Storytelling and copulation....

“Storytelling and copulation are the two chief forms of amusement in the South. They are inexpensive and easy to procure.”–Robert Penn Warren

So recently I found myself in a real reading slump. You all know what I mean. You keep picking up books and reading 20 pages and putting them down. Nothing catches your interest.  As someone who reads constantly, I find this sort of dry spell to be really disconcerting. Oh, I know I'll get my groove back, but since reading is my main form of entertainment I want it back NOW. Usually the key to kickstarting the reading desire is to turn to an old favorite and revisit a story and characters that i know I will love. The pressure is off. I don't have to worry that the story will eventually fizzle out and leave me frustrated, because these books are my tried and true. 

To end this recent bout of reader's slump, I turned to one of my very favorite old friends, Linda Howard's Shades of Twilight.  Now anyone who reads this blog knows that I love me some Linda Howard and this is one of her best!  After revisiting this twisted and sultry tale of the lives and loves of a powerful and dysfunctional southern family, I mentioned my love for this title on Facebook, calling it a prime example of "slightly skeevy southern gothic hotness."  Turns out that this sort of book intrigues a lot of folks, many of them FB friends of mine.  We decided that this should be an official sub-genre or rating system, at the very least.  So what exactly makes a book a purveyor of sssgh?  Lots of things, but here are a few elements that it must have:

• Strong sense of place and that place must be in the South!
• Heat.  Both in terms of sexual chemistry and the weather.
• Gothic elements.  A big old manor house is good.  A deserted plantation house is good.  A shack in the bayou is fine too. Fill any of these homes with an assortment of odd relatives and you're on your way.
• Insanity or at the very least, some crazy.  Whether it be an elderly aunt who is slightly doddering or a villain who is completely nuts, you've got to have a bit of crazy action in a good sssgh.
• Relationships that carefully tread the fine line between skeevy inappropriate and skeevy hot. 

Now those of you who share my love for the sssgh, are probably already thinking of your faves!  Like any good genre reader, you've recognized the type of book to which I'm referring and you're most likely always on the lookout for a new one.  I know I am.  So without further ado, a few of my favorite sssgh classics:

Shades of Twilight - Linda Howard
This one has it all!  It's a sultry, sweaty, slightly skeevy tale of an old south family who knows how to put the fun in dysfunctional!  Hot as hell in every way that matters in a  good sssgh.

After the Night - Linda Howard
Oh yeah, another Howard classic!  The meaner her crazy creole hero, Gray Rouillard gets, the more we all want him.  Nobody does sssgh better than LH!

Best Kept Secrets - Sandra Brown
This classic example of sssgh from Sandra Brown finds her young heroine returning to a small Texas town to solve the mystery of who murdered her mother.  While hot on the trail of a murderer, she finds herself being wooed by two sexy guys.  Which one should she choose?  Probably the one that isn't her father.  IJS.

Slow Heat in Heaven - Sandra Brown
Another good example of a fine sssgh from Ms. Brown.  A twisted southern family tale, set in super sultry Louisiana.  With a  crazy hot hero named Cash Boudreaux, can there be any doubt that this one belongs on the list?

Now lest you think that every great sssgh is written either by Linda Howard or Sandra Brown, here are a few more titles that, while not reaching the level of sssgh greatness of those listed above, will surely provide you with an entertaining read.

One Summer - Karen Robards
Carnal Innocence - Nora Roberts
Lucky's Lady - Tami Hoag
The Sweetgum Tree - Katherine Allred
The Stone Flower Garden - Deborah Smith

So, what do you all think we should use as the rating symbol of the sssgh?  A sultry summer night, a gator, a mint julep?  I'm happy to entertain any and all suggestions.  oh and PLEASE leave your favorites titles as well.  As any proper southern belle would tell you, it's the polite thing to do...

Not your Average Bear...

OK, you guys know that I love me some Linda Howard. I think she is, hands down, the BEST romantic suspense writer going.  Her plots are interesting, her heroines are take charge, intelligent woman, her men are supremely ALPHA and her sex scenes are HOT!  I have read everything LH has ever written and although I love some more than others, there is nothing I would hesitate to suggest to a reader looking for consistently good stuff. I was crazy excited to hear, that after quite a wait, she had a new book coming out. The synopsis made it sound a lot like a vintage Howard, something along the lines of Up Close and Dangerous.  After her last few books, a few of which had sort of a southern chick-lit feel, I was looking forward to a return to the Howard I crave.  So did Prey deliver?  Um, sort of...

