Catch Up

It's been a pretty busy couple weeks -- our local writers' group's unpublished contest wrapping up (I'm on the committee), their third weekend-long conference (I'm on the committee), the grand-kiddo coming along (I'm on the -- whoops, the kiddo and DIL did that one all on their own).

Yep, the grand-kiddo is here at last! And he's totally adorable, and the prettiest baby ever, of course.

Mom and I drove down to Louisiana after DIL went into labor. It's about an 8 1/2 hour drive, and I didn't think we'd make it in time, since the contractions started Monday night and we didn't leave until Wednesday a.m. (Seven o'clock a.m. I didn't know there WAS a 7 a.m.)

Anyway, poor DIL was still having contractions and waiting to be admitted when we got there Wednesday evening. They finally admitted her to labor and delivery late that night and the grand-kiddo was born the next morning. Cute as a bug, and not the least bit stressed out over Mom's long labor.

In between bouts of holding the baby and telling him how gorgeous he was, and catching up with the kiddo on life in general, Mom and I learned our way around the Army post and the town -- not hard at all. It was ungodly hot -- 87 degrees the day the baby was born -- and there wasn't a whole lot to do. We talked a lot, and watched some TV (and worked not at all).

Of all the books I have in my TBR pile, I took only one with me. It was a historical that won lots of awards, and people I knew who had read it absolutely loved it, so I trusted it would be enough to fill what little reading time I had.

No freakin' way. All I could think as I began reading was, "It won a jillion awards. It's got to get better than this."

Then I began counting all the cliches, the repetition, and the examples of bad writing and started wondering, "Where the hell was her editor?"

Then I became convinced that none of the judges who awarded this book the scores that won its awards could possibly have read it. There just aren't that many stupid people judging contests.

I'm two-thirds through the book -- though I admit to skimming lots of those pages. The hero and heroine have long, meandering conversations that go nowhere, don't advance the plot and do nothing but make my eyes glaze over. She's deceiving him and bemoans that fact every time she thinks about doing something -- and I mean every time. (She didn't like this dress, but he liked it and she was lying to him. She should deal with the servants, but, oh, she felt like such a fraud because she was lying to him. She should go to bed, but if she did, he would come and seduce her and she would enjoy it, and that was so wrong when she was lying to him.)

I know, reading is subjective. People have told me that. Hell, as an apparently permanent member of our writers' group's contest committee, I tell other people that. What appeals to me may not do anything for you or, worse, might annoy the hell out of you.

But good writing ISN'T subjective. For every proper sentence in this book, there's another that's run-on or incomplete. Now, granted, incomplete sentences can be used to add impact. (There's no good reason I can think of at the moment to ever have a run-on sentence except occasionally in dialogue.) But when every page and damn near every paragraph have incomplete sentences, there's no impact except to piss me off.

And this book has seriously pissed me off. (Bad sentence structure is only one in a long list of problems.) Through contests and critiques, I see a lot of really good books written by unpublished authors who haven't had any luck so far in selling to New York, and yet this drivel was published by a major NY publisher. (And unedited to boot. Insult to injury.) About the only good thing I can say about it is that I didn't spend money on it. (It was given to me.)

But there went a few wasted hours that I'll never get back again. Rachel10:01 PM