Posted October 02, 2009 to Digital, Media Appearances
One of the earliest interviews we did was at Writer Unboxed, where we discussed how the site came to be, and why we love romances, even the really hellicious bad ones. Here’s a trip way, way back in the wayback machine.
You won’t find Amazon-esque rants of dunce-worthy incompletion at SBTB, because we wouldn’t put up with ourselves writing reviews that consisted of “the heroine was boring and the plot made no sense and that authors sucks.” To that kind of review, I cry Foul, five yard penalty. Why was the heroine boring? Was it that YOU didn’t like her or that she was rather one-noted and never had a reaction beyond, ‘Oh, what do you mean?’ Was she wishy washy and unable to make a decision for herself? Was she a stock character whose every reaction you could predict three pages ahead? Why did the plot make no sense? Was there a giant Deus-ex-machina ending that made you want to holler at the walls? Did you find plot holes you could steer a tugboat through?
I can understand an author getting offended that reviewers sum up her work by saying “She sucks.” She does not suck. I’m sure she’s quite nice and hard working and probably picks up after her dog and manages not to allow red socks into the whites and is a monstrously effective math tutor when it’s time for advanced fractions. So to level the “She sucks” comment is unfair. I am not a fan of the collected romance published works of several authors, and I will say why and how come, but I don’t want to just stand up on my soapbox and say the author sucks and sit back down (I’d probably say, “This sucks and how come it continues to be published when other talented folks find themselves unpublished or in the no-man’s-land of the unshelved midlist?”). It’s her work that I have a problem with, especially if I paid ten bucks for it. As the consumer, I can critique.
