Mary Louise drops onto the loveseat in her favorite room. She’s taking a break from painting, to ice the wrist that has been plagued with tendonitis since last spring. She’s excited to start the new novel her daughter has given her. Fiction is one of her favorite past times. She takes a sip from her glass of ice water and opens the first page of the book.
“AAAAURRGHH!” she exclaims, her rage flaring up as suddenly as a bad case of the hiccups, “Why do so many novelists these days insist on using the present tense? I HATE THAT!”
It is the third novel in a row in which the author has employed this irritatingly cutesy style and she’s heartily sick of it. She considers it the literary equivalent of a movie in which every actor stares into the camera regardless of what is happening in a scene. She decides not put up with it again.
She jumps up from her seat, slams the book closed and drop kicks it straight into the bag of donations to ARC.
She thinks perhaps she will just reread her collection of Georgette Heyer novels.