Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

Wow! I guess this is one of the few occasions where I’m pleased that geographical restrictions prevented me from buying the eBook.

I heard Lora won’t allow an editor to edit her work. She also hands in first drafts. This is from a reliable source and both Lora and the publisher should be ashamed.

But notice she continues to make the NY Times. What does this mean?

Way back when, when Lora Leigh still published electronically, she was not known for being a “clean” writer.  Her editors had to really work on editing her stories.  She was also extraordinarily prolific back then.  At one point, I think there was a Lora Leigh book out every 2-3 months or so.  She had several ongoing series which she left hanging, probably for more than one reason.  She was EC’s biggest seller, but her books were coming out with editing work done, even when EC is often criticized for bad editing.

If her current publishing company is allowing her to go without an editor, I am not surprised.  Though, as I said, she NEVER was a “clean” writer, she’s still raking in the dough, the publishing company will not give a damn and as to Lora Leigh, well, she’s business savvy, that’s the why she tries to reach her fans, she knows who is keeping her up there.  The sales show that at least a good portion of her fans are willing to forgive anything, and if there is one thing I know about her series, is that they tend to hook the reader from the start.  That’s what makes her so popular as well. 

Personally, I stopped reading her work some time ago.  I never read her suspense work because I don’t read suspense at all.  I kept reading the Breeds for a while.  After that, I stopped, because the Breeds now all much read the same to me, and the characters are pretty much interchangeable.  It was a fun series to read though, so I felt sad when I realized that it was not doing it for me any longer.

@KB/KT Grant: “But notice she continues to make the NY Times. What does this mean?”

It means habits are hard to break. I’m currently in the midst of a book purge. I have whole shelves of books taken up by authors who disillusioned me around book five, books I grimaced while buying because I expected them to be bad. (Book addiction much?)

It’s only in the past two years or so that I’ve developed the ability to stop when I encounter an execrable book. I don’t feel obligated to torture myself by finishing it, and I certainly don’t waste my money on another one. Practice makes perfect, right? So they should get better with each book. When the name on the cover becomes the only selling point, the quality of the story inside is neglected.

I find I care a great deal about the story and not a bit about authors who don’t care enough to tell a good one.

This one ended my relationship with her books. I won’t spend any more money on her books no matter the reviews.

What’s really sad is that her fans cut her so much for so long. Many of us thought that since she was going through a bad time she’d eventually be able to get her act together and we’d support her in the meantime.

Her books were fun but they’ve become such cut and paste mishmashes that the publisher should have refused to release them.

Who’s at fault? The author first and foremost. I don’t know what’s going on with her but now I no longer care and I wouldn’t read her books for free.

The publisher should be slapped with a vat of ink for allowing these past ten or so books to ever see the light of day. 
Talk about not respecting the customer.

*sigh* should be ‘cut her so much slack’

I think this illustrates how there are different types of readers out there, not just writers. Things like punctuation and continuity don’t bother some. Others, like me, it annoys the hell out of. If I have to stop and reread sentences, it totally pulls me out of the story.

Reviews, and review sites like SBTB and Dear Author, greatly influence what I buy and try. I’ve learned that on Amazon you have to take a lot of them with a grain of salt, but I’ve seen this particular book targeted on several different sites now so that lends more credit to the negative reviews. Ms. Leigh should be ashamed of herself. To me, putting out an inferior product is disrespectful to her readers, no matter how much effort she puts into connecting with them publicly. Many of us have tight book budgets so we’re choosy about what we purchase, so for her to settle for half-ass and expect her fans to do the same is insulting. And the blame goes from the author all the way through to the publisher. Maybe some of it should even go to the readers who buy this and give it glowing reviews when it quite clearly doesn’t deserve them (IMO). In a way that’s condoning bad behaviors, like rewarding the dog for pissing on the carpet when you’re too lazy to get up and let him outside.

It seems that this type of thing plagues a lot of very prolific writers. Danielle Steele is another example. Over the years her stuff has become formulaic, repetitive and terribly boring. I tried to read the sample of Fat Girl on my Kindle (thank the Amazon gods for that) and couldn’t get through it because of the repetition. And that was just one chapter! Imagine what the rest of the book would have been like? But still, I’ve read glowing reviews for it, too!

Just because you have a large, established fan base doesn’t mean you can rest on those laurels and start putting out crap. In this day and time, those fans will eventually turn on you. Or they should.

I’m not savvy enough in the ways of publishing to know who deserves what portion of blame. But I do know that when you put something out there as an author, and it has your name on it, it’s your responsibility. You should have to answer for the shoddy work that, in my opinion, cheats people out of their hard earned money. Mistakes happen. I have no problem with finding one or two little screw ups in a 350 page book. But when it becomes so frequent as to be distracting, I get upset.

From a reader perspective, there are rose colored glasses that go on once an author becomes a favorite. The longer you’ve been in love with an authors work, the harder it becomes to be honest with yourself (and in reviews) about the quality of each new book. In my case, I’ve been struggling with J.R. Ward, who I used to love but who’s work has largely taken a turn in a direction I dislike. Not a full-of-errors kind of problem, just an issue of the work no longer matching my taste. Yet I keep buying the stupid things, I keep being disappointed, and I keep struggling to write honest rose-colored-glasses-off reviews. Old habits die hard.

I get seriously annoyed with the amount of romance bashing I hear. I am mainly a science fiction and fantasy reader, and I hear so much of it from sf&f fans and authors—who really should know better! But authors like Lora Leigh do give the haters some ammunition.

I haven’t read any Lora Leigh, so this may be wrong, but it sounds like she is just a terrible writer by any criteria. It isn’t just about punctuation—that can be fixed. And little continuity errors happen. But it sounds like this author is either not aware of or not bothering with the basic craft of story.

But I know she sells a gajillion books.

Which I guess is just the long way round in saying I’m so glad sites like this exist, to call out the unprofessional stuff, and praise those authors who really are making the effort!

Is it possible someone else is now writing and turning in her books?

I think placing the blame on the editor shows a lack of understanding how publishing works, not a greater understanding.  (Unless by “greater understanding” you mean realizing that there IS someone involved besides the author.)  Authors who sell well will be less edited.  Period.  They make money for the publishers, and the publishers do not want to annoy them, lest they take their money-making selves elsewhere.

