Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

I wouldn’t call myself an “industry insider,” but even if you watch the romance-publishing world with half an eye you begin to notice what I call well duh moments.

When I decided to become an evil reviewer back in 1999, I was still an infant romance reader. However even my untrained eye noticed several trends:

1) Every historical author on the planet was writing a romantic suspense novel
2) Avon was still publishing westerns
3) Regency England was beginning its strangle-hold
4) Paranormals were impossible to sell and/or find.

Now in 2005:

1) Romantic suspense is still selling, but the mass exodus may be waning
2) Avon has abandoned the western – except for Susan Kay Law. Keep up the good fight girlfriend!
3) I’m so bloody sick of Regency England (that’s probably just me though)
4) Paranormals are smokin’ hot – we want them like yesterday people!

So what changed between 1999 and 2005 really? Did a sudden spurt of paranormal readers rise up from the oceans? Did they drop from the sky? Not likely. They were always there, it’s just they weren’t being seen.

As much as readers like to gripe about time periods and plot devices they hate, they are equally as passionate about ones that they love. The plight of the paranormal reader was well documented on numerous message boards and listservs over the last several years. They just had to be patient.

Really, really patient.

Somewhere down the line some editor had a well duh moment. Maybe he/she plucked a fantastic futuristic romance out of the slush pile and decided to take a chance. Maybe someone convinced them that the vampire is the prototypical-wounded hero and romance readers will lap them up. Who knows? But paranormal fans can now take heart that the industry has finally “gotten” it.

If my current crop of review books is any indication, we are in for a surge in paranormals. And now that Tor has jumped on the bandwagon with a new imprint, world domination seems imminent. Congratulations paranormal fans – you’ve earned this. You stuck with it. You whined. You fought. You begged. Heck, you probably openly wept on more than one occasion. Consider this resurgence the fruits of your labor.

So what does this mean for the rest of us? Everything comes back around again. Everything. So take note western fans. We just have to be patient.

Really, really patient.

“How in the world do you find time to write?”

I’m asked that question quite often. Which, I suppose, isn’t surprising considering I had a full time day job, five kids, and still managed to crank out a couple books a year.

But I started thinking who was asking me. It wasn’t just writers, but people who had families and jobs and commitments and simply couldn’t find the time to do what they wanted to do – obligations devoured their time.

All writers – published and unpublished — understand what goes into writing a book. They appreciate that crafting a story takes time. When serious writers ask me how I find the time, I know they are frustrated and desperately searching for a way to increase their writing time.

Serious writers have a common goal: publication. To reach that goal, you need to write. Writing takes time. Time is finite. And because few of us have the luxury of writing with no outside distractions, we cherish each minute we find.

I was strongly motivated to create writing time. After I had my son in 2001, I realized that I couldn’t stay home if I wanted to – we had a mortgage and now three kids, we couldn’t lose my salary and make ends meet – at least not in the foreseeable future.

I was greatly disillusioned at this point in my life. I didn’t see any way out. I turned to my hobby of writing more out of a need to escape. And realized that I could turn my love of crafting stories into a career – if I committed myself.

Writing steals time from everything else. Like cleaning. I’ve always hated to clean, so it was very easy to give up my cleaning time for writing. Television? A little harder to part with, but I did it. Kids? No dice. So the time I found was at night, after they were in bed. I wrote five to ten pages on average, but when I was on a roll I could knock out twenty-five and roll into bed at two a.m. then wake up four hours later to get ready for work and the kids ready for school.

Because my motivation was strong, I was willing to make sacrifices and deal with the conflict inherent in my goal. Conflict in a writer’s life can be goal-breaking. While it was easy for me to give up cleaning, my hubby and kids sure didn’t like picking up the slack. The conflict of having a clean house is a minor example, but it can be anything – from an unsupportive spouse to a 60-hour-a-week-job to elderly parents.

I would argue that the properly motivated author will never give up. Whether you are unpublished trying to make your first sale, published and trying to breakout, or a bestseller worried that your next book will pale in comparison to your last, if your motivations are strong and your goals clear, you can overcome conflict.

What about you? Do you know why you write? Do you love it? Do you have a goal and know why you want to achieve it? Have you resolved or dealt with your conflicts? If you know the answers, you’ll never ask anyone how they find the time.

You’ll know how. Because you will have found it, too.

After having shared my views on romance novels online for nearly nine years now, one might wonder what in the hell I still have to say that could be of any interest to anyone. As long as I run a website devoted to romance and keep reading romance, I’ll never run out of things to talk about.

