So, I've been reading. The books I've been reading - well, I'm not sure that they have a specific genre, nor can I call them good and bad. There are some very good things about them, as well as bad.
The last six or seven I've read this month, have all been your stereo typical 'law and order-esque'? books. Sure, lets call it that. There are some very annoying things about them - undeveloped/underdeveloped characters. Multitudes of characters that I can't quite place as being one type or another, and GENIUS predictable plot lines/outcomes.
So, that might lead you to wonder why I keep reading them.
Well, lets call it research. My own book is about half done, and the end of part one sort of finished itself for me in a rather cyclical almost anti-climactic way. The ending is also rather cynical, and not an ending at all - which is good, because it's only part one. So, having tried to overcome what I've decided is not writers block, but more like denial I started reading to do 'something' other than writing. Then I had a thought -
'I could write this.' This being the stereotypical novel. It would sell. I could write it. I even went so far as to play that out a little more and thought (in the bathtub) of some dialogue.
In my CSI/law meets order/meets nerd book, the scene that ultimately leads to the knight in shining armour screwing the dazzling lawyer (or some derivation of that) the dialogue goes something like this.
Knight of the not so round table: "I know what you were doing."
dazzling lady fiend #1: "I was listening to Miles Davis."
Knight: "what is it about Miles Davis that does it for you?"
dazzling: "It's the....
(searches for some instrument to pick that is not blown)
(searches for something other than drums because they like to be beaten)
(uhhh - guitars? they like to be strummed - that's so cliche.)
...all right, I was masturbating to Miles Davis. There's no instrument that isn't sexual I can think of. Oboes are practically a siren stick."
At which point in the real novel they go off and screw and have a lovely time of it - all just in time to save the day - eventually. Oh, and if the author has a kid thing, she's always wanted kids and ends up pregnant with the knights child by the end of the story and they walk off happy together.
Then I thought - that's not how that should end.
In my version, they blunder through sex - maybe. Or decide that genetic reproduction or the chances of it are in general a bad idea for the human race because well - we're sort of monsters. They then have a discussion about masturbation or sex that is not at all a turn on, thus alienating the entire market for that type of book. So in the end, my book doesn't sell, not to that market anyway. And, I don't want to write the book that does sell.
So, seven books later, and really about 30 pages into the first one, my research was done, and I discovered at the very least the kind of book I could write, but cannot because it might just make me puke.
Though secretly, I do like the occupy part of my time/aid in my denial books. They also sometimes have some generally interesting bits. Kinda like watching CSI or Law and Order.
Kinda.
