Wild RaspberriesWild Raspberries by Jane Davitt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The Problem with Rushing the Sex

There is a growing tendency amongst ebook erotica publishers to want, if not demand, that there be a sex scene within the first three chapters. Apparently sex sells and (some?) readers are impatient if they have to wait too long for it.

Re-reading one of my favourite m/m romances, Jane Davitt’s “Wild Raspberries” proves how wrong that concept can be.

While the couple have a few brief sexual encounters about halfway through the book, these and the rest of the plot only heighten the tension so when the full-on main event finally does occur, it becomes so much stronger for the reader and the participants themelves.

To quote Tyler: “He loved doing this. Loved feeling the self-imposed frustration build, deepening the intensity of his arousal...”

Similarly, Jane’s lead up to this act, deepens the intensity of the encounter. I’ve read a lot of m/m books in my time, but the next ten or so pages have to be the best written sex scene I’ve found so far. There is just the right amount of physical description to allow you to picture the moment, but also you’re right there in Tyler’s head, feeling everything he feels. Every reaction he has to Dan leads on logically from what has come before.

Recently, I participated in one of Linnea Sinclair’s online classes on how to write kick-butt action. Amongst the many helpful hints she gave was to use prequels and sequels (scenes not stories) to provide the reader with all the facts they need to prevent these details slowing the pacing down when the shit starts hitting the fan.

In many ways, this is what also has to happen to really make a sex scene mean more than slot A into slot B in a step-by-step description.

If we know why Tyler is holding back, if we can picture Dan’s eagerness, if we are familiar with the house and the setting, we only need to glimpse these briefly in the sex scene to pad it out mentally.

Similarly, we don’t need the full on emotional reaction within the scene, these can come afterwards in the “sequential” scene.

Similarly, within the scene, there has to be good balance between the reactions to what is happening and the actions themselves. To sum up, the actual sex scene needs to follow the rules of writing action, full speed ahead, then a pause for a second before continuing. In Jane’s case, before resuming the action, she inserts some more description of the setting, then ratchets the action up a notch to an even more scorching level.

It’s not just mundane description either but more the way the character reacts to the setting rather than just describing the scene: “The room was lit only by moonlight and the glow of the forgotten lamp still burning in the main room, and Tyler decided to keep it that way. There was enough light for him to see what he was doing and enough darkness for Dan to feel less on display.”

Hardly prize winning writing, but just the correct weight of words and context to suit the purpose. Breaking the action with description, mirrors the momentary downturn in intensity as they relocate to the bedroom.

Writing good sex scenes is akin to writing good action scenes. The same rules apply.

Recently, I’ve been reviewing my m/m collection, sorting out which ones have stood the test of time and a re-read. “Wild Raspberries and its must-read-as-well sequel “Wintergreen” together make a great story. But they will always stay near the top of my re-read pile purely because of the way Jane has written this great sex scene.

Perfect.

I'd blogged an interview with Jane a while back. This can be read here: http://www.abgayle.com/1/post/2011/09...

Okay. I admit to being a fan. But with good reason. As an author, I've learnt a lot from her writing. As a reader, I'm always interested in what she's going to come up with next. Her books are definitely not just variations of the same premise or writing style. Compare these ones with "Hourglass" and "Spoken fron the Heart". Each has that little touch of difference that will make her writing last when many other, more popular writers fade from memory.

View all my reviews
Add Comment
 
 
The first book of Jane Davitt’s that I read was “Bound and Determined”. I loved that, so I bought “Drawing Closer” and “Wild Raspberries”. That led me to “Wintergreen”.

