Category Archives: books

The Good, the Bad, and the Others

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The Wicked Witch used to be a villain. She tried to kill Dorothy and her companions. She enslaved flying monkeys. She wanted revenge for her sister’s accidental death.

Now she has her own musical and movie.

The elevation of villains is a thing now. Personally, I blame Star Wars. I was once visiting some friends who had a young son. He held up his Darth Vader action figure and said, “This is my friend.” (This was in the days before the proliferation of Star Wars movies culminated in Vader’s redemption at the last possible second. But I digress.)

My theory is that villains have power but few limits. It’s no wonder youngsters view them as positive influences. When Darth Vader is your friend and protector, you share in his power. You fear nothing.

Maybe this rise of the villain started with the rise of the anti-hero. Let me explain. And let me use Buffy the Vampire Slayer (one of my favorite TV classics) as my vehicle. (Actually, I’m going to do it whether you let me or not. So there. But I digress some more.)

Here’s the backstory, for those not familiar with the Buffyverse. Buffy’s first love was the vampire-with-a-soul Angel, and he was a Byronic hero, a type that became popular when Byron (duh) was writing poetry. Byronic heroes are tortured souls who waft around in black clothes and clouds of pain. They’re never cheerful. They don’t crack jokes. They suffer from existential angst. They have troubled pasts and isolate themselves from society. (Other Byronic heroes include Batman holed up in his Batcave, grieving over his dead parents. The Brontes knew their Byronic heroes, too. Mr. Rochester and Heathcliff are classics. But I digress yet again.)

In opposition to the Byronic hero, we have the anti-hero. They don’t behave according to the heroic model. They’re “bad boys” who manage to dominate the plot and achieve their goals despite being misunderstood or refusing to follow convention. Think Han Solo, Captain Jack Sparrow, or in the case of Buffy, Spike. He’s never going to be Buffy’s Great Love, but he has his uses in her world. (Deadpool and Robin Hood are two other examples who would never have a beer together but occupy similar literary spaces. I suppose Dexter would be the ultimate anti-hero. Still more digression.)

No, wait. Satan is the ultimate anti-hero. Take a look at Milton’s Paradise Lost. Lucifer has agency and is the more interesting character. At some level, the reader roots for him. They know God’s going to win. That’s a given. But Satan’s quest, while reprehensible, is also on some level noble. (I’m talking literary characters here, not theology. But I digress again. And as Jean Kerr said, in reference to the story of Adam and Eve, the snake has all the lines. But I continue digressing.)

So, what makes the bad guys more interesting guys? For one thing, they’re deeply misunderstood. They’ve often been victims of bullies or of an uncaring, unfair society. They touch the darkness, the “shadow self” that lives within each of us. We recognize ourselves in them, identify with them in ways we simply don’t with standard heroes. We’d like to identify with heroes, but we know they’re better than we are.

Standard heroes require supervillains to make them at all interesting. Without Lex Luthor, Superman just flies around foiling ordinary bank robbers. Without Moriarty, Sherlock Holmes is simply Columbo. (I could say that without elusive diagnoses and the looming specter of death, House is basically Doogie Howser, but I won’t. That would be ridiculous. There’s also misanthropy. But I digress some more.)

Personally, I respond more to anti-heroes than Byronic heroes. Pure villains don’t interest me, but neither do sanctimonious heroes like Galahad (“My strength is as the strength of ten because my heart is pure.”). But when it comes to the villains and heroes in the wrestling ring, I don’t give a fig for any of them. Besides, they change places so often that you need a scorecard to tell which is which. (Don’t assume that this means I watch “pro” wrestling. I learned about their ethical switches from the New York Times. Go figure. But I have finished digressing. For this week.)

How to Start a Conversation

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I never used to be any good at small talk. I would stand there, tongue-tied, while conversation went on around me. I was afraid I had turned invisible.

Then I met Erma the Armadillo, pictured here. She’s a purse that my mother bought for me from a catalog called, appropriately, What on Earth. This was back in the 90s, and I don’t think she spent more than $25 on the purse. When it came time to scare up a photo to go with this post, I found that today Erma is considered “vintage” and sells for as much as $140, used.

