I am reading tons this week and actually have time to post about it as Craig and I wait for edits back on Book 2 of Lost Highway this week.
For one thing I have this stack of Trad Wife books I’m working my way through, because the subject is SO topical and, from my point of view, such a rich setting for political commentary and criticism. After my bitter disappointment with Yesteryear, which I wrote about here, I seem to be on an obsessive quest to find a book that actually does the subject justice.
So far the one that absolutely does is the memoir by Substacker and escaped tradwife Tia Levings - A Well-Trained Wife. It’s a brutally honest, deeply personal look into how girls are indoctrinated into the tradwife prison - and prison is exactly what it is. Levings barely escaped with her children in a desperate flight for all of their lives.
The documentary Keep Sweet, Pray, Obey is also a must-see documentary on the massive tentacles of toxic religion and how trad wives are created - from abusive “blanket-trained” childhoods on through submissive marriage.
I’ve already read a couple others of my Trad Wife stack, or started them, anyway - but moved on. I will post more when I’ve worked my way through a few.
I want to say emphatically - I do not like the DNF trend. It has a creepy Mean Girls feel to it and the last thing we need is more online toxicity.
But the truth is I don’t finish more than 90 percent of the books I pick up (or get sent to read). And yeah, some of them are just bad books, but more often it’s just not the right book for me at that particular moment in time. That doesn’t mean I won’t go back to it when I’m in the mood for it. It just means it’s not my drug of choice that night, or weekend, or whenever.
Like this weekend – EVERYONE is raving about Remarkably Bright Creatures, and it’s an obsession of mine to read a book and then watch the adaptation – movie or TV, and the play too if there is one. So I was really looking forward to that.
But I just could not get into the book at all. I loved the chapters with Marcellus, the octopus. I liked the setup with the cleaning lady, Tova. But I did not care about the Knitwits, or the mystery, or whatever was going on with the guy in the van which I didn’t even bother to read enough of to figure out what was going on.
I know a lot of people love this book but I’m just not a cozy mystery reader. Not even a little bit. My personal taste is very much about nail-biting suspense and high-stakes battles of good against evil; thriller, crime, horror, historical, and twisted mysteries. My particular passions are feminist anything in any genre and especially stories about women’s rage. I want to see bad men get exactly what they deserve - without torture or pain - I just want them exposed and eliminated from the planet.
That’s a thematic preference and also a temperament preference. There’s a psychology book I read quite a long time ago now called Mastering Your Moods, which lays out a theory that “there are two types of people” - I know, we’ve all heard that before! - but I think he’s right about this one:
People tend to have a high-stimulus preference or a a low-stimulus preference for experiences.
I really love high-adrenaline activities (adventure travel, rafting, hiking, speedboats, ocean swimming, dancing) and I equally love being put through an absolute emotional wringer by a book or film. Our eldest is the same - there’s nothing he likes better than high adrenaline rides and horror movies. It’s a stress release for both of us. We crave what to other people (like our youngest) is uncomfortable overstimulation.
A lot of people, including a LOT of readers I’ve met over the years, can’t take that high stimulus - it stresses them out instead of releasing stress. I’ve had readers apologize for not being able to read my books because they’re too scary - and that is so totally fine with me! People need to know their own emotional preferences and set their own boundaries.
Those readers will probably love Remarkably Bright Creatures.
Me - I just skipped and read through the charming octopus chapters for a while and then put the book down so I wouldn’t know the end before I watched the movie. Although I’m pretty sure I do know everything about how it ends, it’s telegraphed pretty blatantly.
And then I started the movie, which at least as far as I’ve watched it is an extremely good adaptation - much more engaging than the book. I personally could watch Sally Field read the phone book - I think she is one of the great living Hollywood talents. I think Lewis Pullman as Cameron was great casting and the screenwriter smartly cuts almost straight to his meeting with both the octopus and Tova, thereby cutting out everything I found boring about that subplot in the book and getting right into the story.
The way director Olivia Newman shoots the aquarium to make it look and feel like Tova is under the sea with Marcellus is just stunning, sensual, hypnotic, immersive.
And Marcellus is a remarkable CGI creation - just fascinating to watch, incredibly emotive - I’m looking forward to watching the doc on how he was created.
The story is still too cozy and twee for my taste, but I WILL watch the whole thing - and break at least some of it down for my Screenwriting Tricks for Authors subscribers. Plus - any book or film that can get people to stop eating these remarkably bright creatures is doing the world a service.
I’d love to hear what you think of both book and film - please label SPOILERS when you Comment!
I had the same - “not my genre” experience with the debut Honey. The female rage of it is right up my alley, it’s really well written, and I love the racial/social commentary. But it’s not really thriller-paced, and the suspense isn’t very high so far so I’m finding it slow. Definitely worth reading and I will finish it but I’ve moved on for now.
