Downbeat

[erastes]

I found a review today where someone had been so disappointed by then end of The Snow Queen that they felt like throwing their ereader against the wall.  The upside was that they felt that the story was beautifully written—which was very flattering.

I suppose i think that short stories are fair game;

the I DO! anthology  was in support of marriage equality, and should have a marriage theme, but we as a group didn’t feel it was necessary for all stories to be HEA. I was slightly nervous submitting something downbeat for it, but I was shouted down by all three others of the committee.

That notwithstanding, I want to say right now, that I don’t intend always to write Romance.  This will lose me some readers, I know, but I want to go further with gay historicals and my short stories, to explore themes and stories (and that’s the wonderful thing about gay historicals is that there are SO many stories yet to be explored) that aren’t going to end happily.  If my contract continues with Running Press—and I hope very much that it does, but that all depends on how well the line sells, of course—then I will continue to write romance for them, I’m contracted to do so in fact, but I do want to write other things that DON’T have a predictable ending, because for me, that’s hugely restricting and I feel myself wanting to kill everyone Hamlet/Blake-7-style, just because I’m forced to wrangle a HEA out of the book.

Perhaps I need to invent a new genre. :)

What do you think?  This reader said that the story should have come with a warning, but I think that’s daft—it’s so fandom—I was talking to Chris Smith about this yesterday, as she’s planning a big “genre exploration” thing on Meta Writer and I said that I get excerpts sent through to me for stories that have about ten genre descriptions, and that it seemed all so fandom to me.  With fanfic, some writers are pressured to put so many warnings on their stories: e.g. Sirius/Remus, m/m, blowjobs, anal sex, angst, blood, character death, mention of m/f, blah blah blah (I’m sure readers can come up with larger examples) that go on for lines and lines and really, by the time you’ve finished reading the warning, you might as well not bother to read the bloody story.  My benchmark for this is the film “Forrest Gump” – I remember seeing the trailer and being really impressed and blown away. “I must see this film!”  I said.  But when i DID go and see the film, I realised I’d ALREADY SEEN IT – because every key point was in the trailer.

When I buy an anthology of short stories—no matter what the theme—I expect to find stories of all kinds.  Happy, sad, uplifting, depressing, intriguing, baffling—Unless there’s ROMANCE emblazoned firmly on the cover, I don’t expect anything.  I know I’ve said this before because it’s the journey I like, and not being sure of the ending is part of what I like best about reading.

Ok – that was far far too long. But good—and cathartic—to write.

Talking of downbeat, I’ve just finished watching BENT on the DVD and feel a bit crushed.  Of course I didn’t expect it to end well, how could it?  But it was very hard to watch, which is how it should be.  I applaud Sherman hugely for doing the play in the first place, and really wish I’d seen the original version. Clive Owen isn’t my favourite actor, but I have to admit that he worked very well as Max, and Jagger was brilliant too.  I don’t think the script worked as well on the DVD as it would have done onstage, because it was a little self-conscious, and “play-like” – I would have preferred a more natural style, but it only seemed that way in certain sections.  I liked the way the Nazis were not over-stagey, prowling monsters.  Just men doing terrible things, without over-dramatics. It will stay with me forever, I think.  I should do a fuller review on Speak Its Name.

 

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