I make it a practice to email authors when I really enjoy their work. Call me a crazy fangirl, whatever! I like to tell author's what really works for me. As well as being a great story teller, Jane’s writing style is very fluid. The sort of thing that possibly escapes most reader’s notice, but as a freelance editor as well as a fledgling author, I appreciate well written prose when I see it. So another congrats are in order to Jane (and/or her editor *grins*). This is from the email I sent about a year ago:

Can I just say “Wintergreen” has to be one of the best "sequel" books I’ve read. To me, the anticipation of a couple getting together in the first place is what makes a romance, so sequels often don’t cut it. However, the way you handled the story and the knowledge from the get-go that the pairing would have its difficulties was fantastic. The conflict didn’t feel manufactured and the resolution was well done. I’m not a fan of external conflict being brought in just to create tension in a story. However, in this case, the action in book two had almost been foreshadowed in book one. The tension and conflict still centred around the characters’ past and personalities, with the action being the vehicle to carry that forward.

So, I sent the above to Jane and a discussion followed which I’m blogging here with her permission.  Firstly, her response:

JD: Thank you so much for taking the time to write to me; it’s much appreciated!

I’m so glad Wintergreen worked for you. I loved Dan and Tyler and I wanted to do a sequel and see just how they were getting on a few months down the road. I think there were a lot of pointers in Wild Raspberries that it wasn’t going to be easy to them, yes; just too much dragging at them from the past.

I like to think that now they finally made it on their journey :-)

AB: I’m glad you're not tempted to drag it out further with another book. So many authors do.

JD: I don’t think I could really get into it; one book is usually enough, though Alexa and I did do a trilogy together and enjoyed it.

AB: Though, the next time it would be interesting to be a “fly on the wall” when Tyler gets to retirement age and Dan is at his peak (ie in his thirties). Transitions in relationships are a great source of conflict.

JD: They are! But they’re only, what 14 years apart? When Tyler’s 65, Dan would be 51 :-) ; not that far apart maybe? So, if they last that long, I don’t see it being an issue because they’d have adjusted to it by then.

AB: I’m interested in your collaborative process with Alexa. Do you do it character by character i.e. in role-play or are there elements each adds?

JD: We usually write a character each and tag back and forward, sometimes a paragraph, sometimes more. And we’re not possessive; we often borrow each other’s characters for a few lines. I wouldn’t write:

Would you like a cup of coffee, X

and then send it to her; I'd use her character to answer and pass it over when it got to somewhere more interesting.

With each book, we've become less attached to a single character; in our most recent one, “Room at the Top”, though we each dreamed up a character, when we came to write, we would write long tags, using each other's characters freely until it got to the point where they were jointly owned, really. It made the writing go much faster and the story flow better, I think.

Because, I also collaborate with other writers in an online soap "Redemption Reef", I followed up this question with a couple of other to clarify matters:

AB: I gather you each take a particular character then and write the next scene from that viewpoint by yourself, is that correct? But, that would mean you would have to have some idea about what each of your characters is going to do in that scene, so you must have plotted something out. How much pre-plotting do you do when you're co-writing?

JD: We don't do a whole scene on our own; sometimes it's a paragraph, sometimes even a line.  It's totally dependent on the story. We alternate POVs so if the chapter's from 'my' character's POV, maybe I'd handle anything that added something new to what we know about him or write a particularly emotional bit, but the more we write together, the more the lines blur. We used to add notes, 'hope it's okay, I borrowed your character for a few lines' but we don't now, we just do it and we're way faster and the voice is more consistent, I feel. Think of us as being parents to each character; one of us gave birth to him but we bring him up together :-)

Plotting we do outside the story via email. We'll sketch it out roughly, with a few highlights to include, get started, try to incorporate the highlights -- sometimes the story shifts direction and they don't work -- and plot in more detail as we write. It's a very fluid, easy process. Mostly, the story tells itself.

AB: If you each "own" a character. Which ones are yours and which are Alexa's?

JD: See above :-) To start with, we have a character each and swap their bios, maybe include a photo so that we get a mental image. But once we start writing, these days it's all a melting pot. This is a snippet from Room at the Top, written from Jay's POV (Jay was my character, Austin was Alexa's and we shared Liam). From memory, I'll try and divide it as we wrote it, but honestly, it's hard to remember because we have such a close joint voice so I can't swear who wrote which :-). I'm in italics. So you can see that we're both writing both of them.

