MM romance (and I assume FF as well) are not perfect. But I'm going to outline a few of my pet peeves about poorly written novels that may or may not be good fiction, but could be much better with a little effort.

Biggest pet peeve - adding a bad book to a good series that doesn't fit just because it will sell. Example, Return to the Mountain P.D.Singer. This book has nothing to do with the original mountain series and reads like it's an early story that was just tweaked a little to have the word Mountain shoved into its title. Read the first four books, but stay away from this one.

Annoying - British authors (RJ) who write dialog for American characters that are full of Britspeak. Texans or Californians don't talk about a boy band as a group of young lads, don't refer to seatbelts as belts and never say at the weekend. Americans use an article with the word hospital because they consider it a building not an institution.

Universally annoying -- experienced bottoms that need as much warmup and foreplay as a virgin. It's bad enough when the sex they write is boring (1 finger, 2 finger 3 finger, f...), when it's not even believable it's painful to read. They should take an example from Marshall Thornton who in the second Boystown book has one character shove another up against the wall in and alley and do the deed. It's set in the 80's so it's PC enough and the scene is both hot and believable.

Frequently annoying -- the idea that they will offend people if they have total tops or total bottoms in a book. I personally find the idea that the top has to give it up to prove his love ridiculous, and experience indicates that there aren't that many total bottoms that can get outside their comfort zone all that easily either. Plenty of example of this so I'm not going to single out any one author.

Just sad -- when an author writes a scene set at a pride parade or a gay rodeo and you can tell they've never been. The research for these scenes seems to consist of an image search on google. Or possibly reading each others books. See any book set at either event.

Am I being too critical here? And if I'm not what authorial or editorial faux pas have I missed?

[Fizban]

I know one you missed!

Always frustrating: When an author isn't familiar enough with their own work to get the details right from one book in a series to the next - changing names, relationships, locations, etc - because they can't be bothered to do their own research. And it's even worse when the editors and proofreaders (who are PAID to do that) misses the errors as well.

That isn't limited to LGBT writing, of course. In fact, I've seen it happen to even some of the most well-known authors of the last 50 years but it does seem to happen more frequently with modern authors who publish multiple books in short periods of time. Which then begs the question: how can the person writing the books forget the details so quickly when people reading the books catch the errors immediately?

I know one you missed!

Always frustrating: When an author isn't familiar enough with their own work to get the details right from one book in a series to the next - changing names, relationships, locations, etc - because they can't be bothered to do their own research. And it's even worse when the editors and proofreaders (who are PAID to do that) misses the errors as well.

That isn't limited to LGBT writing, of course. In fact, I've seen it happen to even some of the most well-known authors of the last 50 years but it does seem to happen more frequently with modern authors who publish multiple books in short periods of time. Which then begs the question: how can the person writing the books forget the details so quickly when people reading the books catch the errors immediately?

This isn't even limited to different books in a series: I've seen characters change eyes color or name even within ONE book, genre or not.

thought of another one.

Cookie cutter diverse characters. When an authors idea of describing a character is just to give a weird hair eye color combination like platinum hair and purple eyes. And other than a weird name that's all the description you're going to get for that character. The other characters in the book usually get the same treatment, albeit with different color combinations. Because, hey, I'm trying to do the whole book in a month and actually writing characters as more than doorstops is too much trouble.

[dante11]

i hate it when an author churns out 100 books in 6 months(OK-SLIGHT exaggeration!!)-but they 'cookie cutout' books, series, just popping in a new name, but the rest of the book is still the same....and it is REALLY getting bad when you read certain authors, and they use the same phrases or descriptions to explain a situation, and you an repeat it word-for-word, or you know it is coming before you get to that part. everything in the book seems vaguely familiar, and you think you have read the book before-but you check the publication date, and it just came out.
it feels like a instruction sheet or one o those pre-cut pieces of furniture--"part 'a' goes in part 'b'and then screw them into part 'c'.". BORING!!! -why should i spend my few precious dollars on books like these? and it isn't just m/m or f/f-i am sure there are mysteries like this, and sci-fi books. when did a publishing house become factories and production lines that mass produce the same crap day after day?

[venture01]

Incredibly annoying - authors who have websites/blogs etc, and NEVER update them (Poppy Dennison). I would rather they not have one at all then have one that gets updated every six months or so. I'm not saying you have to write a novel every day, but how about once a week or so, a quick check in of "I'm alive, I'm working on xyx project" or "life is interfering, I'm not writing right now."

Very frustrating - authors who don't release new material (Laura Baumbach) but just keep re-releasing old material with new covers every couple of years, again and again. It's one thing when you change publishers or you decide to self-publish old works, but it seems some authors have the same six books that just get recycled over and over.

I can only nod to what you all have written.

One of my biggest - when authors fall off the face of the earth and you hear absolutely nothing. Gabrielle Evans, for example, suddenly went 'poof' into the blue air around two years ago, and she was in the middle of multiple series which were connected (as Siren Bookstrand does). So, there are a lot of loose ends and you have no idea if you will ever get an ending. Or if anything has happened to this author. It's truly annoying that you won't even get a notice.

In the same line of thought; authors who all of sudden decides to dedicate their time to a new psudonym and new books, completely forgetting about everything else. I'm not saying they should finish one thing before moving on to the next, but I am not following your newsletter to be spammed full of your pseudonym's work which I am not interested in at all.