These days I’m watching the tremendous growth of Romantica (when juxtaposed with the current growth of Inspirational Romance it’s particularly fascinating). Although online romance readers in no way represent the real romance-reading public (of this I’m convinced), online trends may disproportionally affect the mainstream publishing industry. The growth of Romantica in e-book form (and via fan fiction) is something I’m sure Harlequin, Kensington, and Berkley (to a smaller extent) took into consideration before deciding to focus and expand the market.

And this is of interest to me these days because I’ve begun to read quite a bit of short story Romantica (my favorite guilty pleasure read from 2004 is Merry Christmas, Baby, mostly because of the delightfully naughty entries by Donna Kauffman and Susanna Carr).

I owe most of this interest to MaryJanice Davidson (and to a lesser extent, Alison Kent - had authors like her not pushed the Harlequin Blaze envelope, I’m sure I’d be reading even fewer Blaze titles than I do now - how many more virginal sex therapists, uptight lingerie store owners, and frigid talk show hosts and librarians can you stand to read about? :mad:).

We’d reviewed some of Davidson’s earlier work at All About Romance, but it wasn’t until Undead and Unwed that I actually read her. That was enough…soon it was her other 2004 single title releases, and then there were her earlier Romantica short story contributions to the Secrets anthologies, which led me to Angela Knight’s Romantica contributions to the Secrets anthologies, which led me…well, you can see where this is going.

Take a reader who’s discovered one voice of an author she loves, is thrilled to
discover a second voice by the same author, and sit back and watch the glom phenomenon take over…and spreads.

For those unfamiliar, "to glom” means "to seize or latch on to something," but I adapted the term in the mid-1990’s to describe what happens to readers when we discover an author we love - we become slightly maniacal as we try and locate their backlist to read. It wasn’t long after I fell in love with Davidson’s snarky Chick Lit/Romance hybrid voice that I decided I also craved her dirty Romantica voice.

I couldn’t wait to dive into her just-out Derik’s Bane, which is a the third in a series of Romantica werewolf stories. The first two were published in the Secrets anthologies while this new offering is a single title release for Berkley.

I may be the only reader I know who adored Derik’s Bane, but what Davidson’s managed to do may be instructive to others out there. She’s not only managed to parlay her small/e-press romantica success into the mainstream of romance publishing, she’s been able to take her characters with her for the ride. And for those of us readers who get off on connected stories and books - a sizable group, btw - this is exciting indeed.

Let’s get to know one another…if you’re reading (much) romantica
these days, who popped your cherry, so to speak, and whom do you
crave now?

TTFN, Laurie Likes Books

When faced with the task of writing this first column, my muse said, “Well, transcriptionist of mine, what are the guidelines?”

Like any aspiring author, I know what to do with guidelines. Read. Study. Analyze them right into a box. Only then can I be sure that I’m in that box. After scouring the site, I reread Charlie’s mission statement:

Together, with your comments, they will map the landscape of today’s romance genre from every possible angle. From story conception to the moment a reader finishes the book, they’ll cover it all.

That’s a big box. The muse fled in search of Doritos, leaving me to ponder when, exactly, I stopped being able to write anything without parameters. Other writers break the so-called taboos and don’t have their keyboards taken away.

No athletes? Tell that to Susan Elizabeth Phillips (football), Rachel Gibson (hockey), Kristin Hardy (baseball–in category), and Pat White (wrestling!). No actors? Somebody forgot to send Suzanne Brockmann that memo. No mentally-handicapped heroes? Read Simple Jess by Pamela Morsi. No scary stuff? Judith Arnold tackled breast cancer in Barefoot In The Grass.

Why were those stories allowed to break the rules? For the same reason most of them live on my keeper shelves–passion. Not for the sport–does Susan Elizabeth Phillips paint her face and scream at her television every autumn Sunday? I have no idea. But as a reader, I feel the passion she had for Dan and Phoebe’s story. Whether funny or tearjerking, every one of those books meant enough to the author for her to step outside of the box.

Of course SEP and Suz can break the rules–they’re SEP and Suz! It’s probably harder for a published author to step outside of the box. What does the aspiring writer risk? Time and a rejection letter? A published author risks readers, numbers, and therefore her career. And yet, they write the story they need to write.

Why, then, do aspiring authors sweat the guidelines? Why do we have notepads filled with the pet peeves of dozens of editors and agents? Why do we care on what page our first kiss falls? Before writing the book?

As uncontracted writers, we don’t want to spend months writing a book that won’t sell. And turning those guidelines into a box, then writing within that box, is as close as we get to assurance that an editor will be interested.