(I have a thing about armadillos. I fell in love with them when I learned that their main defensive technique is to jump straight up two feet, and their main natural predator is the automobile bumper. My defense mechanisms are like that, too. But I digress.)

Erma was actually a lousy purse. She was stuffed with cotton and had only a small zippered slot that would barely hold a driver’s license and a little cash. I had to carry anything else in my pockets. But what she was good at was starting conversations. Not that she spoke, but when other people saw her, they did.

People were fascinated. They always remarked on what an unusual purse Erma was. I would point out that she even had little tiny toenails printed on her stubby little feet. They’d ask where I’d gotten her. They’d ask why I wanted an armadillo purse. They’d ask more questions and share about other purses they’d seen or owned. Children were especially captivated by Erma. They couldn’t get over the fact that she wasn’t a toy and that she had handles. They always wanted to touch her, and I always let them.

When it comes to starting conversations with strangers, I always recommend accessories. My jewelry collection has some peculiar specimens. I have a sushi necklace that my friend Leslie made for me from air-dry clay. I also have a pair of bacon earrings, though I never mix cuisines in an outfit. Another set of earrings that people found amusing were the ones that looked like the planet Earth, complete with continents. (When I wore them, I liked to shake my head violently and shout, “Earthquake!” But I digress again.)

Conversation goes both ways, of course. “That’s an awesome (fill in the blank). Where did you get it?” is a good start on a good chat. People love to tell stories about their possessions, gifts, travels, etc. From there, conversation is an easy two-way street.

(It can fall flat from time to time. I once shared an elevator with a woman who had itsy-bitsy feet. I felt like I might have been staring at them. So I cleverly said, “Those are great boots! They make your feet look really small!” She replied, “They are really small.” After that, the conversation, and the elevator ride, ended. But I digress some more.)

I don’t know how people who don’t have unusual accessories start conversations. “Is that a good book you’re reading?” is one ploy, but it hardly ever works. Most people don’t read books in public, and if they do, they don’t like to be interrupted. And when I read books in public (which I do), I read them on my e-reader or phone, so the general public just thinks I’m doom-scrolling (which I don’t do).

Erma is no longer with me. Her handles wore out and Dan was unsuccessful at replacing them, which he tried to do. I don’t go out much anymore but when I do, I miss her. And the conversations.

The Tyranny of SEO

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There’s a phenomenon called “search engine optimization,” or SEO for short. And I’ve grown to hate it.

The idea of SEO is to increase the chances of your post, article, book, or whatever being at the top of the responses to a Google search. Writers and publishers in particular are invested in making sure that their wares gain the attention of Google and then potential readers.

SEO works by focusing on keywords. There are certain words and phrases that people search for more than others. If your work contains these words, it will appear further up the Google results and, presumably, increase sales. It’s all about “search visibility” and marketing strategies. There are plenty of books and websites that teach you how to improve your SEO game.

What are some of the best, top keywords that people search for? Well, best and top show up high on the lists. Everyone wants to know the best places to eat or the top-rated appliances, so those words show up a lot. “How to” is another search term that gets top results.

There are lists of keywords for any number of fields. If you have a book or article on health and fitness, your SEO keywords include “weight loss,” “lifetime fitness,” and “health tips.” Business keywords include “money” (of course), “opportunity,” “income,” and “profitability.” There are lists of keywords for coffee, dog training, and poker, among many, many others. For one of my areas of interest, mental health, keywords include “symptoms,” “medication,” and “side effects.” There are companies that specialize in giving you a list of keywords for your project—for a price.

What really ticks me off is what this has done to book subtitles. (Yes, I know that there are much more important things to be ticked off about, especially these days. However, I work in the publishing field, so I get to see a lot of subtitles. But I digress.)

Let’s start with one that isn’t all that annoying: How to Sustain Personal and Organizational Excellence Every Day. Eight words only. But look at the SEO keywords. We have Personal and Organizational Excellence. Sustain may be a keyword too, and so might Every Day. What could the author have done instead? Organizational Excellence ought to do it. Combined with a title like Habits for Success, that ought to do it. Still plenty of SEO words. Or just have a title: Success and Organizational Excellence. No subtitle. But that goes against every publishing rule, evidently.