The premise of the books is pretty simple. Our heroine Angie Powell runs a hunting guide service out of her small Montana hometown. Angie is doing OK until ex Army stud, Dare Callahan sets up his guide service and steals away all of her business. Angie hates everything about Dare, even though she barely knows him and was very attracted to him upon their initial meeting.  Dare likes everything about Angie, especially her "world-class" ass. Yes, Dare is not the most sophisticated of Howard's men, but he is very cool and competent and super sexy. Just before she closes up shop, Angie signs on to take a couple of guys out on a bear hunt. Angie doesn't much like bears, but she needs the cash and isn't all that sure they will even find one, so off she goes. A mutual friend who is worried about Angie being up on the mountain with a couple of strange men asks Dare to keep an eye on her.  He agrees and heads up to his own camp, just to make sure all is well.  All is not well, as the two men Angie is working for turn out to be very dangerous. In fact one of them is a psycho killer.  As if that wasn't bad enough they do encounter a bear. A bear who, as it turns out, is also a psycho killer.  On top of dealing with psychos of both the human and ursine variety, Angie and Dare are caught up in a major storm and have to figure out a way to survive in really terrible physical conditions.  Interesting.  Right?  Great potential.  Absolutely. So why am I not raving about this book?  Because it just did not come together like a typical LH book.

My first problem was with the heroine. Angie is not a terrible person, but she seemed less intelligent and much more emotionally stunted than most Howard heroines. Her life was made up of a pattern of crappy decisions and her social awkwardness made her potential as a partner for the super cool Dare, seem unlikely. I usually love LH's heroines and Angie was so blah, I couldn't really get into her at all.  My second issue with the book involved the fact that the romance was way overshadowed by the man vs. nature stuff. It took over half the book for our heroes to hook up and start spending time together and then they faced terrible hardship, so the romance didn't feel as satisfying as the norm in a Linda Howard book. Ms. Howard spent so much time telling us what the villains were thinking and doing, that we didn't get to know the Hero/heroine as well as one might hope. Chapter after chapter we heard what the killer thought and felt.  Ditto the bear.  Yes, I said the bear.  For some reason, LH decided to try to get inside the head of the bear and provide readers with his thoughts and motivations. Yeah.  I know.  It just didn't work for me.  In fact, there was an episode with the bear toward the end of the book that I found downright off-putting.  I am no wuss when it comes to gruesome stuff, but the violence seemed really gratuitous. While I admire LH for not trying to turn the bear into some anthropomorphized cuddly stuffed animal sort, I just felt like she took the bear attack descriptions a bit too far. In a word, yuck!

So, here I sit, sort of bummed out. I had very high hopes for this book and it just did not work for me.  That said, have no doubt that I will be grabbing the next Linda Howard book as soon as it is published. This writer has provided some of the most enjoyable genre reading ever and I am not about to let one so-so book drive me away. I think that Howard is a victim of her own excellence.  She has written so many outstanding titles, I, and others, expect way more from her.  As I told a friend when talking about this book, if it was a Sandra Brown, I'd probably be raving about it.  I just expect more from Linda Howard.

The City of New Orleans...

Lucky me. Next week finds me headed to one of my favorite places to visit, New Orleans, LA. It has been a very long time since I visited the city, long before the tragedy of Katrina and I'm looking forward to going back. I'll be there for the ALA Annual conference and it looks like it will be a good one. It's always crazy busy, but incredibly productive and even quite a bit of fun.  Since I have a few librarian friends who read the blog, I thought I'd share some of my favorite books that are set in NOLA.  Reading any of these titles should help you get in the mood to enjoy the Big Easy...

First and foremost, anything in the Dave Robicheaux mystery series by the amazing James Lee Burke. For my money, JLB is not only the best living mystery writer, but he is one of the best writers writing, period. Dave Robicheaux is a complex character, the likes of which we rarely see in the genre anymore. If you haven't experienced the wonder of JLB, I suggest beginning with Heaven's Prisoners, the book that started my love affair with Robicheaux. The descriptions of New Orleans are incredibly vivid and will be the perfect introduction to this complex and beautiful city.

For the historical romance lovers out there, I highly recommend Candice Proctor's atmospheric and suspenseful, Midnight Confessions. Proctor is one of the best and the NOLA setting, combined with a dash of suspense and a passionate romance combine to make reading this book an enjoyable visit to New  Orleans in the late 1800s. 

My favorite romantic suspense writer, Linda Howard has two books that feature New Orleans and both are well worth a visit. After the Night is one of Howard's most popular books and features a rather remarkeable Alpha male hero.  We all know that no one writes an Alpha like Linda Howard and Gray Rouillard is one of her most memorable.   After the Night has an incredibly steamy gothic tone and features some of the hottest love scenes LH has ever penned. Kill and Tell is also an excellent read, with more of a nod toward the espionage aspects of Howard's  suspense writing.  Both are a whole lot of fun.

So, there are a few titles to get you in the mood for a NOLA visit.  I could go on and on with this list since writers have found New Orleans to be a fascinating setting for their novels, no matter what their genre might be.  Since very few places have the complexity, history, beauty and just sheer quirkiness of NOLA, I'm sure it will continue to serve those writers well, 

Odi et amo...

Odi et amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?

Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I hate and I love. Why do I do this, perhaps you ask?

I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured.

