I will spare you. I will not do the ‘omg I just got a new camera and have to illustrate EVERYTHING’ thing of taking a picture of the mountain of tissues next to me. And I was only tempted to do so for a fraction of a second, I promise. I was up at 3 am this morning because lying down made me feel like I was drowning. So, here’s the slightly punchy result: a 3 am review of Lynn Kurland’s With Every Breath. (Is it just me, or is there something ironic about that title under the circumstances? Maybe I should call it ‘With Every (Gurgling) Breath.”)

What is it with the apparent popularity of Scottish Highlands time travel romances? And how many of them are out there? Is this a micro-genre? Mini-genre? Or has it gotten to full-blown sub-genre status? And if so, why? I mean, yeah, it’s fun, but wow is that a specific set of constraints for a group of books!

So, that review there is the reason why that book doesn’t make an appearance in my latest photo of my review book stack. And Lynn Viehl’s Twilight Fall isn’t in it because I’m reading it today. The hysterical thing is that it’s only two days since I took that last photo and I already feel compelled to update it.

By the way, I’ve now updated the designs in the entire MMO category of Gamers’ Heaven (well, those that I planned to update). Take a look, and more will come!

Last week I reviewed Elizabeth Vaughan’s Dagger-Star, a fantasy-romance. The lead character, Red Gloves, is a female mercenary, and her love interest is basically a farmer. I enjoyed the book on a great number of levels: it possessed wit and humor; the characters had depth and dimension; the plot executed some unusual twists on the typical fantasy prophecy plot.

I also loved the somewhat unusual Alpha female to Beta male relationship.

This morning I read through the Amazon reviews, which were all over the map. Coming on the heels of skimming a discussion in a popular blog last week about men vs. women in which it quickly became obvious that some very outdated views of women still hold sway when folks think they’re talking anonymously, it left me with a few thoughts I had to put onto virtual paper.

First, a simple correction of perception. One of the opinions I saw on the book railed about the fact that Red enjoys and engages in one-night stands, and is casually sexual. To engage in a mild spoiler about her background, she was abused as a child. The reviewer thought it ridiculous that after such trauma, Red would be willing to sleep with a man at all, much less so casually. In truth, it’s not unusual for people who’ve been molested to become ‘hyper-sexual’ instead of the opposite—either can happen. From my knowledge of the subject (I’ve known multiple people from that situation and I was working on a psych degree from Harvard before we left Massachusetts, in addition to my own subsequent readings and research), I’d say the depiction was entirely believable.

Next, another reviewer said the book read as though the author had simply made her female character into a male and vice versa. I didn’t get that impression, although I can see how one might come to that conclusion. This makes the assumption that certain traits are exclusively female or male. If you have any kind of in-depth experience with the wide array of people out there in the world, I can’t see how you could seriously believe this, but as that blog discussion I mentioned proved, there are still plenty of people who do. While I’ll agree that there are traits that are more commonly female or male (or at least stereotypically female or male), I believe that’s a different issue that doesn’t preclude the depiction of, say, a strong, martial-minded female lead.

As an example of what I mean, one reviewer said that women simply don’t engage in emotionless sex—that this is strictly a male trait. I had to re-read that several times to be sure I was reading it correctly, because I was amazed someone could think that. It may be more common for men to do so, but it’s hardly an act that’s exclusive to them.

Finally, there are ways to make a character recognizably female or feminine without her having to wear pink or lace, cry at every opportunity, or get tied up in emotional knots at the drop of a hat. To my mind, Elizabeth Vaughan accomplishes this. Perhaps those who equate femininity with pink, lace, crying, etc. didn’t see it, but it seemed quite clear to me. Red had her softer side; it just wasn’t a stereotypically feminine thing, and to my mind that’s great. Many of the ways in which she was feminine or noticeably female were a part of her strong, Alpha personality, not in conflict with it. That’s only a problem if you think that females inherently can’t be strong, can’t be leaders, etc.

