Get out of the gutter, for a start. That title isn't what you think. This post is about writers using their hands to type stories with, not to smooth each other's ruffled feathers with.

In the 1980s there was a UK television series called Spitting Image, which used very detailed caricature puppets to satirize celebrities, politicians, royalty, anyone in the public eye in fact. No one escaped: Santa Claus, South Africans, and Spanish holidays all were lampooned in song, and even top-ranking policemen were reduced to blithering latex idiots by the show...Wait, no, that would have been top-ranking policemen reducing themselves to blithering idiots. My mistake. Anyway, the show ran for and was ranked top of the ratings for what seemed like yonks, and having your own Spitting Image puppet became a badge of recognition for public figures. And anyone who thinks this show relied upon "gentle humor" must be remembering through rose-tinted glasses because it wasn't gentle...during that decade, there was a UK politician who had a slight speech inpediment and was also unfortunately given to spluttering rhetoric - his puppet was depicted as gushing fountains of spittle each time it opened its mouth. So, not so gentle then.

But how does this relate to writing? Well, it got me thinking that folks must have had thicker hides in the 80s/90s. These days it seems that writers ( especially indie and LGBT writers ) need an awful lot of hand-holding and much " There, there, there!" cooed at their fragile little egos. They will run to their online groups for virtual hugs from fellow scribes if they find just one negative review of their book amidst the one hundred and twenty-six positive reviews. They will spend an inordinate amount of time demanding to know how they can have nasty reviews banished from their Amazon and Goodreads pages, whining about "good review driving sales" ( That little rubric is one I'd definitely dispute - have you looked at the reviews for '50 Shades of Grey'? Or any James Patterson novel since he started "co-writing" with others? If you went by the Amazon reviews alone, you'd wonder how this bloke ever got to be a bestselling author! But the rule persists amongst paranoid indie authors ) Even discussion of the things that affect writers i.e. piracy, grammar, indie vs traditional, all need to be tempered with a lot of back-patting and reassurance that the individual giving their opinion is sooo right and well done, you go, blah blah blah. Everyone gets a gold star just for participating, aww. 

Well, you know what? Not everyone is going to like what you do. Some people may even hate it. And they might even get on some public forum and spew that hate right at you. So what? Grow up. Grow a pair. Deal with the negativity. You're a published author. Count yer blessings and quit yer bitchin'.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not big on fierce competition or unnecessary cruelty - mostly because the former takes too much energy and the latter doesn't serve any purpose. I do think encouragement and support are invaluable things. But there is a fine line between support and sycophancy. Patting someone on the head and telling them how wonderful they are just to smooth their ruffled little ego-feathers, when you really want to pat them on the head with a shovel and tell them " Oh, get over it!", is being a sycophant. And if you are a fellow indie or LGBT writer, it may well also be fear of raising your own toe off the party line that demands support-at-all-costs-even-your-soul, hmm? You just can't expect positivity from everyone, all of the time, especially not when it comes to readers on public sites like Amazon and Goodreads telling you what they thought of your book. You have to expect that at some point someone will get out the hatchet and attempt to bury it in your creative head. Demanding that these nasty reviews and the people responsible for them be removed will only encourage them to do it again and again, because they will know they have hit a nerve, which is exactly what they wanted to do. Removing the offending review also says that you don't trust your readers to be sane, reasonable and intelligent enough to make up their own minds about what is a review and what is just a hatchet job. And if you don't trust your readers to have minds of their own and the ability to make those minds up for themselves, well, I can only ask...why are you writing for morons?     

 
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Editing is a necessary part of the process of bringing a book to its completed state. It's the polish, the glossy finish. A good editor then is one who can edit a writer's work whilst preserving the unique authorial voice of the writer. A good editor should be discerning, able to treat narrative within the context of time period, setting, and character attitudes, and able to react appropriately according to those dictates. If a character is the type who'd kick puppies, he probably wouldn't balk at using racial slurs, but if she's the type instead who'd rescue a kitten stuck up a tree, she probably wouldn't be so likely to do the latter. An editor should recognize this. They should know the difference between what adds to the narrative ( or at least does not detract from it ), and what is most definitely not required and so can be allowed to fall to the cutting-room floor. Editing also should be a two-way street between editor and writer, whether the editor is a freelancer hired by the writer, or part of a publisher's in-house editing team. There should be lots of constructive communication between the two, and at least a little give-and-take.

Editing should never be used as is a means of diminishing authorial voice. By that I mean it shouldn't be used as a bludgeoning tool with which to create a "cookie cutter" novel, something created to a strict template with no room left over for anything would mark it as different from the rest. A novel should not be the editor's idea of it. It should remain the writer's idea of it. Always. If any novel is so bad it has to be completely rewritten by another person, perhaps it should not be published at all?

