Category: Random Musings (Page 3 of 7)

Put Your Bats Out

November 28, 2014 / Kaetrin

It’s been a tough week here in Australia and around the cricketing world. We lost someone special this week and we are sad. Normally I talk about romance and romance books on this blog but I wanted to share my thoughts and try and explain maybe why the events of this week have had such a broad effect on us.

Unlike Aussie Rules football (AFL), rugby (union or league) or even soccer, cricket is our national sport. It’s played all over Australia – all year round indoors and outdoors all summer long. Our cricketers play all year round all over the world these days. I think every Australian kid has played cricket at some point. Even me. We don’t have many (any?) indigenous cricketers in the state or national teams and that’s a problem (one for another day) but in many ways, cricket identifies us. On Boxing Day, the Melbourne Test match starts and TVs and radios around the nation are on all day and one of the most common phrases you’ll hear will be “What’s the score?”. We are largely a secular nation and in some respects, cricket is our religion. It connects us in ways that politics and religion does not. Even Australia Day is heavily associated with cricket. Cricket is certainly a place we draw icons and heroes from. Sir Donald Bradman, the Chappell brothers, Dennis Lilllee, Jeff Thomson, Steve Waugh, Adam Gilchrist, Shane Warne – these are all cricketers revered by the Australian public in one way or another. They’re ours and they mean something to us. When they do surveys about who Australians trust the most, cricketers almost always top the list. We value our sportsmen more than our statesmen (that says something not very complimentary about our statesmen and women, but that’s for another day too and probably not this blog). In many respects, our cricketers are as revered as the royal family is in the UK. The Captain of the Australian Cricket Team is colloquially said to have “the second most important job in the nation”.

Philip Hughes was from New South Wales but he played state cricket for our own South Australia Redbacks for the past two years and that means he was ours too. Everyone’s a bit parochial about cricket. If a player was born in South Australia or played here briefly or possibly just holidayed here, we are inclined to include him as “ours”. The same holds true in all the other states as well; it’s not just South Australia. Philip Hughes was “ours” because he had played for Australia. He was “ours” because he played for South Australia and he was “ours” because he played for New South Wales. Continue reading

Echoing the Streisand Effect

September 28, 2014 / Kaetrin

As most of you would probably already know, Ellora’s Cave is suing the Dear Author blog and Jane Litte personally over this post: The Curious Case of Ellora’s Cave. Many many people, on various social media, have reported problems with Ellora’s Cave. Authors, editors and artists are reporting they are owed money, there are reports of people leaving the company and other strange goings on. Some authors were afraid to speak out. I guess the latest dick move on Ellora’s Cave’s part shows that to be a reasonable concern.

There’s not much I can do but whatever I can do, I will. And one of the things I can do, is publicise this monstrosity in my little corner of the romancelandia blogosphere. Jaid Black and Ellora’s Cave want to silence their critics. They want to shut down public discourse about their company. They want to scare people into silence. Sometimes, it pays to be careful what you ask for. Because sometimes, what you want is the opposite of what you get. Just ask Barbra Streisand.

I’m one of many bloggers, authors and readers who have come out in support of Jane, Dear Author and the blog post in question.

I won’t be buying, reading or reviewing any Ellora’s Cave books in future. I won’t give them 1 cent of my money. That said, Ellora’s Cave authors deserve our support and I’d urge people to consider buying books published with other publishers or direct from the author where possible. Continue reading

The thing which got up my nose in a big way about the latest Outlander book

August 7, 2014 / Kaetrin

The following might be considered spoilerish, so be ye warned. Personally, I don’t think it is all that spoilerish because even though it comes late in the book, it’s not really connected to the main storyline – something that makes me even more annoyed because it just didn’t really need to be there at all and it could have been changed in one very small (but significant) way and it would have been okay.

On with the rant.

First off, I’m an Outlander fan. I love the series. It’s not perfect, but overall, I find the Outlander vortex sucks me in every time. I gave the last book, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood, a B+. I liked it very very much.

But.

There was one thing which bothered me when I was consuming the book. Claire operates on a very young slave girl (she’s around 13) with a gynaecological injury. The girl, Sophronia, was non-violently repeatedly raped (she’s so young and also a slave, it cannot be called seduction as consent here was so far absent it may have been on the moon) by her owner. She became pregnant. There was a problem during a long labour and the baby died. Sophronia was left with two fistulae – so both urine and fecal matter was escaping her body via her vagina (this is still an issue today, especially in poor communities where very young girls give birth without appropriate medical care, but that’s another story). Continue reading

Opinion piece up at Dear Author

July 23, 2014 / Kaetrin

I’m over at Dear Author today rambling about Accumulation and how one or a few examples of a trope or thing in romance is often not in itself an issue, the problem comes from the cumulative effect of too many. I like to call it The Problem with Too Many Dukes.

I’m over at Dear Author

July 2, 2014 / Kaetrin

contributing to an m/m roundtable with Sunita, Sirius and Willaful. We talk about what we like and don’t like about m/m, how it’s different from (and the same as) m/f and make some recommendations (Hint: check the picture below for one of them). Please come say hi.