All new writers are emphatically told that it is NOT the editor’s job to correct basic grammar and time line issues.  A good line edit will pick up more subtle tics (like using the word “quick” four times in one page), and issues about whether a certain piece of information would be known to a certain character at a given time.  It will also catch the occasional obvious goof that the author doesn’t see because she’s looked at the manuscript a thousand times before sending it in, and it no longer makes sense to her.  But ultimately the responsibility rests on the author.  That’s why authors get page proofs AFTER the line and copy edit to make changes.  Established authors are ASSUMED to know this, which is another reason why they’re less edited (and another reason why they get annoyed about being edited - it’s insulting).

This kind of mistake is on the author, and as someone up thread said, it’s disrespectful to her readers.

I’m sure at least a portion of the people of buy Lora Leigh’s books are doing it out of habit. I’ve had that problem - I’ve bought books I know I’m probably not going to like, books that make me feel like it’s actual work to read them (my recreation should be fun, not work, darn it), so why did I buy them? Because the author used to be one of my favorites. I had nostalgic feelings about their works, I remembered past book signings that gave me warm fuzzies, and I still loved their earliest books. Usually, this kind of thing happens to me with authors who write series. I’ve invested a good deal of time in the series, so I feel like I need to keep going.

It usually takes me many books past the point I should have quit reading to really quit. First I quite buying the author in hardback, then I quit buying in paperback and just get library books. The hardest step is quitting getting them via the library. Even then, it’s a bit like an addiction - there are authors I’ve technically quit, but when I see their newest books on bookstore/library shelves, I still feel a twinge of “must get.” It’s awful.

I’ve not read this book. I stopped reading at the series where all the heroes were navy SEALS who never went anywhere near the sea.
Leigh has never been a clean writer, but she wrote dynamics and outrageous situations that readers (including me) lapped up. Her first Breeds Berkeley books seemed to lose a bit of focus, or something, so I started reading her others.
Leigh writes fast, with lots of errors. And the cleaner the manuscript you turn in, the better chance of the editor spotting all the boo-boos and correcting them. An editor usually has a stable of writers, not just one, and it’s not fair on the others to monopolize her time. So it’s a courtesy to the other authors, too, to hand in a reasonably clean copy.
So maybe Leigh needs a panel of beta readers before she turns her stuff in to her editor? Maybe they should put her a book back, so they have one in hand, so to speak, and add the extra process. There must be lots of fans who’d be willing to do that for her. Or even - gasp - a secretary.

security word - respect69. I surely do.

I agree, LL has never been a “clean” writer. I wonder if her print publisher has cut staff, particularly final line editors or copy editors. As I recall from years ago when Lora was only electronically published she herself admitted she was terrible at grammar and punctuation. Still the author can’t put it all on the editors, she should know a character’s height, etc! Keep a notebook! lol Although that type of thing was what some authors used to ask “first readers” to check. I met Lora at various book signings and readers weekend. She was sincere and nice and kind of shy. I think she has great ideas and can hook a reader in with good premise, characterization and action. But I noticed, even early on, a tendency for her plots to ramble or for descriptive paragraphs to be repeated. Plus timelines were confusing in her series. The stories didn’t seem to come out in any order and that just got worse when she repubbed and put out new stories with her NYC contracts. Now I read an occasional book by her but have definitely fallen out of “gotta have it” impulse for LL. I’m certainly not one keeping her on the bestseller lists!

@Lynne Connolly: If it’s true she doesn’t want a professional editor touching her works of genius, I very much doubt she’d allow beta readers to take a whack at her.

I read some of Leigh’s earliest books and I’ve read a couple of her more recent books. Saying that she was never a “clean” writer is a serious understatement. I know this is going to make me sound like a bitch, and not in the not good way, but I’m going to say it any way—-Leigh is one of less than a handful of writers whose success makes me angry.

She has never produced any work that meets what I consider to be the bare minimum in quality for a person paid to write. Her grammar, spelling and word usage have always been atrocious. I’m not talking about minor errors. I’m talking about the sort of things people are supposed to learn in elementary school and it has never gotten any better.  She also has consistency issues, both in characterization and story that, as others have noted, have actually gotten worse.

Writing is her job. She should be doing far better and I see no evidence that she’s making any effort at all. Every part of the system that keeps her on the NY Times list makes me sort of annoyed.

Wow! What you all said. I’m not one of those people who can just let go when the WRFery becomes WHAT THE F***!!!! And, yes I’m anal enough that a comma in the wrong place or the wrong word is the mental equivelant of being thrown off a horse. Sure I’ll climb back on; if it’s just a typo all’s forgiven. But if the story/writing sucks on top of it? That’s like riding with a burr under your butt.
I’m with Kerry. In the last few years I’ve gotten my book addiction under control & stopped the knee-jerk purchases based on author’s name. My book budget has taken quite a hit so there’s nothing worse than finding out I just spent hard cover money for a something no one from the writer to the publisher cared about.  We’re just an income stream to them. As long as there are plenty of fangirls out there who are blinded by their adoration enough to keep supporting this kind of crap, I don’t forsee a change. So, I guess readers have a share of the blame. Oh, no! I just blamed the victim!!
I’m ashamed of myself… But I’m not exactly wrong….

I’m sorry, but this problem is as bad for Lora as for whoever is her editor and the publishing house. I can’t see how any editor or pub can’t take part of the responsibility or blame. NO WAY.  Did the editor even read the manuscript or just glossed over it??  If not, can anyone tell me what is the job of the editor if it isn’t to polish the manuscript that an author has given to them. Still, not everyone can be an editor nor everyone can be called an editor just because they put it after their name…

Out of curiosity I clicked over and read the omitted love scene from Navarro’s Promise. Ack! It’s way overdone and there were errors there too.

@Lori
If you’re a bitch then I’m one too, because I feel the exact same way. It pisses me off that some people continue to get crap published when there are really good authors out there who can’t get the break they deserve.

when Lora was only electronically published she herself admitted she was terrible at grammar and punctuation.

This is akin to an accountant saying she is terrible at arithmetic or Excel. 

can anyone tell me what is the job of the editor if it isn’t to polish the manuscript that an author has given to them.

Assuming the question about the editor’s job is not a rhetorical one, see my comment up thread.  Also, recall that editors play a role in acquisitions (finding new, less terrible authors), and marketing. 

As to polishing, how do you know the manuscripts weren’t even WORSE when she handed them in?  I know when I’m going through student papers my eyes glaze over after the first page of errors.  Perhaps the editors simply dragged it up to what they knew the minimum standard was that (enough) readers would accept, and then moved on to working with more rewarding manuscripts, with authors who actually make the effort to hand in clean work, and appreciate the editor’s effort?