“It’s not—” Jay took a deep breath and abandoned the argument before it began. “I’ll be good.”

“If you are, I’ll buy you something special,” Austin said. “It’ll be like Christmas. Really late Christmas.”

“Or really early.” Jay didn’t care either way. He loved Christmas, and the most recent one he’d spent with Austin had been as close to perfect as he could have wished for. They’d had an amazing tree and piles of presents, and Christmas breakfast had consisted of the two of them snuggled on the couch in their almost identical new bathrobes, sipping hot chocolate and eating fresh cinnamon rolls. The apartment had smelled like cinnamon for days. “Too bad there won’t be candy canes.”

“Yeah, I think those are a seasonal thing. Have a good afternoon, okay?”

“Love you.”

“Love you two.”

“Love you three,” Jay said. If he’d heard anyone else say that, he’d have rolled his eyes at the sap overload, but when it was between them, it felt like a joke only they got.

He tucked his phone away and left a scatter of bread crumbs for the ants.

Did they even eat bread? Maybe he’d look it up when he got back to the library. He was going through Dewey numbers in his head as he crossed the road, but he made it to the other side, so he must’ve looked both ways.
end of chapter

Hope that helps!

AB: Why do you collaborate?

JD: Alexa and I both started off writing fanfic (still do!) and worked together on several fics in the Buffy fandom years ago. We enjoyed it so we decided to try co-writing a novel. At that point we’d both had solo novels published. I find it fun, because you get to read at the same time as writing. I once collaborated on a fic with three other people and we posted a new chapter daily for eight months, each taking turns to write it, and we were as much fans of the fic as writers of it. I find that there’s no writer’s block when you’re collaborating; if you’re stuck, you do a short tag and your partner digs you out and then you return the favor. It gives it a very organic feel, especially in the sex scenes; you’re not controlling events and it’s looser, more natural.

AB: Do you find it difficult to write by yourself?

JD: No, not at all. I'm pretty prolific :-) I do find it’s much faster to collaborate, though. Solo, I aim for 1000-2000 words a day; with Alexa, we can knock off 5,000 a day easily.

AB: Do you have other things you’ve written that you are looking for publishers for? Or are you flat out writing for your current publishers?

JD: I have four publishers, Torquere and Ellora’s Cave for my solo novels, Loose Id for the books with Alexa and Total-e-Bound for short stories (it just sort of happened that way) and no, everything I write is usually at their request so I don’t have anything hanging around. I aim for a solo novel and a co-written one a year plus a few shorts.

Recently Jane responded again when I reviewed her book “Hourglass” at Goodreads which also appears in m,y previous blog post.

JD: That is such a great review; thank you! I don’t just mean it’s good because you liked the book either; I love that you really took the time to detail your feelings and responses to the story as you read it. It was so interesting to see the book through your eyes that way.

Emboldened, I asked her some more questions which she was kind enough to answer:

AB:. When you set out to write “Hourglass” did the concepts about the structure come first or did they grow with the story? In other words, was the “how” you were going to write the story always there from the start?

JD: It was, yes. I had the idea of the TV show first and then I decided it'd be fun to not just refer to it in the book, but to plot it out in detail. From there, I got the idea of starting each chapter with a snippet of script or a show-related article. They were masses of fun to write and of course, I could use them to echo something going on in the ‘real’ story (though in some ways, both sets of characters felt equally real by the end).

AB: What prompted that decision? Did something else inspire you?

JD: Nothing in particular. I guess as a fan myself, I know just how it feels when a show is cancelled so I drew on that, and I own many scripts of shows, which I love reading. They came in handy as templates so that the scripts were as authentic as I could make them.

AB:. How much of what I interpreted as being deliberate was, or am I reading into it much more than you did consciously?