--Catallus

The very short and poignant poem found above is by the Roman poet Catallus.  It sort of sums up the subject of this Tuesday's Top 5 which is angst. I'm not just talking run of the mill, oh I'm so upset cause you broke my heart, kind of angst.  I'm talking larger than life, earth-shattering, no one is right, no one is wrong, cannot move for the sobbing sort of angst. We romance readers tend to think of this as angst with a capitol A.  I like to call them Angst monsters.  

Finding romance novels that feature this level of angst used to be a pretty easy thing.  Romances tended toward big, overblown scenarios and epic lengths that really leant themselves to putting the featured couple through the proverbial wringer. These days it is way more difficult to find a truly angsty book. The genre has swung toward lighter, less intense novels and very few writers seem to want to let their protagonists be difficult or complex. Currently, I find that most of the angst in the romance world comes from paranormals. Since I am not a huge fan of that subgenre, I am bemoaning the loss of the truly angsty romance or at least one that doesn't involve a shapeshifter or a vamp. I'm looking for humans and all of their nasty habits and faults that, when combined with the right amount of chemistry, desire and passion, create really amazing stories. Stories where maybe there is no easy answer.  Stories where there may not be a right or wrong.   This sort of angst, when done well, provides a backdrop for more emotion and passion than most of us will ever see in our everyday life.  For that matter, we wouldn't want to truly experience these things.  But experiencing it through a well told story, with an interesting hero and heroine from the safety of your couch is one of the angst lovers truest pleasures.  So, be warned.  The list below features books that are not sweet.  They are, for the most part, dark.  They are dealing with gut-wrenching situations or emotions.  They are not for the faint of heart...

To Have and To Hold - Patricia Gaffney

One of my favorite books of all time! This story destroys many of the conventions that one usually finds in a romance novel. The heroine is a criminal, she is downtrodden to the point of almost being a shadow. The hero is a vain, cruel and superficial man. Their relationship is as disturbing and tortured as I have ever experienced. This book is very dark and very deep and many people hate it with a passion, however, if you crave angst, if you're looking for a complex and multilayered story about an almost impossible love, then go and find this book.  Gaffney is a master and this is her best!

The Lily Brand - Sandra Schwab

The premise of this book was unusual to say the least. A young girl's sadistic step mother makes her the gift of a man. A British soldier is pulled from a French prison and made the love slave to the beautiful and chaste young woman.  She is not strong enough to fight her stepmother, but is completely appalled.  The twist here is that the hero is the one who is enslaved and victimized. That a relationship could bloom between these two is unbelievable, but somehow Schwab makes it work. She carefully examines and exposes everyone's motivations.  And that includes those of the wicked and over the top villain. If you're looking for a romance that is truly different, then this might be for you.  

The Coming Home Place - Mary Spencer

This book had several strikes against it before I even opened it.  It is set in America, in the West and I hated the cover. Once I opened it, I found the over the top language very off-putting and the characters almost absurd, but I could not look away.  Spencer is a master of the Angsty romance. She is definitely more storyteller than writer though.  At times while reading this book, I found myself hating pretty much everyone in it but I kept reading. Look for a full review of this book in the near future because I really want to try and break it down and figure out why I read it and why I have since re-read it several times. It is a crazy manipulative, hyper-emotional, passion-filled mess of a book, but if you want Angst, it delivers in a big way!

Tangled - Mary Balogh

Ok, you guys know that I love me some Balogh. Let me say, up front, that this is not one of my favorites.  It is, however,  an Angst monster of the first order. Our heroine finds herself widowed and alone. She makes a decision to marry an old friend who, by the way, she sort of blames for hubby's death. She is bitter and resentful until new hubby begins to make her feel all sorts of good things. Just as she finally comes to accept her feelings for new hubby, guess what happens?  I am pretty darned sure that only Mary Balogh could have written this book.  

Sarah's Child - Linda Howard

I'm going to mix things up a bit and throw in a contemporary angst monster, Howard's very early work, Sarah's Child.  This book evokes the strongest of emotions from readers, but most seem to dislike it intensely. I am fairly new to Linda Howard and this was the first book of hers that I read and I found it pretty darned amazing. The premise is simple, heroine is in love with her dead friend's hubby, who she has worshipped from afar forever.  Hero finally notices heroine and their chemistry is strong, but he is still living with a world of pain resulting from the death of his family. Hero offers marriage of convenience and though they will have sex, they will not have children. Anybody who has ever read a romance can guess what happens.  The beauty of this book is in the way that Howard builds her heroine.  At first glance, Sarah is seen as weak and obsessed, but you finally begin to understand that she loves Rome.  Really loves him. Not just when it is easy and convenient and fun.  But even when she hates what he is doing, she loves him.  There was a real subtle complexity to this book that I haven't seen in any other Howard romance.  I enjoy her work, but she seems to have abandoned this sort of story and I think that is a shame.  This is another one that we may look at more closely.  I think it deserves a closer more thorough look.  

Is there an Angst monster that you love?  That you love to hate?  Either way, I'd love to hear about it...