Conversations with Kav – Page 6

Conversations with Kav – Tropes + Giveaway

Excited to talk about a hot topic today — Romantic Tropes. BUT first, I think Amazon’s bot’s spied on last week’s conversation ’cause I got the official notification this week banning me from posting reviews because of my “repeated violations of their community guidelines.” Sigh. They said I could email them if I had any concerns and, let me tell you, following the maze of links to finally get to the right place to send the email to was….interesting. So, now I’m waiting for their response.

Meanwhile — let’s talk about tropes! Do you have favourites? Ones you absolutely detest? If a favourite author writes a novel with one of your least favourite tropes, will you still read it? Inquiring minds want to know. AND, since I just discovered that Baker Book House offers gift cards and I’m miffed at Amazon — we’ll do a giveaway for a BBH gift card today too…but more about that later.

So, I’ll start the conversation off by answering my own questions. Yes, I have favourite tropes, so much so that knowing a story includes a certain trope will guarantee I’ll buy it. And yes, I also have some strong negative feelings about certain tropes that will pretty much guarantee I won’t read the book. There are only a very FEW fave authors I will blindly follow anywhere. So, for instance, if Irene Hannon wrote a love triangle (please, nooooo!) I’d read it. But that’s a very rare exception.

I brainstormed Romantic Tropes and here’s what I came up with. Did I miss any?

As a rule, I enjoy a variety of Romantic Tropes, but I do have favourites:

Grumpy/Sunshine – Love me a brooding hero with a heart of gold and the whole opposites attract thing he has going on with the heroine. (Yes, I know it can be reversed with the hero the grump but I prefer it the other way around.)
Marriage of Convenience – Yes, I know it would actually be horrendous in real life but it’s swoonworthy in my fiction!
Secret Crush – Soooooo much fun, especially in a rom/com. Angsty but with enough lighthearted scenes to not make it gutwrenching. And I don’t care who is pining for who…I just want all the feels. 🙂
Close Proximity – Especially in Romantic Suspense. So many opportunities for character development and relationship growth.

Now for the Romantic Tropes I don’t have a fondness for:

Secret Baby – There’s practically no good reason for a woman to keep the father of her child in the dark. If this trope isn’t written really, really, really well, the heroine comes off looking selfish and shallow. And no, just because your college boyfriend said he didn’t want kids doesn’t give you carte blanche to not tell him when you get pregnant. He deserves to know and make his own decision about how involved he’ll be in the child’s life. That’s not your call. Grrr…I pretty much always pass over books with this trope with very few exceptions. Having said that, I’ll concede that I have read some good ones where the author did manage the secret keeping reasons to feel plausible and relatable, but they are rare.
Amnesia – this used to be one of my favourite tropes but then it seemed like every Romantic Suspense book I picked up featured an amnesia plot and a lot of them weren’t developed well. So, I just had enough and started avoiding this trope altogether. I’ll make a few exceptions (again, if Irene Hannon wrote an amnesia story I’d be all in.)
Love Triangle – You all know I feel about this. No….just Noooooooooooooo! And part of the reason is I’m reading a romance for the happily ever after and, in a novel where both potential love interests in a love triangle are likeable I can’t stand the idea of the rejection one of them will feel. Yes, I know it’s a story but….And if it’s really clear who the love interest should be then I feel that all the nonsense with the obvious ‘loser’ is just a lot of wasted page time when I could be swooning over the nicely developing romance. Oh — and if a heroine is dithering over two guys and one is obviously a creep and she can’t see it, then I lose respect for her and I find it hard to be in her corner as she figures it out. I just want to shake some sense into her and tell the good hero guy to jump into another story and find a better heroine.

Hmmm….it seems I have strong opinions when it comes to tropes, but now it’s your turn. Have I missed any tropes? Feel free to add more in the comments. What are your favourite tropes? What are your least favourite?

WOOHOO! And now it’s time for the GIVEAWAY:

Just leave a comment and I’ll put your name in my Random Wheel of Names Generator and you could win a $10.00 e-gift card for Baker Book House. They have fantastic deals, including free shipping and discounts for new releases as well as used books.

Draw will be held and winner announced on Saturday November 23 2024.

Conversations With Kav – Bits and Bobs

It’s finally cool enough to light a fire so, gather ’round and toast your tootsies and let’s participate in a Bits and Bobs Bookish Chat. That’s a fancy way of saying I don’t have a themed conversation planned for today. 🙂 So, we’re going to bounce around topics and you can jump in with some of your own too. I’ll provide the refreshments (hot cocoa and ginger thins (kafferep) from IKEA. Yum!) Let’s get started!

I mentioned this event a couple of weeks ago and it’s now in full swing. A ton of indie authors have banned together to host the event and I believe there will be giveaway announcements in the latter part of the month. I’ve discovered a bunch of new-to-me authors through the list I’ll share below and I’ve purchased a few books and will be sharing them in giveaways the rest of the month. I got a nice mix of historical, contemporary rom/com and suspense and I stuck with a holiday theme because that’s what I’m in the mood for. I’m really pleased with what I’ve read so far. Here’s a link (thank you, Paula) to a list of their genres and authors/titles. Very clever categories. They’ve put a lot of thought into it.https://subscribepage.io/bellpepper?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=check_out_this_bell_pepper_romance_event_going_on&utm_term=2024-11-01

Also, if you do a search for #Bell Pepper Romance, you’ll find links to blogs, instagram posts and You Tube videos.