JD: Sometimes, I’ll write something and people will read more into than I consciously intended, but with Hourglass I was very deliberately setting up echoes between the actors and the characters they played and structuring it in quite a complex way. It was like someone sitting between mirrors and seeing endless reflections of themselves. There was a story within a story within a story.

AB: Would you ever write something so untraditional again (not necessarily using the same methods but other more deliberate devices)?

JD: If an idea comes to me that would fit that format, sure, why not?

AB: How did Torquere receive the story?

JD: I don’t recall any issues at all. I sent it in; my editor, Vincent Diamond, liked it, and we worked together to polish it up.

AB: Do you have an editor there who encouraged that style or was it more of a case of “Well you’re a well-respected author of the genre so people will forgive you for your untraditional story telling style?”

JD: I work with different editors there but I’m sure whoever edited it would have been supportive. To be honest, it never occurred to me that it WAS all that untraditional or out there. I thought the concept with the chapter headings telling a parallel story was interesting but I’m sure it's been done before (what hasn’t? :-)). Ben introducing and ending it, well, I liked Ben and I didn’t see why the story had to be solely about Ash and Lee; there seemed room in the story for him. They were actors; they needed to be directed, if that makes sense.

AB: Do you regret that m/m romance particularly is becoming formulaic?

JD: I read a fair bit of it now that I have an e-reader, and I don’t know if it is or it isn’t really. The genre of romance itself does have a framework that readers like because it’s reassuring and that goes for m/f, m/m, or f/f romances. I definitely like stories to push the boundaries, but I’d be pouting if there was an unhappy ending so maybe I don’t want them pushed too far!

AB: What would you like to see more of in the genre?

JD: Nothing comes to mind. There’s a huge variety of settings and heat levels as it is, plus crossovers with SF, horror, mystery and such. I think it’s a vibrant, growing genre, especially with the surge of interest in e-books and I’m proud to be part of its growth.

AB: Any other comments you’d like to make on reviewers, readers and your future writing plans?

JD: I’m currently writing a solo novel for Torquere that’s my first novel not set in a contemporary setting. It’s a pre-industrial fantasy world, no magic, no dragons, but definitely not our world, with a theatrical background. An actor sees a young man fresh from the country in trouble and steps in to help him only to find he's unable to walk away once his good deed's done. I’m having a lot of fun (in a vaguely Hourglass way!) in having the actor quote from plays that I invented, and coming up with dozens of titles.

And to reviewers and readers alike, I have only one thing to say which is : thank you! Thank you for reading and for being interested enough to comment. It’s much appreciated.

"Room at the Top", Jane's most recent collaboration with Alexa is now available from LooseID.

A big thank you to Jane for so patiently answering my questions. I do enjoy knowing more about the why and how they write.
Add Comment
 
 
HourglassHourglass by Jane Davitt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Have you ever picked up a book, started reading it and gone WTF? Hourglass did that for me.
I bought it purely because I love Jane Davitt's writing (possibly the ones she writes by herself more than the ones with Alexa). I didn't read the blurb first and found Ben - the guy whose POV the first chapter is written in - frankly obnoxious. Then Samantha his daughter arrived on the scene....
Now, I'm not one to stop reading because of unlikeable characters and have even rated books higher if the author can sell me a story where the main protagonists are less than perfect (Bad Company), but when I first picked up "Hourglass", it didn't grab me.
Maybe I wasn't in the mood.
I left it in my Mobipocket reader library along with all my other unread stories. Over the next few weeks, other purchases came and went as I read through them quickly, but still Hourglass remained. The weird thing was that my reader for some reason uses one cover as a default, so out of, say, thirty books, half may have one illustration. Every time I opened my reader the multiple images of an hourglass grabbed my attention. It was almost as if the book was yelling at me to read the damn thing.
Finally, I succumbed and am bloody glad I did.
There are only a couple of writers whose work resonates with me as being "original". Other readers may not see them that way, but something in their books or their characters jumps out as "different" and enjoyable, mainly because of that difference. Syd McGinley's Dr Fell and Jay Lygon "Chaos Magic" books fall firmly into that category. Interestingly they are also published by Torquere Press.
At this point of writing, I'm half way through Hourglass and dreading that Kate Mc's review of (Brilliant first half, shame about the rest) remark is correct.
So far so good. Now that I have the hang of what is going on, I'm enjoying the structure. The characters and their romance is one level, but the underlying circumstances with the real life parallels to shows like Torchwood and the little digs at the movie industry and the workers in it are worth reading for their own sake.
Ben is growing on me and even the presence of the daughter is not an eye-rolling diversion.
In fact, seeing the couple from Ben's POV adds another dimension to the story. The cynical onlooker. A device that Take My Picture could have used (see my review).