Here’s another subtitle that’s been reined in just a bit: Reflections on Death, Rebirth, and Hunger for a Faith. Nine words. It says what you’ll find in the book without going on and on. Just enough to pique the potential readers’ interest. (While we’re on the subject of things that tick me off (and I think we were), I cringe whenever I see “peak” someone’s interest, or, God help me, “peek.” But I digress again.)

Now here’s a subtitle that goes a little further overboard: Dynamic Techniques for Turning Fear, Indecision, and Anger into Power, Action, and Love. Thirteen words. Dynamic Techniques, Power, Action, and Love are obvious self-help SEOs. I can imagine the title that would go with it: Transform Your Life.

Let’s keep going. Next on my list of terrible subtitles is Stop People Pleasing, Staying Silent, & Feeling Guilty… And Start Speaking Up, Saying No, Asking Boldly, And Unapologetically Being Yourself. Twenty words, one of them a mouthful by itself: unapologetically. Honestly, I think you could read the first chapter in the time it takes to read the subtitle.

Finally, here’s a subtitle that really grates: Transform Your Body in 28 Days with Illustrated Exercises. Lose Belly Fat, Sculpt Glutes, and Feel More Energized in Just 10 Minutes a Day! Twenty-four words, four verbs, and a plethora of nouns and adjectives. And a promise with an exclamation point. What is there left to say in the book? Whoever wrote that subtitle ought to have their thyroid checked.

On the other hand, maybe I’m just jealous. I wrote two books before SEO took off. (I still get royalties. I’m saving up for a pizza. But I digress some more.) Maybe I should have called them Bipolar Me: The True Story of One Woman’s Journey Through Mental Illness, Depression, and Hypomania, Based on Her Weekly Journal of the Same Name and Bipolar Us: A Deep Dive into Bipolar Disorder and Its Devastating Effects on Sufferers and Society, the Highs and Lows That Come With It, and How to Find Peace and Stability.

Of course, if I did that, the subtitles would have had to be printed in little tiny type, another aspect of publishing that really ticks me off. With my bad eyesight, I wouldn’t even be able to read my own subtitles. I can’t win.

I Can’t Commit

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Of course, that’s not completely true. There are things I can commit to—my husband, for example. We’ve been married for 41 years, which I think is proof aplenty.

What I can’t commit to are things that go on too long. (The marriage does not fit into that category.)

Let me explain.

Movies

In the evenings, when my husband and I have finished dinner, he often wants to watch a movie, but I don’t often agree to it. I hate leaving a movie in the middle, but I also hate staying up past my bedtime to finish one. It’s a delicate balance.

For example, after the recent eclipse, we decided on Ladyhawke, which was relevant, but I couldn’t make it all the way through. We had to watch the second half the next day and that upset my internal clock, not to mention my sense of continuity. If a movie starts at 8:00, it’s pretty much out of the running for me. I’m a little old lady and don’t like staying up past 9:00. (And you can get off my lawn. If I had one, I mean. Dan is aiming for a pollinator garden. But I digress.)

TV Series

When it comes to TV, I hate to start a series because I realize I’ll never keep up with it every week. This doesn’t apply to series that have already finished. Often, old episodes of House, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Castle, Inkmaster, Chopped, or Bones are shown for several hours a day, and those I can tolerate multiple episodes of. (That may sound counterintuitive. The difference seems to be that I don’t have to pay attention to them. I usually have them on when I’m doing something else like writing. They’re just my emotional support background noise. But I digress again.)

Books

I used to be able to tolerate series of books. I devoured The Lord of the Rings, Asimov’s Foundation trilogy, Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain series, Sue Grafton’s Alphabet books, and other long-running written endeavors. Not anymore. I buy many of my e-books from discount sites for $1.99 or $2.99 (because I’m cheap). Many of them, as you might suppose, are not exactly scintillating. Some of them are so dreadful I give up on them well before I reach the denouement.

