K.J. Charles's Blog, page 18

Magpie Lord vs Captive Prince: extra DABWAHA bribery!

The Magpie Lord is through to round 3 of DABWAHA, which means it will be facing up to Captive Prince by CS Pacat. Voting will be 28 March, 00.00 to 11.59 CST, or 5am-5pm GMT. Vote here then.

Let’s face it, this isn’t going to be pretty. Captive Prince has a huge and well-deserved adoring audience – I love the first two books, have fangirled the author myself, and can’t wait for vol 3. It’s a great read that stands a really good chance of winning the whole contest. And it has already beaten Abigail Roux and Joanna Chambers in the first two rounds, which is company I’m proud to get kerbstomped in.

All that said, buggered if I’m going down without a fight.

It’s bribery time!

I have already promised a Lucien and Merrick story from Shanghai days. That is happening. But, my additional bribe to scrabble together votes in round 3…

There is a passage from Magpie Lord that a lot of readers have talked about. Stephen asks Lucien why he has seven magpie tattoos.

“Whim. I was being forced to have a very large and expensive tattoo, and it seemed a change from the usual dragons and carp. I rather liked it, as it turned out, so I added more.”

“…forced to have a tattoo?”

“It’s a long story.”

If I win round 3, I will tell you that long story. It involves mayhem, Merrick, magpies, and a very steep learning curve for a young and stupid Lucien.

That’s what I’ve got. Bring it on, Captive Prince. I can take it.

/winces/

Vote for Magpie Lord here (please?) on 28 March, 00.00 to 11.59 CST, or 5am-5pm GMT. No need to register, it takes 5 seconds, and every vote counts (to me, anyway). Thanks!

DABWAHA round 2 won – thank you everyone!

The Magpie Lord is through to round 3 of DABWAHA.

I’m up against a highly respected author with a twenty year career, and this is my debut novel, so, um, help!  Please vote here if you feel so inclined (dabwaha.com). And if you happen to have a partner, few friends, pub gang, entire rugby stadium/international trade fair full of people who you can persuade to vote for me, that would be nice, obviously. (This is a no holds barred contest, actively encouraging all sorts of cheekiness including multiple voting, recruitment and bribery. You’d be amazed.)

My contest bribe is a free story about one of Lucien and Merrick’s adventures in Shanghai, with chaos, adventure, magic and romance. (Romance for Merrick, that is. Yep, going there.) This is *on*.  I will raise the stakes for round 3…

So, vote for me ! And, you know, feel free to ask everyone in your family/office/pub to vote for me too.

Still promo. I know. This is kind of a massive deal for me, though.

DABWAHA game on: bribery is go!

The DABWAHA voting has begun and The Magpie Lord needs your vote!

Voting in my bracket (bracket 4) is open Friday 21, 12.00-23.59 CST, ie for 12 hours from 6pm (I think) in the UK.

It is perfectly within the spirit of the contest to beg or bribe for votes, multiple vote, get your friends to vote, trash talk your opponents, blackmail people, kidnap their puppies, etc. I’m not actually sure if this is a book contest or some kind of psychology ethics experiment. If the latter, I fail, because here’s my bribe:

If I get to round two, I will commit to writing a free story about one of Lucien and Merrick’s adventures in Shanghai, with chaos, adventure, magic and romance. (Romance for Merrick, that is. Yep, going there.)

In the unlikely event I win round two (ie get into the final of the GLBT category) I will raise the stakes…

So, vote for me on Friday afternoon/evening!

Oh, and if you’re wondering who else to vote for in the other brackets, I suggest Provoked by Joanna Chambers, because a) it’s fabulous and b) she will do a hilarious romance pastiche as bribe, and you want to read that.

 

Still promo. I know. This is kind of a massive deal for me, though. 

Bribery and corruption: will write for votes!

The DABWAHA (Dear Author Bitchery Writing Award for Hellagood Authors) tournament voting begins on 20 March. The Magpie Lord is one of the contestants, and I need your votes as flowers need rain/Justin Bieber needs a good hard look at his life choices.