And speaking of hashtags — I need help with some of the technicalities of posting reviews online and I’m sure there are some techno wizards in our midst who can help. Pretty please. 🙂

First — Amazon: Lately I’ve been getting notifications from Amazon requesting that I edit and resubmit my reviews because of questionable content such as profanity, harassment, hate speech, sexual content, illegal activity and private information! I’m totally gobsmacked — especially since the exact same review will be approved and published on the Canadian Amazon site. But the US site is giving me fits. It happens with maybe one out of five reviews. I change a few words and resubmit my review and it’s usually approved. A few just seem to be stuck in limbo though and never get posted. It wouldn’t bother me that much except that Net Galley expects reviews to be posted on various online sites, so it is kinda a big deal if I want to keep getting audio books from them. So, has this been happening to anyone else? I’m hoping it’s just some flukey algorithm glitch and not a targeted attack on little old me. Bwahahaha! Any suggestions on what I can do to sort this problem out?

And then there’s Net Galley. I’m pretty comfortable posting reviews and links on their site but there’s one area I keep leaving blank because I don’t know what to put. Of course, I can’t remember exactly what it looks like or what it’s called, but it’s on the second page after you click the boxes about whether you’d buy the book, recommend the book etc. It’s something about putting in descriptors to help other reviewers search? Do they mean tags like Historical Fiction or the author’s name or Christian Fiction? Do you add anything in that field? I’ve still been getting books to review even though I’ve been leaving it blank.

Oh — and do you have a shelf dedicated to Net Galley on Good Reads? I had one request from an independent author to do that and I couldn’t figure out why I thought the shelves we create were for our own use and I can’t fathom why I’d want a list of books I received from Net Galley.

And then, when you post reviews on instagram or other social media, do you tag the author and publisher? Like @theauthor ? Is that good digital etiquette or is it a nuisance? Expected or not? Inquiring minds want to know. 🙂

And can someone explain how to use hashtags properly? I haven’t used them at all because, I dunno, they seem so random and my little librarian brain can’t compute. Like what earthly good would #bookboyfriends be to anyone? But I can see how #bellpepperromance works successfully in a search because it’s more specific. But I see posts with so many random hashtags at the end that it’s just confusing.

Okay — that’s enough questions from me today. I’d sure appreciate some feedback, though, from you more sophisticated, got-it-all-together reviewer types. 🙂

Conversations With Kav – Seasonal Reading

I am very much a mood reader so it’s pretty much impossible for me to stick to a monthly TBR like a lot of people do. Content creators on Booktube create lovely monthly TBR videos, sharing the books they plan to read in the next month. So, right now, I’m being inundated with these goal-oriented videos and, while I love watching them, I can’t imagine anything more torturous than having to make up a reading list and sticking to it for a whole month!

EXCEPT….

I have noticed a definite inclination towards certain genres and tropes in different seasons.

Summer

Like I discovered an affinity for Contemporary Rom/Coms this summer. It was like I couldn’t get enough of fun, flirty meet-cutes, witty banter and plots filled with comedic flare. I could read one after another and never grow bored. It wasn’t that I didn’t read other genres as well, but I craved rom/coms…especially ones set in summertime.

Autumn

So, then things get kinda strange when the crisp cool weather heralds in the fall. Oh, I’ll still read a rom/com if it catches my eye but what I can’t live without, literally, I would pine away without… a healthy dose of Romantic Suspense! And, as the days get shorter and the nights grow colder and I start making a hot cocoa to sip while I read, just any Romantic Suspense won’t do. It has to be a Stalker trope! Yes, I know that sounds really odd…maybe even creepy to some of you…but I cannot make it through the fall without a few good stalker books!

Winter

I live far enough north that the snow starts to fly in November so that’s when I officially feel like winter has arrived. And my reading cravings become oddly specific. I’m still on the Romantic Suspense kick BUT now I need a snowed in with a crazy stalker guy / damsel in distress / brooding hero to the rescue trope. Bwahahaha. Don’t judge. It’s really more than a craving…it’s a deep rooted bibliophile need and I have no idea why. I can settle for being stranded by another kind of natural disaster, but snow is my first choice. And while I love a strong heroine to the rescue other times of the year, the first chill of winter screams ‘damsel in distress’ to me. Isn’t that odd? Oh, and the brooding hero is very important. All noble intentions but miffed that he’s been put in that position. And he shouldn’t communicate well. Like, if he doesn’t talk for the first 50-100 pages, you know just heavy sighs and annoyed grunts kind of thing, well, then I’m swooning in bibliophile bliss. (Told you my reading cravings became oddly specific!)