(One of the first ones I ever committed libris interruptus on was a horror novel that started by introducing the protagonists. They were perfect. Perfect looks. Perfect jobs. Perfect house. Perfect marriage. Perfect kids. By the end of the first chapter, I was rooting for the monster, which hadn’t even shown its tentacles, fangs, slime, or whatever. But I digress some more.)

I recently discovered that even book series I love can be too much of a commitment. I recently reread the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings, but couldn’t jump right into The Silmarillion. I love Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan series and set out to reread them all, but pooped out after book ten. I needed a break (a la Friends) and haven’t come back to finish the other four. Yet. I have a feeling that after 600 pages of Midnight in Chernobyl, my current good read, I’ll be ready. (I hate the phrase “a good read.” It sounds too much like saying someone is a “good lay.” But I digress yet again.)

I haven’t even reread my own books (Bipolar Me and Bipolar Us). They don’t constitute much of a series and would make a terrible movie. But that’s not the reason. There’s a terrible typo in the first one, and I’m afraid I’ll find one in the second as well. If I weren’t depressed about the slim sales, that would do it.

The Rise of the Asterisk

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It’s well-known (by people who know me) that I love punctuation. I read books about punctuation. I have two punctuation tattoos. My favorite mark of punctuation is the semicolon (which is one of the tattoos I have). But lately, when it comes to punctuation, the asterisk is in the ascendancy. And that’s because an increasing number of books have swear words in their titles. Punctuation is how we address the problem delicately.

The first example of the trend and at the time most shocking was Go the F**k to Sleep, a book that purported to be a read-to-kids goodnight book, but was really an expression of parental frustration. It caused quite a buzz.

After that came The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (and the more daintily titled The Subtle Art of Not Caring About People’s Opinion), I Used to Be a Miserable F*ck, Unfu*k Yourself, The French Art of Not Giving a Sh*t, and F*ck Feelings. For those who prefer hashtags, there’s Unf#ck Your Brain. The winner for the longest title is The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck: How to Stop Spending Time You Don’t Have with People You Don’t Like Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do (A No F*cks Given Guide). And Everything is #@%!ed! uses a whole string of punctuation. Fucking This shit Show: A Gratitude Journal for Tired Women dispenses with the veil of punctuation altogether. (I can’t help that inconsistent capitalization. That’s the way it’s written. Maybe shit is supposed to look less threatening in lowercase? But I digress.)

(When marks of punctuation are used as stand-ins for letters or words, they’re called “grawlix,” an almost completely useless word, but one I’m quite fond of. Most people have seen grawlix only in comic books when Popeye, for example, wants to cuss. But I continue digressing.)

What’s the reason for all the daintily disguised sweary titles? It’s not like we don’t know what the asterisks stand for. It’s not fooling anyone. Go the F**k to Sleep was obviously meant to be shocking, though it also expressed humor and frustration. After that, it looks like a bandwagon was jumped on. The book even jumped on its own bandwagon. Now it’s a trilogy, including You Have to F**king Eat and F**k, Now There Are Two of You.

(I note that most of the sweary titles go with self-help books. Does this indicate a certain irreverence regarding the concept of self-help? Frustration with the concepts in the books? I know I’ve wanted to swear at self-help books during various periods of my life. Now I write them, though (so far) none have titles that require grawlix. But I digress some more.)

Personally, I have no objection to swearing. For a long time, I couldn’t do it, but after working as a waitress, I made up for lost time. Now I swear like a sailor, though with better enunciation. Sometimes, a curse word is just the right one. And of course, when I use a swear word in writing, I punctuate it properly. No grawlix here.

My favorite unexpected use of punctuation, however, comes in this brief verse:

Mary’s little lamb / Upon the grass did frisk. / But Mary was afraid / Her little * .

Now that’s creative punctuation!

What I’ve Learned About My Writing From Writing

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I’ve been writing since I was in second grade. Back then, and through college, I wrote poetry, most of it pretty terrible. (Pretty depressing, actually. I was bipolar but undiagnosed. Thus begin my day’s digressions.) Gradually, my poetry turned into prose and I went where my muse took me. Maybe it was all those papers I had to write for college English that reinforced my love of prose. (I still write some poetry, but mostly to experiment with different forms like haiku, sonnets, and villanelles. I’m on my second digression already.)

