Out of step - again

I'm reading several pieces which have been nominated for various SF awards right now, and I'm feeling that familiar disgruntlement that I always do when reading such stuff.

The first story I read was a novella I had half-considered buying.   I absolutely loved this author's first two books.  They're two of my all-time favourites, books I come back to when I need a comfort read.  But her third book destroyed all that.  Lacking a plot, it also espoused some views I strongly disagree with.  So I fell out of love with her work.  Now I've just read that novella start, and it consists of no more than jumbled backstory couched in a scientists' diary.  And after reading six pages I still don't know what the problem or challenge - the conflict that supposedly drives all stories - is.  So that's one pass.

Then I turned to the start of a paranormal crime book by another of my favourite SF authors.  It seems like a standard police procedural with a paranormal detective.  The first viewpoint I encountered was of the murder victim, who naturally doesn't hang around for long.  So not the main character to start the story with, then.  The main character spends a lot of time reminiscing about growing up in the town she's returned to to investigate this case.  A town she seems to have run away from and doesn't like.

I'm disappointed by this development.  I loved this author's recent SF trilogy.   It has characters with real heart, and the books were very strong in humanity.  That's lacking in this extract from this crime book, and I'm not tempted to read the rest of it.

The next piece I turned to starts with a woman winning a massacre.  Blood is mentioned in the second sentence, followed by the thought that winning was fun.  Count me out right there.  I do not want to read books where the main character thinks mass slaughter is fun.

This sort of stuff can easily send me into a sad spiral where I remember all the comments about my work - which doesn't include blood and murder on the first page ever - from agents and editors.  My desire to write hopepunk was even called 'quaint' by one condescending celebrity author I pitched to.

So I won't be following the progress of this year's major awards.  I don't care who wins any of them.  If  I did get involved I'd only get thinking that nobody is writing the kinds of stories that I write, and that I love, and that there's no point in submitting my work.  I've had enough of those downward thinking spirals already.

But I know there are people out there who do love the things I do, so I will keep going.  In the hope  that eventually I'll connect with them.