As authors, we all look froward to our first review of a new book with a mixture of anticipation and dread. We all hope we'll have a positive review, one that the reviewer likes, if not 'loves', although that is always a thrill. If it's a 'professional' review, even if the reviewer finds our book not to their taste, hopefully they'll find something nice to say about it, so as not to make us feel completely useless and untallented, but more importantly that they'll explain why they didn't like it, and how they feel it can be improved. All right, it hurts to be told your 'baby' is not perfect, but after a few days, if we go back and reread the review, if the reviewer has done her job properly, we'll know what might not work for some readers, and how to improve next time.
What about the 'casual' reviewer though? Many of us have come across the person on a site such as Amazon or even, sometimes, commenting on a blog, who feels they need to tell the world how bad your book is, and how much they hated it. I've had one myself. These so called 'reviews' sting but the only consolation is that often you'll find the same 'reviewer' casting aspersions at several other books, and usually with spelling and grammar that leave something to be desired Some people seem to get a 'kick' out of criticising other people's work, without seeming to realise that there is a world of difference between 'constructive criticism' which can be very helpful to a writer, and plain ol' 'criticism' for the sake of it'. Michael Quinion in his 'World Wide Words' has found the perfect word for this person -'Criticaster'. This is what he says:
"It's not much met with now, more's the pity. This is one of its rare modern appearances in print:
If I were deemed kosher by that classist, racist, misogynistic bunch of criticasters, I would consider it time to retire my pens and legal pads. [A letter by Erica Jong in The New York Times, 1 Feb. 1998, on learning that her book, Of Blessed Memory, had been nominated for The Literary Review's Bad Sex Award]
You may gather it is uncomplimentary. It refers to those who set themselves up as arbiters of taste and literary discernment butwhose sensibilities are inadequate to the task. A blast against such petty critics was penned 150 years ago:
What amount of obtuseness will disqualify a criticaster who itches to be tinkering and cobbling the
noblest passages of thought that ever issued from mortal brain, while at the same time he stumbles and bungles in sentences of that simplicity and grammatical clearness, as not to tax the powers of a third-form schoolboy to explain? [Notes and Queries, 11 Jun. 1853.]
It was coined in the late seventeenth century by adding the ending"-aster" to "critic". The suffix came directly into English fromLatin, where it meant an incomplete resemblance. English adapted it to refer to a person of inferior or inadequate qualities."
So take heart if you are the victim of one of these 'Criticasters'. For every one of them who hates your book there will be many genuine readers, as well as professional reviewers who love it. As the old saying goes 'can't win 'em all'!
Not the hero of your average romantic novel - but he might be the villain.
My source of wisdom on all wordy things, Michael Quinion, has this to say:
"A man who behaves dishonourably, especially towards a woman...
Cad is the classic British contemptuous epithet of the nineteenth century....
Its history is as weird as one might like. The word started life as cadet, either a military trainee or a member of a younger branch of a family. That developed into caddie, now solely a golfer’s bag carrier, but in the eighteenth century any lad or man who hung about in the hope of getting casual work as an errand-boy, messenger or odd-job man. Both cadet and caddie were shortened to cad. Early on — for reasons unknown — it had the sense of an unbooked passenger who had been picked up by the driver of a horse-drawn coach for personal profit. By the early 1830s, it had come to mean the conductor of one of those new-fangled London omnibuses, the man who rode inside to take the fares....
Might the job have been one that was taken as casual employment by caddies? My references don’t say. In 1895, George Augustus Sala commented in London Up to Date: “An omnibus conductor, nowadays, would, I suppose, were the epithet of ‘cad’ applied to him, resent the appellation as a scandalous insult; and, indeed, ‘cad’ has come to be considered a term of contempt, now extended to any mean, vulgar fellow of whatever social rank he may be.”
The shift seems to have happened at the university of Oxford. Lads from the town who hung about colleges in the hope of casual work of the caddie type were called cads by the undergraduates. It became a contemptuous way to describe townsmen and by about 1840 it had achieved its full flowering as a term for a man whose behaviour was unacceptable."