I find this all fairly baffling. 
All serious writers accept that their work will benefit from being read and checked both by friends and colleagues, and by a professional editor.  But at the same time, the text should always be as perfect as the author can make it before it is shown to anyone else.  We are all human, and we all make mistakes, but we eliminate as many of them as we can find before turning to other people, whose fresh eyes may identify other problems.  And then, we take heed of what they say.
I find it outrageous that any manuscript that is still apparently in a draft stage should see publication at all.  It is an insult, not only to readers, but also to the many aspiring writers who work conscientiously at their craft, but have not yet been published. 
Errors like internal inconsistencies in the descriptions of characters reveal a cavalier attitude to the craft of writing that would make me very angry indeed.  They demonstrate that the author’s actual writing process is sloppy and flawed.

I’ve said it before - and others have already mentioned it in the comments - but Leigh books have ALWAYS been full of errors. Always. And they’ve always sold well. Which is, I think, a perfectly legitimate reason for her publisher to not bother editing her now, since clearly her fans like her writing as is.

I’m flabbergasted that her fans are complaining now. Someone who’s new to Leigh’s work has the right to gripe about the errors, but long-term fans? Come on, now. I enjoyed a lot of her work but I always new that she was more of an “idea” person than an actual writer. Her writing might be worse now but it was always bad, and the outrage over her current books—as if her fans got cheated somehow—don’t make a bit of sense to me.

And has anyone noticed that authors who acknowledge their beta readers, are often writers who don’t have problems with that pesky continuity thing?
@Lori, if you’re a bitch, I’d hate to think what that makes me. That’s kitten scratching compared to what I’d let loose with in a less civil venue.

@Donna: I’m right there with you. What I posted was the nice version. The unedited version of what I think about Leigh’s lack of professionalism and the fact that she makes the NYT list is much, much nastier and has a lot more swearing.

@las - could the outrage by existing fans be because of Agency pricing on her e-books.  It is possible the people making noise now are paying more for a product they once purchased at a discount and they want it to be better if they are spending more.

I was proofreader on some of Leigh’s books back when she was first being published in ebooks and I can corroborate - she was not a “clean” writer. The errors (grammar, continuity, spelling, sentence structure) were ridiculous. There is one specific misspelling that I still remember to this day and sometimes use as an example to others. I only remember two authors who were worse, actually.

I don’t remember her refusing to edit or accept changes or suggestions back then, though. It sounds like success has gone to her head and she’s pulled an Anne Rice.

This is disheartening because it’s unclear who to blame
or if anything will be done.

Authors don’t always have control over covers & titles
& in some cases don’t have control over the way the story
shakes out. Errors, however, are usually seen by many sets
of eyes. I beta read & line edit for various authors who agonize over every single word & scene, who actually care about the finished product & the fact that their name is behind it.

I really don’t understand the discrepancy between Lora’s
books and Louisa Edwards’ who is with the same publisher. I’ve never seen any errors in Louisa’s books.  Could it be that the publisher feels LL’s books sell on name alone & they don’t have to spend any money on quality? That becomes the publisher’s responsibility. I know in my various reading groups, readers have been bitching & counting the errors in LL’s books & some won’t buy any more or will buy only used now. Doesn’t help the frustration in reading, only that they didn’t pay a lot of money for it.

@Lisa J - honestly, I think readers have a right to expect a clean product. We pay hard-earned money and I at least expect editors - and authors! - to do their jobs, which they are being paid to do, and edit the damn books.

I put up a document as a PDF and it came through with one formatting error when I tried to quote a poem and I’ve heard of one typo where I left out the “i” in the word “his”.  True, I once worked as an editor, but she should love her story enough.  To me, it’s like going out when you know your shirt is dirty or your teeth not brushed. Like you not only don’t care what people think, but you don’t care about yourself enough.

@J—I think readers have a right to expect a clean product.  However, if they consistently accept far, far less it’s tough to argue that they really have a leg to stand on complaining about not getting it. We’re not talking about some first time author at a small epub who people are trying for the first time.

Every one of Leigh’s books that I’ve read has been riddled with errors from top to bottom. I have never seen any evidence that the ones I didn’t read were any better. The fact that those early e-books were proof-read and were still so terrible is pretty horrifying. I can’t even imagine what her first drafts are like, and I honestly don’t want to try.

In spite of this Leigh consistently makes the bestseller lists. IMO that means that readers have to own some of the responsibility for the low quality of the books. They’ve essentially told both Leigh & her publishers that quality doesn’t matter and now they’re upset over being taken at their word. Or more precisely at their wallet.

If they want better quality they need to stop paying for crap. If low quality really doesn’t matter to them and/or there’s something about the books that they want badly enough to buy them even with the errors that;s fine. It’s a free country. However, they need to own their taste and stop complaining as if they’re shocked to find glaring errors in Leigh book.

I read her way back in the EC days.  She put out a lot of books really fast but I know she had to work very closely with her editors.  At one point she started cut out anyone in her life who recommended that she work on editing and beefing up her plots because it hurt fer feelings.  I think while she does work hard on reader relationships which can overwhelm a lot of errors and bad books, she probably needs to cut back on the sheer volume and put together a tighter book.

  I agree that her newer books are much worse plot and error wise than the older ones.  The interesting thing that she said years ago was that her plot light and minimally edited books were usually her best sellers while the ones she worked at did not sell as well.  Which could brings up questions on reader tolerance.  I know I will enjoy an author with some minor spelling or plot errors because things happen, but if they persist or become egregious, regardless of how much I love their work or need to know how the story ends (LKH), we are done.

@J - I don’t disagree that we should expect a clean product.  I’m just wondering if the higher prices for books are making people more sensitive to the fact the books they are buying are not worth the extra cost.

I forgot to say too, that I think sometimes there’s such a thing as TOO MUCH author/reader contact. When the authors are so very socially active, they start to feel like friends. So you find yourself buying books and giving good reviews or excusing their mistakes out of some odd sense of loyalty. I don’t think that’s fair.

She used to be a great escape route for me.

I’ve been to her RAW event and had a good time. 

Things have changed.  In her life and in her readers weekend.  It’s been moved to Maryland.  The weekend fees have nearly doubled and the hotel bill is much bigger.

Long time fans can’t afford to attend.  This is the first year that they still have tickets available and the event is in like ten weeks.

I don’t know if it’s a backlash at her lifestyle choices or ???

But there are stories going around that some of her longstanding author buds won’t be attending this year.

Sorry if my grammar and spelling suck.

