Judging Sweet

Not only is Fiorella entering writing contests, but she is judging them. Not the categories she is entered in, of course, and only the lower tier.

Most recently, she worked her way through a stack of sweet entries. "Sweet," in romance-writing parlance, signifies that there are no explicit sex scenes in the manuscript, but several of the authors took it to mean sickly sweet--cloying. Never before in her life has Fiorella met such a collection of characters: every child was a dimpled cherub while the heroines were complete milksops, and the heroes, effeminate. In the "inspirationals" (stories aimed at Christian publishers), godliness was demonstrated by people muttering Bible verses under their breath (complete with citation), and sending up little prayers like magical incantations.

Now Fio likes to think positively about everyone she meets, has been known to toss Biblical verses into conversations, and prays constantly, but she hopes she is not cloying. As she notated on the manuscripts she was judging--even Jesus was able to work up enough testosterone to chase the moneychangers out of the temple.