Sadly, I see this cookie cutter approach occurring more often in novels, and especially those in a certain genre / market which shall here remain unnamed...if you've read it, and you've noticed it, you won't need to be told about it. If you haven't noticed it, then there's no point in my telling you, since you're probably content with it. These novels are turned out by publishing houses whose editors rely very heavily on such "style bibles" as Strunk & White's 'Elements of Style'. I'm not saying there is anything inherently wrong in making use of these manuals. I'm saying they should be treated as simply one more tool in the editing box and made use of alongside the many other tools, and only that. Rely entirely on them, and they risk becoming dogma ( it's an inherent problem with "bibles"! ), and in so doing will denude writing of all authorial voice and therefore individuality. A cookie cutter approach may be acceptable for a publisher such as Mills & Boon who produce a very specific type of book and whose readership expect that. However, a publisher simply cannot reasonably expect to edit the multi-genre novels they produce using this approach. Editing must be adapted accordingly, or the result will be every novel looking exactly as though it were written by the same person with the settings and character names just tweaked each time. What you get is the publishing equivalent of Malvina Reynolds' 'Little Boxes' ( see below ). It would be easy to argue that "readers know what to expect this way"...but at some point 'knowing what to expect' must turn into dull predictability and that, also sadly, will be blamed by unsuspecting readers not on the publishers and editors and their over-enthusiastic cookie cutting, but on the ability of the writers themselves to be original. 
   
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Stilettos and SteelStilettos and Steel by Jeri Estes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First of all, let me explain that I pulled the previous review I wrote of ‘Stilettos and Steel’ for the simple reason I felt this rare and unusual book deserved to have more written about it and I needed to have the time to do that in a way I was happy with. Because, essentially, this is the kind of book I wish there were more of appearing in the lesbian fiction genre.

So, I confess to knowing absolutely nothing about San Francisco, the Tenderloin, or LGBT history of the ‘sixties era, which meant this book was an education for me. Jeri Estes, author of ‘Stilettos and Steel’, says the book is somewhat autobiographical and in that case, all I can say is, “ Well done, girl, for getting out of that alive!” And small wonder then that so few of us who didn’t live it ourselves know so little about our this aspect of our community’s history as I’m sure the pc-riddled powers-that-be within the LGBT community today have carefully swept it under the rug, fearful as they so often are of being seen as less than saintly.

The world of Ms Estes’ protagonist, teenage runaway Jesse, is one of female pimps, hookers with hearts of gold and minds for business, drag kings and queens, gangsters, police corruption and abuse, drugs, violence, and not an equality law in sight. Because the author lived it herself, she brings this dark world and the often less-than saintly characters who inhabit it, to vivid life on the page. It’s not all darkness, however, it is also a story of courage and survival. I won’t spoil the story for those who haven’t read it, but although the actions of some of the characters, particularly Jesse, have been seen as questionable by some in the modern-day LGBT community, I think it reflects the time period of the piece. Besides, I have already written in my own Epochalips E-zine article about how we, as lesbians, need the good, the bad, the ugly, and the psychotic too, amongst our fictional characters, how it’s okay to be seen sometimes as more human and less saint!

So, if you like your books full of soft-focus warm fuzzies and unicorns pooping rainbows, I’d advise you to save your sensibilities the shock and not read this book, although maybe this book is exactly what your over-protected sensibilities need? On the other hand, if you are like me and enjoy a good story full of lively characters and you don’t mind getting a wee bit of grit between your teeth, then sink them into ’Stilettos and Steel’ at once. Speaking as someone who herself writes books featuring a protagonist who is an ex-hired killer and unapologetically butch, I can relate to Ms Estes’ reluctance to allow the perceived 'lesbian publishing police' to imprison her characters and story within political-correctness and a genre would have restricted its audience, and her decision to “go indie” with her book instead. Bravo!

I wish Jeri Estes and her ‘Stilettos and Steel’ crew all the best of fortune with the planned movie version of the book.

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Playing Passion's GamePlaying Passion's Game by Lesley Davis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve been trying recently to expand my genre horizons, a feat which has involved me in reading more romantic fiction than usual. And sometimes change really is a good thing.

I stumbled across Lesley Davis’s ‘Playing Passion’s Game’ whilst browsing Bold Strokes Books’ catalogue for something that might keep my attention in this genre, and I thought the storyline sounded like the kind of not-too-slushy romance I could cope with! I was infinitely glad also to realize that you don’t have to be a gamer to appreciate this story, since I’m not a gamer.

