Remission

I get to announce today the happy news that Cocoa has been off insulin for 14 days and is, accordingly, officially in remission! I'm of course consulting the diabetic cat group that tbh provided better advice than my vet did about next steps, but omg yay!

It's very rare that at her age and with her constellation of nasty chronic medical conditions, I have anything resembling good news, so I'm going to celebrate this for as long as I can.

Reading Wednesday

Currently reading: The Unspoken Name by A.K. Larkwood. Almost done this behemoth. Obviously there's enough in it that I'm liking to keep me going through *checks* 464 pages, but it is a mess that did not cross the desk of a structural editor. Since this is the author's first novel, I am both inspired and a little jealous.

Like, the worldbuilding is so cool! The concept is great! I like the characters. I buy the romance insofar as I buy any kind of romance in most genre novels, and at least the two characters have something in common besides being pretty, so that's good. But it's a plot-heavy novel without the kind of pacing that makes that work.
Let's talk about some trends I've noticed, particularly in fantasy writing, as of late:

1) This novel clearly had a great pitch, and the publisher must have figured that people will pick it up based on the back cover description. This is true, by the way. I read Gideon the Ninth because "lesbian necromancers in space" is a brilliant concept even though it was at least one editorial pass short of what I would expect from the publisher, and because the cover was stunning. Similarly, "lesbian orc assassin," also a fantastic concept, and I am here for it, but did anyone edit this thing? I don't think so. It needed to be 100 pages shorter and lose at least two characters, maybe more. I'm also still mad that some authors get to switch POVs mid-chapter and I'm not allowed to.

2) The first few chapters are awesome. These have been extensively workshopped. Not so much the rest. See also, Plain Bad Heroines. Great start, too bad about a mushy middle and a meh ending.

3) Shitty endings, which I'm pretty sure this is heading towards. In the last 60 pages, there is a plot point that I would have queried and kept on the author until she changed it, gave me either a satisfactory explanation as to why our villainess would behave this way, or at least hung a lampshade on this nonsensical plot point.

I don't know if this is more egregious in queer sci-f-/fantasy books or just that I read a disproportionate amount of queer sci-fi/fantasy and that's what I'm writing, so I'm more aware of it. The shitty endings are universal in a lot of lit fic too, though.

I still have like 40-50 pages left, so maybe there will be a reason why ( spoiler )

Look. Tor. You need to hire a substantive editor. The fewer fish in the pond, the more remaining publishers are getting away with some sloppy-ass practices.