On the good side of lame books

I just read an early work by Susan Andersen, who writes romance novels and romantic suspense. It was from the late 80's and even though the edition I read was updated in the early 00's it was still a stinker. I won't even tell you the title because really? Not worth it.

Could you PLEASE mention the heroine's dead sister another twenty times in the first ten pages? I don't think we've heard enough vague hints about how she's dead. Because you know, it makes the heroine sad and uptight. And wait, what? her sister died?

Anyway, this is not to mock the novel (well, maybe a little), but to point out that Susan Andersen has improved ENORMOUSLY since then. She's still not writing Capital-L-Literature or even the very best romance novels out there, but she has written a lot of them and they are good for a nice escape with you know, plot and character and foreshadowing that foreshadows instead of beating you over the head until you pass out.

And what the h??? is this with a Scottish guy as a cop from Seattle who has come to Reno to help with the investigation. And Anderson writes his lovely brogue into it and he calls everyone 'lass' and I was about to shoot him. And no mention of how he became a cop in the US after growing up in a Scottish orphanage. No mention of how he became a cop at all, really.

So anyway, I am extending the novel that I have been working on and trying to get rid of some deadwood in the middle (that I love a lot, but which doesn't drive the action or even the characters. It's nice stuff, just void of plot) and suddenly I have a new character in my head who's been sort of fidgeting around and who thinks that she'd like to make friends with my other characters, but you know, after they're married, so could she have her own story, please? And she's already married to her hero, but they don't know each other well, even after five years, and are both lonely.

So I've written 3470 words on the computer and another couple hundred on paper today.

On a different book.

But really, I AM going to finish the book I was working on before.

Jennifer Crusie, who is one of my favorite authors ever, had a first book (that was published second, I think?) called Sizzle that was.... well, average. She heartily discourages anyone from ever reading it and hopes that no one ever wants to reprint it. I managed to find a copy and it's.... average. Not even average maybe. The germs of greatness are in there, but whoooo.

And Jane Austen? Have you read Lady Susan? Pffffff.

And my whole point here was that even if it stinks big time, even if the second one stinks like dying fish in the local river on a hot afternoon with the water table low due to drought, it will be an early novel and I can get better. So stinky early novels aren't that bad, really :)