So a friend loaned me all of her Suzanne Brockman Navy Seal categories a week ago. She handed over this lovingly assembled hodge podge of reissues and used and new books and I had no idea what I was in for.
I haven't done ANYTHING all week. I go to bed at 9 and read to 1. I've stopped writing. I've stopped exercising - at every turn I am running upstairs to read more about Alpha Team Ten. I am chain reading them. The first one still warm from my hand and I'm three pages in the next.
And so, I've figured out what the deal is with Brockman - I thought it was the males and they are great heroes. But the worst book in this series was the first one -- SHE KEEPS GETTING BETTER. SHE DOES NOT DISAPPOINT. It's amazing. I love some writers -- buy each and every book - and when one is a bit of a stinker - I forgive and forget. But so far none of these books are bad. Her research gets more and more interesting. Her characters more complex and even harder considering her subject matter and the confines of category romance -- they are all DIFFERENT. Elizabeth Lowell's category romances - which I love - are all sort of the same in terms of plot and character. Still love 'em. But Brockman is really pulling it off with these boys.
Now, I write category romances and like most category romance novelists have aspirations of "breaking out." And, I sometimes get very very antsy about time but Suzanne has taught me this last week the importance of building an audience and honing my skills.
While none of them have been bad - Frisco's Kid - is my favorite. And so far - Harvard's Education was the least gripping -- it was fantastic but maybe had less romance than I like. Thoughts?
How about you guys? Is there another author out there that I am missing? Someone else batting a thousand.
4 comments:
I think no matter what stage we're at in this whole publishing thing, we're always in a hurry to get to that next stage.
And I don't think that's wrong. Nothing wrong with ambition or looking ahead... But I think you're right. If we just keep writing and getting better at what we do, the rewards will come.
It's stagnating or failing to evolve with the market, or not constantly trying to get better that will keep a writer in one place --whether that's unpubbed when they want to be pubbed, e-pubbed when they want to be mainstream pubbed, category romance pubbed when they want single title, mid list when they want NYT bestseller list...
It's really impressive, she took the Navy Seal idea and made each book different and better.
Especially in a category setting. Wow!
I agree with Maureen, getting better is the key... but it's hard.
OMG! It's over. I finished the last two last night. Finally I can have my life back. Those were some seriously readable books. Wow.
You're so right about our obsession with time -- it takes so long just for things to get read it's understandable that we'd want to speed up the publication process on our end as much as possible by rushing the writing and the editing etc...
Good books - now I have to read the Ballantine ST's of Brockmans.
Oh I love Suzanne Brockmann! I understand what you mean about her ruining your life. Susan Elizabeth Phillips does a good job of that, too, so if you haven't read hers...you might want to rethink it if you have things to do, though, LOL.
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