Rebel Genius: Why I Love Anne Rice

I discovered Anne Rice through Belinda. It is a mesmerizing book, utterly convincing even though it is rather grotesque: it is the story of a 40 year old man in love with a sixteen year old girl. In interviews, Anne Rice said she actually wanted to make the girl fourteen, but her publishers vetoed that idea. The fact that I love this book, and hate the setup, is at the centre of why I love Anne Rice.

Anne Rice is a difficult woman. She has done some unpopular things, such as loudly taking offense to an unflattering Amazon review and recently set her legions of fans on a reader who used a copy of Pandora for a crafts project. These things make Anne Rice appear to be thin skinned, and maybe she is, but they also force me to recognize a certain difficulty in Anne Rice that I can’t help but admire. She causes a ruckus. She refuses to shut up when someone posts a review that she feels is misguided or stupid. If she were an artist, she’d be scrawling graffiti on overpasses and wearing t-shirts that say FUCK THE POLICE. She is a genuine rebel.

In the early to mid-2000s, Rice rediscovered the Catholicism that had so enraptured her in her youth. She became a hard-core Christian. Her website was almost unreadable for all the Jesus-love going on there. She handled her religion as she handled her books: it was in your face, and while there was deep thinking (she is a genuine intellectual), there was also her bedrock certainty that she was correct, and anything less than total agreement was…well, apostasy.

Her son, Christopher Rice, a talented author in his own right, was openly gay and people would ask her questions about how she handled that, considering the Catholic church’s stance on homosexuality. She would answer seriously that she would pray for her son, that she loved her son, but she could not question the authority of the church.

That broke my heart. In that transaction she illuminated an issue that probably many Christian families face. It seemed to me utterly wrong. Your child is your CHILD. And yet she believed that her child was sinning.

I would read her Tweets, hoping she might say something about one of her S&M novels or Lestat, only to be given a Psalm to contemplate or a bland warning not to sin.

Thankfully, that didn’t last long. Just as abruptly as she rediscovered her religion, she totally renounced Christianity. She wrote on her Facebook page that:

I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life.

Those who loved her and believed along with her probably felt some betrayal. She had probably seemed like such a major score for the Lord. But she was as firm in her anti-coviction as she had been in her conviction. But many of us breathed a sigh of relief. Does this mean we’ll get more sex novels? Maybe some more vampires? Whether or not her art would suffer for her beliefs, I was more excited just to get some Facebook updates from one of my favourite authors without worrying that I was going to have to quietly disagree with whatever religious message she had that day.

That whole period, which frankly seemed a bit bizarre from the outside, was valuable inasmuch as it demonstrated her integrity – she was determined to live by her own conscience and nobody else’s.

Another incident comes to mind – the details are barely remembered but I’ll try to get it right. A few years ago, JP Morgan foreclosed on her $3.6 million Rancho Mirage home. She was unapologetic about it and said she wouldn’t stop buying beautiful places to live because she liked beautiful places. It was natural to her to simply see the foreclosure as an inconvenience (at best) and not change her thoughts on the way she ought to live. She wanted what she wanted, and there was nothing that was going to get in her way.

I love that kind of thinking.

All her determination and refusal to accept anything less than what she wants goes into her novels, which are bursting with detail and vividness. They are rich and dense and filling as a flour-less chocolate torte. Only a personality that refused to compromise on her vision could have produced the Beauty books. When she wrote them, her publisher didn’t want to buy them. The publisher had no idea what to make of them. But Anne Rice didn’t tame them, soften them, or allow them to be written by committee in order to make them palpable to the masses. She went to a braver publisher, and sold them exactly as they were written. And they, like the author, are difficult. Not difficult to read but they challenge you. They ask you what you’re afraid of sexually, and why.

Anne Rice lives and writes at the far edge of the bell curve. By rights she should be a minor figure whose appeal is limited. But ironically the fact that she is so committed to her own vision – be it sex slavery or vampires – means she manages to attract huge swaths of readers. She is utterly delightful to read, whether fiction or a Facebook update. She is today’s only living rebel, a genuine feminist who refuses to be anything other than what she wants to be. And she’s a damn fine author. All writers should strive to be as independent-minded and as difficult.

At Any Cost Cover Reveal

I’m super excited about the sleek and sexy new cover for At Any Cost, my romantic suspense thriller featuring a Secret Service agent and his protectee. The release date is May 28. What do you think?

Don’t Let Historical Romance Die

Dear Author recently published a controversial article calling for the death of the historical romance novel. The central idea was that the historical needs to die and be born again into something less predictable and formulaic.

I’ve been mulling over this proposition for a week, trying to figure out how I feel about it. I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t love the idea. I find that with the historicals I love, I found because I want exactly what historicals have traditionally offered: the landed gentry, the restrained courtship of the day, the lovely subtlety that the Regency period in particular provides.