Despite this gap in my personal knowledge of gaming then, I was sucked in by Davis’s characters, Trent and Juliet, from the first. Trent is a personable, if somewhat troubled butch, and Juliet is the seductive and smart femme who draws her out. It’s less cliché and more classic and it really works in this case. The storyline has just the right balance between humor and drama to make it an engaging romance up there with BSB’s best offerings.

And I was surprised - in a most pleasant way - to find a fellow Brit successfully writing US-based fiction for the lesfic market. It can be done! Go, Lesley!

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The Stranger You SeekThe Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I really wanted to review this book as soon as I read it because as much as I was impressed with it overall, certain aspects left me with decidedly mixed feelings. I hesitated to do so when I discovered that the author has lots of friends within the lesbian writing community since I know how easily anyone with what might seem like a dissenting opinion can end up accused of being the only sour cherry on that fruit stand. And it isn’t my intention to be a sour cherry. But finally, I decided not to be cowed by the yoke of slavish and blind devotion to anything that even remotely resembles a ‘lesbian thang’, and just write the review as I see it.

First of all, I wonder how many of the lesbians praising the author have actually read her book? Because ‘The Stranger You Seek’ is not lesbian fiction.

Amanda Kyle Williams’ protagonist, Keye Street, is a brilliant ex-FBI profiler turned private investigator. Keye is also a dry drunk, her addiction being the reason her high-flying FBI career crashed and burned. Keye is the sort of addict who readily acknowledges her struggle to stay off the sauce, and has no truck with the God-bothering self-righteous congratulation of many recovering addicts, which may not make her to every reader’s taste who might prefer their addicts to be a little more soul-baring repentant. Too bad for them. Keye’s passive-aggressive Southern Belle mother and long-suffering but laidback father were humorously drawn characters and the whole Thanksgiving Dinner scene with them was a hoot! Although, with Keye herself being Chinese-American adopted by a white Southern couple, and having a gay African American brother, it could seem like each color of the diversity rainbow was being thrown into the family melting pot. When Keye is asked by her friend Lieutenant Aaron Rauser of the Atlanta PD to consult on a particularly gruesome serial killer case, she not only feels all the old energy and desire of the hunt return but also worries that she can experience it without succumbing to the desire also to pick up a drink. As a reader I didn’t have any trouble with my willing suspension of disbelief that the FBI would be so desperate as to ask someone they fired for being a drunk to help on a hugely important murder case. Williams writes in a reader-friendly style, and the story itself is well-paced for the most part,so any James Patterson-style improbabilities about the whole thing are easy enough digested. It's fiction, for goodness sake. If fiction were to reflect reality with unerring accuracy, well, you wouldn't be reading fiction, would you?

What marred my liking for the protagonist was her apparent certainty that every woman she interacted with was a lesbian who fancied her. Throughout the story Keye is teased for it by several of her colleagues. I just couldn’t see what this was supposed to add to the storyline, other than to make Keye look either egotistical or homophobic? Since she is straight herself, she also manages to fancy just about every male she falls across, from Aaron Rauser to a garage mechanic. There are lesbian characters who pepper the narrative but they are peripheral and Keye’s attitude toward them - and trans people too - is clumsily handled at best and the reason for the clumsiness never made apparent. I’m not inclined to be hyper-sensitive to perceived homo- or trans-phobia, and to be fair to Williams, the descriptive remark about trans men which jarred with me was an unnecessary throwaway line which a decent editor should have caught and snipped from the final draft. That aside, I’ll probably read the next Keye Street novel, if only to see where Williams takes the character.

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  I may be an exception, but ever since Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, too much gushing about a novel makes me instantly suspicious that the author or publisher has been waging a campaign to pull down any review they feel is even remotely negative. 

  And yet ‘negative’ doesn’t always need to be a bad word. Sure, good reviews are great for the writer’s ego, but if they are not also honest, are they not then of dubious worth? 

  “ If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all!” is all well and good for making people feel good about themselves. However, in what other way can a person ever know they are making a mistake and learn anything unless someone first points the error out? And “nice” is a subjective concept. What one writer finds nice, or even just innocuous, may well send another writer into a snarling huff, recruiting their friends and fans on various social media to massage their own bruised little ego and at the same
time direct thinly-veiled snark at the perceived guilty reviewer.

  “ We need to support each other!” is a noble sentiment also, but support should never be confused with blind devotion, nor used as a means of curbing or manipulating another person's opinion. Having something in common, be it sexuality or race or just the fact that you are all writers, does not obligate each and every one of you to either liking each other, or the work which you each produce. 

