Sharazade

Q: How do you choose the books you review?

A: In various ways. Some are books I’ve chosen to read on my own; some are books that friends or contacts have asked me to review; some are books that publishers have asked me to review; sometimes I’ve seen requests for reviewers and have answered those ads.

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Q: Do you only review books that you liked?

A: Yes.

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Q: Why?

A: I figure most readers who read a review are looking for a book they might like — they’re looking for recommendations, in other words. I don’t think there’s much point in reading a whole essay in order to see what not to put into your Amazon cart. I also review manuscripts (of a very different type) for publishers — in those cases, I review what I’m given, and if I don’t think the manuscript should be published, or if I think it needs changes, I certainly say so. But these are published books. I don’t want to obligate myself to finish something that isn’t to my liking, let alone write a whole piece on it. If I like a book, though, then I want to share that and explain why. That’s why my reviews are more about why I liked a certain book than whether I liked it.

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Q: Do you get paid for reviews?

A: No. If someone has requested that I review the book, I get a complimentary copy of the book, which I can keep. But there is no additional compensation.

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Q: Do you know the people whose books you review personally?

A: Sometimes (see my post on Who are a writer’s friends?). But I really don’t think that makes any difference. The writers I know would not be upset if I said, “Oh, you know, this book wasn’t quite to my taste, so I’d rather not write up a review of it.” They understand that not everybody likes everything.

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Q: Would you review my book?

A: Quite possibly! It depends a bit on my schedule and also whether the book sounds like it’s going to be something I’ll like. To inquire, add a comment to this post describing the book and including an email, and I’ll let you know. (Your comment/request will not be posted to this site; think of it as my blog voicemail.) I’ll review either ebooks or print books, though print ones get read, and thus reviewed, more quickly (because I can read them in the bath). I don’t care how long or short something is or whether it’s an anthology or by a single author. I do have some subject matter preferences, so do include a brief description of your story or book.

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Q: Could I review your book(s)?

A: Why, certainly! Again, just leave me a message here, and let me know whether you would prefer an ebook or a print book.

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Calendar Girl, by Sommer Marsden; published by Xcite Books, 2010.

The title points to the premise: Merritt is recently divorced and hurting, and had only one serious relationship before her marriage. Her Sassy Gay Friend decides that what she needs is more experience, some confidence boosters, and lots of good sex, and sells her on the idea of dating one new man per month of the new year.

It’s really a brilliant plot device. There’s a reason to have a wide variety of very different lovers, all in a context that makes sense, and there’s the chronology moving forward, but in a contained amount of time.

As a reader, I fell immediately into the same trap Merritt did: I really liked Mr. January! Why couldn’t she just stay with him?? But at the same time, I did buy into premise, that it’s hard for Merritt to really know what kind of man is best for her if she’s never had very many. So, like her, I regretfully watched the very sexy Mr. January exit and Mr. February enter (and he was great too). The Lovers of the Month were all sexy, and all in different ways. Merritt is, as they say, “good, giving, and game” and she gives them all a fair chance; treats none of them poorly; and has just a ton of hot sex.

It’s also a plot device that could bog down if adhered to too closely. I mean, if Chapter 1 was January and Chapter 2 was February, and so on, till December in Chapter 12, you might find yourself getting bored with the predictability. So yay for a clever author who knew that and threw in some surprises and twists. I don’t want to give any of them away; suffice to say that the main plot allowed for a clever, structured story line that never became too restrictive.

There were two things I especially liked about this book (in addition to Mr. January): 1) very good sex scenes, and 2) the various subplots. Each of Merritt’s men is very different, which means that the sex is different, but even within one month the descriptions were just the way I like them: explicit without being crude, affectionate without being precious, and varied without depending on a lot of odd synonyms for body parts. OK, wait, three things, with 3) being her writing style in general. I especially liked some of the humorous descriptions from the first-person narrator, such as I wiped my nose and checked my face. Red nose like Rudolph, red cheeks, red eyes. Basically when I cry I start to resemble a cherry tomato. Or a lifelong drunkard.

Many of the subplots involve family members. At the same time that I read Calendar Girl, I reread Anna Karenina. Even if you’ve never read it, you may be familiar with its opening line, because it’s just That Famous: All happy families are like one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. When I first read Anna Karenina in high school, I thought that line was very clever. As an adult, though, I find myself disagreeing. I know lots of happy families who are very different from one another. And, just going out on a limb here, I’m going to say that the happy families in Calendar Girl are like nothing Tolstoy ever knew. Now, granted, Calendar Girl is a different type of fiction — it’s light, humorous, exaggerated, and intended to arouse. Still, though, the sentiments rang true for me. There are brothers and mothers (and mothers-in-law) and spouses and ex-spouses (and friends), and they fight and feel frustrated and misunderstand one another — but they love one another and work through their problems. While some of the scenes were pretty wild, the feelings were familiar. This is how complex, loving family members deal with each other. It wasn’t the main point of the book, perhaps, but it was a nice side element, as was the treatment of Merritt’s job.

