A woman recently approached me at a signing raving about my latest book. "It was so funny," she said. "I didn't know you could write funny."
Got an email from another reader the other day complaining about the same book because it lacked my usual humor. "I wish you would write with more humor in your novels, the way you used to do in your earlier books".
Okay, I will be the first to admit that I have no idea why one of these people thought the book was hilarious and the other held the opinion that it lacked any trace of wit. That's the weird thing about humor -- it is impossible to explain why some people are amused by one scene in a book while others don't get it or, worse yet, just roll their eyes and turn the page. No two people bring the same things to a novel and no two people take the same things away from it.
But at least when you write about grim stuff: murder, tragedy, natural disasters, for example, the vast majority of readers have a visceral understanding of what's going on and can relate to some degree. In other words, they "get it."
That is not true with humor. We are not all amused by the same things. Some of us respond to irony, wit, or clever repartee. Others like broader strokes of humor, slapstick or potty-mouth jokes, for example. And before you ask, I'm not even going to touch the subject of mimes.
Whatever humor you may find in my stories was not put in deliberately by me. I don't think that way. It never occurs to me to say, "hey, things have been a little serious for a couple of chapters, I'll put in a funny scene here." The humor (or lack thereof) that finds its way into my stories winds up there because it is part of my world view. That world view shapes everything I write. My hero and heroine share my sense of humor. If you don't find them occasionally amusing on the page, it is safe to say you wouldn't find me very amusing in person, either.
But if you share my sense of humor and if you do sometimes find yourself smiling when you read one of my books, I suspect we have a lot in common. If we ever met we wou
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Jayne Ann Krentz sent the following posts to customers who purchased Ravished