“The chain-link gate yowled like an angry tomcat in the watery light of dawn.” This is the first sentence of a book by a “New York Times bestselling author.” I can’t state that I’ve seen a more hack-kneed or trite opening to a book since Snoopy wrote one. There follows a number of quotes lauding the capabilities of the author and the series of books, all marketing BS. If you are a writer, and I like to think that I’m, you wonder how this book got published.
Okay, give the guy another 25 pages. Maybe it’s just a bad start. After all everybody has different tastes. Not every style appeals to each reader.
Unfortunately, I spent another 15 minutes of my time wading through the next 21 pages before I couldn’t take it any more. (I don’t review books or movies for a living because I can’t stand spending the few days I’ve in this life subjecting myself to crap.) It was over-written and filled with cliche characters. HarperCollins must have lots of money laying around to bet on this junk. Allow you, I’m not a big Jane Austin fan, but her stuff is very well done, interesting and readable.
The good news is that if publishers are willing to shell out good money on this inane book, eventually superior writers will their fiction published. Hopefully, I will be one of them.
If you are a writer, have some pride in your thoughts and in your work. If you don’t have time to do a good job, don’t bother. There is more to good writing than punctuation.
Entries (RSS)