Vicki wrote
I think they might have just been feeding me that
commercial idea about the
detective, knowing that if they bluntly asked me
to get rid of the sex scene, I
would balk. I didn't figure that out till
later.
Harrumph (also Hi Vicki)
As the editor/publisher concerned, I can assure
one and all that my objection was not to the mode of death
but to the whole detective thing. To my mind the introduction
of the detective at the beginning and end rather crudely
turned Iguana Love from a noir (existential? Gide-ian?)
masterwork into a 'crime novel' and that's why I suggested
their removal. It felt to me as if the detective was there to
please some previous reader's desire for more of a crime
novel format. And, as an editor, I understand that formats
are 'commercial' but that's - seriously! - not what we at
Serpent's Tail are into (or particularly good at selling,
come to that). Hey, I also told Ken Bruen not to write police
procedurals.
I also think that the sex aspect of the scene,
while fine in itself (no one writes better, more brutally
honest, sex scenes than Vicki), doesn't work right at the
beginning, to my mind it gives away too much of Ramona's
fate, too early.
Be interesting to know what fellow rara-avians
who've read Iguana Love think of it though.
By the way while on the female noir tip, I'm very
pleased to announce that another Serpent's Tail author, Joolz
Denby, has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize (big
literary prize for fiction by women) for her excellent biker
noir novel Billie Morgan.
John
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 28 Apr 2005 EDT