Finally - I found this brilliant Substack: Dracula Daily, which has been sending me chapters of Stoker’s novel, which you may remember is written in letter format, and actually starts on the date May 3, so I’m getting a letter/chapter every other day or so. It’s a fantastic way to slow-read the book again.
And it’s either great timing or my devices eavesdropping on me - because when Craig and I were in London a few weeks ago for the Harrogate book festival launch, we saw the extraordinary Cynthia Erivo in her one-woman show of Dracula.
She is mesmerizing and it’s a tour-de-force performance, simply astonishing that one human being can put herself through that marathon every night.
The production, by theater wunderkind Kip Williams, doesn’t achieve the mind-blowing heights of his Picture of Dorian Gray production starring Sarah Snook in an even greater tour-de-force. There’s not as much money behind Dracula and it’s not as good an adaptation - Craig and I agree that Dorian Gray may have been the single best theatrical production we’ve ever seen.
But the Dracula production was good theater and a perfect way to experience the book. My re-viewings and re-readings of classics in multiple genres are one my great pleasures in life.
Altogether, it’s been enough to keep me marginally sane as the sociopaths in charge continue to torch democracy, morality and decency.
So what have you all been reading/watching?
Now, for the authors! There were a couple of Substack articles I read this week about publishing that are pretty essential reading:
Erin Niumata tackles the question of What Romance Readers Actually Want Right Now - but this exceptional analysis is about much more than romance. I was on the fringes of romance publishing for years and I don't think I've ever seen anyone explain the complexity of the current market, the tropes AND the emotional needs of the readers this well, this succinctly. Many of the points she makes go for publishing in general.
This excellent article by Brooke Warner, What Actually Sells Books, is the most incisive explanation of what has contributed to the current book market saturation that I have read yet. Although I do think it’s difficult for someone who hasn’t been actively publishing for a while to understand everything she’s talking about - it still needs to be read and mulled over.
Personally, I was trad-pubbed first, then struck it rich enough in the digital Gold Rush before TikTok and the 3-books-a-year indie model. Which is not a NEW model - three books was always the category romance minimum per year to make a career, and the big digital-only publishers came out of romance and brought all the tricks with them.
But as a reader I would rather do anything - clean the house, do my taxes, clean the cat box - than read a book in a series of 50, or God forbid, 100 books. That is just slop.
And I’m writing for readers like ME. So I’m not going to be killing myself trying to write three mediocre books a year. I have to make my one published book a year pay for that year. It has to be worth writing to be worth reading.
I keep telling writers, if they’re interested enough to ask, that Substack is the best platform out there to build an organic and growing mailing list of readers who are like you, that you have a real relationship with, and who will seek YOU out. The pitfall of TikTok and the Meta platforms is that you can lose your entire contact accumulation at the whim of the sociopath billionaires who control those platforms. You NEED an analogue mailing list to keep your relationship and contact with your devoted readers. (Someone commenting on the article said that events are the best way to develop those readers - that’s certainly the deepest and longest lasting way, in my experience). Also I am always front and center about my politics and passions because it’s a great way of filtering out readers who are not… let’s just say, a good fit for my books.
And another amazing thing I have suddenly discovered about Substack is its potential for collating bonus content. Craig and I are putting together a lot of reels, posts, short videos, etc. for our book launch of The Grapevine, Book 1 of our upcoming Lost Highway thriller series — and it took me all of twenty minutes yesterday to create a section on this author Substack that we can now build as a landing page:
We’ll be running our contests and giveaways there, and collating every post that we make during our book tour at the end of June, so that anyone who wants to follow along with the mystery can go to that central hub (and find clues to win prizes…) More on this when we’ve got more to it, but feel free to have a look - and subscribe if you want to be entered in subsequent drawings.
There’s also a Goodreads giveaway to enter - for US readers only - but both US and UK readers can enter multiple giveaways on the Abby Gomersall is MISSING page.
And a couple of other plugs…
My feminist crime thriller Huntress Moon, Book 1 in the six (soon to be seven!) book series, is on sale this month from Thomas & Mercer.
$2.49 to buy on Kindle, all six in the series free on Kindle Unlimited.
A haunted FBI agent is on the hunt for an elusive woman he believes is responsible for dozens of murders across the US.
And if any of you Bookstackers are interested in an ARC of The Grapevine, message me - I’d love to get you a Netgalley invite or Kindle copy.
Subscribe to Writing Life for monthly-ish free posts on books, new release news, the author life, how to write with your spouse without killing them, Scotland, our expat travels, and always - our entirely justified female rage.
-Alex
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