Monthly Archives: May 2015

INDIE AUTHORS OF THE WORLD, PLEASE STOP DOING THIS (part 2)!

Late last year, I found myself so annoyed at authors who fill the synopsis section of their book’s description with so much praise I can’t decipher what the book is actually about that I wrote a whole post about it. You can read it here.

This morning I had a similar experience, leading me to a similar response. I’ll start with a couple screenshots, see if you can guess my complaint by the common denominator.

Did you figure it out? Look authors, I realize Amazon stopped using tags and I realize that tags were a useful way to find books, as well as something authors could manipulate and feel like they were doing something significant to work their books up the recommendation chain. I get it, I do. I even tried it once when I was new. But tags do not belong in titles! (This is just my opinion, of course, but I’m pretty firm in it.)

I find it especially irritating in cases like the first and last examples above, when at least one word of each of the tags in included in the title itself. This means that anyone searching those words would get the book even without the tags. (And as an aside, I could write another whole rant on mixing incompatible genres, like in that 3rd example. How can you have a YA, threesome erotic novel? You shouldn’t be able to? It goes against what it means to be YA.)

Let me break this down for you, from a reader’s perspective. I’m scrolling through the list of millions of books available to me as a reader, yes? I’m glancing at covers and titles to see what interests me. If I come across Fantasy: Immortaland: The Greatest Fantasy Kingdom To Exist And That Will Ever Exist (Fantasy Story, Epic Fantasy, Magic Kingdom, Fantasy Adventure) I have to stop and pick through all those extraneous word to find the actual title. Do you know what my reaction to this is? ‘That’s too much trouble’ and I scroll right by. That’s right. This practice is losing you sales in a very real way.

What’s more, it looks desperate. It says to me that this author is so desperate to be noticed they’re attempting to rig the system. Yes, I know how hard it is to be noticed, but getting noticed for trying to get noticed is a little pitiful.

Then there is the fact that sites like Goodreads pull the book’s details from Amazon and thus indiscriminately pull the data from the title line, along with all those tags, into their metadata where it really is useless.

And what if I’m the sort who likes to hide my kinky side? I don’t necessarily want that kink readily apparent in the title. Just because my seven-year-old sees me reading a book called Strictly Business doesn’t mean I want to yet explain what Strictly Business: Gay, M/M, BDSM, Dom/sub, billionaire, CEO, taboo (Courtland Chronicles series Book 2) means. The same argument could be made for someone reading outside their religion, or above their age limit, or in a professional setting, etc.

It’s my further understanding that this is an outdated mode of getting your book found in the first place. According to a 2009 post (that’s right six years old) Google no longer uses metatag keywords in their searches at all.

And you can guarantee that if Google has given it up the rest of the Web isn’t far behind. After all, there’s surely a reason Amazon removed the tagging option in the first place.

So, this practice of obscuring your title with tags annoys readers (at least this reader), means some kinky readers have to avoid your books, looks ridiculous, and probably doesn’t really do much. So, I’d be interested in hearing why authors and publishers seem to be ramping up the use of the practice. The five examples I used above took me mere moments to find and I could pull dozens more.

How about this one:

According to the cover, the title of the book is The Barony Letter and the series name is Liath. (You might be tempted to think it’s the other-way around, due to which is most prominently displayed, but you’d apparently be wrong. I was.) But the author has chosen to put the tag Historical Romance, before the actual title, as if the book is called Historical Romance: Liath: The Barony Letter. Sorry, I have no desire to read anything so clumsily titled, or any book that I have to work so hard to figure out the basic information of, for that matter.

Here’s more: HISTORICAL ROMANCE: The Marriage Was Not The Best Suited For Our Love HISTORICAL ROMANCE Short Story (Historical Romance, Regency Romance, Historical Romance … Romance books, Historical Romance Novel), Mystery: Whispers of Silence (Mystery Books, Mystery Romance Novels, Thriller Romance, Mystery Romance Books, Mystery Romance Series), Ancient Egypt: Discover the Fascinating World of Ancient Egyptian History, Myths, Pyramids and More: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Egypt Fiction, Ancient Rome, Ancient Greece, Egyptian History, Egypt, A Firm Lesson Learned (Hot Neighbor, Alpha Male, Gay M/M Man Next Door, Mind Control Paranormal)

Is it starting to look like gobbledygook yet? I know I can’t tease out the titles from all that other nonsense. (For the record, that’s four books in the paragraph above.) And I can’t even blame it on one author or publisher. These are mostly all different writers crossing genres from gay erotica to mysteries to non-fiction. Though, it does seem most common in the romance & erotic genres.

So, from one serious, several-hundred-books-a-year reader, please authors, PLEASE, stop doing this. It drives me batty and puts me off your books. If you really want that information available to readers, put it in the synopsis. That’s what it’s there for.

Book Review of Old Loyalty, New Love (L’Ange, #1), by Mary Calmes

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I recently bought a number of Mary Calmes e-books, as they were all on sale for a dollar. Old Loyalty, New Love was one of those books. (At the time of posting, I noticed it’s still listed at $1.00)

Description from Goodreads:
When jackal shifter Quade Danas was banished from his pack for being gay, he spent years in the military escaping his father’s prejudice before returning to civilian life as a bodyguard for Roman Howell, the teenage son of a very rich man. After Roman is in an accident that leaves him physically scarred and emotionally distant, Quade is the only one who can get through to him. As Roman becomes a man, he realizes what he wants—his bodyguard by his side and in his bed. Unfortunately, Quade can’t seem to see past the kid Roman once was to the man he has become, certain Roman’s feelings are merely misplaced gratitude. But Roman knows a lot more than Quade realizes, and he’s used to persevering, no matter how many impediments life throws his way. He wants the chance to prove to Quade that he’s strong enough for a jackal alpha to call mate.

