Closed a book early yesterday.

Yup! I've talked about it before, but I had to do it again. I didn't care about the characters. Kinda wanted to know what happened, but the remaining 250 pages were not worth my time.

This go round, I think the problem was the point of view (POV). The main characters were all men and the few women appeared to be very stereotyped. The wimpy mom. The obnoxiously dressed career secretary who files her nails and stares out the window. The hot babe sunning herself on the back porch. Gag me with a spoon. Yes, I just wrote that. If the main character is always tramping through the woods carrying a gun, peeing behind trees and ogling a girl from afar, I cannot relate to these non-universal experiences. I'm pretty sure this is the reason men don't read chick-lit. Too much girl stuff. So this book is what they must refer to as "lad-lit." I've heard of the phenomena but never read any. Now I know why. But for all the guys out there, I'm glad the book exists. It actually won a fairly prestigious award for the excellent writing. I'm guessing the judges were men.

As I'm working on my next novel, this makes me look at my male characters more carefully. Are they cardboard cutouts? Are they placeholders/props? I want all my characters to be real; three-dimensional. How do I avoid the cliche? I'm working on finding some kind of universal experience in each character that every reader will relate to. Something to think on.

What makes you quit reading a book? (Please don't name names).

Do You Believe in Magic?

I'm not talking Harry Potter magic, either. I mean, when you read a story - seemingly normal, and then the author throws in a little bit of magic, do you believe it?

It's easy to believe magical things will happen in a magical place. For instance, we easily believe a ring found under a mountain can prolong the life of a hobbit in Middle Earth and also destroy the entire world. But what if a woman finds a ring under her bed in Muncie, IN? Would we believe it could destroy the known world?

I love to believe in supernatural stories. It's like a ride the author takes me on, painting the backdrop for amazing, irregular things to happen. But have you ever read a story where it just didn't work?

What if the setting is contemporary, the people are all normal, but "out of this world" stuff begins to happen and the author provides no reason at all? What is your threshold for believability?

I happen to believe that if the author makes me believe it, he's done a great job. It's when the "seams" of a story become noticeable that I stop believing. An author who decides to dump a magical or mystical element into the story to make it work is using magic as a crutch and nine times out of ten, it will not work. But when an author writes a story so believably that it doesn't matter how realistic things are, beautiful things happen.

One such story is The Sugar Queen by Sarah Addison Allen. She tells an intriguing story about interesting people I care about. I believe the story. But then she weaves in this subtle, magical thread and while I know it's not possible, I love it. I eagerly follow this part of the story and it brings me joy because I wish it were possible in my own life.

It's a quirky novel (I just love them!) and I'm not sure it's overly well-known, but it's worth the read. A light-hearted and serious story, not too deep, but providing quality characters I'm still thinking of two weeks after I read the last page.

Check out The Sugar Queen and tell me, did you believe the magic?