  A mixed review, or even a bad review, is not necessarily a personal attack on the writer. Or the publisher. Or the editor. Well, okay, sometimes the editor! There is a gulf of difference between a simple bad review and an unnecessary personal attack, but by removing every bad review as well as the personal attacks, writers insinuate that they can’t trust readers to discern the difference for themselves. In which case, why bother writing for them at all if you hold your readers in such low regard?

  When it all gets boiled down, a review is really just someone’s personal opinion. It’s easy to argue that “Good reviews drive sales” but should it be at the cost of muzzling those opinions which we feel don’t achieve this to our satisfaction? Should we throw freedom of speech out of the window and demand
that all reviews be an exercise in sycophancy? Or should we suck it up, realize that not-good doesn’t necessarily have to mean bad, and let the reviews stand as they are?

 Besides, even a bad review can be made to work for you with a little imaginative editing and some judicious cutting and pasting. Imagine a review snippet that said “[insert name of novel] hurtles out of the starting gate at breakneck pace”. Sounds pretty exciting, huh? Now imagine the rest of that
sentence ran “ [insert name of novel] hurtles out of the starting gate at breakneck pace, then promptly stumbles at the first hurdle and limps the rest of the way home”. Oh dear, not so good, eh? But there is nothing to stop an author or publisher from using only the first part of the sentence, and indeed it is
done - often. There is no misquoting, just selective quoting. But by doing so voila! you have turned a bad review into a good one. And the really good part? You can pretty much take it as read ( pun intended ) that although there may be one or two OCD types who will determinedly seek out the full review, most
people will have neither the time nor inclination to do any such thing. 


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Blind Curves (Blind Eye #1)Blind Curves by Diane Anderson-Minshall
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The cover blurb for this book made it sound a little different from the run-of-the-mill murder/mystery-heavy-on-the-romance which flourishes in lesbian publishing and to my happy surprise, it lived right up to the blurb.
Rosemary Finney, the most hated woman in lesbian publishing, has been murdered. The prime suspect is her ex-girlfriend, journalist Velvet Erickson who recently had a blazing public argument with Rosemary and threatened to kill her. However, all is not so clear cut. It quickly becomes apparent that Rosemary has more enemies than you could shake a lesbian romance novel at. Velvet is given 48 hours by the court in which to clear her name and to do so she hires private detective Yoshi Yakamoto and the Blind Eye Agency.
This is a plot-driven novel. As the title suggests there are lots of blind curves around which it takes us before the real killer and motive are revealed. Events bound along quite pleasingly in between, with the romantic entanglements ( and there are those ) kept to a sub-plot and never allowed to over-shadow the mystery element. The writing is witty, for the most part relevant to the plot, if occasionally heavy on the fashion and lifestyle references. Perhaps you don’t get “deep” into the characters heads and hearts but I didn’t mind that at all. Too much angst-ridden contemplation of motivation here would have slowed the plot down. You know what you need to know about the characters. As it was, the single jarring element in the narrative was the unintentionally hilarious descriptive turn of phrase “ hot breath building up between them like LA smog”… but that would be a gripe toward the editor and not the writers. All writers can occasionally get carried with our own cleverness. That’s why we have editors who should be red-penning this kind of flowery stuff out of existence.
As an aside, this book was given one very stinging bad review on Amazon. It’s interesting to note that the review has since disappeared and sad in a way, too, because every less-than glowing review taken down makes it seem like authors think readers are not discerning enough to make up their own minds. Or am I really the exception who was encouraged to read the novel for myself by the review ( which, whilst veering often into the unnecessarily personal, did make a couple of valid points )? It made such a refreshing change from the feeling that there is some secret policy on never posting anything but reviews dripping in glowing praise-diamonds where LGBT books are concerned. Curb the right of readers to give an honest opinion too many times and it will surely result in less of them being willing to give such reviews. Is that really what LGBT writers want?

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Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk StoriesSteam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories by JoSelle Vanderhooft
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Let me start by saying that romance is not my favorite genre to read, and lesbian romance in particular more often than not grates on me with its insistence on everything working out as perfectly as unicorns pooping rainbows.

However, this collection of lesbian steampunk-themed romantic shorts is well written, the romance is not necessarily of the happy-ever-after-coated-in-sugar-rainbows variety, and the steampunk is pretty darn good from what I can tell as a relative newbie to that genre. The alternative worlds built by the writers are convincing and if the science of steampunk still baffles me a bit, it thankfully wasn't overly-complicated here. Only one out of the sixteen stories in the collection really left me bored enough to skip the ending, and I was particularly intrigued by 'Suffer Water' by Beth Wodzinski and 'Under The Dome' by Teresa Wymore, each of which is themed by human-machine and human-animal hybridization respectively. I would have read either of these as full-length novels.