Despite the decades Quade has been away, and the heartache of his father’s rejection, his inborn loyalty to the pack remains, and his abrupt departure left the jackal shifters without an alpha heir. As a psychopath shifter staking claim as alpha draws Quade back home, and Quade feels compelled to heed the call, he may be forced to make a choice he never anticipated. But doing so means he must leave Roman behind… unless somehow they find a way to make loyalty and love work together.

Review:
This review pretty much sums up what I feel about Calmes books, but I’ll try and give my opinion of this one.

I swear to God Mary Calmes books are like crack. I know they’re all the same. I know objectively I should hate them because I generally hate all the tropes that make them up, but somehow they also manage to push some primitive button in my brain and I often guiltily enjoy them, despite my intellectual objections.

Having said that, this one was basically a fail for me. While I liked the idea of the friend/employee to lover idea I didn’t like the way any of it played out. I didn’t like that Roman needed to be horribly scarred and suffering from a sensory disorder in order to be compatible with Quade. I didn’t believe that if Roman lusted after Quade since he was 16 and, even knowing Quade loved him for years, that he’d wait until he was 27 to suddenly divulge his love and then pursue Quade so aggressively. I didn’t like that Roman basically became a weepy, giggly woman as soon as they’d had sex. I hated that Quade was all about Roman wanting to submit, when this was never integrated into the plot. I didn’t believe a whole pack of families would allow even an alpha to pimp their daughters out. I hated the cult of Quade, the way everyone fell to their knees in worship of his alphaness just for standing in their presence. I thought it ridiculous that Quade’s ex and ex-BFF would have waited 11 years and then expected him to step back into their lives. It wasn’t at all believable. And worst of all I didn’t like that, like, 90% of this book was just rehashing the same argument over and over and over again.

Nope, Calmes may be like my crack, but in this one, I think I got a bad batch.

Book Review of Partners (PsyCop #1-2), by Jordan Castillo Price

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I’ve had Partners, by Jordan Castillo Price on my wish list for a while. My husband recently bought it for me. (See, I knew there was a reason I married that man.)

Description from Goodreads:
Featuring two PsyCop novels, Among the Living and Criss Cross, this volume will leave you on the edge of you seat, wanting more.

In Among the Living, Victor is a PsyCop, also known as a member of the Paranormal Investigation team. He’s not popular with the living, as most people consider him a little odd, but the ghosts of violent crimes can’t wait to tell him all about their deaths. His new case pairs him with Jacob, a non-psychic who works in sex crimes. Victor and Jacob have a history, and as they work together to solve a set of serial crimes, they begin to explore the possibilities of a future. The case is like nothing they’ve ever experienced, and soon Victor finds that he’s the only one who can solve the crime, and save Jacob’s life. If he’s not too late.

In Criss Cross, Vic figures life is pretty good. He’s got his lover, Jacob. He’s got some time off to go fishing, and his new partner in the Paranormal Investigation Team buys the coffee. Naturally, nothing that good can last. When Vic starts to see ghosts everywhere, things go very wrong, resulting in a trip to his doctor, who says he’s got problems. Vic’s friends tell Jacob he has to leave for Vic to get better, sex is starting to get dangerous, and Vic’s abilities are getting out of hand. Can he and Jacob figure out what’s happening in time to save Vic from becoming a pawn in a dangerous game?

Review:

Among the Living
I am a total sucker for M/M cop stories. I just am. I admit it. And I found Vic and Jacob a wonderful combo—one so willing to pursue and one barely keeping up with the idea of being pursed, but not resisting either.I also liked that the language was real and not glossed for PCness. How do I express this? At one point, for example, Vic states that a room was full of black boys. But as a reader you understood that this was nothing more than a physical description of the people inhabiting the room. There was no judgement inherent in it or slight intended and thus Vic could skirt the ‘is it PC to say this’ question. It got around the overly scrutinized way many Americans’ sphincter clenches in fear every-time someone dares describe a racial minority. (Please don’t get me wrong, in the same way I appreciated the book’s frankness, I don’t mean to trivialize or demean the very real stresses that still exist in America. But after several years living abroad, I’ve come to appreciate that not only our utter inability to even talk about the subject, but also our unwillingness/inability to allow the language around race to become normalized and uncharged is prohibitive and I was impressed by the authors willingness to allow the color of a character’s skin to be as normal and non-angsty as hair color. Plus, there simply were characters of color.) Similarly, Vic’s observation of his own and the victims’ gayness felt natural and non-titillated.

While I enjoyed the mystery, I was bothered more than once that Vic had information that the other detectives needed but he never provided. And I thought Lisa’s contribution made the whole thing feel a little too easy.

All in all, though, I really quite enjoyed it.

Criss Cross
Again, I quite enjoyed this story by Price. I’ll definitely be looking to finish the series and keeping my eyes open for others. I found Vic and Jacob hot together and Jacob is just so wonderfully accepting and understanding. He makes me swoon.

I did think Vic came across as pretty wimpy for a lot of the novella, though I understand he was kind of experiencing constant trauma. I also thought it was all a little predictable. I had it figured out quite early and I thought the plot line (as in who was the bad guy, etc) was one I had read many times before, even if not necessarily with the psychic aspect. And, for being the elite of the bureau they sure don’t seem to vet their officers very well.