2007 Book Log #37: Finders Keepers, by Linnea Sinclair

Finders Keepers, by Linnea Sinclair, is the love child of a romance novel and an SF one. It's set in space, sure--but at heart, it's really a romance. You don't get much more romance-novelly than Scrappy Young Trader Chick From Wrong Side of the Galaxy finds Crashlanded and Unconscious Tall Dark Handsome Stranger Who is More Than He Appears. The only way this could have been even more romance-novelly a start would have been if she'd been a pregnant runaway bride, and the guy had had amnesia and crashlanded during a snowstorm. Whoops, wait, this is supposed to be an SF setting. Let's say ion storm. ;)

And, unfortunately, the plot's a bit thin on the ground. There's an alien species that's supposedly trying to take over the galaxy, but we never get an idea of what this species actually looks like, and mostly we get the overall idea that they're evil because... um... they're evil! And we get hints dropped that the government under whom our heroine is a citizen is corrupt, yet we only have the word of a questionable character to begin with to back this up--and a character who's part of a rival government to begin with. There are a few side characters introduced that have the potential to be interesting, though I was personally vaguely vexed that the two side female characters seem to be primarily there to either commiserate with the heroine about her relationship with the hero, or to whack some sense into the head of the hero who is of course being Obtuse about his relationship with the heroine (since this is, after all, a romance novel at heart). There's the obligatory swarmy former boyfriend, too, but he winds up having hardly any camera time at all and is only long enough around for the heroine to punch him out before he gets diced.

Balanced against all of these things, I will admit that the chemistry between hero and heroine was enjoyable enough, and it was kind of neat to see a spacefaring situation where there were at least hints of multiple languages scattered around the dialogue. So overall I'll give this 'un two and a half stars.

Writing panel ideas

So I've been asked by awritersweekend for panel ideas for next year's conference (this year's being nailed down already and taking place at the very end of this month). I've already thought of a couple, both of which come out of my online gaming/roleplay experience:

• Writing POV characters that aren't your gender. I used to get semi-regularly boggled at for playing male characters on various games, and more than once I've been boggled at by other writers who have difficulty getting into the mindset of writing a character that isn't their own gender.
  
  
• Jumping from online gaming to writing and what skills are transferrable. I've identified at least four writing-related skills I've practiced during my RP years: character development (this certainly being the biggest, for the games where I've had to apply for characters with special backgrounds and/or abilities), plot development, how to effectively describe an action, and how to collaborate with others on a group work.

Anybody up for adding to this list? If you were going to attend a writing conference, what unusual panel topic would you like to see?

(x-posted between my journal and scuzzboppers)

About food, and books, and more food

So, well, aside from the whole agent turning my novel down thing, the tail end of this week has really been quite good. Quite a bit of this has involved adventures in lunch. ^_^

Wednesday spazzkat and I went to lunch at Todai in Westlake to celebrate his one-year mark at the Times. Mine is coming up real soon now. It's a comforting feeling to be hitting a year mark on a job and not having to worry about having to look for another position in the immediate future. Here's hoping we'll still have this same job this time next year.

Thursday I met up with casirafics to fork over the ticket I'd bought her for the July 29th GBS show, and that was highly enjoyable. We had tasty World Wrapps food and there was much fangirling over Doctor Who, and then a visit to the Dilettante cafe for hot chocolate and truffles. I didn't expect to get the latter--my compatriot in Tennant-ogling wanted the cocoa, I was going in to accompany her--but one look at the truffle counter was enough to make me heave a resigned sigh and make my peace with the fact that I wasn't getting out of there without truffles. Because, I mean, c'mon people, truffles. Those of you who are local and/or who have had Dilettante truffles will know exactly what I'm talking about here. Two words: Dark Ephemere. Mmmm.

Friday, back to spazzkat as we finally tracked down Blue Moon Burgers, this place near the Times at which I've so far managed to miss at least two team lunches and we wanted to see if it was tasty, darn it. Verdict: not bad, though Kidd Valley really has 'em beat on the garlic fries and on the milkshakes. We spotted a couple other places that might be worth checking out as well on the days when we need a break from Whole Foods.

The tail end of this week has also involved adventures in books. I wound up picking up four from Third Place on Thursday: two Eighth Doctor novels, the latest Victoria Thompson mystery, and Witch Fire by Anya Bast, since I'd seen seimaisin squeeing about that coming out over on her journal. And just because I could, I went to the Baen Free Library and yoinked down several ebooks to read on my frob. I'm starting to really dig this whole ebook idea--very nice way to get around the whole shelf space problem, and it saves paper too. (Though I can see one reason to have a physical book--book signings. Hee. I can't exactly see coming up to an author at a signing and going, "Hi! I have a copy of your ebook that I bought off of ebooks.com, will you sign my computer?")

Tonight we're all going over to a housewarming at sksouth's new house, and there should be barbecued things, and they will likely be tasty. And there will be cool people and chatting and generally hanging out. Yay!

Meanwhile I sent out another e-query on Lament, just to keep another one out there until I get a printed partial together for it to fire off to Tor. And it's worth noting that I'm finally closing in on the nine-month mark with Faerie Blood in the e-queue at Baen; hopefully sometime soon I'll hear back on that one way or another.

Miles since the 3rd: 23.9
Miles out of Hobbiton: 2067.2
Miles out of Isengard: 274.2
Miles to Minas Tirith: 511.8