Sunday Soup - May 17

In The Soup This Week... conference news, musing about cross-posting reviews, Karina Cooper, and maybe I'm in a rut?

Soup Dish:  on my mind this week
✽As expected, I spent the week enviously stalking the #RT15 hashtag. Along with the all of the fun pics of romance lovers boozing it up, reuniting with friends, goofing with cover models and posing against sexy wall cling pics, I saw this tweet and I can't stop thinking about it:

Pam Jaffee (spelled wrong in the tweet) heads up the amazing publicity team that runs the Avon Addicts, the program I've been privileged to participate in for three years now. I've met her at the two RT cons I've attended and I doubt there is a savvier person in the entire "Big 5" romance publishing world.

That's a scary thought.  Change someone's career?  Note that she doesn't specify whether the change would be for better or worse. I tried cross-posting my reviews for awhile, but many of Amazon's policies about reviews (like stripping out the link to my blog) annoyed me.  Perhaps I'm being too selfish though.  I'm giving some serious thought to this.  Those of you that blog reviews more religiously than I -- do you cross-post? what do you think?

✽I am planning to go to Casey's Reading Until Dawn conference in October, but I need to get going on all the things I agreed to do! I can't believe we're in the second half of May already.  WHAT.

✽Oh, oh! guess what I found out about?  the Historical Romance Retreat conference for 2016.  This one is drive-able for me, the list of attending authors is STUNNING, and I adore Delilah Marvelle, so this is on my DO WANT list also!

✽And while we're talking about conferences, next year's RT will be in Vegas, which seems to be a bit of a polarizer, and RT17 is rumored to be in Atlanta.  I might break my every-other-year rule, because Atlanta seems cool. Well, not literally, it's not called Hotlanta for nothin'. But you know what I mean. I might be in the market for a roommate in Vegas, so if you're going too, maybe hit me up in August or September.


What I'm reading

✽Currently finishing up Engraved, by Karina Cooper.  It's the second to last in this steampunk/alt history/urban fantasy series, and so so interesting.  I love the world and the main character.  I'll be honest though, I'm finding this book a little slow-going.  It might be because I'm coming down with a delightful spring headcold, but it's also a function of the diction, which, in a bit of a nod to nineteenth-century penny-dreadful, is sort of deliberately lurid and ornate. I like it, but (because?) it slows me down.

✽Can you believe that it has taken me this long to give J.D. Robb a try? I picked up the first book, probably as an Amazon freebie, and I can totally see how addictive it will be.  I'm slightly put off by the gruesomeness of the murder though, which is kind of why I don't read murder mysteries in the first place.  With 30-some books, I need to watch my budget so I need to work out some kinks in my e-library account at the moment before I go glomming on this one.

✽I guess it's been a bit of a slow week in books because I can't think what else I've got.  A few things I'm looking forward to in the next months:

• Beyond Innocence, by Kit Rocha. God, I love this series.
• Shards of Hope, by Nalini Singh. Soooooooooon, my pretty.  Sooooooon.
• Taking the Heat, by Victoria Dahl. Buzz on this one is seriously hot. Why on earth isn't there a buy link yet??
• The Legend of Lyon Redmond, by Julie Ann Long. I guess this is fairly predictable of me.
• The Bourbon Kings, by JR Ward. Also predictable. 

Maybe I need some new authors in my rotation.  Who's new that you love?

Outlander Watch... Och. I canna wait for Jamie and Claire onscreen.
So I missed an episode due to some traveling, and haven't caught up yet, and I'm kind of afraid to watch the finale. What's wrong me me??!

And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors

OK, they're not really sponsors. They don't pay me. And I don't run ads on this site. However, I don't mind occasionally turning this space over to pure promotion. Here are a couple of authors worth checking out.


Disappointing News for Delilah Marvelle Fans

It looks like Marvelle's School of Gallantry series is facing a premature ending. Her current publisher has dropped the series, and Marvelle is working hard to prove that her volumes are there in hopes of finding a new publisher. Please check out her comments and the accompanying contest. Here are my thoughts on her first book.