Basically this is a tournament of romance novels with six rounds of voting. Books are paired up and you have to vote for one in each pair. (Me! Me!)

To say it’s competitive is understating things. I need your votes. And am allowed/encouraged to offer inducements for them. So, vote for me or I change the ending of Flight of Magpies and kill them all!

No, wait, that’s a terrible idea. OK, here we go, my hostage to fortune:

If I get to round two, I will commit to writing a free story about one of Lucien and Merrick’s adventures in Shanghai, with chaos, adventure, magic and romance.

In the unlikely event I win round two (ie get into the final of the GLBT category) I will raise the stakes…

All you have to do is vote for me! And get your friends, colleagues, loved ones and milkman to vote for me. And keep voting for me in lots of rounds. Go on, you know you want to really. (Please?)

If you dropped by for writing talk/publishing snark, and have no idea if you want to grant me your vote (you do!), you could check out the following freebies:

The Smuggler and the Warlord (a short story of Merrick and Crane in China)

Interlude with Tattoos (a story set after the end of Magpie Lord)

Butterflies (a Victorian occult horror story from The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal)

Remnant (another Simon Feximal story written with Jordan L Hawk)

Oh, and if you’re wondering who else to vote for in the other brackets, I suggest Provoked by Joanna Chambers, because a) it’s fabulous and b) she will do a hilarious romance pastiche and you want to read that.

Click here to vote on 20 March!

I promised it would be back to normal service and it’s still all promo. Sorry about that, it’s a bit fraught.

Self promo, bribery and free stuff (a post about me)

I hate self-promo. So do you. Therefore, be warned that this post is an update on me and what I’m writing/doing, rather than writing advice or publishing snark, and feel free to run away. (Although there’s a free story, if you make it that far.)

Big award nomination news

The Magpie Lord is a 2014 DABWAHA (Dear Author Bitchery Writing Award for Hellagood Authors) Finalist. This is totally the best possible name for an award and I am delighted and honoured. Even better is that it’s up there with Joanna Chambers’ wonderful Provoked, which is one of my top three of last year. DABWAHA is run by Dear Author and Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, two of the best blogs, so this is a big deal and I am very thrilled.

There are several rounds of voting starting 18 March, and apparently it’s kosher for me to offer bribes. Cool! So stay tuned for shameless offers of…something. Feel free to suggest what in the comments. Not money, or my children, otherwise I’m game. I’m thinking a free short story, open to suggestions as to what you’d like to see, or I’ll come up with something next week.

Remnant (free story!)

I’m a big fan of Jordan L Hawk’s Whyborne & Griffin series, occult mystery/romances set in 1890s America. As it goes, I’ve written a couple of stories in that time period myself, featuring Simon Feximal, a British occult detective, and his lover/narrator Robert Caldwell. Therefore, once Jordan’s characters decided to head to Egypt via London for W&G book 4, it all came together like peaches and cream. Or, more accurately, like the Titanic and the iceberg.

Remnant (cover once again designed by ubertalented Susan Lee) is a mystery starring all four occult investigators: Simon, Robert, Whyborne and Griffin. Jordan and I wrote it in alternate chapters, with a lot of transatlantic evil cackling, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we did. It’s available on Smashwords and ARe right now, and it’s free, so dig in.

Non-Stop Till Tokyo

And now for something completely different: I have a contemporary romantic suspense thriller coming out in April. Kerry is a hostess in a Tokyo bar, drifting along in a sea of generous tips, until she is framed for the murder of a yakuza boss. She’s soon trapped in rural Japan, running for her life – and the one man who’s got her back may be poised to stab it.

Non-Stop Till Tokyo is a bigger book than my published stuff to date, and my first contemporary, and my first het romance, and and and. Very different from what I’ve published to date, but what the heck, it’s nice to try something new! I’m happy with it, and I dearly love the cover by Angela Waters.

