We’re overdue some fun with fictional stereotypes. What would happen to the characters we all know and love if literary genres collided? What if a tortured Romantic Hero were to dwell in tension-filled ennui with the moribund overthinker that is the Literary Fiction Protagonist?
In what will resound through the world as a shock move, I divide this post in two to ask: when is a 5-star review not a 5-star review, and why should they be banned? Then I attempt to completely subvert the laws of physics by asking you for ADVICE. Pop something bubbly. This may never happen again.
I want to blow my mind with a book, but the publishing world is consistently offering me the literary equivalent of aspirin. Unfortunately, what I want doesn’t seem to fit into those narrow marketing categories which now dictate everything we read. Don’t they know that the biggest blockbusters of the last few decades didn’t fit in either, and that’s kind of the bloody point?
3 Writers enter Mr McGuffin’s Plot Device and Writer Unblocking Emporium in dire need of help. Will Mr McGuffin be able to save the tragic lovers of the romance novelist? What’s in the bloodstained suitcase? Just what is going on with the world’s most mysterious dog? And how long can one pun be stretched out over an entire blog post? Click the bait to find out.
Why is Young Adult Fiction pigeon-holed into a daftly narrow age category? If so-called General Fiction is a mirror held up to society which helps us to cope with what we are – how better to do this, than to look at ourselves while we are becoming what we are? But don’t worry, it’s not all serious. Or perhaps it all is, except for that last sentence. Hmmmm.
I am sick to the back teeth (ew) of people going on about ‘grip-lit’. Not the genre. The term. We can’t get rid of it. We can only try to outshine it. For that reason, Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you Wick-Lit, Flip-Lit and Crick-Lit. Go forth with them, and prosper.
I did my review of 2015 last January, because I was confident that I would be far too busy in December with things I hadn’t made up yet. At the time, I was fairly certain I’d be flat out right now with glittering parties, dazzling the hoi-polloi with my witty repartee. Sadly, I had to ditch that in…
Tara Sparling writes 