Peeves, No Pets About It

1. Passengers
Characters, male, female, both, neither, green and purple spotted spongiforms from the planet Dvwabc. Don't care. If they don't drive their stories, I'm not going to read. Sure. A character can START a story in reaction phase. No agency. No ambition. But if that lasts much past the inciting incident then I'm an unhappy camper. I expect characters to have an arc. Meaning that they may start a book as a doormat, but within the first few pages of the book, I'd better see some hint that this person/these people will grow a pair(s) and eventually take the story by the throat and throttle it into submission. From this diatribe, you may fairly assume I do not read much literary fiction.

2. Deus ex Machina
Literal translation - God in (or from) the machine. It's a hold over from the Greek plays you read in high school. Medea. Her hubby throws her over to marry another, politically well-connected woman. Medea kills the children she had with the guy. When he comes gunning for her, the entire conflict of the play is resolved because Zeus (who has had zip part in the play to this point) swoops down from the clouds, picks up Medea and teleports her out of Greece and back to her father's court. The term Deus ex Machina is now used to describe events in stories that are too pat. Too facile or convenient. It's easy to have happen if your characters aren't driving their stories. If forcing your characters to earn their happy (or unhappy) ending isn't your cup of tea, you'll have to guard against Deus ex Machina. Cause when your out of the blue ending rolls around, there's a high possibility that the book will fly cause I pitched it.

3. I can ID the source material
We all have writers and stories we wish we'd written. But when you go to write your version of that story, if you haven't disguised the source material well enough, I'll see through the veil and that, frankly, makes me deeply uncomfortable. I decided to pick up a book, the first in a series that has done exceptionally well. Read the whole thing - admired the writing and the story-telling - but still felt a bit uneasy. A few hours after I'd finished the novel, it hit me. It was a rewrite of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And I was done. Not that the books are a rip-off. Or written badly. I could just see through the clothing. Sometimes feeling dirty is okay. This, for me, isn't one of them. And it should be noted that I may be the only person in all of existence who feels this way about this particular series. Take that for what it may be worth. I am guilty of this particular sin, too. I wrote a thing. Entered it into a contest. When the scores came back, one of the judges had nailed the exact thing (down to the scene) I had used as inspiration for the novel. That rated an insta-shelve of the WIP. It may not be rational, but there it is. If I can change it up enough to get a few more light years between my story and the inspiration I might finish it one day.

Save the Pet, Kill the Peeves

Three pet peeves as a reader... THREE? ONLY THREE?

Fine, fine, fine. Just three pet peeves as a reader.  Since you all know my loathing of Head Hopping I'll let it pass...this time.

1.  Backstory Dump: There is an artful way to integrate backstory. I hate slogging through pages of it, particularly anywhere in the first arc. If it happens in the second or third arc, I'm baffled by why it was necessary, but I'm more forgiving because I made it this far into the story.

2.  Killing the Dog:  I don't care how many humans, humanoids, droids, or bipeds you bump off. I don't care how heinous the manner (as long as it suits the story). Just don't kill the dog. I don't care if he is possessed by the soul of a demon. You train the hairball, you don't kill it.

3. TDTL: To Dumb To Live characters, especially if they're in a starring role. Hey, even the comedic relief characters have a clue. There is a wide line between inept and witless. Everyone is utterly inept at something. But a character whose only purpose is to wail and flail...get me the demon dog.

Pet Peeves

by Allison Pang

For the most part I tend to think of myself as fairly easy going. (Not sure that's entirely accurate, but generally speaking as long as I'm fed I tend to be able to handle most things in stride.)

However, there are a few things that definitely push my buttons. (And these are sorta random, but I thrive on chaos so I guess that's okay.)

1) When things don't work.

To clarify - I'm definitely a technophile. Nothing irritates me faster then when my highly priced electronic gewgaw stops working. Particularly the computer - I'm in the tech industry so much of my daily life revolves around computers in some fashion. Hard drive starts failing? Overheating video cards? Blue Screens of Death? BLACK Screens of Death? (Yeah, got that one once. Uncool.) And of course it's always when I'm on travel someplace where there's no internet and I won't be anywhere near a store where I can buy parts or find a way to recover it for 10 days. And something is due. Somewhere. (That or I go somewhere and forget my charger. Either way, massive fail.)

2) Lying


I don't mean white lies - but actual, in your face, falsehood. It cheapens everything.

3) The Dregs

I don' t know why, but I can't eat the last of anything. If there's a spoonful of milk left in the container, I will totally open a new one just to avoid using it. Goes for jelly too. Or ketchup. Anything wet, I guess.

4) Pantyhose

Used to wear them back in the day - won't touch them with a 10 foot pole ever again.

5) Selective Hearing

I have kids and pets with both. How is it they can hear the TV from three levels away but I can stand and holler up the stairs for 2 minutes and it's all like "Sorry, didn't hear you, mom."? But I think that also goes for things in general. People have a tendency to hear/read only what they want to (myself included). I suspect the world might be better off if we *really* paid attention to what was going on.