A brief note…

Posted in Azteclady Speaks, rant Thursday March 11, 2010

to the asshole who,  in the middle of a thunderstorm, swerved towards the sidewalk while accelerating, thus creating the waterfall that blinded me and finished the job of soaking me to the skin:

I hope you get crabs and become allergic to them.

Enjoy your chuckle, asshat.

~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~

In other news… still haven’t gotten my reviewing mojo back, and I have no idea when (if? *gulp*) I’ll get it back.

I just started working again–hourly employee in the food service industry. This translates into never having the same schedule two days in a row, let alone week to week. It also means more physical exertion than any other job I’ve ever held (and for less money than I’ve ever earned too).

On the other hand, in an economy where one in ten pers0ns is unemployed, I’m very grateful I’m one of the nine with a job.

Is Elloras Cave Having Financial Problems? Again?

Posted in Elloras Cave Sunday March 7, 2010

According to one of their authors who shall remain nameless, she hasn’t been paid properly for over a year now.

Now either her books aren’t selling well, or there’s a cash flow problem at EC.

Does anybody have any further info?

And actually, when was the last time any of you lot bought a book from EC? I never recognise any of the authors there anymore, apart from the likes of Amarinda Jones who seems to have a book out every week. *g*

Also, my favourite author Carol Lynne doesn’t seem to be as prolific over there as she used to be, I wonder why??

By the way, the pic has nothing to do with this post, I just liked it :)

New Cover For Magic Under Glass…

Posted in racism in publishing, whitewashing covers Thursday March 4, 2010

Remember the hooha over Bloomsbury’s decision to whitewash Jaclyn Dolamore’s book, Magic Under Glass? Well they’ve released the new cover:

This was the old cover – Yep, nothing “dark-skinned” about that lady, even with the bad lighting.

This is the new cover. A definite touch of ethnicity there at least.

What do you guys think?

Via Angela over at Save Black Romance.

E-Book Release Alert: Sharon Cullars’ Gold Mountain & Loose-Id Does Something Good …

Posted in Sharon Cullars Again Tuesday March 2, 2010

I’m very fond of Sharon Cullars’ books, and I was pleased to see that she has a new release at Loose-Id.

Here’s the blurb for Gold Mountain:

In 1865, the hope for gold has spurred many to seek their fortunes in California, the place the Chinese call Gum San or “Gold Mountain.” Amidst this backdrop, Quiang, a new Chinese immigrant, works the dangerous rails hoping to save enough money to send home to his parents. In town, Leah and Clara, two enterprising women from New York, have plans of their own to grow a restaurant and laundry business. However, both plans go awry when Quiang and Leah meet one fateful day. What starts as a budding attraction soon grows into tumultuous desire despite the cultural and language barriers between them.

Initially resistant, Leah succumbs to passion following a tragic loss that leaves her vulnerable and alone. With hopes for a future that now includes Leah, Quiang embarks on a perilous path as he leaves the railroad behind for a more profitable position as a courier for The Tong, henchmen for the dangerous Triad. Quiang soon finds that navigating the secretive life of a courier brings more danger than he has ever faced on the railroad, dangers that not only threaten to tear him and Leah apart, but may cost them their lives as well.

Sounds good, yes? Even for a hysterical.

By the way, it has been duly noted that Loose-Id seem to be trying to release more M/F books lately. Long may it continue. *g*

And seeing as it doesn’t happen very often in Romanceland, I’m gonna give a nod to Loose-Id for their wonderful homage to Black History Month. If you’re a reader who doesn’t mind reading books featuring heroines and heroes who aren’t white, you’ll find some decent stories there.

You can find my review of Sharon Cullar’s book, Again, here.

Religion And Interracial Relationships…

Posted in AA romance, Racism in romance Monday March 1, 2010

Angela has a really interesting post up entitled Religion and Interracial Romance. I have an idea that using the word ‘romance’ is a bit of a misnomer though, seeing as her column seems to really be talking about religious influence on interracial relationships, period, rather than the bookish side of things.

She starts:

The black church has a history of being the pillar of the black community, and admittedly, most blacks–that is, blacks who consider themselves Christian–are pretty religious and/or spiritual. I have observed, however, in online conversations between black women and the issue of interracial dating, that a few of the black women conversation who are married or who date white men, have mentioned their lack of religion.

So basically, the more religious you are, the less likely you are to enter into an interracial relationship?

