Book Review

Walkin’ Dusty Roads of Metaphor

DNF

Title: Walkin' Dusty Roads
Author: Ken Potter
Publication Info: eXtasy Books 2010
ISBN: B0040GJAJC
Genre: Erotica/Erotic Romance

Book CoverHere at Smart Bitches, I am not one to shrink away from a metaphor. In the past few years, both Candy and I have employed a metaphor, and by “employed” I do mean “beaten into the ground with overuse and obviousness.” Our use of metaphor is completely, and utterly lame compared to some of the opening lines of this novella.

Here, have the plot summary provided by the publisher in the opening pages:

Dusty Roads is a drifter whose down-to-earth
cowboy work ethic has landed him a job in a
Carolina power plant. Honey Barnes is the plant’s
lone but feisty female boss fighting to succeed
despite resistance in a male-dominated workplace.
Both are tormented by tragedies from their
past…tragedies they were helpless to stop. When
a workplace situation evolves into what both
recognize as a potential catastrophe, they are
thrown together by the chance to avert disaster
and find redemption. In the process, their
irresistible attraction for one another turns into the
passionate love that has long eluded them.

That’s right, Dusty Roads and Honey Barnes.

I receive a good many submissions to read and review, from novellas to epic novels that make my inbox attachment folder cry. I usually try to read the first few pages to see if the material grabs my attention. This experience I had to share with you. Why?

The opening paragraph stopped me cold. Mostly because it is two sentences long, but oh, what sentences they are. Here is where I resolve never to use another metaphor or simile again, because clearly I don’t know what the hell I am doing.

Honey would sometimes think of Dusty, and it was like she twisted a dial and opened a steel door to a safe in her heart where she kept her grandest
jewels—bittersweet memories, surrounded by a poignant moat. Some were vivid as fallen red bougainvillea petals, while others drifted by aimlessly, as vague and faded as old photographs in a dark flooded cellar.

I feel like I’m watching one of those informercials about educational programs guaranteed to improve your memory. Safe! Jewels! Poignant moat! Petals! Photographs! Flooded cellar! French drains! Homeowner’s Insurance! Flood Policy!

Wait, I went too far, though perhaps the safe of memories in Honey’s mind could use some additional riders in the event of a flooded poignant moat.

Regardless of the flood plain, however, that many metaphors is not advisable in any circumstance. Really. It’s just too much.

 

The metaphor-palooza comes to an end with other memories in Honey’s opening recollections:

The safe contained her sixteenth birthday party at the secluded cove she had discovered at Jordan Lake—the one Taylor laughingly called the Honey
Hole. She swam in her sheer undies, staring curiously from the corners of her green eyes while the guys went skinny dipping. Her large breasts floated on the water, the wrinkled, brown, quarter-sized areolas visible through the sheer lace bra.

Yes, that does indeed say “Honey Hole.”

No, wait, I’m wrong: there are more metaphors and similes that crash into one another like cars on the needles of a pine tree swaying in the gale force winds of my attempts to oxygenate my reeling brain, which was reeling like a pine tree swaying in the gale force winds. (How am I doing? Yeah, really, I can’t keep up and need to just quit, right?).

Dusty would strut out to the front of her mind like he owned the place, smiling, dismissing all the other memories like slamming the door on an annoying salesman. That was how she always saw him. That genuine smile that came from his heart, his gentle blue eyes belying his big, gruff exterior. Dusty’s smile could stop a charging pit bull in its tracks. And if that didn’t work, his hands were big and strong enough to snap its neck like a chicken’s.

Aaaaand that’s where I stopped. Dogs with broken necks. Yeah. I’m done. I wish I had the fortitude to keep going, but I am clearly a weak and shameful individual that I cannot persevere in the face of moats, honey holes, brown floating nipples and unfortunate dogs.

I tried, though – literally AND metaphorically.

 

Comments are Closed

  1. zinemama says:

    Now, that’s the sort of writing (your review, not, god forbid, the book) that keeps me returning to this site. Thanks for the laughs!

  2. Faellie says:

    From the sounds of it, Sarah, you need a new grade which takes the review scale another step beyond “Did Not Finish”.  How about “Barely Started, Threw Across Room Disgustedly”?

  3. Leslie Mendoza says:

    From the sounds of it, Sarah, you need a new grade which takes the review scale another step beyond “Did Not Finish”.  How about “Barely Started, Threw Across Room Disgustedly”?

    You mean: BS-TARD?

    This whole column winz the webz today lol!

  4. Diva says:

    I kept thinking, from the excerpts, that they were possibly trying to sell a yeast infection cream? Or maybe it just made me feel as icky as if I needed such a treatment.

    The Honey Hole really jerked at my gag reflex like the thick stench of rancid six day old tuna salad whose fishy rankness clogs the back of your throat and makes your eyes tear up faster than peeling a firm juicy onion.

    captcha “bad19”=that was 19 kinds of bad.

  5. MightyJesse says:

    I was laughing so hard I was weeping, and could not read the comments all in one go, due to the tears of mirth and snot of joy that was flowing freely down my face.

    I love you ladies (and possibly a few gents.). Your wit and sarcasm win at the intarwebs every day.

  6. jayhjay says:

    The Honey Hole really jerked at my gag reflex like the thick stench of rancid six day old tuna salad whose fishy rankness clogs the back of your throat and makes your eyes tear up faster than peeling a firm juicy onion.

    Ha!

  7. Kitala says:

    The first excerpt made me cross-eyed trying to wade through all those metaphors, and the “Honey Hole” part made me feel dirty by giving me the mental image of a 16 year old girl in wet, sheer underwear.

