Category Archives: Blog Mem
Not So Wordless Wednesday: My shoe collection.
So I’m culling my closet, and here are my shoes, all 63 pairs of them. I only kept 38 pairs of shoes. Aren’t you proud of me?
This week at the Sunday Salon: Reading Unpublished Manuscripts
When this blog goes up I’m going to be at FenCon, a science fiction and fantasy entertainment convention. There’s stuff for gamers, readers, writers, comic lovers, everyone! I signed up for the writer’s workshop and as part of it I’ve read twenty submissions, each ten pages long and critiqued them.
So I thought, why not talk about reading unpub’d manuscripts?
Anytime you offer to read something that’s unpublished you run the risk of buying into a time sink. All authors, even the best ones in the business, go through really bad writing phases and someone out there had to read those manuscripts. It can also be super exciting to discover that diamond that some agent or publisher is going to find and polish and publish.
Recently I had the great honor of reading a friend’s book. I read it while I was on the plane to France. I actually put down a published book that wasn’t worth the space it was taking up on my ereader and picked up hers instead. I couldn’t put it down! The characters and situations and the plot were terrific! Within the week she heard back from a publisher who wanted to sign the book. It was so exciting to cheer for her and help bounce ideas for edits around. I can’t say anything about the book yet, it’s still way too early in her process, but it’s exciting and I can’t wait to see it printed!
On the flip side, I’ve invested in some serious time sinks. Manuscripts where the writing isn’t mature yet, where there are far too many errors, plot holes and issues that finishing was a chore.
Deciding when to read a manuscript is hard. If you wait until you think you have time, you’ll never read one. You’ll never have time. Sometimes you just have to go with it. Heck, I’m always grateful when someone offers to read mine, because you can’t progress as a writer without feedback. The problem is choosing what to read, and who to ask for feedback.
Do you read manuscripts for others? How do you choose who reads yours?
This week at the Sunday Salon: Whitewashing Covers
I think most people will remember the stir that was brought up over some YA books, who had non-white characters, but were sold with white cover models. It’s a sad practice, in my opinion.
This last week I was reading a book that I was requested to review. Along with the pdf I was sent an image of the cover. The cover was good, kind of a stock pose of a man and woman loosely embracing and staring off in opposite directions. The dude was hot, the girl was pretty; it wasn’t a bad cover.
So I started reading and part way through the first chapter I had to stop and look at the cover again. The cover models are clearly white. They have features that are European, skin that might be tanned, but they’re very white. The hero is a first generation American, with Syrian parents.
I was really disappointed. There are so many great opportunities to have books about other nationalities, bring in other cultures and show them as attractive and hero material. Let’s face it, when most of us see someone of Middle Eastern descent there’s still a horrible, misplaced stigma about them. I think the book is great, but I wish the cover lived up to the book. Syrian men can be hot.
So I did a quick google search to look up Syrian men, mostly to look at the bone structure and that of the cover model. Pictured left is a popular Syrian singer. He’s attractive and rugged with some of that bad boy stubble, but the cover model for the book still doesn’t look anything like that.
I kept reading, and discovered that the clearly fair skinned, white woman, was supposed to be Egyptian. Now, given the woman’s peculiar background I was way more forgiving for using a white cover model for her.
Reading the book was a great experience. The man is a hero, he’s tortured and overcomes what was done to him. He saves the day and takes his life back. He’s a real hero! So why not celebrate everything about the character?
Did they chose a white cover model because finding someone of the right ethnic background is too difficult? Does having someone that isn’t white on the cover impact sales? Are they trying to mislead readers? I don’t know why the decision was made to whitewash the cover, but I think it was a missed opportunity.
