While I didn’t love this book, I think I would’ve enjoyed it a lot more if I’d known what the story was actually about before I started reading.

Lord John discovers that his cousin’s fiancee is poxed, and this sets him off on a quest to push the man into breaking the engagement. At the same time, he has to figure out who killed a military colleague, and why. The plotlines become entangled in unexpected ways, which was a delight for me.

I was disappointed in the way the resolution devolved into an info-dump, but the story was satisfying and very fun to read. I’ve already put the next book on reserve!

Happily, a lot of the “turn off your self-editor” tips were very useful, and some of the lists he suggests making — particularly, the two Magna Cartas — were excellent advice. Make a list of things you hate in books so you don’t accidentally do them yourself! Brilliant! (Yes, it took a book to tell me that might be a good idea. Yes, I now have that list pinned to my desk door.)

Joanne Baldwin, the main character in the series, is in crisis-mode as the book begins. She’s running, and as the story unfolds, we begin to understand why, and what from. The clues are laid out neatly, but it’s not until the climax of the story that I truly began to see what the author had been doing all along.

The role the weather plays in the story is an interesting twist on the way many authors — and directors — use weather to foreshadow upcoming events. Instead of the bad weather simply being a sign of bad things to come, it is the bad thing, being wielded like a weapon by the people chasing Joanne.

I’m definitely looking forward to the next book in the series!

My only complaint is that this book — while beautiful and well-written and useful — is incredibly expensive for what amounts to a pamphlet’s worth of information.

Writing Young Adult Novels

Unlike the last YA writing book I picked up from the library, this one focused on topics specific to YA: how dialogue, setting, characterization, and plot are used in YA versus adult-focused novels. It also covered the importance of characters feeling real to the teenagers reading about them, and how children tend to “read up” in age.

The downsides are few, but they’re not small: the authors are dismissive of romance as a suitable genre for YA novels, and they focus on contemporary fiction. There’s no mention of fantasy, science fiction, or historicals as potential genres in which to write.

On the other hand, they do encourage writers to tackle difficult subject matter in their books: racism, pregnancy, self-discovery, homosexuality, etc. That’s a big change from the last YA writing book I read, which said, in essence, “If they want to read about that sort of thing, they should get it from adult books.”

If it were still in print, I’d recommend this book. As it is, I’m going to be looking for a more recent book about YA writing to read.

The book covers a wide variety of topics, from royalties and advances, to authors behaving badly, to how one might actually make a living from writing. Because the book is actually taken from Scalzi’s blog, The Whatever, his writing style is conversational and entertaining.

Writing for the Teenage Market

The age of the book is not its biggest problem. The biggest problem is that, of the eight chapters, only two are actually about writing YA. The rest is all about how to organize your writing, how to formulate a submission packet — things that are covered in generic writing books, because they’re applicable to any age-range. I was very disappointed.

Even the chapters that are about YA aren’t particularly useful, as they mostly cover the history of the development of YA as a publishing age-range, and what young people of that age used to read before YA was being published.

There were a couple of good points: a YA novel lives and dies by the strength of its dialogue, and the author should choose a POV that allows the reader to feel connected to the main character — third limited or first person.

All in all, though, I’m glad I didn’t spend money on this. Even when it was current.

Times Queer [Amazon] was an uncomfortable read, but I think that is actually one of the book’s strengths. If it were a light, easy read, it wouldn’t feel so honest. The main character, Ricky, is very much a child of his time and circumstances, and the book follows him through his tangled exploration of sexuality.

From a childhood experience on a subway car to his twisted long-term relationship with Red, a woman he can’t decide if he loves or hates, Ricky’s sexual experiences change him, and shape him into the sexually confused young man he becomes. Ricky doesn’t know: is he gay? is he straight? The reader doesn’t know either. It’s impossible to tell, because of the way his experiences have shaped him, and that honesty is something I really appreciated in this book.

The only true complaint I have is that the afterword rehashes every pivotal moment. It’s a powerful story, but the afterword spoiled the gut-level high I had been feeling after reading. It felt as though the person who wrote the afterword didn’t trust me, as a reader, to come to my own understanding of the story.

Regardless, the story itself is excellent, very much about a specific time and place. I wouldn’t recomment it to someone looking for a romance, or a light, easy read, but if you’re in the mood for something tangled and realistic, this might just be the book for you.

Passionate Ink

One of the aspects of the book that was most helpful for me was the section in which she describes in detail what makes particular scenes flow. This is something I do on gut instinct and how things sound aloud, but her description of what I’m really looking for when I’m
listening to my words — word choice and varied sentence length based on scene type — will help me to really dissect what I’m doing, which is very important to me.

My only two complaints were:

1. Ms. Knight recommends ignoring agents’ and editors’ rules regarding query letters and instead sending a portion of the manuscript. This has been shown on several agent blogs to be a surefire way to get your manuscript thrown out unread. The rules are there for a reason.

2. The lengthy excerpts from Ms. Knight’s published work. While I understand that copyright laws would make using others’ work more complicated, the length and frequency of the excerpts left me feeling as though I’d finished reading a very long advertisement for Ms. Knight’s books — and simultaneously like I never needed to read any of them, as I already know how they all progress.

All in all, though, this was definitely a book worth reading.