Blog Entry: Reading hiccups and a giveaway
Entry posted on September 3, 2010, 11.31 am
Categories:
A Most Improper Magick, Dragon Book, Giveaways, Reading
First, the important news for UK readers: if you live in the UK, check out this giveaway at the BookBabblers! From now until 8pm Monday, 6th September, you can win a copy of A Most Improper Magick just by commenting on the post.
And speaking of books...
Most of the time, being a writer and a reader go together like...well, like birthday cake and ice cream! You can't have the first without the second, right? (Well, OK, some very strong people may be able to eat birthday cake and NOT eat ice cream with it, but...not me.)
Every so often, though, there's a hiccup. And it's weirdly unpredictable which books - or whole genres - turn out to be off-limits during particular writing projects.
When I was writing A Most Improper Magick, you might have thought that the genre I wouldn't feel able to read would be Regency romances. On the contrary! I loved reading them even more than ever and felt no conflict or discomfort whatsoever as I wrote my own Regency-set adventures, which (gently and lovingly) teased some of the biggest literary conventions in Regency romance.
Books about sisters, though? They felt like poison. I COULD NOT read any of them, no matter how good they were. They could be set in pioneer America or 23rd-century space; they could be gritty realism, even. None of that mattered. As soon as I realized that a book centered around the relationship between sisters, my whole body screamed RED ALERT! RED ALERT! DANGER! and I had to stop reading...
Because what I really cared most about in my own novel, it turned out, was the relationship between Kat and her sisters. That was the most important part of the book, for me, and it felt way too vulnerable and raw to let myself get influenced or thrown out by anyone else's literary sisterhoods.
Now I'm writing a dragon book that's yet again set in the Regency (although about 13 years later, after the Napoleonic wars are finally over). Again, I'm happily reading other Regencies. I'm fine reading other books with dragons, too, because for all the million different representations of dragons in literature, I feel perfectly comfortable and secure in my own interpretation. I'm perfectly happy to read about someone else's 2-ton dragon even as I write about my own heroine carrying her small, decorative (and troublesome) dragon on her shoulder. No problem.
But last week I tried picking up the newest novel by one of my favorite Regency authors for adults, Eloisa James. As usual, it's witty and romantic...but this time, it's a retelling of Cinderella.
As I read, I felt discomfort creep slowly but steadily through me. It got worse and worse, to the point where it actually felt painful. After two (really excellent) chapters, I had to give up and admit that I CANNOT read this novel right now.
This is a book I've been eagerly anticipating, because I LOVE the way Eloisa James writes. But guess what? It turns out that, at its essence, my dragon book is a Cinderella story. One of my beta readers pointed this out a couple of months ago, but I didn't take any notice, because that wasn't how I thought of it at all. I never conceived the novel as a fairytale retelling - Cinderella has never even been one of my favorite fairy tales, so why would I? - and I had no plans for any glass slippers to get involved.
But it turns out...well, my beta readers are really, really smart. Because at its essence, yes, for all the differences between my story and the original fairytale, I really am writing a Cinderella story about loss and transformation and romance...and right now, I cannot bear to read anyone else's version.
What about you guys? If you're writers, are there any genres you've had to give up reading while you wrote a book? If you're a reader, what are your favorite fairytale retellings? Or the genres that you could NEVER give up reading, no matter what?