Christmas

Guess we can’t talk seasons without mentioning Christmas. I can happily read Christmas books any time of the year but I start looking for them in September and read most of them before December. That’s because I want to make sure giveaway books reach winners in a timely fashion so they can be enjoyed during the holidays. This is the time of year that I actually look for novella collections. And I’m particularly fond of Regency Christmas novellas. And Amish Christmas books in general…which is kinda weird since they really don’t celebrate the holidays with the same gusto us Englishers do. Then again, maybe it’s the simplicity of the festivities that are the draw.

So, what about you? Do different seasons spark different genre interests in you too? Or am I just peculiar? 🙂

Oh — and you’ll notice I didn’t mention spring and that’s because I really don’t think I have a genre/trope preference in the spring. I think I’m so gobsmacked giddy over no more snow and getting back into my garden that I’m happy to read anything that strikes my fancy.

Conversations with Kav – Indie Books + Giveaway

This is me feeling uber guilty over one of my ten reading goals for this year. That would be to read more independently published books. Because my reading year looks like this so far:

Yikes! It looks really bad put into a graph! So I have just two months left to sort this and I need your help!

LET’S TALK INDIE AUTHORS AND THEIR BOOKS

I need some guidance and a whole lot of encouragement to help me navigate the indie world of Christian Fiction. So, what’s a reader to do but turn to her bookish besties who always have her back?!

I’d love to hear about:

some of your favourite indie authors (can include hybrid authors (publish both indie and traditional)
a specific indie book recommendation you think I would enjoy
how you source indie books

No worries if some of you end up recommending the same author(s )– that’ll just push them higher up the priority list since they are so popular. But I’d also like to end up with a healthy Indie TBR list by the end of the day. And, as a special thank you for sharing your love of Indie Christian Fiction:

INDIE CHRISTIAN FICTION GIVEAWAY

At the end of your comment, include the title and author of an indie CF book you would like to win and I’ll enter you in the draw. Books MUST BE CHRISTIAN FICTION and can be independently published any time up through the end of this year.

This giveaway is for a print or ebook copy. Winner’s choice.

US – available in print or ebook — winner’s choice

Canada – available in print or ebook or audible (if available) — winner’s choice

International – ebook copy if you have a US Kindle account.

If you would like a chance to win a copy of a Christian Fiction Indie novel, leave a comment below or email me at kavluvstoread AT yahoo DOT ca. If you add an email to your comment, remember to use AT and DOT instead of @ and . in order to protect yourself from spammers. If you enter the draw via email, please add the title to the subject line so it’s easy to spot your entry. Draw will be held and winner announced on Saturday October 26 2024.

Conversations with Kav – Bell Pepper Romance?!

I was recently scrolling through my Instagram feed and I came across a post announcing an upcoming November Clean/Closed Door Romance promotion. First — I love they have coined the phrase ‘Bell Pepper Romance’ to describe these romances. I’ve always been uncomfortable with defining books as ‘clean’, ‘wholesome’, ‘sweet’ etc. Makes them sound so…well, ‘meh’. Like there won’t be any substance to the stories which is so far from the truth as these kinds of romances often deal with difficult subject matter, have emotionally layered characters and complex plots. So, Bell Pepper Romance is not only fun, but perfectly compliments its sister, ‘Spicy Romance.’ I really hope this trend catches on.

Anyway, the definition of a Bell Pepper Romance is no sex on the page and no swears….except for bible swears? I’ve never heard that term before and wonder if any of you have? I’m assuming it means words found in the bible that are generally considered as ‘mild’ cuss words? Like um, well, the other word for donkey or h-e-double hockey sticks (true confession, I’m super conservative about language as you can tell by my inability to even spell the words out here! 🙂 )

So, this got me thinking — what does ‘clean’ actually mean to you? Just the absence of physical intimacy and no crude cursing in a story? Because, that’s not what I am looking for when I am reading Christian Fiction (especially!) or a Bell Pepper Romance.

For example, if you take the biblically acceptable h-e-double hockey stick word and turn it from a place name noun into an exclamation, then it becomes swearing as far as I’m concerned. I recently read a contemporary rom/com which used that word as a form of cussing a few times and it totally took me by surprise. Enough that I won’t be reading any other books by that new-to-me author. I mean, if you’re only going to use the word a handful of times, why even bother? Surely there are other ways to show a character’s shock, dismay or other strong feeling.

And don’t get me started on using the Lord’s name in vain — another bible word that is all to often used as a curse word. I stopped reading a Historical Romance author I loved when I noticed this kind of profanity creeping into her stories more and more. I finally DNFed one where a number of male characters kept using the Lord’s name in vain…as if that was somehow an acceptable ‘clean’ alternative to coarser language. Now, this is a secular author, so totally understandable that she is fine with that type of language in her books, but it’s just not content I want to read.

So, tell me, am I too conservative? Could some of these milder examples of swearing be more acceptable in some regions/countries than in others? Or am I just a prude? (I won’t be offended if you say I am.)

And how do you source out your really, truly ‘clean’ (for lack of a better word) contemporary and historical romances? Any recommendations? I’m excited to have chance to discover new authors and books during this special November promotion…just not sure how I can avoid the ‘bible swears’.

Stay tuned for details on the Bell Pepper Romance Bookstagram Event in November!