Following the line of newsletter. I am not signing up for a newsletter just so I have to do three steps to continue being part of this special group who gets first dips on excerpts and book ideas. I am not going to like/share/comment anything on facebook for you nor write a review on Amazon to continue being part of the special cookie club.

Authors who are whiners and trying to stir up drama on social media because they feel like it is in their power and entitlement to do so. The biggest sinner here, for me, is Abigail Roux who has the most hardcore and defended group of fans in the inner circle. Seriously. I get you feel annoyed and apparently people are always after you, but it does ruin some of the enjoyment of the books when you have to listen to drama on social media before you catch a glimpse of the upcoming books.

For books, my biggest pet peeve is, as CarbonUnit has pointed out, this idea of people having to switch between being tops and bottoms. I admit, I like my cut roles, and I can rarely get it to add up in my head when someone who has been a top throughout it all suddenly decides to bottom to prove their love. In particular Charlie Cochet does this at times in her THIRDS series (which I just adore) and it threw me for a loop.

Or when you read recycled sentences. This is particularly prominent in their sex scenes. I swear, I can read three different books in three different series and the sex scenes are pretty much alike. A lot of authors do this, so it's not even worth mentioning names here. If they could just spice things up once in a while it would do wonders.


I am probably overly critical, but it does throw me off books and authors when they do this.

Can't decide whether to laugh or get mad at this one. Female writers who make gay sex too much like het sex because they're ignorant or just too used to writing MF sex. So you have a character who needs to be slowly prepped with fingers and then has bareback sex (so hot because he can feel his partner shooting deep inside (yawn)). And then he has to have a towel shoved between his legs to catch messy leaks. Seriously? I love the genre and I'm happy to have anyone who wants to write in it do so. But please show a little respect to your readers and your characters.

Can't decide whether to laugh or get mad at this one. Female writers who make gay sex too much like het sex because they're ignorant or just too used to writing MF sex. So you have a character who needs to be slowly prepped with fingers and then has bareback sex (so hot because he can feel his partner shooting deep inside (yawn)). And then he has to have a towel shoved between his legs to catch messy leaks. Seriously? I love the genre and I'm happy to have anyone who wants to write in it do so. But please show a little respect to your readers and your characters.

watching gay porn might help writers on that end

watching gay porn might help writers on that end

I'm not sure porn is an answer. Many of them already have the repetitive, boring and uninspired aspects down. And the logistics of porn are nothing like the logistics of real sex either.

My suggested fixes would be to have their sex scenes edited by someone who's actually had sex (the kind they're writing about especially) or to put in interesting generic details and leave out anything they aren't sure of. For a great example of the use of sex in MM romance see Eli Easton's Unwrapping Hank The sex is almost vanilla and used minimally in the story. But you still get a great read that feels real, warm and fuzzy, and makes you want more of those characters. And it's not just warm, funny, and real; it's sexy too.

I just LOVE authors that write about places they have never been! Way back in school we were told to write about what we knew. Ok, if you are going to place your book somewhere you have never been, you have to do LOTS of research! I'm not seeing that at all. I am an ex Montanan, native, and have driven over most of the state. One of the books I read had the person fly to the airport in Helena and drive all the way to south of Missoula when there is a larger, more flights per day airport in Missoula! The drive alone from Helena to Missoula would be at least 2 hours alone! You can google all this info!! I love how all the cowboys always wear Stetson hat's, too. No, they all wear ball caps, and only at weddings do the cowboy hats come out! The cowboys don't all have horses, either, lots of ranchers just use ATV 4 Wheelers, less maintenance and feeding! I could go on and on!!

I can add to that! I'm from the Netherlands and Ann Grechs Whitewash (Unexpected Book 3) opens with a snowboarding competition in the Netherlands. She writes about 'a complex freestyle mountain course'. I didn't read any further than those first 2 sentences. The highest point in the Netherlands is a whopping 322 meters...

Authors who fall off the face of the earth may have a reason to do so. I started putting out a series (SF) and then first my mom got sick, and I had to stop both my day job and my writing to care for her until she passed (in her own bedroom at home) and then my dad took a nose dive right after, and it took four years dealing with his physical limits and dementia (same bedroom.. had to get hospital beds) before he passed. Then I sat without a job, without income, everything until the house sold and the estate settled. I just moved into my daughter's backyard cottage, and have to start everything from scratch.

As for my website. I had someone back then who updated it for me. Keep paying for the website, but that person is no longer available, and I don't have a clue how to do it myself. I can't afford yet to pay someone else to sort it out for me.

So, for things like that, please realize that authors are people too.



That said, I have my own pet peeve... glaring spelling, grammar and word order errors. Those who self publish I still can understand and accept a few errors. But a book that is handled by a publisher, and every second page has an error on it? Nope. I have put many books down after a chapter, no matter how interesting the story, just because I cannot get past those errors.

Authors and amazingly the staff at Siren Pub. who do not understand the use of the noun breath and the verb breathe. They seem to use them interchangeably! Drives me totally nuts!

[rosesandmistletoe]

I'm with KayM on the spelling, grammar and word order errors. I can take any of the pet peeves mentioned but these will turn me off faster than anything. If you can't afford an editor, ask for a volunteer. There are tons of people out there, myself included, who would rather get paid with a free book, then to have to read a book that seems to be written by a third-grader.