is Jeff Vandermeer afraid of Girl Cooties?

[lagilman]

No, this is a (mostly) serious question. In his most current roundup of books he's gotten for review, http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2008/06/12/books-received-er-recently/ he singles out the two Luna titles (yes, including mine) as "two books I probably won't review." No given reason -- and no indication that he's already read our work and doesn't like it. Just...two Luna titles.

(and it's not because he has anything against fantasy, or even fantasy-with-sex, since he's got Lynn's newest in the main pile o' books and man am I jealous, she says with a pointed look at Lynn and Lynn's agent, who both promised her a copy)

Interesting.

EtA2: And Jeff, being a gentleman, responds. Thanks, Jeff!



EtA: in more important news, my turkey in garlic-tahini sauce with pasta turned out good but not spectacular. My sauce still fails to knock my sandals off. Must investigate further.

Comments

[otterdance.livejournal.com]

How odd! Well, he liked your covers, at least.

[nick-kaufmann.livejournal.com]

And he did say he might do an Amazon feature on them.

[lagilman]

Yeah, but if he's going to give an air of dismissal to them on his site, what sort of "feature" could we look forward to? I did not feel the love. Or even the tolerance.

[otterdance.livejournal.com]

Still odd, though.

[jer-bear711.livejournal.com]

Look on the bright side--you got faced-out!

(Employing rarely used Luna icon for sistah solidarity.)

[lagilman]

True. I do so love my cover, it is a thing of WTF? beauty....

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

Could it be because they're Harl, ergo, ROMANCE? He did have something snarky to say about the David Zindell cover, equating it to a romance-style cover and saying he didn't like it.

[lagilman]

yeah, that was sort of my point. "Oh. Luna, that's the Harlequin imprint, never mind." I had hoped, four years down the road, that we'd gotten people past that instinctive dismissal, but....



(edited for a sticky 'w' key)

[ex-fashioni.livejournal.com]

I figured that was your point, but the brayne, she is crisped at the moment. Much going on-- which reminds me, actually, I do owe you an email. *scurries off to take care of*

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

It is possible, surely, that one might not be interested in this or that line for reasons other than bias born of ignorance?

[lagilman]

Entirely possible. But those two books are quite different from each other (one's a science-based contemporary fantasy, one's an alternate world historical romantic fantasy) -- in fact, the three things they have in common are that they are a) fantasy, b) fantasy written by women and c) published by Luna.

So, going on the available evidence, the only thing to set them apart from the other fantasy-with-relationships written by women he didn't single out to say "not interested" is that they were from Luna, which is an imprint of Harlequin. Hence my question.

[difrancis.livejournal.com]

Well, if takes a walk through The Bearskin Rug, he's going to get sex/romance/girl cooties all over him.

Sigh. Which reminds me that I need to pick up my copy of Free Fall. I think. Oh, wait. Going to check . . . Nope. Got it. Must have picked it up in my last Buying Frenzy on Memorial Day Weekend. Not that I have even allowed myself to glance in its direction. Something about a deadline. In days . . .

But at least I have a carrot to keep myself going, right? I'll reread them all! Yay me!

Di

[lagilman]

Oh god, time for non-research reading-for-pleasure. I have a pile that's about knee-high that keep giving me come-hither looks....

[lyonessnyc.livejournal.com]

Only knee-high? I have an entire bookcase filled with stuff I'm going to read "after the semster's done."

[cmpriest.livejournal.com]

Eh. All publicity is good publicity, right?
And to tell you the truth, I've rather strongly disagreed with some of his book reviews, anyway. :)

[(Anonymous)]

Eeek! I can't read everything! I CAN do features on Amazon regardless of having read stuff. Based on covers and reading a summary, I sometimes have to make a distinction between what I'd really dig and what would fall a little outside of what I'd pick up on my own in a bookstore. I don't think it's unfair to decide that it's probably not my thing, given the amount of material I get on any given day--it's overwhelming. So: do I spend the time to read it only to be potentially turned off the book? Or do I just do a general feature on it, acknowledging that there's a wide audience out there for your fiction, thus giving you additional publicity unrelated to the specificity of my tastes? I don't know what else to say. I most definitely did not mean to make you feel bad. But no reader can love everything. And I don't know why my personal taste would bother you one way or the other. As for girl cooties, it's not a gender thing. It's a subgenre kind of thing.

JeffV

[lagilman]

Hey Jeff, thanks for responding! No, I don't expect you to read everything -- hell, having been a World Fantasy judge, I know firsthand how overwhelming those piles of books can get! -- and I didn't feel bad, per se, just curious about your singling out those two titles as not-for-reading without further explanation of why, since you had other romantic fantasy in your "received" piles that didn't get singled out.

[(Anonymous)]

I singled them out because I thought they were singularly pretty. I could've been more coherent with the comment, though, true. You can always ping me about doing something on Amazon, btw. Anyway, apologies for any offense. I don't like cooties, but that's any cooties. ;)

jeff

[otterdance.livejournal.com]

(and it's not because he has anything against fantasy, or even fantasy-with-sex, since he's got Lynn's newest in the main pile o' books and man am I jealous, she says with a pointed look at Lynn and Lynn's agent, who both promised her a copy)

Ahem! Who insisted on the "finished product"? ;-) They've only sent me two so far, but I should have more soon. Not to worry, I'll make sure you get one.

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

I have a strong taste for Luna books. I haven't been impressed by what straight-up romance I've looked at, but I do enjoy well-done romance plots in science fiction and fantasy. I think Luna has seriously nailed the romance/fantasy crossover, handling romantic plots better than F&SF usually does and fantasy elements better than romance usually does. I've bought a number of Luna titles to review ... I'd be reviewing more of them if the publisher gave out review copies, but the only ones I've gotten were from writer-friends. The rest I had to buy, and I'm pretty broke. But Luna is a great publisher.