This bothers me on so many levels. While I don’t read Lora Leigh, the fact that she regularly produces error-ridden manuscripts is almost as disturbing as the fact that someone publishes them. I work incredibly hard on crafting my novels, and I’m having a damnably hard time getting a foot in the door. Agents have outright said that the book is fine, but the economy bites, so it’s hard to get publishers to take a chance on something new.  Yet poorly written books with atrocious grammar and continuity errors are pumped out regularly. It’s incredibly disheartening. Doesn’t mean I’ll stop trying, but it would be nice if all authors were held to the standards expected of writers who have not yet had the luck to land a contract.

As a former editor, I have to say that the very best writers were the ones who could take constructive criticism and wanted an editor to take a long hard look at their work.  The very worst writers were the ones who thought their work didn’t need ANY editing and who would defend their word choices/sentence structure/grammatical mistakes to the death.

As for the explanation for why LL’s error-ridden work keeps getting gobbled up by the reading public, a cynical part of me wonders whether there are increasingly large segments of our society made up of people who actually don’t know good or bad grammar and spelling when they see it and/or don’t really care about it. 

In my current work (the law), I see ridiculous numbers of people who don’t seem to be able to write clearly and well.  These are supposedly very well-educated people.  Some of them I can help.  Some of them may really be beyond help because I think they are trying to translate muddy thought processes into the written word.  Even then, I can sometimes help “un-muddy” the thought processes, which then helps the writing.  Maybe LL would benefit from some of those unmuddying techniques—logic trees, plot maps, etc.—in addition to some help with the writing basics (grammar, sentence structure).

OK.  That’s my curmudgeonly (is that a word?) rant for the day!

@RR Kovar
Exactly! Yes that…so disheartening. Makes me a little sick on my stomach, actually.

@JacquiC
I think you may be on to something there. You want to hear something really frightening? I have a few friends on Facebook who are teachers. Now granted, I understand that spelling/grammar errors are usually forgiven in text-speak or, for the most part, overlooked. But it would shock you to see how many words they routinely misspell or misuse. And these are TEACHERS! So yeah, that could be a big part of it. That, and as you said, they just don’t care.
I admit I’m anal about it. I dissect the newspaper.

@JacquiC I couldn’t agree more!  I think American society is losing the value of the written word.  If we do not read well written books it’s difficult to then write well, in my opinion.  Plus, I love the Internet, but I think the informal nature of the Internet and texting gives people a lax attitude toward the written word.  Of course, everyone makes mistakes but those should not be our standard!

@ LG
I completely agree with you. Before my book budget got sliced to pieces I went off name alone, and Leigh was one of them.

I really loved her EC books, and never really enjoyed her switch to a NY publisher. Megan’s Mark was terrible. But I persevered for years with that series until the WTFery was beyond my gag factor. And being honest here, I didn’t always buy her books for a plot so much as her sex scenes which makes it that much worse when I can’t get through the plot.

I picked up Midnight Sins this last week used specifically because of the bad reviews to see how bad her books had gotten. I quit reading her books back when one of her SEAL books featured a SEAL that could afford a $50,000 ( I think that was the amount) sex club membership. I didn’t count the errors, I counted all the little things that bugged me or threw me out of the story, and 53 is a big number. It made glad I don’t buy her books anymore.

But as for who is responsible, it would be everyone. Leigh, editors, publishers (for paying her the big bucks) and readers for putting her on the NYT list repeatedly.

I got this book from the library and gave up on the 5th or 6th
page.  I couldn’t understand the family info on the 3 guys the
series is about.  It made no sense whatsoever.  I thought I
might pick it up as I read along but the next page had more
errors and I just decided I wasn’t going to waste my time. 
When I give up on page 6 it’s bad, very bad.

I also enjoyed Lora’s EC books—and never found them to be error-filled, a credit to her diligent editors. But yeah, her NY books have gotten worse and worse. I don’t buy her anymore, but a friend passes them on, and we often goggle at the errors. It’s got to start making an impact on her sales eventually, or maybe not? You have to understand good grammar, punctuation, etc. to recognize when it has gone wrong, and not every American reader has that level of awareness. Aside from that, the last one I read was so over the top with the sex, it was almost a parody of erotica.

LL is not the only one. Michael Korda (former Simon and Schuster editor) in his book comments on one of Harrold Robbins’ books where the second half was significantly different than the first. Korda also speculated why readers bought it anyway. Korda’s book offers little romance, but some interesting insight into the editorial side of publishing.

I don’t disagree that we should expect a clean product.  I’m just wondering if the higher prices for books are making people more sensitive to the fact the books they are buying are not worth the extra cost.

LL used to be an auto buy for me - at least with her Bound Hearts series - until she screwed Khalid over in his book (although once that series went mainstream it wasn’t as good or entertaining).  Gave up on the Breeds at Bengal’s Heart and never read past the first book in the Elite Ops (hate to tell her, but if you are a SeAL you don’t live elsewhere and only go out on missions/and live more than three hours from the closest base)...I may get her books from the library but definately in no rush to do so

@ Kathleen - thanks for that!  I heard a radio interview with Michael Korda ages ago where he mentioned that Harold Robbins incident. This thread reminded me of that and I’ve been trying all day to remember who the heck that was.  Now I know - Michael Korda (his book is Another Life; a memoir of other people).  I think one of the female characters had a different name in the second half of the book, but Harold Robbins refused to change it and they published it.

I didn’t read Korda’s book but the interview was fascinating.  He also worked with Jacqueline Susann on Valley of the Dolls.  His stories about fact checking Ronald Reagan’s memoir were hilarious to me - Reagan told several anecdotes that happened to other people as actually happening to him (my grandfather did the same thing, now that I think about it).  But they caught those errors.