So if you're writing a Victorian romance, remember the cad, he might be just the character you need to show up your hero's uncaddish qualities. What do you think?
It's my great pleasure to have Ednah Walters as my special guest today, as part of her Book Tour at the VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR CAFE. I asked Ednah to talk about one of my favourite subects - heros, namely tortured ones..
Go on then Ednah, give us your take on THE BEST HEROES ARE….
“Hi, my name is Ednah and I’m a tortured-hero addict.”
Say, “Hi” then share your addiction(s).
Seriously, what type of heroes rocks your world? Is it the flirt? The perfect and charming one? The serious, meticulous kind? The cocky bad boy? The nerdy hunk? The tortured brooder?
I remember a critique partner kept pushing me to read J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood books. I resisted for so long but finally succumbed.
For months she raved about her favorite hero. All she talked about was Hollywood—I can’t remember his name now, but if you’ve read the series, you know the one. He’s the gorgeous hunk with multi-shaded blond hair. She raved about how hot he was, gorgeous and charming…everything she loved in a hero.
When I finished four of the books, I only had one word for her—Zsadist. Boy, talk about a tortured hero. I loved Z before I read his story. Cried when I read it. And he spoiled the rest of the series for me. Okay, he didn’t exactly do that. After I read the ghost wife book, my interest in the series tapered off.
Anyway, this post is not about Ward’s BDB series. It’s about heroes. What we like in our heroes and what we don’t. Look at TV characters we love, the programs we tune in to watch every week. I’m talking about Dr. House, White Collar, Monk…. I may like smart, nerdy guys (I love The Big Bang Theory), but my favorite guys are the tortured heroes. The White Collar guy…what can I say? He’s so in love with his Kate he can’t see straight. Monk and his dead wife. House…why is House tortured? He’s so complex every time I think I’ve figured him out, he surprises me.
Why tortured heroes? I like to see them come out the dark place and into the light, watch them become transformed by the right woman. They tend to resist falling in love the hardest, yet they long to be loved the most. When such a man lets a woman in, you know it’s for keeps, ladies. You got him for EVER.
So in my books, I always try to make a hero as imperfect as I possibly can and tortured. If it’s not family issues, it’s personal ones. Ron, in SLOW BURN, is from a wealthy family, but it’s as dysfunctional as they come. They have secrets, most of them not good. They’re not big on touchy-feely moments either, so he has a lot to learn about trust and love. Then there’s the tortured part, the guilt he carries with him that only adds to his character.
In MINE UNTIL DAWN, my hero has it worse—dealing with rejection from his father. Part of the time he wishes the old man would stay out of his life the other part he wants his approval. So there, I admit it—tortured heroes are my weakness.
Ten years ago, Ashley Fitzgerald witnessed the death of her parents in a tragic fire and blocked the memory. She pretends to have moved on, is a successful artist and photographer, until the morning she opens her door to a stranger she assumes is a model and asks him to strip to his briefs .
He wants to expose the truth...
Wealthy businessman Ron Noble has the body, the jet, the fast cars and the women, but he hides a deadly secret. His father started the fire that killed Ashley’s parents. Now someone is leaving him clues that could exonerate his father and they lead to Ashley’s door. Blindsided by the blazing attraction between them and a merciless killer silencing anyone who was there the night of the fire, Ron dare not tell Ashley the truth. Yet the answer he seeks may very well tear them apart.
While a demented arsonist...SLOW BURN(s)...and plots his ultimate revenge.
Writing about myself is not as easy as penning a saga about fictitious characters. Where to start? What to add? What to leave out? Don't want to bore you with stories of my childhood...when I walked, got potty-trained, talked...so I'll start with the more interesting stuff.
I started making up fairytale stories before I could write, even wrote a play which was performed by my class in high school, but I didn't complete my first story until I finished my PhD in chemistry and decided to be a stay-at-home mother. The first books I wrote were picture books about the adventures of a little lion called Little Leo and his pet Cockatoo. My kids got a kick out of hearing me read them out aloud. Then I moved to mid-grade chapter books. Their favorite was Goldilocks before the Three Bears. Then I tried my hand at contemporary romance and romantic suspense. That didn't go so well and besides, I couldn't read them to my children.