Reading on......
Part of the "problem" people have with the book is the amount of "telling" versus "showing" there is, particularly bits from Ben's POV where we gets lines like this:
The read-through a week earlier had been a disaster. Morden and Simons had sat as far apart as was humanly possible at a round table and said their lines to each other with an icy politeness that robbed them of meaning, or a bored mumble. Sure, no one expected a cold reading to be Oscar-material, but the tension had been palpable. The only time they'd behaved like professionals was when the script called for them to talk to someone else. For those scenes, they'd taken their heads out of their asses and actually given him something resembling a glimmer of hope that this movie would be halfway watchable.
Now, in most m/m romances you would get this scene "shown", but then it would have to be in one of the character's heads, so it would have been uneven as neither would ever admit to themselves they were being pig-headed. So, by telling it from Ben's perspective, we are able to picture the scene ourselves simply because we already know the characters so well. Sure, we're not spoon-fed with it by seeing it in detail, but I can still picture everything that happens.
Perhaps that's why I'm enjoying the book so much. There is freedom for me to fill in the gaps.
Which reminds me of one of my current peeves. There is a growing fashion in romance writing for everything to be shown (and I'm not just talking graphic sex scenes, but that's one symptom of it). I think it's great if we get a good balance between the two forms of writing. Used intelligently in the appropriate place and then read patiently, a good tell can be just, if not more rewarding.

Anyway reading on......
By now, Ben's really growing on me.
"Son, the writers put a palomino in that scene," Ben said with his friendliest, scariest smile. "If you want to be the one to tell them that you couldn't get them what they wanted, if you want to be the one to destroy their artistic vision, just trample it to the ground, then go right ahead. They're in that little room beside the men's john."
"The broom cupboard?"
"Is that what they're calling the writers' room these days?" Ben inquired innocently. "Like the green room or something?"
"No, I think it's actually a --"
"Go away," Ben said softly, with emphasis, tiring of the game.
Pity he's straight!

Two-thirds of the way through now. Still OK, still making sense. Logical relationship progression. Not too fast, not too slow.
Fucking each other once, no matter whether the earth moved or not, is not going to magically atone for ten years of having their lives fucked up. Some criticisms have been levelled at the tired old trope of the big misunderstanding being used, but that was only one aspect of their problem. They admit themselves that they weren't ready for a relationship at that stage, society was less accepting of celebrities being gay and an element of professional jealousy prevailed.
I think another reason I'm enjoying Hourglass is that the author treats her readers as people with intelligence. A rare occurrence. Take this bit for example:
If this was a movie, the script would call for him to splash water on his face, stare at his reflection in the mirror, maybe punch a wall. Ash didn't want to do any of those things, which just went to show how artificial scripts were. He sat on the toilet, with the seat down, and stared at the floor, a spotless white tile, subtly patterned with swirls and with an iridescent gleam.
I can really relate to that.

Reading on.... Ooh, something unexpected happens. This must be the spoiler that Kate deleted. Hm, not too sure what I think of this development. I can see where the author is coming from, though, making a pretty heavy statement about the right of celebrities to live their lives in peace, without papparazi or the public thinking they own them, just because they see them regularly on their little rectangular boxes in their living rooms.