Think of England

My next m/m offering, Think of England is an Edwardian pulp adventure with derring-do, stiff upper lips, country-house parties, shameless homage to Victorian and Edwardian adventure fiction, and a bit of social subversion going on. More on this one nearer the time.

Again, the cover is gorgeous, this one Erin Dameron-Hill.

Flight of Magpies (A Charm of Magpies 3)

I’m delighted to say that I’ve signed the third book in the sequence that started with The Magpie Lord. Flight of Magpies, to be published by Samhain 28 October, brings back Stephen and Lucien. This time they’re in trouble with old enemies, new enemies, and unsuspected enemies. Which is a nuisance, because they’re having quite enough problems with their friends…

Underway

Current projects include: A historical story for a charity anthology. More Simon Feximal stories. Think of England 2. But first, another story set in Magpie-world, starring a secondary character from Flight of Magpies who pretty much demanded his own book as the price for not stealing that one. This book is writing itself so far, having elbowed its way to the front of the queue rather than waiting its allotted turn. This is typical of the character in question. Watch your pockets.

Oh, and I should have a proper website very soon. Woop!

Normal unpromo service will be resumed next time. I’ve saved up plenty of sarcasm.

Anne Rice Vs Amazon: more on reviews (with flowchart)

Anne Rice, among others, is calling for Amazon reviewers to be forced to give their real identities. ‘The Interview with the Vampire author is a signatory to a new petition calling on Amazon to remove anonymity from its reviewers in order to prevent the “bullying and harassment” it says is rife on the site,’ says The Guardian.

There’s no point going into the stupidity of this because it won’t happen. It would cause the number of Amazon reviews to drop like a rock (silencing not just those who don’t want to be harassed, but also anyone who doesn’t want their parents, partner or potential employer to see what they’re reading), and if there’s one thing Amazon likes other than gouging for gigantic discounts and exploiting workers, it’s onsite reviews. So that’s not what I want to talk about here. What I’m baffled by is…

Anne Rice reads her Amazon reviews and gets upset by them.

Think about that for a moment. Anne Rice, who bestrode 1980s fiction like a colossus, with estimated global sales of 100 million copies, a movie with Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Antonio Banderas and Christian Slater, a career spanning over 35 years – Anne Rice reads her Amazon reviews and gets upset by them.

I can’t italicize this enough. Anne Rice, who presumably has enough in the bank to spend the rest of her life on holiday, instead hunches over her computer and reads Amazon reviews. And gets upset. And encourages her own fans to attack negative reviews, because she cares that someone called HissingSid32 says stuff like:

I didn’t like this book because it was boring. That’s all that needs to be said. It was very very very very very very very very very very very boring. If you have to read this book shoot yourself first.

Oh, sorry, that’s not an Amazon review of Anne Rice, it’s of Anne Frank. That was what someone posted about Diary of a Young Girl.

Here are some other Amazon reviews:

I actually found it impossible to like or even dislike any character in this story. Everyone is quite boring, 1-dimensional, and stale. The result: an 800 page “masterpiece” about characters that are impossible to care about. (Anna Karenina)

 

I hated having reasonably high expectations for a so-called classic, only to have to suffer through a drab chain of non sequitur events, thoroughly lacking any explanations at all. (1984)

 

A great read if you suffer from attention deficit disorder, as the author must. That, or you’re a crackhead. Skips from one scene to another with no transitions, and no unity in plot. A disaster. (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)

 

Amazon reviews for the best books you can think of all include this sort of genius. Go on, try it yourself, find me one single acknowledged masterpiece on Amazon.com without a one-star review. And it’s worth noting that these books have managed to struggle on, somehow, despite HissingSid32’s opinion. Anne Rice evidently feels her position is less secure.

Of course Ms Rice says she doesn’t want to stifle negative reviews or critical comment. She only want to silence the “gangster bullies” who the petition’s creator acknowledges are a “tiny minority” of Amazon users. But even if we take this at face value, she wants everyone to have to identify themselves publicly if they are to comment on a book, because of a handful of trolls who – and I can’t stress this enough – she chooses to read and to engage with in the first place.