There are some who manage to produce amazing, vivid, beautiful, wrenching novels from these constraints. Authors like Sarah MacLean, Meredith Duran, and Sherry Thomas have lifelong fans in me. They respect the era while also delivering fresh stories. Other authors take the trope and try to infuse a modern sensibility into it and it fails. I’ve read historicals that really should be contemporaries. That’s always frustrating – I pick up historicals because I want historicals, not because I want a revised historical, sterilized of all controversy (i.e., the lack of women’s agency, slavery).

I concede that Regency novels may be overdone. But whose fault is that? The way I see it, if readers craved steampunk historicals or novels about Revolutionary America publishers would publish them.

Maybe authors are locked into the Regency period because that is such a romantic period, the low hanging fruit of lovely dresses, pretty balls, and rich, gallant dukes. Maybe it is lazy, but those books sure do go down easy.

And they’re not just fluff, at least not always. Meredith Duran’s A Lady’s Lesson In Scandal brought to life London’s East End poverty in a way I’ve never experienced before, even through my own research. I actually learned something in that book. I’m not sure I could have really pictured the grittiness of Bethnal Green without that book. That book really stands out as an example of what historical romance can be.

I’m still waiting to find a romance set in the medieval period that would affect me the same way. I’ve read a lot of time travel romance from that era, and it is nearly always disappointing, but that means the market is wide open for both authors and publishers. And how about we move away from England and look at the rest of Europe? I’ve been craving some great French historicals and have found little to satisfy. The rest of the world – from China to the Caribbean – is also untapped. Secrets of Sin by Chloe Harris, an erotic romance, took place in the Caribbean, and while I enjoyed the book, it didn’t feel very historical.

There is a lot of room for expansion and improvement in the genre, but to see it wither before that great reformation? No way. I believe that I will try my hand at a Regency within the next three years. I might not actually succeed at it, but I have an idea brewing and I’d like to try.

I just hope the genre doesn’t die before I get my hands on it.

Sylvia Plath: An Embarrassment of Riches

Two of the three new Sylvia Plath books arrived today. I’m so freaking excited, I can barely stand myself right now.

Book Update

I’ve been really lucky this past week-to-ten days. I’ve read some truly excellent books.

Star Island by Carl Haaisan. Funny and ridiculous. I will read anything he writes.

Shadows at Midnight by Elizabeth Jennings (AKA Lisa Marie Rice). Wow. This was a shockingly good romantic suspense – better than the other Lisa Marie Rice books I’ve read. I loved it. Will definitely read more of her.

Rush Limbaugh, An Army of One by Zev Chafets. A good bio, though I felt like I knew most of the material because Rush Limbaugh is a pretty open guy on his radio show.

Sea Fever by Virginia Kantra. This was the second of the “Children of the Sea” series and I loved it. Her writing is just delicious. So good and so specific. I have bought the rest of the series.

Ten Ways To Be Adored When Landing A Lord by Sarah MacLaughlin. I love her, I will read anything by her, and I loved this funny, smart, sweet follow-up to Nine Rules To Break When Romancing A Rake.

Making Waves by Tawna Fenske. Not my favorite, but very cute. A quick, light read.

And one really bad one:

Ain’t Too Proud To Beg by Susan Donovan. I have a spotty relationship with Susan Donovan’s books. Some of her earlier books are still my favorites. And some are just … not. This one falls into the latter. I found it cliched, unsexy, with a hero and a heroine who are both too stupid to live. I was glad when it was over. I have one more of these books from the Dogwalker series. The first one was a delight. I’m praying the next one follows the trend of the first one, and not this rather unfortunate book.

Zombies and Victorian Lasses, Oh My!

I’m thrilled beyond belief that I just got the ARC for Dearly, Departed, by Lisa Habel. Knowing my recent disappointments with a zombie book, this book sounds absolutely perfect for me. Check out the marketing copy:

Love can never die.

Love conquers all, so they say. But can Cupid’s arrow pierce the hearts of the living and the dead-or rather, the undead? Can a proper young Victorian lady find true love in the arms of a dashing zombie?

The year is 2195. The place is New Victoria-a high-tech nation modeled on the manners, mores, and fashions of an antique era. A teenager in high society, Nora Dearly is far more interested in military history and her country’s political unrest than in tea parties and debutante balls. But after her beloved parents die, Nora is left at the mercy of her domineering aunt, a social-climbing spendthrift who has squandered the family fortune and now plans to marry her niece off for money. For Nora, no fate could be more horrible-until she’s nearly kidnapped by an army of walking corpses.

But fate is just getting started with Nora. Catapulted from her world of drawing-room civility, she’s suddenly gunning down ravenous zombies alongside mysterious black-clad commandos and confronting “The Laz,” a fatal virus that raises the dead-and hell along with them. Hardly ideal circumstances. Then Nora meets Bram Griswold, a young soldier who is brave, handsome, noble . . . and dead. But as is the case with the rest of his special undead unit, luck and modern science have enabled Bram to hold on to his mind, his manners, and his body parts. And when his bond of trust with Nora turns to tenderness, there’s no turning back. Eventually, they know, the disease will win, separating the star-crossed lovers forever. But until then, beating or not, their hearts will have what they desire.