But then, I remember seeing a comment in that blog discussion that stated outright that men were suited to be leaders and women weren’t, so perhaps that’s what’s at issue. I wouldn’t have thought Dagger-Star to be so far ahead of its time in terms of gender depictions, but it seems that I was wrong. I hate it when I get a hard reminder that at the end of the day, a lot of men—and yes, some women—still believe all that crap about women being weaker, more foolish, unable to lead, etc.

The funny part is, romance novels often get accused of setting us back in this department, of perpetuating harmful stereotypes of weak women who need to be rescued by men. Instead, enough of today’s romances are being written by independent, strong-willed women that the opposite is coming to pass—many romance novels are now ahead of society in terms of promoting a strong, independent female image.

Special comment note: Look, the argument over men vs. women is already going on over at that other blog. If that’s what you want to talk about, go do it over there. If you want to talk about gender depictions in these kinds of books, great—as long as it stays reasonably calm and on-topic. I have neither the time nor the tolerance for yelling and name-calling, so if it happens, I’ll delete the comments and, if necessary, close comments on the post. (Go ahead, call it censoring—I don’t care.) I’m hoping my readership is small enough—and enough made up of all those cool, thoughtful book-bloggers instead of ye general internet audience—that I won’t have to worry about it.

On a separate note, I give maybe 50-50 odds on posting a review today. I think I’ve caught my husband’s cold, so I’m not getting so much done.

First, before I forget, today’s review is of Peggy Knickerbocker’s delightful Olive Oil from Tree to Table.

Second, it’s time for the weekly Booking through Thursday meme, which I’ve actually missed for the last few weeks. Today’s meme is:

How about a chance to play editor-in-chief? Fill in the blanks:

__________ would have been a much better book if ______________________.

Now, I do a lot of book reviewing, so there are dozens of places I could go with this. But since I reviewed a cookbook today, I’ll let that dictate my choice—particularly because that’ll give me the opportunity to turn this into a rather funny story.

“The Fearless Chef would have been a much better book if the recipes had been kitchen-tested.”

To quote from that review:

I have a great love of Bananas Foster, so we decided to make the Jamaican Rum-Baked Bananas, which are described as “a tropical answer to Bananas Foster.” They include a bit of curry, and instead of flaming the alcohol you simply bake the dish in the oven, which sounded easier.

When we mixed things together I found myself triple-checking (literally) the amount of alcohol to go in; 1 cup of dark rum sounded like an awful lot. In fact, I even just checked it again because I still find it hard to believe the recipe called for that much. But hey, we were testing the cookbook, so I figured we should use the recipe as written.

We put everything together and into the oven. We basted it halfway through as stated. Then, at the end, I watched out for the cats and my husband opened up the oven to see if dessert was done.

I heard a whooshing sound and the slam of the oven door. Then I smelled burnt hair. I whipped around, and when my husband turned to face me all I could say was, “umm, you should look in a mirror.” His eyebrows had been trimmed, his eyelashes (despite his glasses) were a rather interesting ragged length, and the front row of his hair above his forehead was shriveled and now brown instead of black. A gout of flame had apparently shot straight out of the oven when he opened it up.

Nothing like that has ever happened to us before.

Now, on to the topic I was planning for today. Recently I ended up in Penguin’s database of reviewers. Because of this, I suddenly find myself reviewing a lot more erotic romances and variations on the same than I ever expected.

The other day, someone I know said to me, with a tone of horror, “don’t tell me you’re reviewing romances!” as though this was a terrible thing. It reminded me that once upon a time, that’s how I would have viewed it. Yes, I bought into the stereotype (which, mind you, existed for some time with good reason) that romances were ‘bodice-rippers’—ridiculous stories in which helpless, naive women waited for the strong, domineering man to come along and rescue them. And maybe once upon a time that was largely true, but it isn’t any more.

Out of curiosity I decided to read Alison Kent’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Erotic Romance a couple of years ago. And in reading that book I came to realize that romances have changed a lot, and I decided to give them a try. Since then, I’ve come to a conclusion.

Romances have changed. And really, that shouldn’t be a surprise. The women of recent generations don’t tend to have patience for stupid, helpless heroines, and these women are writing more and more of the erotic romances out there. This means that the people writing these books tend to want the same things we as readers do: strong heroines who are capable of standing on their own two feet, and can match wits with the best of the heroes. Just like books of any other genre, romances can be written well or poorly depending on the skill and talent of the individual writer. Dismissing the genre out of hand is simply silly.