I have been a Lora Leigh addict for at least 10 years. I dealt with the errors, even as they got progressively worse, because I loved the characters and the world she made with her Breeds series.
But I stopped reading her Elite ops series almost as soon as I started, mostly because they were ridiculously unrealistic, at least as far as the love scenes go. I am one to completely go with the flow with unrealistic love scenes. Sex for hours? Sure. Adrenaline spiked sex in a doorway while running from bad guys? Love it. But using words like “flower”, “sweetest juices”, or “beautiful as a summer rose”? I can’t stand. I even gave her a the shadow of a doubt for at least 2 or 3 books, thinking “maybe its just that character”. NO! Apparently all Navy SEALS and Mossad agents make up bad sexual poetry during sex, and I could no longer ignore it.
Now with the Breeds, I hold a different standard, because they are in a different world. One with uncontrollable sexual hormones and humans spliced with animal DNA. I love the Breeds series, but she (yes the author herself) has severely turned me away from it with her blatant disreguard for producing quality work for her customers. I drew the line at missing paragraphs from her final copy.
And thats not my only bone to pick with her either! Yes she reaches out to her readers, not only with what has already been mentioned, but also her online forum. She is great about answering questions and even getting online as her characters to interact with her “Ladies”. But despite that, I wonder at her motives. She has been known to make fans wait for more than 10 YEARS for a HEA to come out for certain characters. If it was something along the lines of “these characters show chemistry or promise for a HEA”, it would be one thing. But she has certain characters mate and then kept apart for reasons that are completely unknown to me. It seriously just makes me feel like a horse with a carrot on the end of a stick, and the only reason I am even reading these books is to get a glimpse of other characters.
I give up. The last and only book I am going to read from her is Cassie’s story, whenever she decides to write it. There are plenty of other writers who care more about their work and respect their readers.

I love LL’s books—all of them, but I don’t read with a critical eye. I read to enjoy the story and the characters. Trust me, there are a lot of readers out there who don’t know or care that there was supposed to be a comma there. I’m betting that most of readers aren’t writers with a separate agenda to see how fast we can pick apart another’s work.

I only discovered LL a couple of years ago and have only read her Breed books.  I liked the first few books in the series, but quit reading them as the series progressed.  I don’t think I noticed a ton of errors, but I did get really tired of the hot steamy sex superceding the romance. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some hot steamy sex scenes.  Love to read them and imagine the specifics, if you will. 

But I get really tired of the characters having sex for pages and pages, then talking for like a minute, then getting it on for pages and pages and pages, then spending a minute declaring their love, which developed for each other BEFORE the book even began, then they hop back into the sack for more sexy lovin’.  Meanwhile, I am wondering how they went from fighting each other or fighting the irrestible mating pull to falling in love.  I really like the falling in love part where characters discover they have FEELINGS for each other beyond lust.  Come on, don’t skip the tender moments where the characters actually connect to each other.  After that, they can hump each other til the cows come home.  Really.

No, Kitty DuCane, most of us just want to read something with grammar at least at the 5th grade level and continuity that can be reasonably followed.  No matter how good a storyteller LL is (and her success mystifies me, even though I’ve tried several of her books), if her books appear to be written by someone’s who is illiterate, it reflects poorly on her.  Has she no pride in a job well done?  You’re not doing her any favors by stating that you’ll buy her stuff no matter how poor the quality is.  Makes you sound like a rabid fangirl who will do anything for her hero(ine), not like an educated reader. I’ll bet you’d think her grocery list is fascinating, too.

Would you be satisfied with a new car with a splotchy paint job, a hole in the muffler, and no windshield wipers?  Sure, it’s missing some stuff and the quality sux, but it’s driveable.

@Crystal
You forgot “tastes like sunshine.”

Gee, I wonder what I’d find if I read any of Kitty DuCane’s work. Because someone sounds seriously defensive.

I’m not a fan either, but not because of the error filled books. She truly believes her readers will forgive her. Readers may be getting wise, though. From what I understand, Jo is having to call in alot of favors to get authors to RAW. After all, who wants to attend a conference where the hostess is drunk the entire time?

Sad to say, I have to agree with Kitty.  I have several friends who are avid readers and have very comfortable budgets for their Nooks and Kindles.  They unashamedly admit they couldn’t spot a grammatical error if it jumped off the page and poked ‘em in the eye.  They see a character’s name as Jessica on one page and Jasmine on the next but it doesn’t register because all they know/care is that it’s that person.

They generally forget a book as soon as they’ve read it, so similarities of plot lines don’t even register.  They are not invested in the story; it’s a pastime, literally.  One woman who has both a Nook and a Kindle (don’t ask me why; obviously she has more money than she needs) read the same book on each about a month apart and didn’t recognize it until another friend gave her the paperback version.  She was halfway through it before her husband pointed out she had it on her ereaders.

The savvy readers are far outnumbered by the others.  Writers like Lora Leigh sell, and the publishers are in the business to make money.  They do not care about the quality of the work as long as it sells.  They will start fixing LL’s writing when it no longer sells.  And then they may decide it’s too much work and they won’t do it at all.  In the meantime, they publish her because she makes money for them.

Please keep the discussion on the work itself—not on the other commenters or on the author’s personal life. Thank you.

I think we all carry some blame, the author for not being careful, the editor for not double checking when they know the author has a history of errors, and the reader for buying bad stuff.

Sad to say, it’s not like this is such a big surprise. Her stories have been consistently riddled with errors and weird plots for the past several books, this 1 happens to be the worst of them all, so far.
It feels like going to a favorite restaurant and find the menu’s been changed, the service and food quality have gotten progressively worse and now I’m at the point where there’s no way I’m wasting my time & money to eat there again.

At the end of the day, it’s Leigh’s name on the cover, she’s responsible for the story she writes. She’s not a rookie author and was producing polished products up until 10+ books ago. Her readers, me included, have been pretty forgiving putting up with her half ass work. Her stories have only gotten worse and worse, but the fact that she’s on a lot of people “auto buy” list haven’t hurt sales one bit. Why should she spend extra time & energy polishing stories when she can laugh all the way to the bank with the unpolished ones?

Well, she’s off My “auto buy” list. I’m not wasting my hard earned money and precious time on her books anymore. There are plenty of authors who do care about what they write, who work tirelessly to make sure they produce polished work to the best of their abilities, book after book after book. I’ll spend my time and money on them instead.

Please keep the discussion on the work itself—not on the other commenters or on the author’s personal life. Thank you.

lookit, Candy and Sarah got themselves another Smart Bitch!

Trust me, there are a lot of readers out there who don’t know or care that there was supposed to be a comma there.

Kitty:  the end result of ignoring the conventions of written language is that it becomes unreadable, impossible to understand at all.  The conventions of spelling and punctuation are the things that enable us to communicate with each other accurately and effectively.  Misplaced commas can quite literally alter the meaning of a sentence. 
Writing is one of the greatest achievements of the human species;  it enables us to communicate with people whom we have never met in real life, people who are now dead, people who lived centuries and even millennia before we were born. This is a magical thing.
We all have a duty to write as well and as correctly as we can, because if we do not, we are slighting the achievements of our ancestors.  For someone who writes professionally, who actually makes her living as a writer, to take a cavalier attitude towards clear and correct writing is unforgivable.

