Noddin' My Head Like Yeah...

As chronicled earlier, I've been sick with the oink this week. The first three days involved a lot of me moving from my chair, to the couch, to the bed and feeling generally ick and watching a ton of movies on On Demand. I've now slept through: Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day, Apollo 13, The Mummy Returns and several other movies I've seen 10,000 times. Anyway, yesterday I finally turned the corner. Although I still have quite a *lovely* singing voice, I'm at least feeling a bit more human and was cleared to return to work tomorrow. This oink thing isn't kidding around, it'll kick your ass.

So yesterday, I kind of reengaged with the interwebz, and found all kinds of fun stuff around.

First is Katiebabs posting about the way she reviews. Now, Kate's post is interesting enough, she recently had an author take exception to a B- grade, which is a pretty decent grade from Kate. But no, it's more the comments to the posting that caught my attention. I do think it's true that it's just never a good idea for an author to react to a review, especially defensively. Now, I love it when an author pops by this blog to say "hey thanks for the review" or, vice versa, "Sorry to hear the book didn't work for you." I may be limited, but I think those are about the only two appropriate responses for authors, other than to clarify a scene or question about a book. On Kate's blog, another author chimed in to say it's tough to have something you created denigrated.

I'm sympathetic to the notion that being given negative feedback to anything you've created is a hard thing. I'm not an author, but I am an event planner, and it's tough to have someone give you negative feedback on something you've been putting together for months and months (or even years). But you know, it comes with the territory.

Second, over at Smart Bitches, they are talking about the grovel. It's well known that the alpha hero is my favorite kind of romance hero. And part and parcel of many an alpha hero is the ability to act like a giant asshat, and then to have to grovel for forgiveness. My go-to author for the excellent grovel is Judith McNaught. No one gives grovel like McNaught. One of the books that came up in the course of the comments was Double Standards, which I have on my keeper shelf, but probably hadn't cracked in about ten years. Oh man, did I forget how much I love, love, love this totally dated little contemp. Completely autocratic hero; sweet-natured, loving heroine; hero fucks up, acts like a big dumb dummy; and man, the grovel is on! My only quibble is I'd have liked a bit more HEA for the two, the curtain kind of goes down directly after the grovel. But hey, it still was a totally satisfying way to spend an afternoon. Another book that was brought up as giving good grovel is The Return of Rafe MacKade by Nora Roberts. Guess what? Yes, I happen to have that one too, and it's how I'll be spending my afternoon. I feel a grovel-glom coming on. Do you have any suggestions for me on good grovel books? I'd love to hear them.

What's going on with y'all? Catch me up!

PS - Yes, that is a reference to the latest Miley Cyrus earworm, which I shamefully CANNOT get out of my head. Pathetic, yes, but also true.

PPS - Happy Birthday to the truly adorable Charlotte, AKA Lusty Reader!! She's one of my favorite new webfriends. Happy day, girl! Make Mr. Charlotte take you someplace fabulous to celebrate.