SBD

This is a review/feminist rant so beware.

First, I checked two "thrillers" out of the library. One I made it through, one I didn't. One was by Christopher Reich, don't remember the name, it was one info dump after another. Now I read a lot of techo-thrillers, ect, so I'm used to a lot of info being dump on me. But serious, I think there were characters in there, but I can't be sure. Boring. I read the last pages to see who was the good guys, who were the bad, who were still alive and who were dead. Then it went back to the library.

Second book was by Ridley Pearson, called Killer Weekend. I've never read Pearson before, but I wanted to read this one since it was set in Sun Valley (Idaho's own Hollywood annex). Pearson has been a Sun Valley resident for many years before his family moved to St Louis (why anyone would willingly move to St Louis is beyond me, but I digress). The sheriff was the hero, he was getting a divorce and had daughters and later a drunken father. Oh and a dead brother with troubled son. That was it. I don't want a discription of the characters out of central casting but I want to get a general idea of age, etc. I still don't know how old Walt is, I can guess some, his father is still active and alive so he can't be "too" old. He considered a character old who was about sixty so he had to be well under fifty (because once you hit fifty you live convincing yourself sixty isn't old). I still don't know how many children he has (he mentioned he had daughters), etc. I want some landmarks to cling to. It throws me out of the story if I'm invisioning a character one way and suddenly find out they are another. The story was good, the characterization sucked. I gather Pearson plans to let us know all of this pertinent info in latter books But to me, you mention something in one book, you explain it in that book and build on it in the next. I got more info in the discription and first two chapters (on Pearson's website) of the next "Killer" book of Walt and his family (young twin daughters btw) than I did reading the whole first book. That's not good in my estimation.

Now the rant. Neither of these books (particularly Reich's) was great. But go to his blog, read the story of his first sale. Read how he sold his first book for $750,000. Pearson hit it big in the early 90's and it was a big deal how he got his first $300,000 advance. In fact, it was just after that that Pearson spoke at a local writer's confence. He told of his editor handing him the check and saying "I hope it's worth $300,000."

I'm sure Nora Roberts gets advances like that (just a guess, but consistently hitting the top of the NYT bestseller does that), but how many romance writers get that kind of advances? How many midlist (which is what I would consider Reich) romance authors got a $750,000 advance for her first book?

I know that it is different genres with different variables (ie: penis vs non penis). And sometimes women are our own worst enemies, but dammit, there's an unfairness about it that just pisses me off.