But there’s a price. The scale balancing the book of your heart versus book of the market starts tipping gradually toward the market. Your manuscript is perfectly crafted to suit, not only the guidelines for a publisher, but that specific editor’s likes and dislikes. And it’s going to land on her desk, along with dozens of other perfectly crafted and targeted manuscripts.

What sets your manuscript apart from those books is your passion for your story. That box is as big or as small as you make it. Make it too small, and someday you’ll be left sitting at your keyboard while the muse licks crumbs from the bottom of the bag.

I’m sitting on the sofa tonight, watching “Everybody Loves Raymond” as I compose this. For the five thousandth time since cable was invented, my husband wanders in and says, “What are you doing?”

“Working,” I say. Note: I do make sure I type furiously while giving him this answer. Can’t say that without backing it up with some evidence.

He gives me the “yeah, right” look and asks for the remote. Ha, ha, ha. Silly man. Thinks that just because I’m working I can’t watch TV at the same time. My argument is simple–watching TV actually helps my writing.

Now, bear with me before you think this is all part of a grand scheme to have sole control of the remote (okay, it is, but there is also some writing logic in this). TV is great for teaching you how to write. It is. Think about this: What’s the number-one maxim in writing?

Show not tell.

I can hear everyone groaning about that one, too. Don’t we all hate getting that on our revision letters and critique notes? “Show, don’t tell how he feels.” Well, geez, I’m a writer, I’m trying to use my words. Let me tell, it’s what I do best.

In television, there isn’t any telling. No narrator saying, “Raymond is feeling quite upset with his father. He knows he should talk to him but blah, blah…”

Look at Raymond in an argument with his father. You can tell in five seconds how he’s feeling, how frustrated he is with his father and what the consequences of his actions are going to be (well, sometimes he does and most of the time the man is clueless; that’s what makes Raymond so lovable). A few words, some great facial movements and a couple of actions and Voila! the audience knows exactly what Ray is feeling because he showed them.

When I see great showing on TV, I try to figure out how I would transcribe that into words. How I would write that as a scene, so that I could show, not tell. How I would build up the character relationships so that everyone would understand the dynamics of the family without me having to run down the genealogy chart and its familial impact every time there’s an argument.

Plus, when I watch TV, I get great ideas. Not ideas I plagiarize, obviously, but ideas for how to maintain suspense, add a neat quirk to a character (and still make him lovable), create an unexpected twist, etc. And the commercials–heck, AT&T should bottle that “making people cry in ten seconds or less” formula.

So yes, I am working when I am watching TV. Most of the time. Except when “Desperate Housewives” is on. Then I’m just being lazy while I try to figure out where Dana is.

I do, however, keep my laptop at the ready, just in case my husband tries to take the remote away.

Shirley

What’s the deal with making a single woman old before her time? In the last four category romances I read, each thirtysomething heroine is so old-fashioned that there is nothing to show she’s from this decade, let alone my generation.

People of my generation vary in their maturity and how they show it. For example, one friend is a fan of classical music and considers ‘pop’ music the scum of earth, while another doesn’t appreciate “silly” games and will tell us to grow up if we misbehave. Another friend has such an old soul that we’ve nicknamed her Sage. Yet each one has other personality traits or interests that reveal their true age.

A typical single heroine has ALL those traits in one go? It’s just too much. Why make the heroine a decade-something if the author doesn’t want her to be part of her generation?

Example: the heroine wears conservative clothes, she is very careful with money, she likes listening to classical music, her idea of having a ‘wild time’ is a glass of white wine, she does her own cooking, and she doesn’t have friends of her own age. She works as a shop owner with minimal contact with her customers, and she’s a Sunday school teacher.

You may think: What’s wrong with that? Well, I have a couple of friends who are like that, but here is the difference; one friend – very conservative, very quiet, and very serious – collects Barbie dolls. Another has such a razor-sharp memory of the ’80s that trivia contest organisers ban her from joining. Oh, yes, she likes attending trivia contests, too.

Here is the real question: Our heroine has no social life, no quirks that make her different, she’s old before her time, so what it is about her that attracts the hero?

My theory is it’s all about the fact that she’s a naïve, virginal virgin. With films, magazines, television and adverts around her, she still knows nothing about sex. Until the hero comes along, she is asexual. I have friends who are virgins, yet they are knowlegeable about sex, right down to knowing what they would enjoy. You know something is up when the hero has to explain what goes where.

