Sidetracked

It happens to the best of us, doesn't it? I was totally going to write this past week, but then Amazon just had to recommend a book to me that I just had to buy, and there you go.

What's the book you ask? It's called A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. It's not so much that the title is anything great, or the initial jacket flap wooed me (witch who doesn't do magic anymore, parents dead, hooks up with a vamp, etc. etc.), but it's the quality of her writing that did me in, well, that and the academic setting (remember, I'm an academic girl, too).

This of course got me thinking. The fact that "it's all been done before" is irrelevant if you can do it better, or different. Sometimes I worry that my characters or setting are too clichéd. While that may be true, and part of the reason for my major revision, I don't think it's a story killer. Do you? Surely there are more examples out there. Do share...