Next Up: Shelli Stevens

I'm not actually familiar with Stevens, but Ciara is, and so I'm passing this along on her recc. This looks like a hot one, so if you're prone to dizziness, heart palpitations, or are under 4'6" tall, please move along.

Mistress of Pleasure, by Delilah Marvelle – Review

One of the recent highlights of my avocation as a romance reader was the Emerald City RWA conference in Bellevue, WA. This just happens to be about 8 miles from my house. I am steadfastly NOT writing a romance. No. Not doing it. As tempting as it sounds to attend a seminar by Julia Quinn on writing dialog, or Cherry Adair as the motivational “just do it” speaker (no really, it IS tempting, that isn’t sarcasm), I would rather spend the $300-odd on books by other people. Seriously, it’s way more fun to read them than it is to write them. At least for me.

**WARNING: NAVEL-GAZING AHEAD**

So, the thing is, as an artist, I’m a damn good engineer.

I do not mean to say that I’m utterly hopeless at creative stuff. For any art, there is craft that can be learned and practiced, skills that enable the artistic vision to shine through. My husband, who’s a 3-D electronic artist, has said that when his company looks for artists, they’d far rather have someone with a great artistic eye and teach them the software, than someone who’s a whiz with the package of the moment but merely OK at the art. Me? I’m pretty good at the craft stuff. If I can read up on it, and practice it, and have sufficient motivation, I can perform competently. It’s that vision, that creative spark, that I think I lack, or perhaps it’s just the faith in my spark that's missing. Either way, I’ve yet to catch fire.

So back to the review, and how it came to be: I was standing in line loaded down with a huge tote full of juicy new books, and started chatting up the person next to me (it wasn’t Ciara, though I did accost her in her FABulous boa and got a bit of a scoop on how things were going) and probably talked her ear off – I tend to do that when I get going on the topic of romance books (I’m sure you’re shocked). Julia Hunter held up to the barrage pretty well, and told me that I HAD to check out Marvelle. You can probably imagine how much arm-twisting was involved. Julia graciously held my place in line (there were like 50 people ahead of us and 4 behind) while I ran back and nabbed one last book.

Delilah Marvelle was the nicest person you could imagine to talk to and her books have a pretty cool premise. She writes in the regency era, but less about the ton and more about the demi-monde, or that class of folks, especially women, who might be welcomed into the rarified air of the ton, if only they would behave themselves.

Intrigued?

So was I. Honestly, I really, really wanted to be able to write a rave review for this book, but I found it only so-so. It seems to me that Marvelle has the spark, the idea, the passion, but it’s executed a little clumsily. Anachronistic patterns of speech, dialog that clunks along sometimes, especially the grandmother’s French inflections. Plot devices that don’t quite ring true – in particular, the hero is a duke who, despite being handsome, fit, of a prime age, and – did I say—a bloody duke?-- is considered unmarriageable because of recent family scandals. His mother, overbearing but loving, is so desperate for him to marry that she pressures him to marry a woman who has no reputation, no money, and no family lineage – she’s not quite a courtesan, but the next thing. The heroine meanwhile, is a prim virgin saddled with a grandmother who has educated her in the theory of sexual arts to a degree that rather squicked me out. Now, I realize that there’s a deliberate attempt here to turn gender roles on their head, but I just didn’t really buy it, on either side.

In spite of all the problems though, I still really like the basic premise (a very secret "School for Scandal" where men of the ton can learn the arts of seduction) and I loved the glimpses of the gentlemen who will become the subsequent heroes. Marvelle tells us that she’s planning to write 5 or 6 books with a concurrent time frame, and I’m looking forward to that. I’ve always loved reading the same scene from more than one point of view (see also: Julia Quinn, “The Lost Duke of Windham” & “Mr. Cavendish, I Presume”).

If I haven’t made my point yet on craft vs. art, I feel like Marvelle has the art but needs a little work on the craft. Which is why I’ll be happy to pick up at least the next book and see what happens with it--I'd rather read a book with this kind of flaw than a perfectly-written one with no heart.