I think this is in keeping with the way I view most organised religions to be honest. No matter how many times I hear the varying equivalents of ‘love thy neighbour’, the fact is, religion is designed to be exclusive. I don’t see many religions telling their congregations to love the differences in people. To me, all the different bibles that I’ve come across seem to be more about loving people like yourself. So if it emerges that religious people are less likely to marry/date outside their race, then I’m afraid, I wouldn’t be surprised whatsoever. I think the Church of England are probably more inclusive than many churches out there, but I’m still sceptical about some of its teachings.

Angela concludes:

After hearing about some crazed pastor who told his mostly black female congregation to stay single rather than marry a white man, I’ve begun to think about the role religion plays in subtly prohibiting interracial relationships.

I know that the average romance reader isn’t really interested in reading IR romances, but at least there are a few of them out there. Angela’s post makes me wonder how many inspirational romances actually feature black/white interracial couples?

How many of you out there who are ardent church-goers are actually involved in an interracial relationship?

For the full post and comments, pop over to Angela’s blog.

Author Responds Badly To A Review, And Crosses A Line…

Posted in Authors behaving like twits, reviews Thursday February 25, 2010

Oh look, another author who can’t take criticism.

*Yawn*

The difference is, this author decided to take a potshot at the reviewer’s weight.

Lord.

Here’s the author’s rant in its entirety, crossing a line that no man should ever cross:

Seriously….you’re just going after me on Twitter and Good Reads now after savaging me on DarkScribe?

what is your problem with me?

the typos are LONG gone and the book has all been re-edited. That verison hasn’t been available for almost a year. I sent you that copy a year ago…you JUST got to it.

enough with the typo thing.

and can you not see that your hyper interest in woman studies and equality are tainting your ability to review a book with an even hand?

Jeesh…if you hate my characters because some are sexist or bigots…what kind of books DO you like?

and for every character you mention that is a “weak woman” or ” idiot cop” there are others to balance them out…yet you don’t even mention them.

You are the first person who has absolutely hated my book. That’s fine. If i wrote a horror novel that EVERYONE liked…i’m doing something wrong.

it’s just that your hate is coming from the wrong places.

anyway…you’ve blasted me enough. Shut up and movo on.

I can’t help but wonder if you’re pissed because the character “Janice” in my book…the one you posted an excerpt about:

“…She needed a man. Hell, maybe if she bothered to drop down below 220 lbs she might find one. That, and she’d have to not talk. Basically she’d have to become an anorexic mute and then she could possibly attract the attention of a blind man with no sense of smell.”

…Hits a little too close to home. Don’t take that out on me.

Others on good reads like my book, even with the old typos (see Monster Librarian member on here- they put Under on thier best of 2009 list…up with many published authors.)

Your opinion is fine….but don’t pretend your hate comes purely from my book….your self loathing is creeping in far more than any typos.

but hey…that’s just my opinion.

how about we both just forget about each other, okay?

Wow, he actually went there.

The self-pubbed author was a chap called Brad Quinn. Somebody needs to tell him that implying that the reviewer reacted negatively to his book because she was a fat cow who couldn’t get a man, is so not the best way to win friends and influence people.

Wanker.

Via Katiebabs’ blog.

Dorothy Koomson’s Latest Release – The Ice-Cream Girls

Posted in Dorothy Koomson Thursday February 25, 2010

I’m so excited to read this book, as my regulars will know, I love Dorothy Koomson’s work.

Blurb:

As teenagers Poppy Carlisle and Serena Gorringe were the only witnesses to a tragic event. Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ by the press and were dealt with by the courts.

Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while married mother-of-two Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past. But some secrets will not stay buried – and if theirs is revealed, everything will become a living hell all over again . . .

Sarah has a review of this book over at her blog. She loved it!

You can read the first chapter here, and buy The Ice-Cream Girls over at The Book Depository.

I have reviews of Dorothy Koomson’s My Best Friend’s Girl, here, The Chocolate Run here, and Marshmallows For Breakfast here.

An Anon’s Take On Domestic Violence…

Posted in Domestic violence Monday February 22, 2010

An anonymous commenter posted on an old thread entitled Romance Authors Can Be Victims Of Domestic Violence Too, yesterday, and I thought it was worth re-posting in its entirety.

“This starts pretty abruptly but its 5 am and I haven’t the energy to re-write the thing, so let me just preface by saying, as to the question of why women try, stay, and put up with abuse, even to the point of defending their abusers, this is my take on some possible (in my opinion) heavy contributing factors.