Great plot device. Enjoyable writing. Hot sex. Rich characters. Zany situations. Hot sex (it’s worth saying twice). Yes, I recommend this book.

Calendar Girl is available as an ebook from Xcite books here, and at Amazon for the Kindle here.

sign from a Turkish bazaar

I chose Sharazade as a pen name for several reasons: I like the way it looks, and I like the way it sounds. I travel a bit in that area of the world and the name reminds me of that. Principally, though, I chose it for its associations.

Sharazade, perhaps more familiar to Western readers as Scheherezade (the spelling Rimsky-Korsakov chose for his suite), is the princess of 1001 Nights (again, more familiar to some perhaps as the Arabian Nights), a collection of stories from the Middle East and South Asia, told as separate tales framed by the story of Sharazade.

The story goes (and here I refer to the Richard Burton translation; he spells her name as Shahrazad) that the Persian king Shahryar had been betrayed by his first wife. Convinced that women could not be faithful, he resolved to marry only a virgin; spend one night with her; and then behead her. The next day he would select a new virgin, and continue the practice.

He had gone through some 3,000 virgins already at the time Shahrazad’s father related the practice to her. She is horrified, and asks, “O my father, how long shall this slaughter of women endure?” She persuades her father to give her in marriage to the king, saying that either she will live, or she will at least serve as a sacrifice to spare another woman’s life.

That first Shar, now, she had perused the books, annals and legends of preceding Kings, and the stories, examples and instances of by-gone men and things; indeed it was said that she had collected a thousand books of histories relating to antique races and departed rulers. She had perused the works of the poets and knew them by heart; she had studied philosophy and the sciences, arts and accomplishments; and she was pleasant and polite, wise and witty, well read and well bred.

Shahrazad marries Shahryar, who abates her virginity. She asks for a chance to say good-bye to her sister, who is brought to the palace. There, her sister, as previously arranged, beseeches her:

“Allah upon thee, O my sister, recite to us some new story, delightsome and delectable, wherewith to while away the waking  hours of our latter night.”

“With joy and goodly gree,” answered Shahrazad, “if this pious and auspicious king permit me.”

“Tell on,” quoth the King, who chanced to be sleepless and restless, and therefore was pleased with the prospect of hearing her story.

She begins the story, then: The Tale of the Trader and the Jinni. Ah, but it is a long story, and she doesn’t finish it by dawn. She arranges to end on a cliffhanger, and King Shahryar is too caught up in the story to be able to behead her. He therefore spares for another day so that she may finish the story. Well, on it goes — each night she finishes the old story and begins a new one, which doesn’t finish before dawn.

After a thousand and one nights of this, the King either realizes she is faithful; or forgives women; or comes to love her; or has become addicted to her stories (accounts vary). But her life is spared and they live — well, you know. Happily ever after.

Now, isn’t that the mark of a good story? So compelling that you simply must return the next day to see what happens. It’s what makes a successful serialization of a novel or a television show; it’s what brings readers back to their favorite authors; it’s what inspires people to call a certain book a “page turner.”

It’s also an important yet overlooked quality in erotic writing, which those unfamiliar with the genre sometimes assume to be just a sex scene. Of course there are sex scenes in erotic stories — but it’s the plot, the story, that draws the reader in. Otherwise you have a movie made up of only the chase scene. A sex scene alone won’t bring the King back the next night; that sex must happen for a reason, to compelling characters, in a story we want from beginning to end.

And then… the next one begins.

(excerpts from The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night (Kitāb ‘alf layla wa-layla), translated by Richard Francis Burton.)

sign from a hotel in Libya

If you couldn’t quite tell from the title whether by ass holes I meant anuses or annoying people, then you already can understand some of my problem.

The broader concern is, What do we call sex organs and other sexy body parts? Clinical terms sound, well, clinical. Crude terms sound crude in a bad way to some people, crude in a good way to others, and crude in an “it depends” way to many. That is, no one wants to be called a cunt while on the phone with customer service; however, in the middle of a steamy sex scene, if a lover uses it with a partner, it can sound totally hot. To some people.