But on to lessons learned.

• My ability to handle distractions has increased. It used to be that I had to write in complete silence, which helped me concentrate. But, as writing became more routine and natural, I experimented with music for writing. Instrumental music was okay with me, but anything with lyrics took me out of the zone. Now I prefer to write with the TV on in the background. I’m not really listening to it. It’s just ambient noise and I tune it out. (My mother used to put on baseball games, which she was not really interested in, just to have some noise in the house. But I digress again.)

• I can keep a schedule. The ghostwriting company I work for bases its deadlines on writers producing 1,500 words a day. I’ve fallen into a routine. I write 750 words for about two hours in the morning and another 750 for around two hours in the afternoon. If I don’t make my 1,500 because of an appointment or something, I write 1,000 words, morning and afternoon, until I’m caught up. (If only I had had this kind of discipline when I was writing my failed mystery novel! Of course, for ghostwriting, I work from an outline, which I didn’t have for my fiction. But I digress some more.) I have to work my two weekly blog posts in there somewhere, but I’ve given myself a deadline for them as well. I post them every Sunday at 10:00 a.m.

• I seem to be specializing in self-help books. I gave up on reading self-help decades ago, but now it’s about all I write. (I did ghostwrite one short piece of fiction, but it was pure smut. So I guess I learned that I can write smut as well as self-help. But I digress yet again.)

• Ghostwriting suits me. Yes, it’s playing in someone else’s sandbox. And no, I don’t get a byline or royalties. But it’s steady work and keeps me from stealing hubcaps. Also, it supplements my Social Security nicely—not bountifully, but nicely. I don’t know what I’d do all day if I didn’t write. Become even more sedentary than I already am, no doubt. Or steal hubcaps.

• I can pivot. I write humor. I write about social issues. I write about mental illness. I write about language. I write about writing (you may have noticed). I’ve written about flesh-eating diseases, pandemics, and baseball heroes. I’ve written prayer services and stories about nuns. I’ve written about poverty in Jamaica. I’ve written about playgrounds and childcare. I’ve written lesson plans for textbooks. (My nickname is 1,000-words-on-anything. I suppose I’ll have to change that to 1,500-words-on-anything. But I digress even more.)

• I can call on my husband to help me brainstorm topics. He also keeps an eye (and ear) for news stories he thinks might interest or inspire me. And he has plenty of quirks that are fun to write about.

• And I’ve learned that cats are no help at all when it comes to writing (especially one named Ow-Toby), except as subjects. Which I’m sure will come as no surprise to you, but I put it out there anyway.

What’s So Funny?

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If you ask me (which no one did), the funniest joke there is, is this one:

What did the Zen master say to the hotdog vendor?

“Make me one with everything.”

The second funniest is:

First Old Lady: My, it’s windy today.

Second Old Lady: No, it’s Thursday.

Third Old Lady: So am I. Let’s go have a cup of tea.

(I have a friend whose favorite joke is a filthy one about a guy in a clock shop. But I digress, and refuse to tell it here.)

What makes something funny? There are theories which sound scientific. One is that “a violation of expectations or incongruity between what is expected and what actually occurs” is the source of humor. I’m not sure if that applies to my favorite jokes, but I think it does to the filthy one. Another theory is that “humor can arise from a sense of superiority or relief that comes from perceiving oneself as better than others or from being relieved of a perceived threat.” That sounds like a load of dingo’s kidneys to me and doesn’t explain either of my favorite jokes. (I don’t think that I feel superior to the three old ladies. The older I get, the more sympathy I have for them. But I digress again.)

Anyway, I think that proposing theories of humor detracts from what is funny. What science can tell us is the effects of humor on human beings. Laughter releases endorphins, the body’s “feel good” chemicals, and decreases cortisol, a stress hormone. Rapid breathing while laughing increases oxygen intake and improves cardiovascular function. It “serves as a form of communication, signaling safety, playfulness, and bonding among individuals” and “can help regulate emotions by reducing stress and tension.” Also, laughter is associated with “improved cognitive function, including enhanced creativity and problem-solving skills,” which means that Weird Al must be a genius. (I mean, Weird Al is a genius, but this proves it.)