The very definition of using a sledgehammer to crack some nuts.

 

In the hope of resolving this problem, I present a handy flowchart.

How Authors Should Deal with Negative Amazon Reviews

 

KJ Charles doesn’t read Amazon/Goodreads reviews or harass reviewers, so say what you like about Remnant, a free story written with Jordan L Hawk and coming out 11 March!

World Book Day: I’ll show you my books…

It’s World Book Day today. This means different things to different people. If you work in marketing for a publisher it means a ton of work for little measurable result. If you are a parent, it may well mean dressing your daughter as Hermione Granger again, and explaining to your son that ‘Angry Birds’ is neither a character from a book nor an achievable costume. If you are a heavy reader and general book person, it’s kind of like ‘International Keep Breathing Day’. If you aren’t a heavy reader and book person, you’re probably unaware that it’s World Book Day, and you may well be wondering what you’re doing on this blog. (You’re looking for Lord Magpie the folk band, or KJ Charles the rapper. No problem, mind how you go.)

Anyway, for those still here: It’s World Book Day, and here are some of my books.

Good Night Little ABC. I am 4, already a fluent reader. My mother gives me this book, a tiny alphabet hardback. Each animal has its adorable self-teddy.

I am charmed. Until I reach J.

I cry and cry. Poor Jasper Jabber Jay, forever alone, without his teddy. My mother tells me it’s alright. She assures me that his mummy is just outside the page, that she will come in and give him his teddy and everything will be fine again. I believe her. I realise the characters have life outside the page. I learn that I can add to the story.

Thirty-six years later I give my battered copy of this book to my four-year-old son. He leafs through the pages, delighted. Half way through, at J, he starts to cry, and I tell him what my mother told me, and he believes me too.

Roger Lancelyn Green’s Greek myths. I read them all, abridged, then unabridged. People mutate and change, murder, rape. I am maybe eight. I read them ragged, then I read his Robin Hood stories. Robin dies – not like Arthur or Achilles, not with a heroic death and some numinous sense that there will be resurrection: he dies alone, wounded, abandoned, without Marion. I cry. My mother tells me, ‘They’d all be dead by now anyway.’ This is quite remarkably unhelpful. I realise that sometimes stories don’t end the way you want them to. Sometimes they can’t be changed. I realise that I’m going to have to tackle some of this stuff myself. I’m growing up.

Diana Wynne Jones, Terry Pratchett, Georgette Heyer. Everything, every word, over and over, taking apart the plotting, immersing myself in the perfectly crafted sentences. Setting the flame to what becomes a burning conviction that ‘genre’ fiction can outclass ‘literary’ fiction, and what matters is not the genre, not the classification into boxes because there’s magic or a happy ending, but the writing, the spirit, the style.

The Master and Margarita. I first read Mikhail Bulgakov’s anti-Stalinist masterpiece aged maybe 10. This is not because I am precocious. It is because I am desperate, having read close to everything in my small town library’s children’s book section. I am already devouring my parents’ shelves of Desmond Bagley and Alistair Maclean, so it seems perfectly natural to nip down to the adult section of the library. I pick up The Master and Margarita because it has a big black cat on the front. I read it bewildered and amazed and uncomprehending. I read it again. I read it maybe thirty times. I own three different translations. I go off boyfriends who refuse to read it. My mother calls it ‘The M&M test’. I learn about flaws and judgement and redemption from this book. I believe, with a teenage fire, that manuscripts don’t burn. I still believe that.

The Secret History. We are 21. We all read it with wild, disturbing enthusiasm. My friend says we will have a bacchanale. My boyfriend takes this a little too literally. The party does not go well. I do not speak to my friend for five years.