I place blame first and foremost on the author who should send in the cleanest work possible and then the editor and finally the copy editor. There is no excuse for sloppy work especially if I’m paying money for something that is bad. I would want my money returned to me.

They generally forget a book as soon as they’ve read it, so similarities of plot lines don’t even register.

When I think of how I, my fellow authors, and editors toil so hard over getting plots, characters, spelling, continuity and enjoyability exactly so, it’s disheartening to know that Linda’s friends probably constitute the majority of readers (and book buyers.) Fanfic authors tend to complain they’re treated like vending machines, and increasingly, so are original authors. Just so the product hits the spot, the buttons, for the small amount of time it takes to consume it, the ingredients and the effort involved aren’t important.

Why should Lora Leigh change what she’s doing? Sounds like she worked out early on how to put in minimum effort for maximum return, and if you’re in the writing game to make money, that’s the easiest way to do it. The longer you take to write and polish, the fewer books you sell, the fewer books are in your vending machine.

Excuse me while I head off and cut my throat at the thought of the years and years I’ve wasted trying to create something memorable :(

Unfortunately this only adds to the vast pile of evidence which I have accumulated since 2008; namely that the mainstream does not care about what they put out. As long as they have a name to hang it on, and Ms Leigh has a name (albeit one I really haven’t had much contact with), her books will sell even if they are poorly written crap. If you care so little about the story that you cannot keep even the basic character facts straight in your head, why bother to write in the first place? I certainly would not waste my money on such a book. Ms Leigh has been writing for years, after the recent (highly publicised) public meltdown by a first time author over her work’s manifest inadequacies, you would have thought that the mainstream would be more careful when it rushes into print. Clearly this is not the case. Printing this book, in this state, cheapens us all, and it annoys the reading public.

I will still continue to buy her books and enjoy the heck out of them. I’m certainly not one who will throw someone under the bus because she’s successful with errors.

Feel free to read my books. My editors at LI, who I love and can’t do without, work their butts off to polish my work. Instead of reading to enjoy the plot and characters, I’m sure if you try real hard, you can find mistakes. And I personally claim all those errors as mine.

I don’t understand why people would pay money for extremely poor work when they could read better written fan fic for free.

I can’t tolerate poorly written work.  It is distracting, confusing, and ultimately destroys my enjoyment.

If a book is not grammatically correct 99% of the time, I don’t bother.  Also, even minor plot inconsistencies turn me off.  At a minimum a book needs to be grammatically correct and consistent.  Beyond that it also has to have an interesting plot.

I vote with my money and demand a great product.

I am all over the suggestion that those of us with at least a third grader’s grasp of spelling, grammar, and punctuation need to dumb ourselves down so we can enjoy the work of writers who do not meet our lofty standards. 

Remember, kids, the only difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse is a couple of well-placed capital letters.

This is depressing stuff for most authors to read about. Amassing popularity and wealth through incompetence? Why even bother striving for quality when tens of thousands of readers don’t give a rat’s patooty about quality?

As Sarah implied, responsibility for the existence of inferior products rests squarely with consumers. As long as buyers settle for crap, it’s crap they’re gonna get. End of story.

@Kitty DuCane: No one is “throwing Leigh under the bus”. I’ve come to hate that expression because it’s so over-used and in this case it’s worse because it’s not even accurate.

People are saying that she produces bad product and they don’t like it. LL is not a charity or her readers’ buddy or that annoying cousin they have to support because she’s family and what can you do? She’s a person offering a product for sale to the buying public. That product has been consistently poorly made and the quality is getting worse. 

Being annoyed because a product is of low quality and deciding not to buy it as a result is a perfectly reasonable consumer decision. It’s no different than deciding to stop going to a restaurant that has bad food or stop buying a brand of shoes that pinches your feet and has the heel snap off if you put one foot wrong. Acting as if it is, is IMO ridiculous.

@AgTigress & Ann Sommerville, thank you. You both say it so much better than me.

@Kerry Allen, I love you!!!

Remember, kids, the only difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse is a couple of well-placed capital letters.

Kerry, that was the vivid example I was trying to think of, and couldn’t remember!  ;-)

@KittyDuCane, I am sorry, but to put out a piece of work crammed with errors, as this one seems to be, is just insulting to her readers. It says, “people will buy any damn thing, and I can’t be bothered to give them a good experience”. People were quick (and right) to slate the author of that ghastly self-published work for it; Ms Leigh should not expect an automatic pass because she has fame and a mainstream publisher.

Remember, kids, the only difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse and helping your uncle jack off a horse is a couple of well-placed capital letters.

I heart you, Kerry.

I don’t think good grammar and plot consistency are lofty standards.

They are standard, to think they are not affirms the stereotypes about romance novel and readers.  If the very basics cannot be followed, then why complain when the literary value of the genre and the intelligence of its readers are maligned?

Thought you’d all like to know that Midnight Sins reached #11 on the NY Times paperback this week. So, look for pretty much of the same to be published in the future.

As an afterthought, there is an agent whose blog is riddled with misspellings and incorrect homonyms.  I know it is not his job to edit the manuscripts sent to him, but it does make me wonder about his personal sense of quality control.  I know, sometimes when I am commenting and I am irate, I make way more typos.  But I always notice them, don’t you, the second I click the submit button.

I realize now that this statement was meant to be ironic.

I am all over the suggestion that those of us with at least a third grader’s grasp of spelling, grammar, and punctuation need to dumb ourselves down so we can enjoy the work of writers who do not meet our lofty standards.

I also noticed an ‘s’ missing in my previous post.  Oops, what a way to make my point.

Sorry, Kim. I’m well into the “people who write for a living shouldn’t be expected to have an understanding of the fundamentals of written language” drinking game, and adequately conveying tone requires greater cognitive dexterity than that of which I am capable at this present juncture. *hic*

You would think that anyone who has written as long as LL has would have improved over the years. Most people who are serious about their craft, whatever it might be, tend to learn and refine as they mature.

LL hasn’t and that is what annoys a lot of us. It’s a definite slap in the face to her buying public that she just can’t be bothered to try.

It’s a matter of respect. LL should have enough respect for herself and her readers to produce as polished and refined a book as possible. And we, her readers, should have enough respect for ourselves to to demand a quality product.

With all the ways a book can be published today there are so very many to choose from and if authors like LL (and lkh) don’t want to respect their reading public then a lot reading public will be more than happy to give their hard earned book buying money to an author that they feel is giving them the best value.

@KerryAllen stop, please, you’re killing me! I’d offer to get in my car and drive many miles to meet you for drinks, but obviously you’re way ahead of me. Mmmmwahhhh!