It’s long and rambled slightly, and for that I apologize. I just feel like talking about it, mostly because I feel stuff like this is frequently overlooked in favor of more pat (and also true) answers like “brainwashing.” Its not that I’m right necessarily, just that I don’t think I’m entirely wrong, and that I have this weird idea that if mindsets like these were not just more understood, but respected (not dismissed as “delusional,” “reactionary,” or other thoroughly unflattering verbs) we might get farther in saving women.

Again, I could be wrong, this is just my experience.

People here are talking on and on about abusers as monsters, and I agree; I frequently call my abuser the Stepmonster. But they forget one important thing as to why women may stay–many abusive men are also pathetic.

I watched my stepfather turn to a raging monster. I endured sexual abuse at his hands. I hate that man with every fiber of my being, and laugh at people who tells me hate will destroy me. Hate is the only logical response I can see to such crimes, and it was my childish anger and hate that allowed to me to rise above the misery of my life and recreate myself as more than just a victim. It was only when I allowed myself to hate the real culprit rather than turning that anger inward that I could paste myself back together at all. I think its underrated as a survival emotion.

But, at the same time, I watched my stepfather go through his mood swings. He had childish tantrums, but he also had crying jags. He was easily hurt. And, as often as his fists and nasty name-calling mouth begat violence, he could, in the next moment, behave like a whipped puppy dog in need of petting.

And none of those moments were faked.

His father made him look like a veritable saint. The man beat the whole family silly, drank ceaselessly, and on at least three occasions tried (and once nearly succeeded) to murder his own son. That injured little boy still lived inside the big, bad, abusive, ex-military Stepmonster, and he still, in his own way, cried for his mommy.

And later, when I stumbled into and out of an abusive relationship of my very own (because I am just brilliant that way), my chosen darling was prone to mood swings, depressions, and was also easily wounded. The son of an alcoholic dad, he also had his war wounds, and also was just looking for someone to obsess over, someone who would love him and never hurt or leave him. A baby boy, crying for his mommy.

It may not be that way in every abusive relationship, but I know both in the one I endured as a kid and the one I was in later, it was those moments of thawing that made it all seem okay. Daddy was a real person, flawed, vulnerable, sad. Beau was just troubled and wounded, and the proper application of love could serve him, save him, heal him.

Its a twisted way of thinking, and sometimes you even realize that WHILE its going on, but I think it also speaks to the human in us on the deepest level. We are once again small children faced with a wounded bird, and it doesn’t matter that it just viciously pecked at our hands, it needs help and that’s all that matters. I think the desire to heal, to pull together tribe, community, is almost a compulsory instinct (especially among women), and I think the softer side of abusers plays on that instinct.

So maybe we don’t know why we stay, but we do. Hoping, trying, loathing, wanting to run away, afraid to try. It all gets tangled up until sorting it out takes a bloody miracle.

I also recall, when I was young, a time when I tried to look forward into my own future. This was a time when I was having major memory loss about the past. Yesterday, sometimes for two or three days, vanished.

If you asked me on Wednesday what had happened on Tuesday, I couldn’t have told you. If you asked me the same question a week later, I could. My short term memory was shot, a condition I suspect kept me breathing and moving forward. This was the period of my life my mom thought I was suicidal–apparently I was exhibiting symptoms. I was eight or nine at the time.

I just recall that one moment of looking forward, from that timeless place I was in, a child without a past, and it was terrible. The days went on endlessly, every day bleaker than the last, like looking down a long train tunnel with no escape back into light. Behind me was only an endless void, a darkness of memory where I, as a person, did not exist. The whole world seemed to close in around me, and the despair and horror (yes, horror, there is no other word for it) pressed down on me, started to crush my will.

It was only for a few seconds, standing by the kitchen sink, the day outside sunny, me just momentarily lost in thought as I looked out the kitchen window, but it was enough. I shut down that line of thought quick, because I felt I couldn’t bear it. To think ahead was to die, or want to die, and to look back was worse. The only way to survive was not to think, only to act. One foot before another, breathe in, breathe out, stay in the “Now.” And I did, every day.

Even after I was out, on my own, free, it took years to stop living in that “Now” of thought, and to this day I have memory problems. I can recall things clearly that happened when I was three, four, five–the pre-Stepmonster years. After that there’s so little I might as well have amnesia.

If I had to guess, this would be another part of the reason women stay. When you only have the “Now,” there is no consequence for tomorrow, no recollection (willing or otherwise) of yesterday. There is only today’s pain, today’s torment, and your only overriding goal is to make it to nightfall, to the next morning, as undamaged as possible. How can one plan an escape when one can’t even imagine tomorrow as a possibility? How can one see how bad things are when one can’t bear to look back towards yesterday?

