First – stop reading right now and click the Deals & Steals tab. I've got an offer too good to pass up. Buy a book for 99 cents and get a $2.99 book FREE. No, I didn't get it backward. Click for details.
And one more "housekeeping" item. I've had people mention that although they've been reading my blog for a while, they didn't realize that only a short piece of the post shows up on this main page. Almost all my posts have a "keep reading" prompt. I do this because I prefer to have more posts visible on my home page, but I didn't realize some people might have missed it If you're one of them, I hope you'll start clicking through to the rest of the posts.
Today's post is targeted at readers more than writers, although I don't think you can really isolate one from the other. I'd appreciate feedback from both sides.
Recently, I've read a few "straight" romance novels by best-selling, many, many books to their name authors. Maybe the reason they didn't resonate for me is because I usually read either straight mystery or romantic suspense, but I had some trouble caring about the characters—in these cases, the hero. And I wondered if I'm the only one.
We all know that writing a "TSTL" character (Too Stupid to Live) is a story killer. And, I'm assuming that even though that caveat usually comes with descriptions of heroines, I'm thinking it should also carry over to the hero. Men can be stupid, too.