So, what’s funny?

For some reason, there’s a category of stock photos known as “Women laughing alone with salad.” I have no idea why single women find salad funny or why there are so many of these photos, but it’s a real thing. (I think the fact that it’s a real thing is funny. But I digress yet again.)

One of my favorite types of humor is puns. Many people consider them the lowest form of wit, but they crack me up. I’ve been known to indulge in them, sometimes in pun contests and sometimes in real life.

Once, over breakfast, a friend remarked that her eggs Benedict were slow in coming. I said, “Maybe the kitchen staff had to go out and steal a hubcap to serve them on.”

“I know I’m going to regret asking, but why?” she asked.

“Because there’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise.” She almost defenestrated me.

I also love improv comedy. I’m sorry that Whose Line Is It Anyway? isn’t around anymore. But at least some friends of mine have kept up the tradition with an improv group they call “Deep Fried Lemurs.” I’ve participated in it too, at least to the extent of providing setups for the “Scenes From a Hat” bit.

I also love literary humor. There are some great humor writers out there and some hysterical stories and books. For short stories and essays, I go for James Thurber and Erma Bombeck (both Ohio writers). And, if I may make recommendations for books (and I don’t see why I shouldn’t), Christopher Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, Jenny Lawson’s Let’s Pretend This Never Happened, and Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy are among my favorites.

Two kinds of humor I don’t care much for are slapstick and revenge comedy. I just never got the appeal of the Three Stooges and hated The War of the Roses. I do like some forms of physical comedy, though, such as the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch from Monty Python And pretty much anything else Monty Python except the Mr. Creosote bit.

So, what are your favorite jokes and puns (filthy or not)? Do you have any theories of what makes something funny? Recommendations for sources of humor? I’d love to hear them. (I could use the laughs right now.) Perhaps I’ll include them in a future blog post.

Writing Sex and Fantasy

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A while back, I spent several years working on a mystery novel that went nowhere. Actually, it went to an appalling number of agents and publishers. It just didn’t stay there. And I wrote a short story that was a mashup of The Wizard of Oz and Star Trek.

But when it comes to fiction that I actually got paid for, my experience begins and ends with smut. Erotica. A dirty book. Whatever you want to call it. Now, I’m a big fan of freedom of speech and free expression and erotic literature, but there’s no getting around it—it was filthy. No redeeming social importance whatsoever, which used to be something people who wrote erotica aimed for. But I’m a ghostwriter and I write what the customer wants. So, I performed my writerly duty on the smut patrol and was compensated—not handsomely, but compensated. Then I went back to my steady diet of self-help books. But I lusted for something more…entertaining.

(We will not now discuss the research needed for the smut assignment or how I conducted it. If you want to, you can assume I drew on interviews with some of my less-inhibited friends. Let’s just say that I needed to include corroborative detail to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. And think of ways to describe body parts other than “throbbing purple-headed warrior” and “quivering love pudding.” But I digress. (Bonus points for recognizing the sources I used in this paragraph.))

Then recently, I almost wrote another non-smut novel, or at least the outline for one with the likelihood of writing the book if the outline was approved. The project was a piece of fiction, 100,000 words of what I guess you’d call “paranormal romantasy,” which apparently is a Thing now. I’ve been looking for a fiction assignment. There’s nothing wrong with self-help—it’s my proverbial bread and butter. But there’s also nothing wrong with adding a little jelly roll to the mix.

I was on the shortlist for the assignment. I didn’t get the gig. But I learned a lot from it, mostly about myself.

Realistically, I shouldn’t have considered taking the assignment, even if they had selected me for it. I’m already working on a long project that will keep me busy for months. I really couldn’t guarantee that I could do the world-building and plotting that the outline required. (There are other kinds of plotting I have more experience with, involving sinister, gleeful laughter. But I digress again.)

So, if I had moved from the shortlist to the one-list, I could easily have gotten in over my head and done a piss-poor job of it. I might have let my current project slide. I might have been sabotaging myself. It could have ended very badly.