Reading on....
Dramatic, but hey, the whole incident parallels the television series they starred in which almost demanded something of this magnitude. In a way, their real life resembles a movie script (more of that later).
Also, I may have commented somewhere that reading half a good book and putting it down because the rest is no good is more rewarding than reading the whole of one mediocre book. Whle this may be true, the sentiment doesn't apply in this case.
There's nothing "wrong" with the last half of Hourglass. For starters, if you did stop, you'd miss the snarky scene between Ash and Ben at the swimming pool.
Lately I've noticed that too many authors just churn out book after book, filled with repetitive chunks of their own writing or are derivative of other people's work, complete with plots you could fill in after reading the first chapter, so it's good to discover that Jane has in a number of instances deliberately skipped the clichéd turn of events, eg people recognising someone when the obvious plot move would be not to.
And as for the show vs tell debate... the point is that that the author has some great "shown" scenes in the book. But they're kept for the important sections.
At no stage did I think these two guys were chicks with dicks. At no time did their angsting, or their dialogue feel anything but right for the character.
I like it when one hero can say to the other:
"You're just one tangled mess of hang-ups and issues, you know that?"
and the remark is uttered affectionately, naturally. The sort of dialogue two men would have.
Sure, Lee's statement above about Ash was a spot on and accurate assessment of his faults. But that didn't stop him loving him, or as he so succinctly puts it later:
Let me know when you've stopped emoting and I'll finish the foreplay and get to your favorite bit."

There was a word or two here and there I would have tweaked to an alternative that might fit better. But, hey, that's me, over-refining the text until it's almost too slick to be real.
And the sex?
Despite what Lee says above, the foreplay for the last, very satisfying scene was the best part of it. All "shown" beautifully, dahlings.
I loved the laugh-out-loud bits of dialogue (and there are lots of those). This is a feel good, smiley book if you let it be.
Lee laughed. That was Ash all over. If he was issued a halo in heaven, he'd probably ask if it made his ears look big. "You make bed head look good, trust me."
Even the ending of the original television series is sigh-worthy.
Now for the final zinger. “Why did the author start and finish the book through the eyes of Ben?” My best explanation is that this makes the love story between Ash and Lee feel like just that, a story boxed up and presented to the reader by Ben, the producer. Although we quickly switch into feeling it is their story, we get pulled back out often enough to give the impression that we’re watching this love affair unfurl on television - complete with interruptions - while segments of the TV series, magazine articles, horoscopes, action told from another point of view are slotted in, much like television commercials.
Whether or not you think, as a reader, this is a good thing or not remains to be seen. At least in this case those “breaks in the viewing” are relevant and act almost like a Greek chorus, commenting indirectly on what’s just happened or about to happen. Removed but pertinent.
To sum up. If you’re reading m/m romances to get a quick sexual titillation, then maybe this isn’t for you. (The sex/romance is there. I can point out the page numbers if you like!) If you’re looking for your standard boy meets boy, they have a bit of conflict but get together in the end, well that’s also there but that’s not all that’s there. If you’re looking for a story about two men in love presented in a way that suits that love, then that’s there in spades.
If you’re sick of the same old, same old and despair of the standard of m/m romances, then give “Hourglass” a burl, but first lose the expectations, lose the preconceptions about how m/m romances should be written. Love the characters for who they are, enjoy watching them connect and discover that there is a relationship beyond the sex. Savor the carefully crafted touches that make this book stand out far above the crowd.
It could have been written as a straight gay romance, but by “wrapping” up a simple love story and presenting it in a box, interleaved with sheets of “tissue paper” Jane has given me, at least, an unforgettable ride of a read.
Or, in this case, in the words of Samantha who by now I liked nearly as much as her Dad:
"That was just perfect," she declared.

5.5 stars rounding down to 5.


View all my reviews
Add Comment