People call these woman stupid, chide them for their behavior when staying, even get mystified by it, but the reality is so much more organic than rational thought. Its base, knee-jerk survival mechanisms that help you survive it, walk you through it one day, one breath at a time. But at the same time, those very organic mechanisms become your own traitor, preventing your escape.

How do you explain that to an outsider?

How can I explain that I will never stop loving the beau who hit me, even while I never want to see him again? How do I explain how much I pity my stepfather, even, sometimes, want to give him a measure of peace, but at the same time I can never stop hating him? How do I explain that one moment in time and how it affected me profoundly for years, how it stopped me from taking any action at all, especially since running away, telling a teacher, or whatever seems such a simple solution–even I see it as simple, these days.

How does anyone explain the things the body does in survival mode, when they often barely understand it themselves? And unless someone else has been through it themselves, how does it not turn into another menopause or PMS or biological clock–functions to be mocked because they are ill understood and seem not to fit in a rational, science-based culture? Never mind they are science based themselves, its like masturbation, its uncomfortable think about, too emotional, to private and personal, and therefore something must be WRONG with it.

Abuse is horrific, but people on the outside oversimplify it, bring it down to a moralistic, rational idea of what’s right and what’s wrong, and it should be that simple. It really should. But like everything in life, if wishes were horses, you know?”

Interesting, right?

Who The F*ck Reads and Loves Romantic Comedies Anyway?

Posted in Romanceland random ramblings Sunday February 21, 2010

Hurrah, I’ve found somebody else who hates romantic comedy books.

BarbaraB’s mini rant says it better than I could:

On another note, I’m just amazed that there’s another romance reader who also utterly despises romantic comedy. Maybe without the fervor and madness that I do, but still! I can’t even think about that crap without practically choking on my loathing of romantic comedies AND romantic comedy authors. Who the hell told them they were funny? They’re not stand-ups. All those goddamned eccentric relatives and townspeople/secondary characters, etc. wear me down.

Even the more sophisticated rom-coms make me gag. IMO, most romantic comedy authors don’t know when to stop with the yuks. It’s like reading Robin Williams or Jim Carrey in book form. EXHAUSTING! I also find the humor very forced and corny.

What breaks my heart and tears me up inside though, is that all “funny” romances aren’t labelled as such and don’t always have cartoon covers. I’ve ended up wasting a lot of money on that shit. I get so pissed off for being duped that I rip the book in two and trash it. I’d burn ‘em if I was liscensed(sp) to burn trash within the city limits or had a fireplace. I’m extreme like that!

When I wanna laugh I’ll watch reruns of Blackadder, AbFab, or Arrested Development. Or even Comedy Central. Not pick up a freaking romance! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I’d literally pick up trash along the highway in one of those ill-fitting orange jumpsuits before I’d pick up a romantic comedy- book or movie. I want some effing angst and drama when I read a romance.

Lol, so who out there generally loves romantic comedies? Go on ‘fess up!

Should Authors Show Their Heroes With A Porn Collection In Order To Keep It Real?

Posted in book talk Sunday February 21, 2010

Mrs Giggles has yet another interesting post up on her blog. This time she’s asking why we don’t see romance heroes with the odd porn mag now and again:

Why do we get hardly any contemporary romance heroes who have porn in their PC or in their closet? I don’t remember reading any contemporary romances with heroes who seem to know what even Playboy is….

I’m not suggesting that I want to see romance heroes using sex toys or surfing porn all day, of course – I don’t want to read a romance novel where the heroine plays with the BOB all day either. But I find it unrealistic that we have Navy SEALs whose locker door isn’t graced with even a single saucy photo of some centerfold, a mechanic who doesn’t have at least a calender full of topless women on his office table, or a romance hero who has apparently never thumbed through a single issue of Playboy before.

To be honest, I really don’t see the point in highlighting the fact that a hero in a romance novel reads/watches porn. How would that further the plot? Even in an erotic romance, I’m not sure this would be of any relevance whatsoever. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’d just end up being fucked off, if in the middle of the book, the hero started spanking his monkey whilst looking at pics of random gigantic-breasted women. Who the fuck needs that much realism? Not me that’s for sure.

What say you? Yay or nay to authors showing heroes with porn mags/vids under their bed, and skin pics all over their lockers, in order to inject a sense of realism into the story?

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