In Dearly, Departed, romance meets walking-dead thriller, spawning a madly imaginative novel of rip-roaring adventure, spine-tingling suspense, and macabre comedy that forever redefines the concept of undying love.

Oh my Gosh, I’ve gone to zombie heaven. I can not wait to read it and of course a full review will be forthcoming.

Galley Reading Stack

I was expecting an Amazon shipment today but it didn’t come. Grrr! Meanwhile I’ve got some yummy reads from NetGalley that will keep me busy:

Fish & Chips by Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux. I think this is the third in the series and I haven’t read the other two so hopefully I’ll know what is going on.

Hide From Evil by Jami Alden. An editor who was interested in my book sent me the ARC for Alden’s last book, Beg For Mercy. It was so good, y’all. So so so good. I loved it – absolutely one of my favorite romantic suspense reads of 2011. So when I saw that Sean was going to get his own story, I had to snap this up. I am almost afraid of reading it – that’s how good I expect it to be. Can’t wait!

Too Wicked To Wed by Cara Elliot. I am reading this one now. Oh my, it is wonderful. I just slide into it like a hot, perfumed bubble bath and enjoy. So good. Full review coming.

A Clockwork Christmas. This will be my first venture into steampunk and I’m excited about it. It’s an anthology. I don’t usually do too well with anthologies because I like the immersive experience, but I was so intrigued by the idea of a steampunk Christmas, I had to grab it.

I’ve requested three others that haven’t been approved yet so hopefully I’ll be able to read and review those as well.

My cup does runneth over. And yet I am itchy for my Amazon books! Gimme gimme gimme!

Books Update

I finished Nine Rules To Break When Romancing A Rake and I loved it! It was the best historical I’ve read in ages – I was truly blown away by the sweetness, the characterization, and the hot hot sexxoring. Oh gosh, I just enjoyed it so much.

I also just finished another 1980s Sally Beauman pre-Destiny Harlequin, The Devil’s Advocate. I was puzzled by this book; it lacked Beauman’s usual pizzaz. Beauman’s classic set up and characterization was in place: young, innocent woman and debonaire, wealthy older man, England and Italy, and the inevitable Big Misunderstanding. There was something oddly lacking though — just not quite enough action and a lot of thinking and pondering.

She uses some of the same lines and same images over and over again, which I actually like. I will read anything I can get my hands on by Sally Beauman.

On Dear Author, Jane reviewed self-pubbed, Working Arrangement, which she pointed out had some striking similarities to another 1990s book, In Bed With The Boss. I downloaded Working Arrangement and Jane bought me a copy of In Bed With The Boss for comparison. I’ll try to write up my findings by this weekend.

I also recently had a book swap with a friend. This was my haul:

A final book note, according to Goodreads, I’ve read 50 books so far this year. 90% are romances.

May Bookstack

I’m also thinking about placing my cookbooks in a small built-in shelf in my kitchen but I’m just not sure it looks right, especially since so far I only have two books. I’ll increase that, no doubt, but I don’t know how I feel about books in the kitchen:

Book Review: Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain by Charlie Cross

Well, now I’m obsessed. To be totally objective, I was hovering on the obsession line for a while. I love Nirvana, and Kurt Cobain specifically, so when I picked up Heavier Than Heaven, I thought I’d just get a better understanding of the subject.

Not so easy. This book reads like a novel. It sucks you in, chomps down on your guts with shark jaws, shakes you around, and then suddenly releases you into the calm black depths of total obsession.

This portrait of Kurt Cobain is not objective and does not seem to be attempting to be objective. But I found the point of view agreeable; it seemed to reinforce my idea of Cobain’s internal workings. There were one or two parts where I could practically hear Courtney Love screaming her editorial suggestions in the background. These parts were just slightly too favorable to her. For instance, when Courtney Love told Vogue that she did heroin while she was pregnant. When Frances was born, she was taken away from her parents for several long weeks. There is a quote about the anti-drug culture that cracked me up because it was so absurd: that there was a “mistaken impression” that one could not be a heroin addict and a good parent. No, sorry, Courtney, it isn’t a mistaken impression. If you’re doing heroin while pregnant, you’re by definition not a fit parent.

In any case, I was very happy when they got Frances back; the love both parents had for the child was evident. The loving commitment and the perfect fit between Kurt and Courtney also surprised me – in many ways they reminded me of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes because they borrowed each other’s lines, sang each other’s songs, and seemed to be deeply compatible. The artistic symbiotic relationship was the hallmark of the Plath-Hughes union. It was a pleasure to read about another similar relationship.

The author takes a few liberties at the very last of the book; he could not possibly know Cobain’s tortured thoughts while he pondered while shooting up and then holding the gun to his mouth. But man, when he did pull the trigger, the words on the page scorched me to the bone, and I wept. I wept for the sweet boy Cobain was, the brilliant artist, the husband and father. I wept because it was a shame to lose it all.

And I wept because, like Plath, I believe that it was inevitable. A date with destiny.

This was a moving, illuminating book. Anyone who loves stories about complex, complicated artists will appreciate it. Those who already like Cobain will be seduced — then obsessed.