This post's purpose is to collect my common tags in one place, so readers (and I!) can easily access entries on several subjects.

Despite having so, so much to do, I spent yesterday evening playing with The Tots. We played with markers, Elder Tot using hers to color, Younger Tot pretending to draw (cap on), pulling caps on and off, putting markers into open box of cereal, carrying markers to staircase and back. YT kept saying the same word over and over, which I finally recognized as her big sister's name. She was very happy to be playing with the big kids.

Need to do a load of laundry and pack for Montreal and do some writing, but I fear the writing will fall by the wayside if I'm not really disciplined about it tomorrow morning. I feel as if writing on a single day during the week might not do any good, but that is a Big Lie I am telling myself. I will write tomorrow, all morning, just as usual. I have the time. I've made the time for myself.

Over at the pro blog, I wrote about Erotic Journeys and Bodice Rippers. I was thinking about changing styles in romance novels, and how romance novels are different from erotica, and the like.

Also, Cecilia Tan did an excellent guestblog for me earlier this week: Why Writing Romance and Erotica Is Like Being Good in Bed, on possible differences between commercial and literary fiction.

Colette Gale, Master: This was interesting; it's an erotic novel based on The Count of Monte Cristo, which mostly fits into the cracks of that novel as fanfiction fits into canon. But also like fanfiction, the novel comments on the novel's characters and time period. Most notably, the female characters are expanded and given more agency, partly through their roles in the life of Monte Cristo, and partly through giving them distinct erotic identities. The focus of the story is taken away from Monte Cristo and his complex revenge, leaving something new in its place.

It's a nifty concept. However, the length and complexity of the orginal Count of Monte Cristo is a hindrance to commentary, I felt; because some events in the original novel had to be compressed and explained to the reader, a great deal of plot impetus was lost. I felt more as if I was reading a collection of commentaries on The Count of Monte Cristo rather than a single novel. I'm not sure how this could have been avoided, or even if it should have been.

My favorite part of Gale's novel was the story of the Nubian slave Ali and the Greek Haydée, daughter of Ali Pasha and now also a slave. Minor characters in the original, Gale gives them their own story. Haydée acts on her erotic desires more than once, until she finally achieves what she wants. Notably, in the original novel Ali is mute, having had his tongue cut out; in Gale's version, his voice is literally returned to him; he explains he has kept silent for years as part of a debt of honor.

A very interesting read.

Kate Douglas' Wolf Tales was not for me. She did some neat things with the idea of werewolves as a separate species, but otherwise I found the story too easy for the characters. I felt this was a deliberate choice, based on other titles from the Aphrodisia line that I've read so far that are similar.

I am beginning to have a theory about different types of erotic novels which are meant to appeal to different tastes or moods of their readers. One type, of which this was one, privileges the sex scenes over other types of scenes, which may be given short shrift. To me, this type of book seems more easily broken apart into a series of scenes meant to be read one at a time, perhaps one each night. Forward motion is less important than dwelling in each scene as it happens. The reader can get to know the characters, and added familiarity with them adds to the enjoyment of each subsequent scene, but there's not plot-fueled rush to find out what happens.

The type more to my taste has a driving plot; it doesn't have to be a complex or elaborate plot, but I do prefer a problem the characters must solve, with the sex scenes advancing them towards that goal. In fact, I prefer that the sex be part of the problem and its solution.

I have to think more on this--it's still a vague shape in my mind.

I've just finished reading A Natural History of the Romance Novel by Pamela Regis, which was originally published in 2003 (the paperback came out this year). In general, I found it useful to help order my thinking about Romance as a genre. I particularly liked her choice of the eight essential elements that are required in a romance novel:

( 8 elements and my comments. )

This post was actually a comment over in oyceter's LJ, but it was so long I figured I might as well make it a post. She had asked what tropes in romance novels always work for you, and which ones drive you nuts, and which that could go either way, depending on execution.

My list:

Generally sword-proof:
*Conflicts that arise from within the characters
*Nice, ordinary heroes (think Carla Kelly)
*PTSD, Napoleonic Wars-style
*Marriages of convenience
*Virginal males (not that you see this one often)
*Banter
*Cross-class romances
*Secretly intellectual heroes/heroines
*Angstful spies, bonus if it's wartime
*Equestrians, musicians, and the well-traveled
*Comfort sex

In-between tropes:
*Virgin widows
*"It was all planned by our parents for us to fall in love! And we never knew!"
*I mostly don't like very young heroines, because I want them to have some life experience.

Things that drive me bugf*ck:
*Destined Lurve and/or reincarnation and/or Genetic Mating or scent-marking or whatever the hell weird shit means there's no WORK to the relationship
*Melodramatic suspense plots
*Instantaneous cures for lifelong angst
*Stupid misunderstandings that could be solved with one conversation
*Historicals in which all behavior is completely modern (though I can sometimes handle modern-sounding dialogue, depending on my mood and the book)
*Women who long to be Mastered by a Man, and not for occasional erotic thrills
*Men who Know What's Best for their women and don't learn better
*Long separations between hero and heroine, especially if reason is stupid

mroctober just asked, in comments, why only women seemed to write Great Queer Fantasy.

The weather outside is vile--New Orleans seems to be visiting Philadelphia--and LJ seems slow, with no great huge comment-riffic posts going on. And I want email. And food for my brain. So I will ask.

Is this true? And if so, any theories as to why?

First, what is the Great Queer Fantasy Novel Canon? And who wrote the canon, men or women, and do we know or care what their genders/orientations are/were? And were the Great Queer Protagonists male or female?

And as a side question, do fans of slash like Queer Fantasy? (I know that in some cases they do, but in some they don't--I'm looking for specific authors that seem to be popular in both directions. So to speak.)

Today I'm thinking of the thorny question of how to define "Young Adult" fiction. Obviously, it's a marketing category, and perhaps one intended to encourage readers who aren't ready for the adult section but don't consider themselves children, either.

For many of the genre readers I know, YA is also a way of identifying books (especially fantasy) that they want to read. Personally, I think this is because the generally shorter format of books classified YA necessarily eliminates epic Tolkien imitators (the "big bucks fantasy novel" or "extruded fantasy product") and favors more innovative works. Also, it is my belief that YA fantasy is much more likely to focus in on character, whether or not the novel follows the popular rite of passage plot, since I think one of the hallmarks of YA fiction is that it offers the reader characters with whom they can identify. Not that other fiction neglects this, but I think in YA fiction, it's more of a priority.

I don't think it's required to squeeze books into categories and then tie them there so they cannot escape. But I am curious as to what others see are common qualities of books that they consider Young Adult.