Getting ready for the April reread of The Messy Truth About Love. Here’s the scoop set to publish tomorrow:
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Unhealthy Relationships and Romance Books
When I was 18 (this was in the early 1990’s), I was a small town girl living in a very conservative community where God, Family, and Country were the trifecta of life. Everyone had guns and used them for hunting season. It was commonplace to get married young—barely out of high school—to your high school sweetheart. All those beliefs perpetuated year after year. I say this to give you a frame of reference about my perspective at 18. I wanted to go to college, but I was the first one in my family to think about it. We didn’t have a lot of money or know-how about how to get there, but I did think: maybe there’s something else.
One thing I loved: reading.
We had one bookstore and a library. That’s where you could find me if I could find my way to either place.
As an adolescent, my favorite reads were romances. I started with the Sunfire Romances (long live the love triangle) and moved on to Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams books (oh the drama), and eventually I found my way to the adult romances reading Lavyrle Spencer and Judith McNaught (so that’s how sex works). I suspect that these readings shaped my belief system about my identity as it related to “romance” and relationships, though to be fair, I had an excellent model of a respectful relationship between my parents.
Like any adolescent, I was ready to test the waters of relationships, and that’s where things got skewed. My fundamentalist, church background—reinforced by my parents—insisted that I shouldn’t date until I was sixteen. When I did venture into the dating arena, I was given a “purity ring” to reinforce chastity (no sex until there was a “ring on it”, peeps) which also loaded on a heap of guilt when it came to experimentation. Finally, I had this “romanticized” version of what it meant to be in a relationship, and no clarity on what an unhealthy one looked like.
Fast forward to 2022.
I didn’t marry my high school sweetheart. I moved away from that small town. I did get to college by the skin of my teeth and graduated. I did marry my college sweetheart and have been a mother to two amazing kids. I got my masters, have worked with teens, and I still read.
Last year, I read the tiktok, booktok sensation Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover. It’s an entertaining book, and while I’m about to be critical of it; please know that this commentary isn’t a knock on the author or her ability to write a catchy book that draws a reader in. This is not that kind of criticism.
When I finished and set Ugly Love down, I walked away from it with my stomach in knots. At first I couldn’t figure out why. It’s about a young woman in her early twenties who’s starting over in a new place. She’s just gotten a job as a nurse and moves in with her brother as a stop-gap until she can find her own place. Living across the hall is her brother’s best friend. There’s a lot of sexual chemistry between them, and so they both consent to a relationship with “no strings.” Except, like most “sex-only” relationships, feelings happen. What ensues is a story highlighting an often unhealthy and manipulative relationship rooted in emotional bankruptcy and trauma. Like any romance read, it ends with the “happily-ever-after” but after reflecting on what had bothered me about it, I realized I had read a glorified version of “If I stick around, I can fix him”, and I felt so sad for 18-year-old me. Why? That girl would have taken the message to heart. I wouldn’t have been able to separate the “romanticized” ideals with reality, even knowing it was fiction.
Which then made me wonder: how many young women 18+ are reading books like Ugly Love (and believe me when I say there’s a lot of stories like this perpetuating a kind of “I can fix him” message) and taking to heart that message? Being set up to accept abusive behavior in a partner because it’s important to be “committed” or if she just “works harder”, then everything will turn out okay.
When I wrote The Stories Stars Tell, there was catharsis for me—the girl steeped in purity culture—to let go of those unhealthy messages about personal empowerment. I didn’t start the story knowing that was where it ended up. I didn’t start The Messy Truth About Love thinking that I would look at that unhealthy packaging of a relationship as “normal” and deconstruct it by reinforcing a healthy relationship. But that’s where it went.
And so that’s what I hope readers are able to take away from The Messy Truth About Love. Sometimes we don’t know we're in an unhealthy situation until we’re able to step out of it and look back as we walk away. And maybe, just maybe, The Messy Truth About Love will be the story someone needs to see their own situation or prevent one. I can hope.
3 Things I Learned About Reading Space Opera
I made mention of sci fi and dystopian in an earlier post (click here for that), but I’m circling back specifically considering the space opera. As a definition, space opera as a category is a story set in outer space that is typically simplistic in nature and dramatic. The most famous space opera: Star Wars. Nebulous futures, scientific explanations about flying through space, the end of the human race, robots, artificial intelligence, heroes who need to save the day. You get it, right? And with my focus on The Ring Academy: The Trials of Imogene Sol—which is most definitely a space opera—and its impending release, my mind is a bit preoccupied in this category.
So look…a lot of the same lessons I’ve mentioned from earlier posts apply here, but rather than be repetitive, here are three new ideas to twist the lesson which can be applied to any category of writing.
Asking the Right Questions
Read any info heavy science fiction novel (ah hem… Dune…) and you’ll understand that just like a fantasy story, it’s easy to get caught up in the minutiae of the information that defines the story. The problem, of course, is information dumping and information overload (which I’ll cover in a moment). This turns off most readers. What great writers in the category do well is parcel out information that is relevant to the necessary questions. Of course a reader has questions about the world, but not all the questions are necessary to the story. Not all of them fill in the gaps of the plot hole. While the author has a lot of the questions answered, that doesn’t mean the story needs all of them answered. The trick is identifying which ones need to be answered for the sake of the story.