  8. sydneycarroll says:

    And, Jordan Lake is a real place! You can actually go there and let your wrinkled brown, quarter-sized areolas float free.
    Verisimilitude is the bromeliad plant that harbors myriad tiny metaphors like mosquito larvae in its mysterious, piongnant depths. In the rainforest of the heart.

  9. Amy says:

    Not only is Jordan Lake a real place, it’s right next to 1.5 million people in the Triangle area (Chapel Hill, Raleigh, Durham) in North Carolina.  Lots of people camp and hike there (and hunt in parts) so I’m not sure I want my areolas floating free.  ;P

    And there are in fact, at least 2 power plants near the southern end of Jordan lake, one being a nuclear power plant.  (They also are currently belated installing a small hydroelectric turbine at the dam at the end of Jordan lake.)  The nuclear plant is on Harris Lake, not Jordan, but you can see the plant from it’s southern tip.

    One would assume the crisis is some sort of nuclear one??? (Not that I’ll be reading it either to find out. The idea of any cowboy in this area of the country, let alone one named Dusty Roads makes my brain hurt.)

    I’ll take a guess the author is somewhere from the triangle area.  Or maybe passed through it once.  Gets a D for research, I guess. ;p

  10. sydneycarroll says:

    I’ll take a guess the author is somewhere from the triangle area.  Or maybe passed through it once.

    Or maybe is a CP&L employee? I could say something about a turbine-ralated areola accident, but I’ll refrain. It would be in poor taste.

  11. sweetsiouxsie says:

    Thanks for today’s entertainment!!! ;-D

  12. Kecen Zhou says:

    The writing reminds me of an old fanfiction of mine. People who read it thought it was good. Bah, not the most discerning tastes. And it also reminds me of other fanfiction I’ve read. Purple prose, definitely.

  13. Sandra says:

    @Amy:

    I’ll take a guess the author is somewhere from the triangle area.  Or maybe passed through it once.  Gets a D for research, I guess. ;p

    Well, they do say, “write what you know”.

    Not to thread jack, but does Jordan Lake have anything to do with one Michael Jordan who attended UNC, once upon a time? I don’t know anything about the lake, but from your description, I assume its a TVA reservoir?

    I used to work for a company that had an office in RTP, and spent quite a bit of time there some years ago. Nothing to do in the evenings but explore. I love Chapel Hill. Wonderful little UBS’s stuck in odd corners. The whole area’s just beautiful, floating areolas not included.

  14. Betty says:

    Dusty’s smile could stop a charging pit bull in its tracks. And if that didn’t work, his hands were big and strong enough to snap its neck like a chicken’s.

    OMG..I could not stop laughing….how in the hell is this suppose to be romantic/attractive or anything? I can’t believe this shit got published.

  15. Karen says:

    You know, I think even Joan Wilder wrote better for Angelina and Jesse.

  16. AgTigress says:

    If you look at the Amazon.com page for this book, you will see that the one reviewer so far gives it five stars, and is particularly enchanted by the wonderfulness of the language.  So there is evidently an eager market out there for vast, teetering heaps of superimposed metaphors.

  17. Either that or the 5-star reviewer was the author himself…

    I wish I’d found this review yesterday instead of now. It’s very early in the morning here, and I haven’t had sufficient wake-up time to be able to cope with the overabundance of metaphors and purpleness. It may affect my writing for the day.

    I wonder what my editor would think if I described my heroine’s areolae as “brown and wrinkled”?

  18. Barbara says:

    Well, just no.  I can’t even.

    You know there was some bad porn in there though if you’d have continued.  Lots of gushing silken rivers like heated South American rain forests with monkeys screaming and piranhas biting.  The sexual metaphors alone might – might – be worth the price of admission.

  19. Lee Rowan says:

    Ow.  Ow.  Ow.

    Finished or not, you should get hazardous duty pay for this one.

    And this, boys and girls, is why some folks turn up their noses at romance….

  20. Amy says:

    Not to thread jack, but does Jordan Lake have anything to do with one Michael Jordan who attended UNC, once upon a time? I don’t know anything about the lake, but from your description, I assume its a TVA reservoir?

    Nope, it’s named after Senator B. Everett Jordan, the guy who actually got it’s construction through Congress.  It was meant both as a wildlife/fishing preserve and flood control.  The turbine was a complete afterthought, and I’m not sure that it’s really economically viable given how long they took to install it. 😉

    The whole area’s just beautiful, floating areolas not included.

    LOL – it is beautiful.  Lots of people and growing, but growth has been managed and planned reasonably well.  Lots of parks and greenways still abound and of course, there’s always Jordan Lake.  *grin*

  21. Fiamma says:

    I am late to the party on this but this excerpt had me dying!!

    “Dusty took her in like a vista, her full, round breasts straining for freedom like corralled wild horses.”
    http://www.extasybooks.com/index.php?page=shop.product_details&flypage=ebook_flypage&product_id=8886&category_id=31&option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=50

    How on earth does this crap get published???

    Image word: needed92 Someone needed 92 more brain cells to haul this off to the slush pile.

  22. Karin says:

    I kept reading that as “pregnant moat”.

  23. Margaret says:

    Karin, don’t feel bad.  I kept reading it as ‘pregnant moat’ as well.

    Metaphore abuse, like thesauraus abuse, should be banned.  Just as it is possible to so drown your writing in urple it starts creeping into the ultra-violet spectrum, it’s possible to include so many metaphores that no one has any idea what you’re trying to say. With judicious use, they can actually help make the story clearer to the reader.

    And then there’s this twit, who never uses one word where half-a-dozen (or more) will suffice.  It’s like being strangeled by a Kunzu vine (albeit a metaphorical one).

Comments are closed.

↑ Back to Top