Inspiration and good execution are both necessary for any successful work of art. For some people, ideas come easily, but they find the grind of putting them into concrete form tedious.  Others are good at the discipline of crafting something to a high standard, but may find original inspiration elusive.  The ideas are, if you like, a gift of the muse, but the good execution is the result of human HARD WORK, something that anyone can achieve if they can be bothered.

For the sake of argument, if someone wanted to make a living designing and selling hand-knitted clothing, you would expect her ideas and designs to be attractive and distinctive, but surely you would also expect the garments to be neatly knitted, without unintentional dropped stitiches, uneven tension, badly-sewn seams…  However great the concept, if the things were carelessly and sloppily made, they would not sell well.  I find it deeply depressing that some readers do not hold professional writers to the same standards that knitters must reach.

Not care about comma placement? *swoons in horror*

I teach sixth grade, and every year I write these two sentences on the board:

“Let’s eat, Grandma!”

“Let’s eat Grandma!”

Nope, no need for those pesky commas…

I have to admit, if I’m into the story, I don’t notice comma placement either. I think I could tell the difference between “let’s eat, Grandma” and “let’s eat Grandma” based on what else was said. I believe most of us could. I’ve also not noticed if eye color changes or hair color. I would notice a name change, though. I’ve only tried two of LL’s stories and never got past the first chapter of either of them. If I have to read something 3 times and still can’t figure the damn thing out, then there’s a problem.
I agree with some of the others who’ve said they don’t understand her success. I’ve never understood it. I don’t believe that not buying the books will do anything, though. Complain to the publisher. Write letters. Make phone calls. LL may be getting the books in late, but to me, it’s untimately the publisher’s fault for not editing them. If they believe they don’t need to be edited, then someone needs to be fired.

And then there is: “A teacher asks his students to punctuate this sentence: “Woman without her man is nothing.”
The men all write, “Woman, without her man, is nothing.”
The women all write, “Woman! Without her, man is nothing!”

The snopes.com entry for someone seeking this had these additional contributions:
” Woman without, her man is nothing.”
and (my personal fav):
“Whoa, man! Without Herman, I’s nothing!”

I particularly appreciated AgTigress’ defense of the written language.  Magical, indeed.

“Writing is one of the greatest achievements of the human species;  it enables us to communicate with people whom we have never met in real life, people who are now dead, people who lived centuries and even millennia before we were born.”

I don’t read LL books (not my thing), but it seems to me that this market in transition will change all this. As authors decide more frequently to take their product direct to readers, they and they alone will bear the responsibility for the quality of that product. Blame the editor(s)? Not so easy when there isn’t a publishing house to get behind the project. The buck will start and stop with the author. As it should.

@AgTigress - I think the knitting analogy is a good one…but I suspect that we who think of a story as being as concrete a product as a knitted garment are in the minority.  Have you read Primo Levi’s novel Other People’s Trades?  It’s about a chemist who shares stories with a man who builds oil rigs, who thinks that the chemist doesn’t have a “real” job making things.  A lot of the book is arguing first that something constructed at a molecular level (i.e. in a lab) is as “made” as something like an oil rig, and second that writing is ALSO a question of taking building blocks and “making” something.  The oil rigger is ultimately convinced that chemistry is “real” but remains dubious about writing.

I think what Jess said about being able to tell meaning from context is part of the issue; for many people the written word is ONLY a proxy for spoken speech, and thus if “it’s close enough for me to figure out” the product itself doesn’t matter.  Because the product, as such, doesn’t exist.  This also flows into the tendency to blame the editor for “not doing her job” because the author is seen not as someone practicing a craft (like knitting) but as someone communicating without a medium.  Thus, blaming the editor for preventing communication between the author and the reader is like blaming the phone company for static during a phone call.  It’s not that the person I’m listening to isn’t speaking clearly, it’s that the line should be fixed.  (Of course, if the person you’re speaking to is dead drunk and slurring words, and has laryngitis, and a stutter, telling the phone company to fix the line won’t help much.  That may be the case with editing some authors.)

I’ve read good books, mediocre books, and bad books - I’ll finish them all.  However, this was truly horrible. I tried to read the first 10 pages and gave up. I read a few random pages through the book and each one was just as bad as the last… a waste of paper, time and money.

I actually liked Leigh’s Breed series…for awhile. Then the sex was all the same Slot A and Tab Bs. The best book I’ve read by her was Dawn’s book because, oddly enough, characterization was highlighted so that you saw the pain of being a survivor of horrible abuse and the flip side of having to love afar, like her mate did. Hand’s down, I loved it. I’ve read something like 8-10 breed books and a couple of the SEALs. Promptly quit, too. I got to the one before Navarro and said “enough.”

I’m crap at grammar. I always have been. Always will be. Commas and I are far too cozy. It’s just a known quantity and why all my papers are edited by someone else. The thing is? I don’t pretend that it’s going to be perfect, or expect it after edits. What I do is make it the best to my ability. That doesn’t mean I require perfect grammar or zero-errors in a book. I can handle a fair amount actually, but not to detriment of the entire series.

Not being able to label her own time line correctly, of just randomly putting books in and making them shift to fit is not a good read. I love light, airy reads. I ignore porn - never been my thing - but I really love the genetic ideas of Breeds.  (Anyone remember Dark Angel?)  I think it’s a fascinating series that could be made better with a trained eye and dedicated team. But even I was pushed to my limit with Jonas’s book. The whole plot was stupid, ill-conceived, and seemed to turn at the most random corner to find his “mate.” (I still maintain Ely would have been a better match.) But the thing that got me was the fact it wasn’t original. Baddest man in the Breeds…and he’s a big old soft kitty? While being shown in previous books that he had no problem doing what was necessary for the best of everyone.

And it looks like even her grammar, continuity, and sexual positions are no longer avoidable if you’re read any of her previous books. How many times can a man penetrate his mate’s ass? I mean, really. That’s for Breeds and SEALs. It’s not throwing someone under the bus to say “I’ve had enough.” It’s saying, as a consumer whose dollars are in short supply, that I have to be more careful. (The same reason I didn’t love Jaci Burton’s “The Perfect Game” for the e-book price and enjoyment level.) I love reading but I don’t love being thrown out of a story within a few pages. I was so grateful I hadn’t bought Navarro’s book after reading the mess-ups. And I’m even more grateful I gave her up after reading how shoddily the piece was thrown together.

