Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

MONICA: The friction between me and Laurie Gold is fairly well known in the romance community. It all started over a review. No, I’m not the type to be touchy over a bad review. I firmly believe that bad reviews come with the territory of being a writer. Nobody is going to like everything anybody writes all of the time. Some folks might even think it sucks and they have a perfect right to their opinion. Heck, they may even be right. So public whining ’cause itty-bitty whine-baby romance author got a bad review, isn’t cool.

I was pissed at Laurie because of what I perceived as rank racism. Yes, racism. The word is as loaded as the N-word. But believe me, it does exist, and more than the majority is probably willing to accept. The problem is that racism rarely black and white, or even easily defined, but rather shades of gray–denied and deeply buried shades of gray. I have my bias and Laurie has hers. Without thoroughly understanding the other person, there is no way to grasp the substance of what can be perceived as racism within a person. And it’s something that can’t easily be talked about. The charge doesn’t bring a willingness to be understood, what it usually brings forth is anger.

I understand the unpleasantness associated with what is felt to be an unfair charge of racism. But I know intimately the impotent anger when you experience racism. I also know that every single black person (not excluding other races, but my experiences are as a black person) reading this has experienced a generous amount. It’s like sour bile burning your stomach and filling your mouth with nastiness. And you can’t spit it out without consequences. So I rarely respond. A tightened mouth and narrowed mouth might be the only outer signs of my anger inside. But sometimes, I say to myself, what the h*ll, and let it fly and splatter.

LAURIE: Monica, one of the most horrendous names a person who believes in true equality of all people can be called is “racist.” While it can never be as hurtful as the “N-word” when hurled at a black person, it cuts to the core nonetheless, partly because it is an impossible charge to refute. Hey, it’s no secret that you and I have been involved in a very public feud, made worse, no doubt, because both of us are stubborn…and both of us are clever with words. Those two things together can be a dangerous combination on the Internet.

MONICA: I’ve never denied that when I’m irritated, I’m likely to directly instruct the person who pissed me off to kiss my derriere, female dog. It works wonders in clearing my air, boosting my morale, and allowing me to move on. Yep, when pissed, it’s all about me. But you, feisty heroine that you are, always threw it right back to me and I gleefully kicked it at you again.

A good fight is something like a love affair. You got your emotions, your involvement, investment, and even some excitement. And we were interested enough to keep it up over the long haul too.

A little background: I approached AAR in the first place years ago because I admired your frank, intelligent style greatly. So when you didn’t get my humor, the book was a soap-opera parody for chrissakes, and then said my characters acted lily-white, and painted all of black romancedom like a Tar Baby, well, it was a huge kiss-my-derriere moment.

LAURIE: I didn’t realize it was a parody…it simply read to me like bad melodrama, with everything and the kitchen sink thrown in. But the lily-white comment, well, that goes back to what I’ve been talking about since we hooked up on my blog last week, and the misassumption I made about the term “Multi-Cultural,” (which is how AA Romance is listed in Romantic Times, which I still read at that time). And because of my misassumption, I went for the trigger term that in turn pressed a big button for you. I think now that had we been able to talk about it as we did last week, we might have avoided all this…it was like a real life Big Misunderstanding, with equally disastrous results as the Big Mis has in romance novels.

MONICA: I agree. You recently posted some very insightful and true things on your blog and I felt called upon to give you due props since I’d talked about you so badly before. I commented on your blog, something I’d avoided doing, because I feel it’s extremely bad form to diss somebody on their own turf.

LAURIE: Yes, I think the ice began to thaw after you read some of my bloggings about Hurricane Katrina? I guess, then, that a month or so later, when I wrote about the sale of Arabesque Books from BET to Harlequin, and asked for input to include in an At the Back Fence column, you felt safe enough to respond. After your public comment on my blog, who would have guessed that we would actually have started to listen to one another? And so, after a few of these quite reasonable exchanges, all without sniping at each other, I might add, I decided to ask you to write a segment for the column, and over the next several days, we exchanged many, many emails.

I think things got really interesting when you asked me, point blank, a series of questions that went to the heart of the matter for you. Behind one of your questions was the idea that white readers don’t read romances by black authors because we think they are inherently inferior. This upset me so much that did my best to convince you otherwise, and it was one of my goals in publishing the eventual column to do two things: 1) to make white readers like me understand that this is an actual belief held by some black romance writers; and 2) to dispel your belief as best I could.

And I saw no reason to be other than truthful because I felt our exchanges of email were actually building a bridge between us. I won’t deny that in the back of my head, spurred on by some friends and family, was the notion that this could be a disaster in the making, but long ago I came to understand that my one great ability at All About Romance is in the bringing together of disparate viewpoints and accepting each of them as valid.

MONICA: I was curious to see where you were truly coming from rather than the reactionary exchanges we’d previously had, so I asked you direct questions. I came to discover that you were a person that I could appreciate–as stubborn and honest as I am myself. In the interchange of e-mails about the column, I got the bright idea for a public conciliation. The plan was that you’d read my book, be stringently fair, but trash it, because I was pretty sure you weren’t going to like anything that I wrote. I would respond graciously, or at least not publicly tell you where you could stick your review, and we’d be cool.

That was the plan.

LAURIE: When you sent me the PDF file of your December release, I jumped right in. I knew you thought I’d hate it, and given that my only experience with your romance writing was negative, I didn’t know what to expect from the book itself. But I did know that I’d be honest about it with you after I’d read it…and let the chips fall where they may.

I read the book in as close to one sitting as possible, then sent you an email to let you know that I’d truly adored Mr. Right Now . My only issue with the book has nothing to do with you, but the fact that it is being published by Kensington’s “AA imprint” rather than as a Brava, but then, that fits into my whole theory that segregating AA Romance isn’t helping to build a broad readership. As opposed to your earlier book that I’d panned, I thought your voice was incredibly genuine, and fresh in MRN, and though calling a paranormal romance believable” is oxymoronic, it’s also a fitting description of your heroine’s offbeat (and simultaneously humorous and angry) view of the world.

MONICA: When you said you liked the book, I gotta be honest…I was shocked. I didn’t really think you were the type to dissemble over whether you liked a book or not, but at first I thought you might not be strictly for real. But you assured me, no, you really liked it.

Well, hot damn. I got good quote from LLB—you could have beat me over the head with a romance paperback and I wouldn’t have been more surprised.

LAURIE: After all these emails going back and forth, I was anxious to get your ATBF segment draft. When you sent it, I was disappointed. It was boringly without teeth. I thought you had censored yourself and asked that you try again. You did, and the reworked piece I received later that day better reflected your views, without a sugar coating of political correctness, but laying bare some hard truths as you saw them.

MONICA: Yep, I was going to be a wussy and you got me straight. The final column is even-handed, interesting and educational. Best of all, there have been no race flames in the comments! Go see for yourself, everybody! Black folks and white folks are talking about race singe-free. Amazing.

LAURIE: Never in my wildest dreams when I broached the idea of writing about the marketing of AA Romance did I believe that rapproachment between you and I would be achieved. It’s true that I’d worked through disagreements with authors before, but never had the arguments been so vituperative and long-lived.

MONICA: If Laurie Gold and I can get on the same page without blood shed, there’s not a reason in the world why readers can’t get together and let romance be romance, regardless of skin color or cultural caste.

LAURIE: Have we truly reached détente, and, more to the point, successfully challenged some preconceived notions of one another? I’d like to think so, because as a result of the absolutely open and honest communication we shared, each of us was forced to deal with the fact that we had been wrong about the other. The power of words, it seems goes both ways…the power can destroy but it can also rebuild.

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