to it (maybe someone killed someone else with magic, or someone released a dangerous creature and main character has to find out who released the creature and then stop it from destroying the world), you might not be prepared to review it.  Your review might say "Well, the mystery was there, but what is with all this magic?  Why couldn't you just have everyone be human?"  Any urban fantasy fan will tell you that's the whole point of the novel, but that's just it. Fans will tell you that.  Someone who is new to the genre themselves could write this review and turn off potential new fans because they weren't aware themselves of what they were getting into.

The other issue I have stems from knowing that readers have favorite genres for a reason.  In this woman's case, it's not a stretch to see her read and review horror novels.  She has said she likes the horror genre, even though she's more of a romance reader.  It's just that romance has spoke to her the most.  Well, if she (or anyone, I'm just using her as an example because that's what I've been doing this entire post) is aware going into the horror novel that there's not going to be the romance she loves and it will get disturbing (hopefully) then I have no doubt that she can write a good review.  But what if a reviewer judges the new genre based on criteria from their genre?

We'll use an example of my favorite genres.  It' isn't entirely fair since I'm aware enough of both genres to know "Oh, yeah, that's going to happen" but I'll ask you to go with me for a bit. 

I can enjoy an urban fantasy novel if it has some blood/gore, more than one scene of action, strong supernatural elements, and a strong lead character.  I can enjoy a horror novel if it has a noticeable amount of blood/gore (unless it's psychological horror, and then it gets a pass), more than one scene of action, strong supernatural elements, and a strong lead character.  Both genres (or genre and subgenre) are similar in what I can enjoy.  Here's the things that would take me out of each genre.  I will give up on an urban fantasy novel if there's all this world-building and no action, no supernatural elements to speak of, no magic (implied is fine if that's the point, but there's got to be evidence), a weak character that relies on everyone around them to solve their problems, and extreme romance (such as, there's a dangerous situation going on and the female and male lead take time out to hop into bed)  I will give up on a horror novel if it's not psychological and there's no blood/gore, if there's no action, if it takes half the book to get to the point and then the point is lost at the end, and if I find myself wanting everyone dead, even the "good guys" I'm supposed to cheer for. 

I have different requirements for what makes a good horror novel and what makes a good urban fantasy novel.  When it comes to what I like, the two are very similar.  When it comes to what I don't like, there are important differences.  If I'm reading an urban fantasy novel I can't say "Well, there's no point and I'm wanting everyone dead, so it is a terrible, terrible book!"  If I'm reading a horror novel, I can't say "Well, there's no magic so it's a terrible, terrible book!"  

I keep saying I may have been using an unfair example and I'm beginning to see why, but let's keep going with it.  I might get my review written and it might make me feel better getting it off my chest, but it wouldn't work as a review.  Because I went in with a checklist from my favorite genre expecting something I wouldn't get from the new genre.

Since I've gone on and on, I think I should close this post.  And I'm going to close it with this.  Anyone should be able to review whatever they like.  Nobody should be telling them "Oh, you can't review it because it's out of your genre!"  However, there are things to consider when reviewing something out of your genre.