My mother has complained about the same factual mistakes in her Romance novel reading so many times that the last time she started to rant, I asked her to blog it for me.  She did.  Here it is:

PET PEEVES IN  NOVELS

by Alice’s mother

When I come across incorrect information in novels I’m reading,  I want to throw the book against the wall.   These frequently come down authors ignoring to the well known edit that authors should write about what they know.  I have a few examples for you; some more subtle than others.

  KNOW THE LOCATION 

In one novel, the heroine moved to El Paso because it would NEVER snow in El Paso.  Wrong.  Growing up in El Paso, I can vouch that it does snow in El Paso.  It may only be a couple of times a winter and it usually melts rapidly.  When they get a major snow storm (3-7 inches),  it is chaos.  Schools close and driving is challenging among novice snow-drivers.

 GENERAL KNOWLEDGE

 Another novel had a ranch of 1000 acres with forests, lake, bluffs, etc. and overnight trail rides.  Guess what size that really is?  One section is a square mile and has 640 acres.  Around here 8 blocks equals a mile.  This means the area was about 8 x 13 blocks in size.

Occasionally, you will read of cases of foodborne illness that occur during or within minutes after the meal.  Poisons might be fast but microbes are not.  Most organisms take 24-36 hours to do their thing. (So blame a previous day’s meal) Some incubation times are measured in days.  Staphylococcus aurous is a speedy one, it only takes 1-6 hours to cause problems.

HORSE FLANK REFERENCES

The flank is the third label up along the inside of the horse’s back leg.  It’s the muscle there, not other parts that might appear on, say, a stallion.

My top pet peeve is involves horse’s flanks.  The flank of a horse is the area located on the lower section of the main body (barrel) of the horse  immediately in front of the back legs.  In rodeos, a flank strap is used to insure the broncos will buck.  It is a sensitive,  ticklish area.

I’ve come across references to kicking the horse in the flanks in romance novels, westerns and one mystery.  You do NOT kick a horse in the flanks for two reasons.  First of all, the horse might buck you off if you did so.  Second, your position would be really awkward as you stretched your legs out behind you – and would put you in an even better position to be bucked off.

A few examples from books: “dug heels into mare’s flanks”  “kicked in flanks..” “He kicked the appaloosa’s flanks and….” and last  “….watched  him remove the saddle and rub the mare’s dappled flank with a handful of straw.”  The amazing thing about this story is the next sentence doesn’t mention the hero getting kicked.  I’ll admit writing “he kicked the barrel of the horse….” doesn’t have quite the same lilt but surely there are alternatives.  “He kicked his horse into a canter”  or “He nudged his horse with his heels”

I usually growl when I hit one of these type of mistakes in a book.  After three of them, I make a notation in my book list to avoid that author.