Casey’s Literary Rants

In which I rant about details, or lack thereof, that bug the crap out of me

When I read a book, I’m ready to accept anything the author throws at me. A one eyed monster that eats only pasta and lives in the closet? Sure, that can exist. A world where the sky is purple and the grass is actually made out of sugar? Yeah, that sounds like a pretty cool place to live. But when the author fails to adhere to the most basic details of life – that’s when it drives me crazy.

One of the biggest failures comes from hair. Honestly, who would think that hair would ever cause such a problem? But it does if your an author who has always had short hair and you write about a character with long hair. Hair is hair is not all hair. I’ve had long (waist length) hair for most of my life, so I can tell you from experience that with hair that long it gets everywhere! If left loose at dinner, for example, a few strands can land in your food, and then without knowing it, you take a bite of food only to choke on it when you swallow because your hair was in that food and your hair is still attached to your head! (Yes, that is a true story.) I’m not saying authors should add scenes like that because it was gross enough living through it (multiple times), who wants to read about it in a book? I’m saying you can’t give a character long hair and not do anything with it.

Nearly all of Christine Feehan’s female characters have long hair. And do you know what they are constantly doing? They are constantly braiding their hair. Because that’s what people with long hair do! Obviously not all authors get this concept and one that comes to mind is the heroine Annywl from G. A. Aiken’s Dragon Actually. It’s been awhile since I’ve read this book, so my details might be slightly off, but from what I remember, Aiken briefly described Annywl’s hair as long in the beginning and then never really mentioned it again until about half way through when Annywl was described with her knee-length hair covering her entire body. I don’t know if you get this, but knee-length hair is LOOOOOOOOOOOONG and long hair gets everywhere (see gross story above). Like when I ride in a car with the windows down, my hair dances in the wind. It dances in front of me, behind me, to the sides of me – its a mass of dancing hair! When Annywal rode on the back of a dragon, her hair should have turned into a mini tornado. Or at least, gotten tangled up in the dragon’s scales.

Some authors also don’t understand the concept of thick hair either. In The Vampire Shrink by Lynda Hilburn, I distinctly remember a scene where, a measly 10 minutes after washing her thick hair, the star of the story, Kismet mentions how it is completely dry. In no possible way could that ever happen. Not only did Kismet not even use a blow dryer, but it is utterly impossible for thick hair to dry in 10 minutes even with one! I personally hate using a blow dryer (because of all the damage it does to my hair) but when I do use one, after 10 minutes my hair is really hot and still damp. If this book had taken place in the year 2087 and there was some invention that could instantaneously dry hair, well, cool. That’s totally believable. But in the year 2008 (or thereabouts), no. An especially big, fat no when all Kismet did was walk around her home getting dressed.

In Lori Foster’s When You Dare, she didn’t have a problem with hair. But she did have a problem with a lack of details about Dare’s girls (a.k.a. his two dogs). Dare does say that they’re Labradors and about 75 – 80 pounds each and that’s all the description we get. Am I crazy to want to know what kind of labs they are? Do they have unique markings? We the readers didn’t get any of that. Nor did she really give a depth to just how big the dogs really were. Growing up with giant dogs of my own, I know that dogs that big can casually lay their heads on the kitchen table. It’s those seemingly unimportant background details that are actually vitally important.

The other thing that bugged me about When You Dare was that Dare let the recently kidnapped and rescued Molly buy clothes online with her own credit card and had them shipped to his P.O. box, mere miles from the house that they were hiding in. He allowed this after telling Molly she couldn’t access any of her online accounts in case the person who wanted her dead was capable of tracking her online. And yet, that one little action completely undermined his whole speech about keeping her away from online accounts. Not that it actually affected the outcome of the book, but still. It’s the principal of the action!

But sometimes, it isn’t the little details, or lack thereof, that really bother me. Sometimes it’s the more important details that bother me. Like in Cynthia Eden’s Deadly Heat. (This is the part where I warn you that I’m about to give away parts of the ending of Deadly Heat. You have been warned.) After Kenton was captured by the bad guy, he was tied to a bed and hosed down with gasoline. His shirt was soaked with it, it splashed over his face and into his hair. It was already sprayed all over the house and then the bad guy light a match and dropped it onto said gasoline.

I’m going to pause here and let that information soak into your brain.

Okay, so like I was saying, gasoline everywhere and fire was added to it. Instead of everything blowing up in a giant explosion, the firefighter and heroine to Kenton’s hero, Lora has enough time to fight the bad guy, rescue Kenton, run around the house fighting/arguing with the bad guy some more and eventually get out of the house. All the while, Kenton is still SOAKED in gasoline (although, Lora did pull his shirt off) and neither of them have any kind of firefighter equipment. That lasted for about four pages and Kenton walked away with very minor injuries. (Being in a coma for three days is nothing compared to having all your skin burned off.)

Have you ever seen Zoolander? For those of you who have, you know where I’m going with this. For those who haven’t, well in one scene, three male models get in a gas fight (they spray each other with gasoline) until one decides to light a cigarette and the entire place EXPLODES. (You can watch the entire scene here. The part I’m talking about happens from 2:45-3:07.) So what I’m trying to say is that Gasoline + Fire = MAJOR INSTANTANEOUS EXPLOSION.

Cynthia Eden is not the first author to make this mistake, nor will she be the last.  It happens in movies too. Did anyone watch The Haunting in Connecticut? Yeah, very similar ending to Deadly Heat.

I am in no way picking on, or attacking these authors or their books. I am merely using them as examples because these were the books that came to mind. I did read and enjoy (apart from these small details) each of these books. And, if you think about it, these authors did their job right because I’m still thinking about their books long after I’ve read them. Though, probably not the way they want me to think about them.