Bleak House. Immersing myself in Dickens, a whole term at Oxford with nothing else. Grotesquerie and sentiment, aspiration to kindness teamed with relentless, callous cruelty. I see Prunella Scales and Sam West at the National Theatre reading from Dickens, and I realise I should listen to him on audiobook forever because these are words that need to be read aloud. One day, I will.

There are others, thousands more. Single moments. My office passing round Behind the Scenes at the Museum like samizdat, sharing knowing nods when someone burst into tears: ‘we know what bit you’ve got to’. Marabou Stork Nightmares, the only book I have ever thrown in the bin. The Dark is Rising, a brilliantly pagan novel that I read every Christmas. ‘This night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining…’ Reading A Fine Balance, in India on my honeymoon. (That could have used more thinking through.) And Bridge of Birds, where I turn for comfort. If you can read Miser Shen’s speech to his daughter in this marvellous, magical, life-enhancing book without tears, you probably need to have yourself reclassified as dead, or possibly concrete.

Those are some of my books. Feel free to tell me yours.

(I have just noticed that on the swear-to-God randomly selected spread of Good Night Little ABC, the animals’ names include ‘Crane’ and ‘Daniel’. Crane is the hero of my first published book. Daniel is the hero of Think Of England, coming in July. I am going to chalk that up to slightly disturbing coincidence, and not look further.)

Back Away from the Review: why authors should stay out of it

Another day, another Goodreads meltdown. In the latest ‘oh dear’ moment, an author and her friends (or possibly alternate personalities) is/are going nuts on anyone rating her book less than an enthusiastic 4+ stars. This includes attacking someone for leaving a DNF review (without star rating) and someone else for saying ‘I’m not reading this because the blurb is terrible’* (again without a star rating).

* As annoying as it may be for authors to have someone say ‘I’m not reading this because X’ where X is a factor unrelated to the book itself… the blurb in question is terrible. It’s one ADJECTIVE IN CAPITALS away from achieving sentient life and eating your soul. As a blurbwriter of many years’ experience, I want to give the person who wrote this blurb an hour’s remedial intensive coaching, and a slap. I’m not reading this book because the blurb is terrible. Please click here for how to write a good blurb. But I digress.

I’m not linking to the book because publicity, and also because getting into internet slap fights is right up there on my to-do list next to flossing with barbed wire and listening to the Collected Speeches of Michael Gove at 33rpm. However, I am blogging on this sorry business because it’s a good opportunity to remind myself, and other authors, of a few salient facts about reviews.

Negative reviews aren’t always a bad thing.

I disagree violently with certain reviewers (in my head, obviously), therefore anything they slag gets extra interest from me. I’m much more likely to believe in a book with 30 5* ratings if it has a bunch of 2* or 3* ratings to suggest that the reviews aren’t all by sock puppets. And a review that feels like a murderous knife attack to the author may well read as a mild ‘meh’ to anyone not personally involved.

You don’t have to read reviews, and you probably shouldn’t.

This is not to say I don’t appreciate reviews – I do. Any success I’ve had as an author is down to the enthusiasm and energy of people, mostly on Goodreads, reading and sharing and discussing books. It’s incredibly valuable to any author. I love people who give their time to books.

But, as I have blogged elsewhere, reviews of my books are none of my business. The review is a conversation between the reader and the book. It is not the author’s place to stick her nose in, unless specifically invited. Reviews are for readers, not authors. They are not for you.

Don’t expect yourself to be thick-skinned.

Authors are people. Our books are personal and precious to us. We get upset by negative reviews, especially when they’re spiteful, inaccurate or point-scoring. It is not much fun to have your work made the object of a comedy slating or hate screed. (Or even of mild and justified criticism, to be perfectly honest.) But the solution is not to go in all guns blazing and tell that reviewer why they were completely wrong about your book. It is not to read the reviews in the first place because – all together, now - they are not for you.

Remember that book you didn’t like? 

Some people didn’t like your book. Live with it.