But, oh, I wanted it. The opportunity came up over the long Thanksgiving weekend, so I had plenty of time to wait for the offer to come. I found myself prewriting (aka sitting around staring into space). I named the main character. I toyed with what her paranormal power might be. I speculated about what worlds of the multiverse she would travel to. I contemplated who her love interest might be.

It was mental effort wasted. Or not wasted, exactly. I proved to myself that I have the writerly chops to engage with a major fiction project and come up with ideas. I learned how much I want to branch out into fiction. I discovered that I can still get excited over a potential piece of writing. (Not that I don’t like helping selves, but I could use a little variety. It’s slightly disturbing how much I enjoyed ghostwriting a book on flesh-eating diseases. Yet another digression.)

Would I write smut again? Sure. I don’t have a philosophical objection to it. I might someday even look into a job as a phone sex operator. It’s a work-at-home position (sorry not sorry) with no actual (physical) customer contact. But, no. I don’t think I could keep myself from snorting and giggling.

Romance has a similar effect on me, but combine it with paranormal fantasy and I think I can handle it—as I hope someday to prove.

The Latest Book Trends

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(I shall begin with a digression. Actually, I can’t guarantee that these are actually the very latest book trends. I buy a lot of my ebooks based on newsletters from FreeBooksy and BookBub because they promote heavily discounted books, not all of which are, technically speaking, new. But most of them cost under $3 and, at the rate I buy books, I need to economize somewhere.)

That said, I have noticed what seem to be trends.

The first one is not a book trend, per se. It’s a trend in book covers. What’s hot right now (apparently) is book covers that don’t show faces. I’ve written about how men on the covers of romance novels are cut off at the neck (so to speak) or lost in the shadow of a cowboy hat, but these books feature mostly women on the covers. And they don’t have faces either.

The most common reason for this is that the woman or women are walking away from the person viewing the cover. (Bonus points awarded if the woman is wearing a red coat.) I don’t know why this trend has come to the fore, but I suspect it’s because the cover designers don’t like to draw faces or don’t want to read enough of the book to learn what the main character looks like. Or maybe the women are supposed to be all mysterious. Or the reader is supposed to imagine the woman having their own face. Like I said, I don’t know.

(A while back I noticed that there was a book cover that featured a man in a top hat walking through the rain, in the night, beside a wrought iron fence. In fact, there were two different books that had exactly the same cover. Both were terribly atmospheric mysteries or dark Victorian tales. I guess someone made the cover for one and an unimaginative art director tried to get away with using it twice. I noticed, however. But I digress again.)

Now, as to the contents of the books, I’ve noticed trends as well. When it comes to cozy mysteries, cats are perennially favorite characters or even sleuths. And Rita Mae Brown credits her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown, as co-author of her mystery series. Cats are as popular as ever, or more so. Every self-respecting woman in a modern romance novel has a cat.

Many of those romances take place in libraries and bookstores. The trope of the young woman who moves to a small town to restart her life, taking up the job of librarian or bookstore owner and meeting the love of her life, after suitable conflicts and misunderstandings, is a common plot. (Librarians are no longer portrayed as lonely spinsters—mostly. There can be an older librarian as a mentor and confidante, at least regarding the book aspects of the story. But I digress more.)

You can easily see what’s coming. The romantic heroine has both a bookstore and a cat. And the covers of the books reflect that. In fact, sometimes the cat and the books are all that appear on the cover. The woman herself is missing in (romantic) action.

One other trend that I’ve noticed in romance novels (I don’t actually read them, you understand—I learn about them through reading blurbs) is that, although traditionally the stories involve reckless, passionate, consequence-free sex (the “zipless bleep” that Erica Jong made so popular in Fear of Flying), is that increasingly, pregnancy results from the sex. (No, I’m not saying that romance novels are getting more realistic. They still involve royalty and billionaires, after all. And men from Scotland apparently are popular now, as in the book titled Too Scot to Handle. But I digress still more.) The pregnancy adds an extra layer of potential complications, such as the impending parenthood needing to be kept a secret.

