Rose Kerr, an Amazon author. Here are the first three paragraphs of her Amazon short story, 'Their Human Sex Slave" (from the FREE SAMPLE of the story, which I believe does not violate copyright):
She has a GENIUS for bad adjective-noun combinations. “Thunderous cackle” “towering shadows” and most of all, “debilitating chunks.” She also has a nice touch with Thing That Make No Sense: a sky that is at once turquoise and orange and also solemn black lit by the pitchfork images of strange lightning, but most of all, how do the spikes on an iron collar become inverted as part of being in a plane crash? Must have been a HELL of a crash!
Thing is, Kerr has a vivid imagination and she expresses it well. The opening scene here is MEMORABLE, the image of a naked woman stunned in an alien landscape strewn with body parts while a storm rages is powerful, and her off-kilter adjective-noun combinations do kind of contribute to the alien-ness of the landscape. I’ve read samples of a LOT of erotic romances and frankly, most of them are deeply forgettable. Cookie-cutter. When it comes to cookie-cutters, Rose Kerr borked the mold! I will never forget that opening scene, especially her description of the effect of acid rain later in the sample …
However, having read the review of Kerr’s book by someone who bought it, I’m fairly sure I don’t want to read the rest of it. I might read something I can’t forget, no matter how much I want to. I will, instead, be content with the small, but still deeply debilitating chunk of the story from the sample.
Whoa! That’s getting up into “Eye of Argon” levels of awful!
I recently read a book where the author kept using the wrong words. He used “shoed” for “shooed,” and “oscillate” for “ululate.” (Lots more, but I don’t remember 'em.)
I once started a fanfic story with “At that moment, Commander Tsala realized she liked the smell of burnt flesh.” and even I can sneer at the quoted text in the OP.
Pikers! I didn’t even have to mention the part where her stunning, emerald green eyes languished in desperation as she glared. How do eyes languish and glare at the same time? Hell, how do eyes languish in desperation, stunning or otherwise? She has some ACTIVE eyes!
You with your silly billion tons of death and your smells of burning flesh! You have a long way to go before you can match her for crapitude.
She’s got another book called “Breeding Great Grandma.” I’m afraid to look.
I had to dig for it, but this is from a fanfic I wrote at least fifteen years ago:
The previous commander of the station, Captain Frances Breslow, had lost her husband and three children at Wolf 359. Breslow had slowly faded into the deepening gray of depression. The Borg were an enemy who revealed no secrets, were not subject to propaganda, did not have psychological weaknesses that could be exploited. To an intelligence officer like Breslow, it had been the ultimate helplessness. Karajan watched her carefully, saw the inevitable and used his limited influence to ensure then-Lieutenant-Commander Elaine Darby would be promoted to executive officer. It took much subtle maneuvering to get rid of the previous XO, who was a fool and a backslider and a coward. Less than a month after Darby’s promotion, she and Karajan were in her office, looking at a security camera’s footage of Breslow walking to the outskirts of Starbase 223, pointing a phaser at her chest, and burning out her own heart.