And the little munchkins grew and became teens and moody and impossible to please...digressing again. As teens. my babies wanted to read teen books. Vampires and werewolves were in. A professor of mine once told me that you can either be the first or the best at what you do. I wasn't too keen on jumping on the vampire/werewolf bandwagon, so being first was out. And I couldn't see myself being the best, self-taught writer that I am. So I decided to write something different--the fallen angels.
The idea for Awakened (originally named The Awakening) rose from the inner recesses of my mind after a friend told me the stories of kris/keris daggers. All I knew was that the weapon had to be at the center of my story. Soon the characters formed in my head and wouldn't leave me alone, especially an orphaned girl named Lil.
Finding a home for Awakened wasn't easy. Books about fallen angels by other authors hit the shelves while I was still trying to find an agent and an editor willing to take a chance on me.
Like most of my stories, Awakened is full of romance, mystery and adventure. I believe in the power of love, and that's why I spice up my stories with romance.
I live in picturesque valley in northern Utah with my husband, five children and two cats...one is with ADHD.
but hadn't given much thought as to its origins, until I came across it in Michael Quinion's World Wide Words.
He has this to say about it:
"It's possible to say a surprising amount about this American expression, though nobody has yet unequivocally traced it to its source.
It starts to appear in printed sources in the early 1860s, as a term on the frontier and among the military for what Samuel Bowles described in his book of 1865, Across the Continent, as "any kind of an establishment, store, house, shop [or] shanty". One type of establishment was an inn or saloon, a use of "shebang" that was previously known only from later in the century but which I have now found from the 1860s. This is the earliest so far:
'Along all the roads on the reservation to all the mines, at the crossing of every stream or fresh-water spring, and near the principal Indian villages, an inn or "shebang" is established, ostensibly for the entertainment of travellers, but almost universally used as a den for supplying liquor to Indians.
[Annual Report of the US Department of the Interior, 1862.]'
It was also a term of frontiersmen for a shanty or rough cabin and by soldiers (this is the Civil War period, remember) for a bivouac or other temporary accommodation. The poet Walt Whitman wrote in his diary in December 1862 about the terrible conditions of the soldiers following the first battle of Fredericksbug, often living in "shebang enclosures of bushes"...
Whatever the source, "shebang" took on yet a third sense early on to mean something like "the business" or "the current concern", so leading to "the whole shebang", the entire setup, or whole affair or matter...
...The most likely source is again military. Officers are recorded during the Civil War as "running the shebang" (for example in a diary of 1864 reproduced in Susanne Wilson's compilation Column South of 1960), in which "shebang" seems to refer to the whole of an encampment or other military establishment, a straightforward
extension of the idea of a single bivouac."
Isn't that interesting. Do you use this phrase, and if so have you any other ideas as to its origins?
I'm delighted to have AJ Best (writer and co-hostess on The Author Roast and Toast, as my guest blogger today, with some excellent advice on how to negotiate the maize that is Social Networking!
Ovee to you, AJ!
I’m a rather picky person. Don’t believe me ask anyone I’ve ever come into contact with. There are some things that just hit a nerve with me. And unlike the entire world’s population, I have two cents to give to everyone about everything under the sun. If I would quit giving my two cents, I might be able to pay attention.
I’m going to share another set of pennies with you, even if you didn’t ask.
When I follow an author (in a totally non-stalkerish manner) I’ve been noticing something that just gets my goat. Here’s an example:
(TWITTER) @AuthorJane – new book comes out in one week. Off to clean the bookshelves so I have room.
(FACEBOOK) new book comes out in one week. Off to clean the bookshelves so I have room. Via twitter
(LINKEDIN) new book comes out in one week. Off to clean the bookshelves so I have room.
So what have I learned here? Not too much of anything. I know that integrating social media sites makes life easier, but it can also cause others to see through you. Each social media outlet has a purpose, so use it toward that purpose.