I’m not a writer. I have problems drawing out what I need to say into a story form. Bit too blunt. But I do think that as a writer you’d have to have the steel to handle the cutting up of your piece to bring what needs to be addressed out. To make sure a reader would enjoy it. But maybe that’s just me. Unfortunately, I admire the writers who take the approach and show pride in their work by producing to the best of their abilities and I’m afraid they may be rare now.

@Rebecca:  your comments are very interesting and really convincing. 
Although speech came first, writing is a lot more than drawing a visual diagram of speech to ‘substitute’ for the lack of sound.  In all languages, the form and dynamics, even some of the vocabulary and syntax, of the spoken and written forms are different and complementary. This is more obvious in some languages than others, but even in English, if you heard someone speaking in formal, written English, it would sound stilted, while a formal letter — say, a job application — written in the register of colloquial conversation between friends would seem inappropriate to almost everyone.
In face-to-face speech, we unconsciously augment the actual words with changing tones of voice, expressions, pauses and gestures.  The nuances conveyed by those physical means have to be achieved in writing by word-choice and construction and by punctuation.  Modern Internet emoticons (which are clearly a type of punctuation) developed to help avoid the ambiguities that can cause real misunderstanding:  when one writes ‘;-)’, one is trying to ensure that the reader will know the preceding words are not to be taken literally or seriously.  Ancient, pre-punctuation texts are often hopelessly ambiguous, providing scholars with endless opportunities for study…
I suppose I can just about imagine a really superficial reader not thinking of writing as a craft that has to be practised and honed, but I find it hard to accept that anyone who actually writes for a living could be oblivious to that fact.  Pretty well everything we do in life requires some innate ability, but a lot more in the way of application and practice.

One of the ways that readers might get the publishers of books to take notice of quality issues is to return the book.  This would happen with any other product which was not properly made.  I’m fairly certain that bookstores would reduce their orders of LL’s books if they faced irate customers demanding their money back for these books.  I’m not sure how the NYT bestseller list works (does anybody?), but I believe that it is, in part, based on the orders which bookstores place for a book.  If the bookstores aren’t ordering, then there goes the NYT bestseller list ranking.

@Lynnd.  Probably the most practical and most effective course of action.  Occam’s razor!!

@AgTigress; thanks.  I suppose my attitude comes from being both a writer and a knitter. ;)  Actually, after reading your comment, I looked at the website of Kitty DuCane, who posted earlier in this thread.  I hope Ms. DuCane doesn’t mind if I cite the following from the biography section on her webpage:

I really don’t consider myself a writer. I’m a storyteller. A writer implies that you know your grammar, sentence structure and punctuation.  That’s not me.  There’s probably an error in what I’m typing right now!  A storyteller, on the other hand, weaves a story and then gets help with the writing stuff. So, can anyone be a writer…probably.  Can anyone be a storyteller…absolutely!

I was amused that Ms. DuCane talks of a storyteller “weaving” a story, thus using exactly the same fabric metaphor that you did, but apparently does not see vocabulary and grammar as the warp and weft of her loom.  Perhaps this comes from some Platonic ideal Story, which is transmitted from creator to consumer without any medium at all, neither visual, verbal, nor aural.

Hope this isn’t beating a dead horse.  Ironically, I have to go back and fix a time line problem in my own story at the moment imposed by historical accuracy.  Mumble grumble…damn conflicting secondary sources…grumble…incomplete, unclear translations mumble mumble….ignore the crazy person talking to herself in the corner of the room there. ;)

This is a sad situation. It’s hard for me to realize that an author I like is, by my standards, failing at his job. Especially one who introduced me to a certain genre, like LL did for me and erotic romance. A few weeks ago I reread one of her first novels and while they had some errors, for some reason they didn’t bother me as much. I’m not a grammar expert and I make huge errors and I know I do, English not being my mother language and all. There are of course, some grammar errors that just make me want to pull out my hair. But it’s not those errors that bug me. I remember that in Live Wire I encountered a few errors but I was able to get past those and enjoy the story. What kills my mood are the inconsistencies. It might be harsh, but in my head, characters are like children: a good parent realizes he’s not talking with son/daughter no1 but with no2 or no3. And so an author should never confuse which character did what. A reader is able to do it. I do it all the time with characters I don’t care much about. But an author, once he created a character, shouldn’t do it. So I had a difficult time keeping track with what character did what and why in Midnight Sins. That was one thing that killed me. The other one? The timeline. I didn’t get it. It’s two years later, and then 18 months later and then another 6 months later and then another 2 weeks go by and all the book seems to happen “time later”. Time passes in books, but seriously, it was exaggerated! I liked the idea of the book, the premise. And another thing which might be considered harsh. What is with this military obsession? Don’t get me wrong, I love military romance! I think it’s fun and sexy and hot. But in the last few years, ALL her characters are military guys. With Tempting SEALS and Elite OPs I get it. They’re series about army men. I had hoped that with the new series, we were going to read about something else. It takes a while for me to give up totally on an author. I haven’t reached that point yet with Leigh’s books, maybe because I’m living off a memory. But yes, I think the biggest fault goes on her shoulders. What’s sadder (and if someone else pointed this out, sorry for being repetitive) it’s that she doesn’t seem to accept criticism. All you have to do is go on her forum and you see everyone there ganging up against some readers expressing a negative opinion. It’s so sad, because I do think Lora Leigh is a good writer. She might not be the best, but she’s good one. 

A mistake on her part is taking on so many contracts. I’m an avid reader, so it’s normal for me to want a new book every week from my favorite authors. But I prefer getting one book a year that is flawless than twelve that are full of errors. It’s not about the money I spend, but about the respect I think an author should have for himself/herself, for the art of writing and for the reader.

I gave up on my JR Ward when she had the same problem and inconsistencies in her plots and basically gave the middle finger to her fans. Sadly, I’m giving up on Lora Leigh (ironically, the two are apparently BFFs).

This is a woman who might not have had “clean” books from early on, but they were riveting and had plot and stories that kept me interested and entertained. There have been way too many mistakes of late - not just typos, but entire scenes missing and plots that are rewritten halfway through and characters who have never once been mentioned appearing at crucial plot points.

I will always treasure Mercury’s War and Wild Card and Live Wire and a few others, but I work too hard for my money to give it away for mediocrity and for the last few years, that’s what it’s been. I should’ve stopped with Live Wire (and that’s being very generous because the Elite Ops books in between Wild Card and Live Wire were all awful). Goodbye, Lora Leigh - with the money I save from buying several books a year, I should be able to find one or two authors who care about putting out a quality product.