 

If you want to bask in all the lovely comments, or learn something from the critical ones, or profit from the fact that people are talking about your book at all, you have to accept there will be negative responses too. If you can’t take the negatives (and there is no shame in that, you’re only human), you need to stay away from the whole thing.

But you can’t pick and choose, and you really can’t tell readers what they ought to think and say about your book. It doesn’t work that way.

(Not) Writing a Book

So I went to a party recently and I had The Book Conversation. There’s always one.

Woman: You’re KJ, you’re the writer, yeah? I’m writing a book too.

KJ: Really, what’s it about?

Woman: Oh…well, I mean, I haven’t actually started it yet. I’m really keen to do it, but I think I need more  experience of life before I start the writing.

KJ: Do you think that your stories and ideas might come now if you started actual writing? I find that I need to get down to it to see the ideas and the characters develop—

Woman [cutting that right off]: No. I definitely need to understand life more first. To have deeper experience, do you see?

KJ: Well, to be honest, I write gay paranormal Victorian romance, so I mostly use my imagination.

Woman [with just a smidge of condescension]: My book is rather different to that. A bit more weighty.

KJ [in my head]: And a lot less written.

I have had a lot of variants on this conversation. It’s my fault, of course. 95% of the time, the correct answer to the party statement ‘I’m writing a book,’ is ‘Wonderful, congratulations,’ and then nodding until you’ve finished your drink. (The perfect response is what the late great Peter Cook apparently used to say: ‘Oh, you’re writing a novel? Neither am I.’) But I love talking about writing and I tend to take what people say at face value, so I always say damn fool unwelcome things like ‘How much have you written?’ that presuppose the person is actually writing a book.

There is nothing wrong with not writing a book. Lots of people don’t write books. There’s a great deal to be said for more people not writing books, in fact, especially if I get to choose which ones. And there’s nothing wrong with liking the idea of being an author, or indulging in a bit of fantasy. I clearly spoiled my fellow partygoer’s fun by talking about writing as a thing she could do, rather than a thing that she was prevented from doing by her own artistic dedication. Sorry.

But it is a bit weird how many people seem to go from ‘I’d like to be a writer’ to ‘I’d be a writer if only I wrote’ to ‘I am a writer’. I mean, I occasionally daydream of doing a plumbing qualification and becoming vaguely competent around the house, but that doesn’t mean I tell people I’m a plumber. Still less that I would be a plumber, but I’m waiting for the Plumbing Fairy to magically turn me into a plumber with no effort on my part. (Which is what I am doing, of course.)

The problem is, basically, that people confuse ‘I want to write a book’ with ‘I want to have written a book.’

It’s fabulous if you have written a book. Congratulations! There it is, done, with all the characters worked out and the plot beautifully resolved. A huge great undeniable achievement, ready for the world to buy and read and leave 5* reviews for. Your publisher sells the foreign rights in twenty countries. There’s a movie deal. I think Michael Fassbender would be perfect for the hero, don’t you?

Writing a book, on the other hand, involves typing, swearing, getting the cat off the keyboard, junking 30K words over which you’ve wept blood because you made a stupid plotting error, your family getting annoyed you’re always writing, working for three solid hours at a stretch till your neck is killing you and discovering that you only achieved 800 words, not selling the book, and writing another one. (And a lot of good stuff too, of course—that feeling when the words are singing, the joy of bringing your characters to life, the plot clicking into place—but it is neither quick nor easy to earn the good stuff.)

I have written five published/to be published books. It’s amazing.

I am writing my sixth book now. It sucks.

_________

KJ Charles loves it really. A Case of Possession is out now. Non-Stop till Tokyo and Think of England are freshly up on Amazon for inspection.

Valentine’s Day: There’s No Such Thing as a Happy Ever After

I read a couple of interesting things on happy endings recently, and Valentine’s Day seemed like an appropriate time to reflect on them in a really negative way.