Twitter is around so you can see the fail whale, sorry I digress, and give tidbits of information about yourself. Unfortunately readers honestly don’t care about how many times you’ve changed a diaper today. The color of your mucus holds no attraction either. Consider holding contests, posting links to your latest blog posts, or even share the love of some of your favorite authors.
Facebook is a whole new critter. I’ve tried to use it, but can’t tear myself from the personal page to check it as often as I should. I honestly got rid of mine before it even started. It’s nice to know your limitations and only work on what will be productive for you. If you spend too much time on the social networks, you could loose out on productive writing time and your next manuscript.
LinkedIn is more of a networking platform than social media. Knowing this, think about what goes on your pages and updates. Your future boss may see what’s on there. Don’t post about the kegger you went to last night, or the amount of ta-tas that were flashed. Post links of your work, current blogs and guest blogs. These things will show a publisher or freelance company what you are capable of.
So now that you’ve fought over the pennies, let me know what you think. I’d love for you to stop by and say hi on my website www.ajbestwrites.com or feel free to stalk me by emailing ajbestwrites@gmail.com.
I don't want to depress you. Here in the UK we've been enjoying an early spring. The hedgerows and fruit trees are bright with blossom and I already have roses budding in my garden and strawberries beginning to fruit. However, do you realise that it's only four or five months until those same hedgerows and trees will take on hues of gold, orange and brown before they shed their autumn garments and winter sets in?
Ok, that's just my way of leading us into today's word, courtesy of Michael Quinion, 'Filemot'.
He states quote:
"This word is now so rare that people who write about it tend to quote from one of its last unforced appearances, Lew Wallace's Ben-Hur from as long ago as 1880 ("each compartment crowded with
labelled folios all filemot with age and use"). Here's another, from a little earlier still:
October now. All the world swings at the top of its beauty; and those hills where we shall live, what robes of color fold them! Tawny filemot gilding the valleys, each seam and rut a scroll or arabesque, and all the year pouring out her heart's blood to flush the maples, the great impurpled granites warm with the sunshine they have drunk all summer!
You may by now have guessed that "filemot" (said, if you please, as three syllables, and not as "file-mot") is a colour, the russet or brown colour of dead autumn leaves.'
Personally I think that the beautiful autumn colours are in their own way just as beautiful as the myriad greens and flamboyant colours of spring and summer. (The picture above was taken from the field adjoining the one where I keep my horses, looking out towards the bridle path.)
So what do you think about the 'filemot' colours, and what do you think is the most colourful or beautiful season?
I hope you're not tired of hearing about the Royal wedding. I just had to mark the occasion.
This was one of the rare times when I was glued to the television set nearly all day. From the early morning interviews with the crowds who'd camped out all night to the first glimpse of 'the dress' all the way through to the kiss on the balcony and the drive from the Buckingham Palace to Clarence House after the buffet at the Palace.
I enjoyed it all, I loved the horses, the little bridesmaids and the bride's sister, Pippa, and I thought the bride looked absolutely beautiful in her gorgeous, understated 'Grace Kelly' style dress, with its beautifully fitted lacy bodice and the elegant full skirt sweeping out from the waistline, with the brocade work from the hem to halfway up the skirt, and an 8 ft train.
The bouquet was small by Royal standards and featured the traditional myrtle (a legacy from Queen Victoria who used it in her wedding bouquet, white sweet williams and my favourite, lily of the valley. (The scent must have been lovely.) It was very pretty and in line with the 'naturally sourced ' floral arrangements Kate chose for the Abbey, along with the English field Maple trees that lined the Aisle.
The cake was magnificent, all eight tiers of it!
I was really impressed by the way everything was timed, and ran like clockwork, even down to the exact minute Kate left her hotel suite en route to Westminster Abbey. I have to say that we Brits are pretty good at putting on spectacles like this, and the day made me proud to be British.
(Now, if only they could apply the same efficiency and attention to detail to British Public Transport...)
Kate and William seem genuinely in love and I wish them a long and happy marriage.