A good buy if you like steampunk and you like romance, but not necessarily having the latter shoved down your throat.

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Writers take liberties with the truth. In order to write fiction - good fiction anyway as opposed to dreary fiction - writers must bend the rules of reality. Much the same rules of this reality-warping apply whether you are writing a book, or a movie, or a TV show. Successfully having your audience buy the brain candy you are selling them depends largely on their Willing Suspension of Disbelief ( henceforth to be known as ‘WSOD’ because it’s a ruddy mouthful otherwise and I’m a lazy typist ) which means:

the audience must be willing to temporarily put aside their knowledge of real-world facts and suspend their sense of disbelief in the contradictory things you are showing them.

In short, you have got to make ’em believe that a Jason Bourne or a Michael Westin could not only exist in this world but also operate within it in the high-octane, rule-discarding ways they do. 

The biggest problem with achieving WSOD, from the writer’s point anyway, is that readers ( viewers, too ) are slippery little buggers. They can slip out of this state of WSOD with alarming ease, and not always for the reasons you might think. No writer can ever be 100% sure what might burst their audience’s bubble
( and FYI neither can your editor 100% predict this, not unless he or she is psychic and if anyone finds  a psychic editor could you please pass their name onto me? ). You can have your super-spy action-man hero engage in all manner of derring-do and seduction and the audience will eat it up with a spoon, only to have them suddenly snap to out of their drowsy make-believe and howl in disbelieving derision because you committed the heinous sin of dressing your Jason Bourne-alike character in a polyester shirt with pineapples on it.  

You can, however, learn through simple observation what will give you the greatest chance of maintaining WSOD in your readers. I recommend reading Clive Cussler, James Patterson, Stephen King, and any spy or adventure novel by a mega-successful author. Or watch TV shows such as Burn Notice and Criminal Minds. Both are excellent examples of style over substance providing perfect ongoing WSOD. Both shows take immense liberties with truth and reality but both shows still have managed to be
top-rated network successes for 5 and 7 seasons respectively. Because the scripting is sharp, the stories are exciting, the characters are people we can actually care about and become invested in, and the locations are glamorous. You might be surprised how much a glamorous or exotic, or even an interesting
location, can do for you as far as WSOD goes.

Actually, with WSOD, beta readers might be more help to you than an editor. An editor is one person, one who maybe hates anything to do with Men In Black Suits From The Government and so refuses to be lulled into WSOD so long as men in black suits are present in your story. Having your story test-driven by a varied group of beta readers then might give you a greater chance of finding out if the majority are willing to buy into your black-suited men from the Ministry of Disinformation. Which is not to say you should discard your poor editor entirely. Editors, after all, are useful for some things…Give me a minute and I might think of at least one of those things…Ha ha. Just kidding. No, really. I am kidding. Love to the editors. 

Also, you might want to try asking yourself, would I be willing to believe this if I were reading it in another author’s book? Think about what bursts your little bubble of make-believe and realize that if your brain can’t happily wrap its jaws around that candy, you can hardly expect anyone else to. Finally, check out websites, too, like tvtropes. It’s a font of fascinating and informative stuff will help you with WSOD.

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Greetings From Jamaica, Wish You Were QueerGreetings From Jamaica, Wish You Were Queer by Mari SanGiovanni
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

'Greetings From Jamaica, Wish You Were Queer' warns you “this book may make you laugh out loud in public”. Although I didn’t quite do that, it did give me a few silent chuckles for all the right reasons.
Marie Santora inherits a fortune from her grandmother and takes her crazy Italian family to Jamaica with it, as a parting gift before she departs for a new life as a screenwriter in Hollywood. Also turning up unexpectedly in Jamaica is Lorn Elaine, the actress Marie has been “stalking” in an attempt to get Lorn to read her script. Thus the scene is set for misunderstandings and romance.
I’m a sucker for fiction involves crazy, unruly families and incident-prone protagonists, and Mari SanGiovanni’s debut novel certainly delivers on both those counts. Marie is a likeable protagonist and I was left curious enough about her to wonder if the writer plans a follow-up? The book was a tad long for my liking at 256 pages. A comic romance like this may have been more comfortable edited down to around 200 pages, but that’s an editing beef not a writer one.
'Greetings From Jamaica'… would be an ideal book to read whilst lazing on the beach with a pitcher of cold margaritas.

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