Romance writers and readers use HEA (‘happy ever after’) and HFN (‘happy for now’) as shorthand for endings. If a book ends with a wedding or similar level of commitment, that tends to be an HEA – obstacles conquered, commitment made. A less definite ending counts as an HFN, and may suggest a sequel might be on the cards to take our heroes/heroines to the ultimate HEA.

But, if you’ve ever actually been to a wedding, you’ll have noticed that the celebrant spends half his or her time explaining that a wedding is a beginning, not an end. It’s worth noting that 42% of marriages in England and Wales now end in divorce. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Charlie Cochrane wrote thoughtfully on whether you can give your characters a HEA with any plausibility at all in gay historical romance. Personally, I think that’s still a valid question if you take the words ‘gay historical’ out .

Basically, in any relationship, you can conquer the misunderstandings, the communication problems, the dragons/warlocks/albino monk terrorists trying to kill you, the issue that he’s a cat shifter and you’re a honey badger, whatever, and get to the point of a serious mutual commitment. But the real work starts after the thank-you notes are written/blood cleared up/novel ends. It starts as you squabble over towel choices, and get irritated, with each other’s parents, and realise that apparently you’ve tied yourself for life to someone who can’t grasp that the bins go out on Wednesday night, so you have to do it every single bloody week. Wednesday. Is that really so hard?

I was struck by an observation in this terrific post on sex scenes by Joanna Chambers.

When I re-read old and much-loved Georgette Heyer novels, I occasionally worry that the whole relationship’s going to go south as soon as the MCs try to consummate it. I loved Friday’s Child when I was 15, but now I can’t imagine Hero and Sherry having sex. (Actually, that is a lie, but I do have a vivid imagination).

I wholeheartedly disagree with this particular example (I’m convinced they’d be at it like rabbits as soon as they worked out what goes where, which in fairness might take some time because they’re both idiots). But it started me thinking about the ‘after the book’ endings, which I’ve written on previously so I’m just going to copy/paste and save effort:

Consider possibly the greatest romance ever written: These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer. If you haven’t read this, a) do, and b) spoilers follow.

Avon, a really nasty dissolute 45-year-old rake, falls for Léonie, a 17-year-old spitfire. At last, he vows he will be worthy of her, and we fade out on Léonie dancing on a table, whooping up the newly discovered joys of the marital bed. Happy Ever After.

Then Heyer wrote Devil’s Cub, featuring Avon and Léonie’s grown son Dominic. Dominic is a dissolute disappointment to his parents. They have fought about him. They have been unhappy. And now Avon is an old, old man, and soon Léonie will be a widow, and even when Dominic marries the right woman, Léonie doesn’t like her. And then, even worse, there’s An Infamous Army, where we learn that Dominic’s kids are horrible and he was obviously as rotten a husband as anyone would have guessed.

I wish I’d never read the second two books. Avon and Léonie’s story should end with her dancing on the table while he laughs.

Nobody would read These Old Shades and call it an HFN ending, but it is. Avon and Léonie get their happy ever after only if we close down their story there. And that’s not just because of the two subsequent books; it’s because nobody gets a happy ending once you think beyond the big moment. People get old, and sick. They argue. They die. I don’t just dislike An Infamous Army for the above reasons; I dislike it because in its world Avon and Léonie are long dead and forgotten and nobody cares about them any more.

You know what the most HEA Heyer wrote is? A Civil Contract, where the hero spends most of the book in love with another woman, not his unwanted financial-transaction wife, and finally comes to realise that his wife is the one he wants to live with. Not a fantasy image, not a beautiful goddess, but a quietly contented partnership with the mother of his child, bobbing along. It’s the most plausible HEA she ever wrote, and the least romantic romance.

So: my name is KJ and I’m a romance author who doesn’t believe in happy ever after. I believe in happy for now. I believe in working hard for happy for now, I live in hope that you can sustain ‘now’ for a pretty long time. And I think that’s fine, actually, because ‘now’, the present moment that you’re living in, is all any of us actually have. The rest is hope.

Do you want an HEA and damn the plausibility, or will an HFN do you fine? Have at it in the comments!