Not so long ago, I wrote a post about my disappointment in the recent Stephanie Plum release, and cited the media reports about the money Janet Evanovich had been paid to move from St Martin’s Press. I sort of feel now that I should make a retraction, or at least a follow up, in response to this interview with Janet where she says that the media misreported the amount she was paid, and represented her unfairly as “demanding.” The quote I used in the title is I think a very accurate statement about how successful women are perceived in the media.

She also makes it clear that her main reason for moving publishers had nothing to do with money (unsurprisingly she is quite well off) and more to do with creative direction: “I think they did a fabulous job for me, but we had some differences about moving forward, about the projects that I felt very strongly about in the future, and that really was not so much a matter of money, it was a matter of a vision. I just had a slightly different vision than St. Martin’s. So, I just felt like maybe I needed a change, maybe I needed some new ideas. Sometimes you are the new girl on the block, and there is just a lot of enthusiasm and there’s a lot of energy. You all of a sudden have this rush to do something fabulous.”

That kinda sounds to me like the issue was Janet wanting to write something other than more and more and more Stephanie Plum… and while I personally have never enjoyed her non-Plum books as much, there can be nothing worse for an author than that expectation that you keep doing your cash cow successful series at the expense of growing and developing and trying new things. Her intentions to hook up with co-writers to help boost other careers is kind of an interesting thing, too – and probably something that would help her kick herself out of the rut she might be in. I see other authors doing this – Jenny Crusie for one, though I think she mostly does it with close friends – but have rarely heard one talking about their motives for doing so openly.

There’s I think an unfair assumption with co-writing that it’s entirely a trade of famous name for leg/fingerwork, and that the no-name writer does all the work while the famous person just signal boosts the book by existing. More authors talking about the co-writing process and their methods and what they get out of it would help to get rid of that myth, I think. Also I just find co-writing a fascinating thing to read about because everyone does it differently!

Day 01 – A book series you wish had gone on longer OR a book series you wish would just freaking end already (or both!)

I love the Stephanie Plum books. I love everything about them – I love the flawed and (mostly) unapologetic heroine, I love the quirky and colourful supporting characters, I love the two tall, dark & sexy men in her life, and I love her deeply awesome Grandma Mazur with her funeral obsession and her sawn off shotgun. I love the fact that she can’t keep a car for more than three days without it exploding.

I read once that Evanovich said basically that Steph would always be in her early 30′s and Grandma would never die, which I was quite happy about, because these books do make me feel safe and cuddly.

But, you know, but.

We’re sixteen books in now, and while Finger-licking Fifteen managed to feel fresh and entertaining to me, Sizzling Sixteen failed to launch. We’ve reached serious stasis time. I have been turning it over in my head, trying to figure out why this one out of sixteen freaking volumes is the one that made me go meh. I still read it at a breakneck pace, I still enjoyed the experience. The lack of change is starting to wear on me a bit – for every hint of moving forward there are two steps back, and ultimately the books are chasing their own tail.

In particular, the romantic elements are starting to irritate me. It was obvious from the start that Morelli, the slightly more tamed bad boy, was completely the perfect guy for Stephanie. Ranger, the badder boy who is completely untamed, was a wistful fantasy. (naturally I ship her with Ranger – I always go against canon) The trouble is, Steph and Morelli just fit too well together, so Evanovich has had to employ all kinds of complex machinations to keep them apart. I can buy Stephanie’s fear of commitment, and quite like the fact that he’s the one who wants to settle down and she doesn’t, but it has dragged on so long now that the whole thing is getting tiresome. The books have been following a pattern of getting them back together regularly and then splitting them up again off screen due to random domestic fights. It makes both of them a lot less likeable, and seems to be entirely set up to allow Stephanie to run off with Ranger for sexy interludes, mostly guilt free. Not that I object to the Ranger interludes, it just is starting to feel like all the characters are in orbit, waiting for the last book to arrive so they can all get some closure.

There was a lot of talk recently about how Janet Evanovich has left St Martin’s Press after they refused to pay 50 million dollars as an advance on her next four books. Most people I have seen reacting to this seem to think that Evanovich (or more likely, her agent) was asking far too much. I would respectfully suggest that those people have probably not realised quite how huge Janet Evanovich is. She has not only produced sixteen straight-to-bestseller-lists Stephanie Plum books at the rate of one per year since 1994, but all of those books are still in print, and still selling. Financially, I don’t see why she wouldn’t be worth it, especially (and I mean ESPECIALLY) if it was a retirement plan – not just for Evanovich, but definitely for Stephanie Plum.

I don’t know what was included in that proposed 50 million deal, but what I would really REALLY have liked to see was those contracted 4 books be the last in the Stephanie Plum series. With four volumes to go and a proper end point drawn, Evanovich could have taken all those hints and bits and pieces about Stephanie’s future and actually driven the series to a crashing, brilliant conclusion, rather than just lurching from book to book, the way it currently feels now. One of the cleverest and most admirable things that JK Rowling did was to put a cap on the Harry Potter madness and to stick to it, despite the fact that she would have made so many more millions if she had cracked and decided to write “one more” or another series in the same world. I think it’s time to lay Stephanie Plum properly to rest, before too many more of the fans start wandering away from the car crash.

(more…)

You can get a double dose of Tansyfic on the internet airwaves right now. Tehani Wessely reads my story “Relentless Adaptations” from the upcoming TPP anthology Sprawl on the Twelfth Planet Cast, and you can hear ME ME ME reading “Fleshy” at Terra Incognita SF.

Both are available on iTunes, too.

I would blog further, but we just got a freaking iPad and the household is in a total tizzy about it. Also I’m three quarters of the way through the latest Stephanie Plum and I won’t make any sense to anyone until I’m done with it – I’ve basically spent the day forgetting shit & bumping into things. Damned books. Some authors should be locked up.

I did get an exciting stack of mail today, though, including a certain book I’ve been hanging out for:

And of course, Trent couldn’t help it, he had to jump on the book trailer bandwagon too, though I think he may have missed the point just a tad.

I love my friends.