So I’m no longer vaguely embarrassed by the idea of reading & reviewing these books. Instead I’m enjoying opening my eyes to a whole new genre and discovering some wonderful writers, many of whom write in other genres I enjoy as well.

I’ve read with some interest—yet stayed almost entirely out of—the discussion of romance author Cassie Edwards’s plagiarism scandal. For those two readers who haven’t heard about it yet, here are the basic, quick-and-dirty details as I understand them:

Cassie Edwards has written scads of ‘trashy’ romance books. You know—the kind that helped to establish the stereotypes that exist in most people’s minds when they think of the romance genre. She has tons of fans the world over. (Hey, that kind of novel became the stereotype because it sold. It isn’t something I’d read, but it has plenty of proponents.)

Not too long ago, thanks to Google, people started to notice that various passages in her books—ones that didn’t sound the same as the words around them—had apparently been lifted wholesale from various research books. If you want a blow-by-blow listing, you can find it at the blog that’s chronicled most of this: Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books. Check the sidebar for the list of Edwards-related links.

Accusations of plagiarism started to fly. Cassie Edwards’s response was apparently to say that she didn’t know it was wrong to copy research material without attributing it. Leaving alone the fact that ignorance of the law is no excuse, it’s extremely difficult to imagine a writer not realizing that it’s wrong to take other writers’ words and use them as their own. It’s also extremely difficult to imagine a published writer who is completely and utterly unaware of the concept of copyright and what it means, which is essentially what she’s claiming.

Now, I can understand the idea that there are writers who’ve failed to adequately label their research when taking notes and ended up inadvertently plagiarizing a line here or there. I guess I’m somewhat generous by nature and that was my first thought when I heard about this, but it quickly became clear that this wasn’t what had happened. First, the passages are far too long, frequent, and exact. They were clearly copy-pasted. Second, she’s apparently done the same with several novels. Yes, she plagiarized other fiction in order to write her fiction.

You might at this point be wondering why I’m bringing this up. After all, it’s very nearly old news. It’s clear at this point that she plagiarized, and that she’s going to keep claiming she didn’t know it was wrong, and perhaps even keep claiming that it wasn’t wrong, as stunning as that seems. (I’m also pretty amazed by the fact that so many of her fans continue defending her and claiming that the folks who exposed the plagiarism are just big ol’ meanies. I mean, she broke faith with her audience—she put forward others’ work as her own—and if I were one of her readers I’d at least want to know that.)

But here’s the deal: I had to bring this up today because this morning I stumbled across a magnificent article written by the guy who wrote an article on ferrets that she plagiarized: Move Over, ‘Meerkat Manor’. He explains what it felt like to find out his work had been plagiarized, and then what it felt like to realize what it had been turned into. And oh, it’s a hysterical read:

First I was angry. Then I had to laugh. To see my textbook descriptions of ferrets in a bodice-ripper, as dialogue between a hunky American Indian and a lustful pioneer woman who several pages later have sex on a mossy riverbank, is the height of absurdity.

And he’s right. Having read the copy-pasted material that apparently passes for dialogue in Cassie Edwards novels, I can’t imagine ever picking one up even out of curiosity now:

Let’s put aside for now that ferrets live on the prairie, where there are no bushes—never mind the forest where Edwards has set her characters. Seeing the cute animals, Shiona and Shadow Bear launch into a discussion about the cute little critters.

“They are so named because of their dark legs,” Shadow Bear says, to which Shiona responds: “They are so small, surely weighing only about two pounds and measuring two feet from tip to tail.”

Wow. Yeah, now that’s sexy pillow-talk right there!

I highly recommend reading the rest of Paul Tolme’s article, not only because it’s a hysterically funny take on the scandal, but because he takes the opportunity to use the unfortunate theft of his hard work to bring attention to something very important to him: the very real plight of these wonderful animals.

Before I sign off, here are my latest reviews: Val McDermid’s The Torment of Others and Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest.

Reluctant Romance Reader