Sometimes it seems as if her virginity IS her personality, which makes it as if the hero’s courting her virginity, not her. I mean, the hero hasn’t even shown an interest in her interests or opinions.

I’m not saying that she should rip her blouse open, dance a jig on the hero’s car top, and sing, “Come and get me, big boy!” She doesn’t need to announce, “I like my life straight, I like things to be neat and tidy, and I’m a life member of a S&M club”. But there must be something about her that sets her apart from the others, something that makes the hero go, “You’re It.”

Is her virginity the main attraction? If that is the case, the hero is one dull dude. Or a perv.

There’s always a certain amount of anxiety that goes along with being first in anything, and it’s no different whether you’re the first one to write an entry in a blog, or the first one to stick your hand in a cobwebby, crumbling “Insert Hand Here to Access Golden Idol” hole in a hidden Mayan temple.

Well, OK, probably the hand volunteer would take the Most Anxious title, but considering the stress we writers can put on ourselves to not only perform, but perform well, maybe not. Since this blog promises to be a fun, interesting look at all sorts of aspects concerning romantic novels, I won’t dwell on the things that may or may not happen if you stick your hand in a cobwebby, crumbling “Insert Hand Here” hole, and instead muse over the very first romance I read.

I came late to romance reading, but I’ve always been a romantic at heart, so I gravitated naturally to authors like Elizabeth Peters who combined so well mystery with a smidgen of romance. One day (after I had written my own romantic historical mystery), I decided that I wanted to write a straight romance. One with (gasp) love scenes. Since I’d never read a romance, I grabbed the biggest one I could find at my nearby bookstore—that book was Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander.

Outlander had an impact on me in two significant ways—the first was that I argued with the author the entire way through the book (I would reach a spot in a chapter and tell my dogs, “No! That is so not what I’d do! What Jamie needs is a dark-haired American named Katie! And he should be naked a whole lot more often!”), but the second, and more profound, was that it made me fall madly in love with the idea of a book devoted to a love story.

I spent the next six month reading literally hundreds of romances. I wallowed in them. I would come home from bookstores with my arms laden to the point where my husband started making pointed references to a handy service he’d heard of called a library (I ignored him—I couldn’t merely borrow books I knew I was going to want to read over and over and over again). I joined the RWA. I went to my first conference. And with each passing day, the beauty of the genre that is romance sank deep into my psyche and struck up a sympathetic chord.

Today, after having written twenty-five romances, and with what seems like a gazillion more stories rattling around in my head, I’m just as smitten with the romance genre as I was when I finally closed the cover to Outlander. I don’t understand people who sneer at the idea of a romance novel (who doesn’t want to relive the wonderful feelings of being in love?), but I’m willing to concede that perhaps the happiness that a well-written romance can bring is not everyone’s cup of tea.

I still think Jamie would be better off with someone named Katie, though…

Even though Romancing The Blog is not officially launched, we wanted to thank everyone who has commented and sent us messages about the site. We’re excited about RTB’s future, and we’re thrilled with the responses of those we’ve queried to join us as columnists. We will continue to search for the best and brightest in romance bloggers.

In the meantime, we anticipate a January 25th launch, and we hope
you’ll join us for the excitement and the daily posts by our columnists!

Readers have been enjoying the offspring of the romance writer for as long as I’ve been working in the publishing industry–and much longer than that.

Romance is the offspring of love–love of the reader, love of the writer,
love of the reviewer, and love of the publisher. The genre is ever-evolving. I’ve seen trends come and go. Cowboys went the way of the West and vampires came into the light. That will change, as the genre always does. What’s popular today won’t be tomorrow.

Do you know where the genre is going next? Do I?

Who dictates the direction of modern romance? The writer? The reader? The publisher? The reviewer? The answer is: All of the above.

I’ve attempted to stay one step ahead, following the latest news, keeping my ear to the pavement. Weblogs are emerging as a viable source of information and following this new trend I’ve spent the last few months researching various romance related “blogs.” And I learned quite a bit, much more than I would have guessed.

These newly emerging “bloggers” are on the cutting edge. They find information and spread it quickly. They share their knowledge and their viewpoints, they “rant” and they praise. And when it comes to romance, they know their stuff.

I’ve chosen readers and reviewers, aspiring authors and bestsellers. Some are thoughtful, some are humorous, some are a bit “ranty,” and some are insightful. They all have their own voice and a love of romance. Together, with your comments, they will map the landscape of today’s romance genre from every possible viewpoint. From story conception to the moment a reader finishes the book, we’ll cover it all.

Do you know where the genre is going next? Do I?

With their help, we will.