I am the occasional practitioner of omniscient voice, or as I like to call it, the Tom Jones voice.  This name is not in reference to the knighted swinging singer of “Its Not Unusual”, but instead a reference to the 1749 novel by Henry Fielding.  You see, when Mr. Fielding needed to explain a small bit of backstory, he used omniscient voice, and simply… explained it, and generally with a very dry wit.  No need to filter it through a character’s point of view or shoehorn the info into dialogue.  I have used the Tom Jones voice in the same manner – whether it be to give the background of a fictional country or the heretofore unknown to the reader (but known to the characters) tidbit of information, such as the identity of a spy.

Omniscient voice is not that common in romance novels – and it’s easy to understand why.  When a story is as internal and personal as falling in love, you (the reader and writer both) don’t really want to interrupt the flow of emotion just to step back and view the larger picture, which is what omniscient voice does.   The downside is that the information has to come out somewhere, and sometimes it makes dialogue a little lumpy.  So for me it’s a bit of a gamble.  But, here’s the reason I prefer it:

Which sounds better to you…

While Mary and John were married, he was employed at the DoReMi Agency, which had any number shady dealings.  Difficulty arose when he decided to blow the whistle on his bosses, resulting in his firing, subsequent destitution, loss of wife, and loss of dog to his best friend Joe — who, deciding he could not possibly own a Chi-Chi, renamed the pup Larry.

Or…

Cindy reached over and took Joe’s hand.  “Do you mean to tell me,” she said, “that your friend Joe who used to work at the DoReMi Agency blew the whistle on his bosses’ criminal dealings and because of that lost his job, his money, and his wife?  And you got his dog?”

“Yep,” said Joe.  “And I renamed the dog Larry.”

What voice or person do you prefer to read and/or write in?  First?  Third from character POV?  Third omniscent?

First of all I have to say, there is an awesome review of Revealed up over at The Book Smugglers blog. If you haven’t read it, check it out: http://thebooksmugglers.com/2009/03/book-review-revealed-by-kate-noble.html

Now, I have to make a confession: I’m a contest virgin. I have never had one in the past, and I rarely enter them. The one time I did, I won a coffee table. And honestly, what can top that? (Besides coffee table books, I mean. Word play!)
So it is with an intrepid heart and crossed fingers (hard to type with crossed fingers, by the way) that I present to you, my first ever Contest!

So here are the rules:

The hero and heroine in Revealed, Marcus and Phillippa, become partners in an investigation. Uneasy partners at first, but then they start to get along very well. So all you have to do is tell me who your favorite fictional investigative partners are and why.

They can be male-female (like Goren and Eames), male-male (Holmes and Watson), female-female (Cagney and Lacey), human-animal (Turner and Hooch), animal-animal (Pinky and the Brain pretending to be Watson-Holmes) or heck, just about any combination investigational partnership you can think of, from books, movies, tv, comics, etc.

How to contact me:
Just email me at kate@katenoble.com (put “April Contest” in the header) or send me a message via my contact form on my website, www.katenoble.com/contact.html

Time Span:
Over the next week (March 30th to April 5th)

Prize:
My top five favorite entries will receive their choice of a signed copy of Revealed or a signed copy of Compromised. Winners will be announced on Monday April 6th!

Good luck everyone, and happy reading!

Compromised is out today in Mass Market! This means if you missed it when it came out in the larger trade size last year, you can now get it cheaper! Which, lets face it, in this economy, is important. Hope everyone is having a good week — and we are one month to the DAY of Revealed’s release!