One thing I have noticed in the past year or so is that the more romance readers are online speaking with one another, the faster we all get a working understanding of the publishing process. We learn more about how a book is produced, in other words, the more we speak with writers, editors, and publishing professionals.
Remember Navarro’s Promise, where the promised sex scene was entirely missing? That scene is available as a download on her site.
But alas, it seems the error-filled Lora Leigh books continue: the reviews for her latest book, Midnight Sins, are cringeworthy.
But what is interesting is that some reviewers spread the blame for the terrible finished product across several parties, including the editors and the publisher.
She screws up ages, details, names & relationships to such an extent that the story is incomprehensible….
There are just too many more errors—I counted 78 in the entire book—almost 3 a page. She can’t keep Rafe’s height correct – he’s 6’3”, no he’s 6’2”.
And where the heck did the villain come from? Never met him, never heard about him, just appears in the last 10 pages.
Not going to bother reading Lora Leigh anymore until someone actually begins editing her books.
I am just about fed up with the inconsistencies in the time line. One minute it’s been five years since they’ve been together, the next it’s been two. Or it’s been twelve years since her sister was killed, the next it’s eleven. I have to stop and think of the back story in order to figure out what they mean.
And the editing job is awful. There are quotations in the middle of statements and missing commas. It forces me to stop for a second and try to figure out what is being said or done. Instead, I should just be able to flow through the story.
Overall, it had the potential to be a really good story. I think the editors dropped the ball when they should have caught this stuff before it was released.
If you are a fan of Lora Leigh you know her mistakes in her books are getting worse. And I’m not even going to hold it against her editors completely. I mean seriously? This is her career…one would think she would have a bit more pride in what she is putting out there. It is the editors job to cach mistakes here and there but they shouldnt be expectd to hold Ms. Leighs hand the whole time and watch over her shoulder to catch her huge mistakes. Thats her job. Its her story. She should darn well know the timeline of when things happen in her books. I really dont think I have the patience to ever read another of her books. There are just to many other authors out there who actually care about their writing and want to share a great well written story.
It’s like her editor was drunk. We’re not talking typographical errors…this is BAD. The storyline is all over the place, pieces are repeated over and over and then they change at a moment’s notice. Not just once or twice but throughout the whole book. It had a decent premise but it was dropped and jumbled up. I checked and fortunately Ms Leigh did not dedicate this book to her editor.
I wonder if there should be a raffle, like guessing the total number of jelly beans in a big ass jar, only in this case, guess the total number of continuity, editing, and grammar errors in the book.
Currently there are 16 1-star reviews, and six 2-stars on Amazon. Over at Barnes & Noble, there is a mix of 1-star angry reviews and squeeing 4 and 5 star reviews. Many of the 1-star reviews are angry and wonder what the hell happened. Some place more blame on the editor than on the author, and some vice versa. Still others absolve the writer, saying the editors should have caught the errors before the book went to print.
It is, in a word, embarrassing.
So who is at fault? My guess: everybody. My theory, based on unrelated conversations and a heaping spoonful of conjecture, is that Leigh turned in a manuscript that was likely extremely late, and it was full of the errors described above. But because the publisher had already sunk serious money into the promotion and marketing for the slot in the calendar in which her book was scheduled, they couldn’t reschedule her book to allow for editing. Plus, because it’s Lora Leigh, her books will sell on her name alone.
In short: better to make money on a flawed and terrible product than lose money and attempt to improve it.
What’s really freaking sad is that Leigh has an active interest, it seems, in connecting with her fans. She hosts the RAW Reader Appreciation Weekend every year, connecting authors and readers for four days in October, and authors I’ve spoken with say they love attending and meeting readers in an intimate gathering like that. Leigh also hosts a monthly book club in Hagerstown, Maryland, with a potluck and what looks to be, judging from the time reserved, one hell of a long-running and active discussion. That’s a tremendous amount of effort to make to connect with fans.
That effort is pretty awesome – and so I’m baffled as to why Leigh’s books themselves continue to be an utter embarrassment of errors. And, judging from the reviews, so are her readers.
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.
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 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.