One of my favorite dystopian writers is Paolo Bacigalupi (Ship Breaker, The Drowned Cities, and Tool of War). The cool thing that Bacigalupi does that I’ve seen some of my favorite fantasy writer’s employ is drop the reader right into the world and unfold the world around them as if the reader is already a member of the society. I LOVE this technique. A perfect literal example of this technique is The Maze Runner by James Dasher. The reader is Thomas dropped into the maze having to learn on the fly what’s what and how he fits in. The pros of this is that you avoid the pitfall of the info dump, and like the character, the reader uncovers the world and the conflict as they go.
There is inherent danger in losing the reader when an author embarks on information overload. I get the temptation to include all the cool things developed in world building, but just because it exists, doesn’t mean it’s relevant to the narrative arc. Well-written books in this category recognize this and employ an “as needed” methodology by understanding which questions need to be answered.
Which leads to the next point…
The Structure (the world and creatures)
Space opera (which encompasses Sci Fi/Dystopian) writers build worlds like fantasy writers, but then they destroy them. There is a methodology to this madness of course, even if they make it look effortless. But then consider that a wonderful fantasy story’s world is important to overall conflict from political machinations to traditions and systems impeding a hero’s journey. In Sci Fi/Dystopian the structure of the world and its demise is often the narrative architecture around which the conflict is built.
It’s clear when we enter habitat with Mark Watney in The Martian by Andy Weir, the structure of not only the immediate place is a functional place, but also that as a reader, the structure of the story is about survival. We are surviving with Mark, we are invested in his success, in the tension between learning he will connect with NASA. Or as we siphon through the missives of World War Z, the means by which author Max Brooks structured the novel makes it necessary to understand the hows and whys and what-fors in order to understand the movement of the narrative. The world, the creatures (think Alien) are so integral to the story, they can’t be removed or changed without impacting the overall narrative structure becoming a character in and of themselves.
Which then leads to:
Reader Story Interface
It might be easy to develop a story in this category so high above a reader’s understanding that it becomes inaccessible. But strong writer’s of this category make sure that the average reader is as much an expert as the scientist character or the super computer. Isaac Asimov is a great example of this. A very talented scientist (physicist), he was a pioneer in the science fiction realm of writing, making science fiction accessible (check out his Foundation series).
And really, that’s what any category is about right? Making the narrative accessible to the reader so that they fall in love with the story.
Favorite Reads of 2021 So Far
We’re (almost) halfway through 2021. Wait. What.
This means I’m also halfway to my reading goal of reading 100 books this year, stacking in at 53 reads so far. Nice. I figured that meant it would be a good time for a Favorites so far. Here they are:
My favorite Books I’ve read in 2021 So Far …
Anxious People by Fredrick Backman is awesome. The story follows the lives of several different characters in a crime that goes terribly wrong. I struggled initially and even thought I would abandon the book because of the multiple point of view, but once I was hooked, I was hooked. It’s both poignant tear jerker and laugh out loud funny. One of my best reads ever.
Fable & Namesake by Adrienne Young is a YA duology that follows Fable in this pirate inspired fantasy. Hiding her power as a gem mage, Fable needs to find her way to her father who didn’t want her. She doesn’t expect to find a family in the process. I loved the originality of this world.
Paradise, WV by Rob Rufus releases this summer (July), and I was fortunate to get to read an early copy. It’s a wonderful story of several characters caught amidst a crime spree happening in their small town that is reminiscent of a serial killer behind bars who committed crimes years before. Mystery, coming-of-age, and family saga, Paradise, WV was a wonderful ride that I couldn’t put down.
Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse is an epic adult fantasy influenced Native Americas cultures. It took me a while to get into the story because of the multiple points of view, but once I was invested it was a quick and adventurous ride to the end. The heroes and the villains aren’t always clear which makes for a very intriguing read.
Frankly in Love by David Yoon is a wonderful and well written YA novel that follows Frank Li on his journey through his last year of high school, his first experience of falling in love, and his struggle to reconcile his Korean heritage with his American roots. Loved this read.
Charming As a Verb by Ben Philippe is another wonderful YA novel exploring themes of diaspora, socio-economic disparity and race. Henri Haltiwanger is working hard to achieve his dreams, but when he takes matters into his own hands, he has to decide how far he’s willing to go to make his dreams happen and face the consequences when he does. Well written with awesome characters. Really enjoyed this story.
Ever After Always by Chloe Leise is an independently published RomCom. The third book in the Bergman Brothers series, this is about a Bergman sister, Freya, who’s marriage is falling apart. Can she and her husband, Aiden put it back together before it’s too late? I loved this story, and the healthy way it presents marriage. I have enjoyed each book in this series and am looking forward to the fourth installment which publishes later this year (September).