Straw Bear 2013 and weekly miscellany
This week I have mostly been… ill.
It started off on Saturday, which was unfortunately also the day of this year’s Straw Bear festival. I was in that half way state where you know you’re ill but you don’t yet know what it’s going to be when it’s fully manifested itself. So I dressed for dancing, then added several more layers of jumpers and a sheepskin coat and went as a musician who might dance if absolutely necessary.
The layers were all very needed, as it was perishingly cold, but it was also sunny and clear. Perfect weather 🙂 I haven’t got much more to say about it than I said last year or the year before, but it was a good one, which I will remember fondly.
It was the first showing of my new purple waistcoat 🙂
More photos than anyone other than a member of the Riot could ever want to see:
http://www.elriot.co.uk/jalbum_sb2013/index.html
I spent Sunday hacking my lungs out. But I felt a little better on Monday, so I started the week determined to stick to my New Year’s Resolution of writing 4,000 words a day. This I managed on Monday, and on Tuesday. By Wednesday I felt awful again and wrote nothing. 3,200 on Thursday, and I told myself “you’ll feel even better by Friday. You can do the 4000 and maybe even an extra 700 to make up Thursday’s total. Thus, having jinxed myself, I feel terrible again today and need to sleep.
OTOneH, this push of over 10,000 words has brought me *this close* to the end of The Glass Floor – I only have the finale to write now. OTotherH, it’s so frustrating to know I could have done more.
Still, what I did manage on the non-writing day that was Wednesday was a complete revision of the plot plan, to make the whole thing tighter and more exciting. I suspect that ought not to be sniffed at as an achievement either.
Other achievements this week – my youngest, having been told he wouldn’t get the grades to get into his 6th form college of choice, buckled down, pulled his finger out, and got those grades regardless. I am super proud of him.
I’m also pretty chuffed with this lovely review of Blessed Isle:
http://www.bookloversinc.com/2013/01/17/review-blessed-isle-by-alex-beecroft/
I’m slightly perturbed at the fact that the lack of sex is causing such problems for everyone. Are there really no other sweet m/m romances out there? What about Charlie Cochrane’s? But I am delighted that everyone’s enjoying it despite that 🙂
Wishing you better, from a fellow-sufferer.
– I don’t think what you did on Wednesday should have been dismissed as “wrote nothing”. A complete revision of the plot plan is a very real achievement!
– as is your youngest’s achieving his grades. That’s brilliant!
– Do you think that the lack of sex is really “causing … problems”? I suspect it’s just that it’s worthy of note, so that potential readers know what they’re (not) getting. And so that those who prefer that know it’s one they can safely go for!
Also pleased for you that it’s getting such good reviews, but it’s no more than it deserves.
Thanks, HJ! Back at you 🙂
Well, I’ve read a couple of reviews that gave the novella a very low rating and said that the lack of sex was a dealbreaker for them. They seemed very indignant about it, as though it was an altogether unknown imposition on the world of m/m romance to have a story with no sex. I don’t quite know why – I swear I’ve been writing not-very-hot books for years 🙂 But yes, apart from those ones it’s an important thing to put in a review to avoid disappointing other people, and to help people find the stuff they do what to read. It’s just a factor I need to keep in mind for next time, I guess.
Thank you!
Another interesting take on sex in m/m from Kate A.: http://onlytruemagic.blogspot.com/2013/01/when-sex-gets-boring.html#more – readers noting they skipped over the sex because it was the same as every other sex scene. We can’t please everyone, right?
Do you think m/m novels appeal to a broader audience if there is minimal graphic sex?
Oh that is interesting 🙂 And I think it probably is inevitable that now we’ve had nearly ten years of highly sexed m/m romance the novelty of being able to read about the sex has worn off. Probably the genre will start to separate a bit more into erotica and romance-which-is-about-the-romance.
I’m sure that m/m romances without graphic sex will appeal to readers of m/f romances more than those with it. Whether that is a broader market, I don’t know, because they may lose a part of their market as a result (the part that likes the graphic sex.) But certainly I think the mainstream literary world is more likely to take seriously books without sex than they do books with it.