I’m working at a paying job, which is a very good thing, the only down-side of working is that my reading time is now severely limited… down from several books a week to one book a week if I’m lucky. So, I’ve been careful about the books I’ve read lately, wanting to get the most enjoyment for my limited time.

Unfortunately, two of my favorite authors majorly let me down. And I’m seriously annoyed, because they were both stupid newbie author mistakes.

The first author has switched from writing romance genre to writing science fiction, which would be an okay thing to do if her publishers would start shelving her books in the science fiction section, but… alas, they haven’t. So her last four or five books have been increasingly unsatisfactory as she really doesn’t write very good science fiction and her attempt at it has ruined her romances. She’s been building for the last six or seven books to a big climatic book… which I wasn’t holding out big hopes for. In fact, I held out so little hope that I didn’t buy the hard-cover and I had serious reservations about putting out money for the paperback. From those of my friends who have read the book, my reservations were well placed, which completely annoys me.

If you’re going to build for books and books to a climactic book, then for God’s sake WRITE a book worth the build-up.

On top of that annoyance, I shelled out the money for this same author’s book two books after the supposed big climactic book, in hopes that the author had gotten the stupid story-line that I couldn’t care less about out of her system. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. This book was shelved on the romance shelves, and the spine claimed it was a romance, but **sigh** less than 1/4 of the book had anything to do with the relationship between the hero and heroine, the other 3/4 was about other people and the stupid story-line that I’d hoped the author had finished two books ago.

If you’re going to write a book to be shelved on the romance shelf, then could you please write a damn ROMANCE!!

Then, just to annoy me further, I switched to another of my favorite authors, in hopes of enjoying my limited reading time. Unfortunately this author also disappointed me. Again, she built up our hopes and this was the climax of a four book series. This book was supposed to be the redemption of the villain of the other three books. Again, lots of hype, and for this author I actually had hope that she could pull it off. Except, instead of having a real plot… she had the “gods” pick up the hero, heroine and a bunch of others, and dump them all on a deserted island to fight-to-the-death amongst themselves for no other reason than the gods’ entertainment. How stupid is that?!? **sigh**

If you’re going to write a big redemption book, don’t have a plot that’s so contrived that the reader goes GAK! ten pages into the book and skips to the end in the faint hope that something interesting happens in the middle… and to make matters worse, you have NOTHING interesting happen in the middle of the book.

So, to say I’m annoyed with these two authors is putting it mildly.

I might give the second author another chance, because this is the first bad book after a long series of excellent books.

But the first author, even though she’s written two of my all-time favorite books… I’m done with her. Blessings upon her and her career, but she’s not getting any more of my time or money. Her writing just isn’t worth it any more.

The lesson to get out of these examples is if you’re building for books and books to a big climactic book… then DELIVER A CLIMACTIC BOOK!!