If you’ve noticed any other book trends, feel free to share ’em. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking for a book that features a man in a red kilt walking through the door of a bookstore with a pregnant cat in the window.

-Punk, -Core, and Portmanteaus

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So you thought punk was something that had its vogue years ago and has disappeared since. Or maybe you just hope it has.

It’s true that you don’t hear much about punk music anymore, but punk is alive and well in the fictional world. As long as it’s combined with something else, that is. There is, as far as I know, no strictly punk genre of stories and books. But there are cyberpunk, steampunk, and even stonepunk and solarpunk.

(All of these are “portmanteau words,” squished-together words or sounds that combine two meanings to create a new one. Think smog, webinar, bromance, brunch, or spork (which I still call a runcible spoon). Or, given the time of year, spooktacular. But I digress.)

These varieties of fiction share the sensibilities of punk such as rebellion, individualism, social inequality, and unconventional thinking. (Less screaming, feedback, and safety pin piercings, though. Thank goodness.)

Most people’s introduction to the hyphenpunk world was a 1984 (appropriately) science fiction novel, Neuromancer, by William Gibson. It presented a dark, gritty, dystopian society in which a killer AI invaded people’s brains. At the time it served as a warning, which apparently we have not heeded. (Since then, almost all -punk fiction has been sci-fi or fantasy. At least I haven’t seen any romancepunk or mysterypunk. Again, thank goodness. But I digress again.)

Cyberpunk didn’t start any fashion trends the way punk music did (using the word “fashion” loosely). But another iteration of -punk has: steampunk. Steampunk combines Victorian-era technology and problems with a sense of adventure and invention and owes a lot to the writing of Jules Verne. You’ll find air battles between pirates in blimps, steam-powered robots pieced together from spare parts, and plots involving gaslighting (the streetlamp kind, not the manipulative kind). It’s a celebration of innovation, progress, and developing technology combined with nostalgia for a time when science was exciting, not threatening, and possibilities for advancement seemed limitless. Steampunk, unlike cyberpunk, is uplifting.

Nowadays, you can see steampunk aficionados at clubs and sci-fi conventions dressing in Victorian garb, embellished with brass gears, gauges, and wheels. One trendy accessory is the top hat with welding goggles as a hatband. Women can dress as aviators (aviatrixes? aviatrices?) with, obviously, aviator goggles. One would assume that the expected reaction from those not in the know is goggling at them. (Sorry, not sorry.)

(And that stonepunk and solarpunk I mentioned? Those refer to fiction that immerses the reader in a Flintstones-like past and a back-to-the-land agrarian setting respectively, with technology based on those eras. But I digress still more.)

Now on to -core, another element used in portmanteau words related to the music scene, rather than fiction. As you might guess, the word “hardcore” is the origin of the term. But instead of referring to pornography, -core applies to an extreme expression of any kind of music. Skacore. Thrashcore. Even emocore, unlikely as that sounds. (Theoretically, you could have punkcore music, but I’ve never heard that term used. Nor punkpunk fiction, for that matter. There is a subset of country music called cowpunk, so I guess you could have cowpunkcore. But I digress even more.)

Historical note: Lewis Carroll, author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass pioneered the creation of portmanteau words. (A portmanteau is “a case or bag to carry clothing in while traveling, especially a leather trunk or suitcase that opens into two halves.” So portmanteau, when it comes to words, is actually a metaphor.) Carroll’s epic poem “Jabberwocky” contained several. Slithy (as in “the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe”) is, he said, a combination of lithe and slimy; frumious, a mashing-together of furious and fuming; and chortle, a portmanteau of chuckle and snort that is still used today.

(Less historical note: Thanks to the book The Annotated Alice (annotations by Martin Gardner), which I highly recommend, I learned how to recite the first verse of “Jabberwocky” in French, a skill with no practical applications whatsoever. But I digress. My last digression for this post. I promise.)

(Just kidding. Bonus digression. Back to -punk and -core. There exists a series of books that combines steampunk, thriller, and fantasy. (A Study in Silks (The Baskerville Affair)). Steampunk-Holmes-demoncore, I guess you’d call it.)