AAR poll results

I've printed the results, along with today's At the Back Fence column and will read them at lunchtime. The most noticable thing for me is the repeated winning of Loretta Chase's Mr. Impossible, which I found to be an okay read, but not a keeper or particularly outstanding. Her Lord of Scoundrels seems also to be highly regarded; when I bought a used copy to see what the hype was about, I was pretty disappointed. I'm wondering if maybe Ms. Chase's writing style is just not to my taste. Since I'm generally disinclined toward European Historicals to begin with, that would explain why I've missed the fan-boat for her work.

Tomorrow I'll post on the ATBF board comparing my votes to the winners and losers...I know I saved a copy of my ballot, now I just have to find it :)

SB Day -- voice/style

Last week, LLB posted a question about a cover quote on a Kinley MacGregor book from Sherrilyn Kenyon, who happens to be MacGregor’s alter ego. Or maybe MacGregor is the alter ego. In any case, MacGregor=Kenyon. Was it tongue-in-cheek, did anyone care? Personally, I take all cover quotes with a grain of salt, and since I knew that M=K it didn’t make much difference to me. I don’t care for M/K. I came too late to Kenyon’s Dark Hunters – the world is much too convoluted with too much backstory to wade through in order to read and understand the books. MacGregor (I think) writes Scottish set historicals, which I avoid like the plague.* But I’m thinking now that it is a little dishonest, cheating kind of. I can’t put my finger on why it bothers me, but something about giving a cover quote for yourself just doesn’t pass my smell test.

But that’s not really the subject of this SB post. The MacGregor/Kenyon question got me to thinking about authorial voice and style, and whether or not a writer who writes under multiple names/pseudonyms really has separate styles for those different personas. The examples that I can think of off the top of my head really don’t change their style or voice, they are just switching from one sub-genre to another. The name change seems to be more about warning readers of the genre change so they don’t bring a certain set of expectations to the table, rather than signaling a complete change of style and voice.

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