Whether a term for a body part is silly, puzzling, hot, a turn-on, insulting, or downright offensive depends on so many factors, mostly to do with one’s personal experience with the word and how one’s acquaintances react to it. Just as a carbonated non-alcoholic beverage can be pop, soda, cola, or a soft drink to different people, so too do penis and vagina go by many different names. Some writers like to use a wide variety, and others (like me) use just a few favorites.

It’s interesting, I think, to examine your own likes and dislikes and think about where they come from. Books you’ve read? Past lovers? Or just the sound of the word? For me, my dislikes are often related to sound — I find I don’t like long vowel sounds for sexy body parts (although I have nothing against long vowel sounds in general). So, I prefer the short o sound of cock to the long e of penis. Pussy, with its short u, is a yes; vagina with its long i is a no.

And then just a few days ago, while traveling, this notice in the bathroom of my hotel reminded me of the one body part I always struggle with:

What can I call, in writing, the ass hole? To me, anus doesn’t sound right. It’s too clinical, and it also makes me laugh, for some reason. Predictably, I don’t like its long a sound. But ass hole, even when written as two words instead of one, sounds like a guy who just cut you off in traffic for no good reason. And then… I’m stuck for any other good synonym. I don’t like cutesy workarounds like brown eye or poop chute. I want something that sounds sexy! Is that too much to ask for a body part that gives so many pleasurable feelings to so many? So I’m soliciting suggestions. If you have one I like, I’ll use it in my next story.

The fact that one of the protagonists is a strong, smart, educated, sexy woman is not what I like best about Rock My Socks Off (Jeremy Edwards, Xcite Books, 2010). I’m a strong, smart, educated, sexy woman, and I know plenty of others. Yet some authors seem blown away by the presence of these women in their own books. I read one not too long ago by an author so famous I’m not going to mention his name here in case I piss off his legion of fans. Practically from page 1 we heard that his protagonist woman was beautiful—and yet smart! Oh my gosh! A few pages later, we learned that while she was smart, she was also… very beautiful! And he kept that up throughout the entire book. In fact, this woman was only able to defeat the Evil Bad Guy because the EBG was not prepared for the fact that she was so smart—because she was so beautiful!! I cannot believe the author actually knew any strong, smart, educated, sexy women, because if he had, they would have strangled him dead to death.

Jeremy Edwards must actually know some strong, smart, educated, sexy women, because his Normandie (née Brittany, but in her disgust at having been stuck with such a trendy name explains that she took the next French province over) is, well, strong, smart, educated, and sexy; and this is perfectly natural. Her boyfriend Jacob is no slouch, but Normandie is better-educated and in a higher-level job. And what makes that so enchanting to me is precisely the author’s not making a big deal of it. So that is Good Point Number One (there will be four, if you’re the sort who likes to keep track of these things, and GP#3 was what I liked best about this book).

Good Point Number Two is that I see why Normandie and Jacob like each other. You know? And it’s not just because they’re too sexy for their pages. Lots of characters in erotic romances have luscious bosoms and throbbing members (not on the same character) (usually), so I want to know what about the characters’ personalities attracts them to each other. These are two wise-cracking, affectionate smart-asses. They’re a good match, and it’s a pleasure to watch them interact. Their sex is believable (and hot) because their attraction is believable.

Now, these two characters have a lot of sex. I mean… they have a lot of sex. From their first encounter, they have sex every few pages. And yet I’m going to say that Good Point Number Three is the plot. If you took out all of the sex, you’d still have a great story (although you’d also have a much shorter book!). It’s the sort of plot you often see called a “romp”—fast-paced and just a heck of a lot of fun. There are twists, there are surprises, there are Oh, I hoped that would happens, and there are Oh, my, s/he couldn’t really haves.

However, this is an erotic novel, not just a novel, and so the sex counts. That is Good Point Number Four. Did I mention these characters have a lot of sex? Because they have a lot of sex. However, it’s different every time—by which I mean both that the characters go for different positions and locations every time, and that the author describes it differently every time; sometimes in graphic detail and then sometimes just by ending a chapter with something as simple as She took his hand again. They have sex predominantly with each other, but sometimes a friend joins the two—some of my favorite scenes. The side characters are quirky but believable, and I’d call the actual sex scenes among them ‘quirky but believable’ as well. Third partners have their own lives and personalities and motivations, and aren’t just tossed in there to get a threeway into the book.

Finally, I liked the rocking horse theme—which shows up in various and sometimes surprising ways throughout the book. And yes, there are socks, too.

These are some of my favorite socks, by the way, that I wore while reading this book:

Clearly, I got the hard copy version, but it’s available as an e-book too. In fact, it’s available in so many ways in so many places that I’m going to let the author’s website explain it all to you.