Who are your favorite writers and why?
This last Saturday at the writer’s meeting it was pointed out by someone there that one of the best ways to find a literary agent and/or publisher is to look over your favorite writers and figure out who their agents are. Then find out if the agents are taking new people and start querying. Other people had other methods that ranged from the basic going through the Writer’s Market and querying those agents one at a time, to opening up a book on agents, closing your eyes and picking someone randomly. In the end, it all means work.
But it got me thinking about who we read and why. Sometimes we read people because we “ought” to. It’s the next big “thing” on everyone’s reading list, or is being made into a movie, or it’s in our supposed genre, or it’s a classic, blah, blah, blah. While at the library (where we have our meetings), I checked out some books. Some were favorite old authors I’ve read before and felt like reading again while others were authors I haven’t read but felt I “ought” to.
The author I checked out because I “ought” to was a fast read. She wasn’t bad but I wasn’t overly impressed. She writes well (as in her sentences were mostly well crafted, etc), but I’ve read so many other stories like hers, I just was so bored. To be fair, I think she made a specific type of paranormal romance/urban fantasy famous. I used to do reviews for a review company that would send you the reading material for free as long as you wrote a 200-300 word review in a reasonable amount of time. For a while I really enjoyed it, but I read a LOT of paranormal romance/urban fantasies/erotica type stories for that company. Most of them just mediocre and plenty of them just plain old bad. So I think that turned me off from reading a steady diet of those types of stories. I’m pretty sure I would NOT want to query agents or publishers from those particular writers unless something specific stuck out about a writer that I really liked.
Another author I picked up I used to really enjoy, but lately her murder mysteries read as just very thin Lifetime versions of what they could be. I enjoyed her earlier stuff. It was meatier, more emotionally truthful. Now it’s just cute and I don’t get attached to her characters. She’s selling more books with the thinned down stories, I think. But again, I wouldn’t go to that agent either using that criteria. Or maybe what I’d do is research to see who her agent was in the beginning and see if they’re still around.
The final author is dead, and so is her agent, most likely. But I do like her writing the best of what I checked out. I enjoy the words as well as how she sets up the story. I don’t feel like she’s dumbing down for me as she introduces characters or ideas. I don’t write like her, either, though. I would like to write like her, but the genteel intelligence of early 20th century mystery writers isn’t appreciated these days, I don’t think. Or maybe I’m out of the loop and just haven’t discovered current writers who are similar to Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Agatha Christie.
Oh well. Reading them reminds me of why I like to write. So maybe that’s all I need for now. I can worry about what I write some other day.
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on February 4th, 2008 at 4:15 PM
Did you ever read the Rita Mae Brown mystery books? I think her cat may have been the author…
on February 4th, 2008 at 5:14 PM
Yeah, see. She’s one of the authors I brought home from the library. The earlier ones were okay but I don’t like these later ones so much. But she doesn’t have Sneaky Pie solving the mysteries now. It’s more people oriented.
on February 5th, 2008 at 9:10 AM
Of course the cat ones were better!
on February 5th, 2008 at 11:03 AM
Yeah, I need to stick with Sneaky Pie Brown and Mrs. Murphy because these others are just not as fun.
on February 14th, 2008 at 1:31 AM
[...] A couple of weeks ago I went to the library and picked up some books of some authors I knew and some I didn’t know in an effort to find some inspiration and to learn. The thing about reading when you’re a writer is that it can be a way of learning about your field. And, as someone pointed out at the writer’s meeting, it can be a way of looking for a writer you feel akin to and hunting down who they use as an agent and/or publisher. I was disappointed with all but one book. And that was the book written by the dead author, whose agent and editor are probably long gone as well. The other authors really irritated me. Within the context of their stories, they preached at me about the environment or animal welfare or preserving history (there’s nothing wrong with those things, I just don’t need to be preached at about them – I just want to read a good story) or were too repetitive (dumbing down to the reader), or seemed to write the same story over again no matter which series you read (it’s still the same type of heroine and situations) or did their best to find an excuse for sex or some kind of sexual context every other page or created Jean Greys out of their heroines (you know where the problems in the story build to a horrible knot but it’s suddenly discovered that the heroine has yet another super power that no one knew about except the author who pulls it out of their butt to save their heroine’s lovely, sexy ass). But these books sell. Some agent believes in these writers and sold their stories to a publisher. And yes, these stories are well written for the most part, but they aren’t Charles De Lint or Neil Gaiman or Marion Zimmer Bradley. They aren’t brilliant. [...]