Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

“Writing is a lonely business,” we’re often told. In fact, yesterday I searched Technorati for those exact words and turned up no fewer than 85 results, most of them pointing to writers’ blogs. But if writing is a lonely business, I’ve been doing it all wrong. Because I never feel lonely when I’m writing.

I have a number of energetic, outgoing friends and relatives who crave constant social contact. It’s difficult for me to picture any of them happily banging away at a keyboard for hours on end. They’d go crazy. But although many writers appear to be chatty, they can actually turn that off, sometimes quite abruptly, and go silent for hours or even days at a time. I know because I’m one of those people.

At this summer’s Romance Writers of America Conference, a new writing friend commented that I seemed very people-oriented. Yes, I spent four days lunching and dining and coffeeing and partying with all sorts of people and I even chatted with strangers on elevators. But that wasn’t me, it was just me at a conference. I was there specifically to network with other writers and industry professionals. Back at home now, I’m perfectly content when my telephone and my doorbell don’t ring. And when they do ring, I answer them only about half the time because when I’m writing, I tend to resent anything that yanks me out of The Zone.

It’s true that many writers wish they could get more immediate feedback on their writing projects. Work in an office and you’ll know whether you’re doing a good job because if you aren’t, somebody will be sure to send you a memo. Not so with novel-writing. Is the chapter you’ve just finished absolute dreck? Sometimes you really wonder. But for most of us, those doubts are far exceeded by the thrilling freedom to create stories without any outside interference. It’s a heady experience, being alone and completely at liberty to write your heart out.

So whatever you may have heard, solitude isn’t the downside of being a writer. It’s one of the perks.

I love a man in uniform. No, not a military uniform (although those are quite nice, too). A baseball uniform.

As a diehard Mets fan (hush, you, we’re in the lead this season), I do a little Annie Savoy every year and pick a new Met to crush on. This year it’s third baseman David Wright. Okay, so he’s only twenty-three, but it doesn’t matter – we’re simply talking visual appreciation here. In his jersey and cap (and those lovely tight-fitting pants), he’s absolutely beautiful. (So is Xavier Nady, but he was traded just before the deadline and is therefore no longer an official Met. Sob.)

I know I’m not the only woman who feels this way, about David Wright or about baseball players in general. In real life, at least. But when it comes to romance, it seems, not so much.

What is it about romance that excludes athletes? They’re our everyday heroes, the men who drive in the winning run, throw the winning pass, make that basket or goal when their team is depending on them. And most of the time, they’re no slouches when it comes to looks – by definition, athletes are usually built pretty well. (David Wright definitely is. I’m just saying.) They come with automatic conflicts, too – being on the road for long stretches of time, individual goals versus what’s good for the team, career-ending injuries, the great unknown after a career does finally end. So what gives?

Don’t get me wrong. Romance hasn’t completely ignored them. I did a little checking and came up with a few lists, courtesy of All About Romance, which may need updating but at least provide a starting point. And even if the list isn’t up to the minute, I found only nineteen titles listed under “baseball,” which is a pretty small number when you consider that at least one of the titles on the list dated back to the 1970s. How many romances have been published since the? Thousands. I found twenty-one hockey books, eighteen football (five of them Susan Elizabeth Phillips’s), and only seven basketball books. Those are wee little numbers when you think of how many vampire romances, for instance, have been published in the last few years alone.

Yeah, Susan Elizabeth Phillips struck gold (or made a touchdown, I guess I should say) with her football-playing heroes (see It Had to Be You and Nobody’s Baby But Mine to start), but can you think of another sports-oriented romance (series or otherwise) that’s done as well? I can’t. I have to go to the movies for that.

Where you find the mouthwatering Crash Davis, as played by Kevin Costner (before he got kind of creepy), in Bull Durham. This is about as perfect a sports romance as you’re likely to find (although it does break the rules, what with Annie’s initial relationship with Nuke), and it’s a perennial favorite among women. It may be the gold standard, but there are dozens of other sports movies out there with to-die-for heroes – it’s just that they’re movies, not books. To name just a few (and to keep it to baseball, my favorite sport), I’m thinking of The Natural, For the Love of the Game, and Summer Catch. (And there are dozens of other sports romances featuring other sports, too.)

So what’s the deal? I’ll be the first to admit that the image of the all-American, true-blue athlete has been tarnished in the past few years. Is that it? Have steroid scandals and rape allegations put us off these guys? Can that really be true? The military has certainly come under more than its fair share of accusations lately, but SEALs and other soldiers are still as popular as ever. Same with cops, and since Serpico we’ve known that plenty of real-life police officers are corrupt.

I don’t have any answers here. I’m just getting itchy. October, and the World Series, will be here before I know it, and it’s a long few months after that until pitchers and catchers report. Anyone else interested in seeing more hunky guys swinging bats in their romances?

I’m under deadline and I have three major problems with my writing right now: my plot, my hormones, and my butt.

Let me deal with them in reverse order, starting from the bottom. My belly is getting bigger by the day, thanks to my being six months pregnant with my son. This means that whenever I sit for any length of time, my butt aches. At first I thought this was because I’d lost so much weight in the beginning of my pregnancy that my butt didn’t have enough padding. Well, six months in, I have enough padding, believe me. But if I spend any more than an hour at my computer, my backside hurts.

Usually, I am an extremely obsessive writer and like to write and write and write and write until I fall down exhausted. My butt is stopping me from working like this. I need to get up and move and do other things, which means the second problem kicks in: the hormones.

This is probably not news to most people, but pregnancy has made me a ditzbag. I can’t follow a train of thought about my fictional characters for more than a couple of minutes before I start thinking about the fact that my stomach looks so weird when the baby is doing somersaults, the fact that we have no place for the baby to sleep, the fact that I can’t figure out whether I can afford not to go back to work after my maternity leave, the fact that I really, really, REALLY need a bran muffin with raisins NOW.

I know that this admission will make people who are more experienced than I am at breeding laugh at me. Laugh away; I deserve it. I know I’m naïve that I didn’t fully appreciate that my body would take my mind hostage. This lack of focus is good practice for when the baby comes, I know, but why does nature make you rehearse for something by making you completely crap?

My third problem is related to both of these, and it is my plot. Due to the two problems above, whenever I try to think about what should happen to my characters next, I invariably think, “Hey! They should have a baby!”

Now, the baby plot is a good one. I love a good secret baby or unplanned pregnancy in a romance novel. Thing is, I’ve already done two books (out of five) that have a pregnancy angle this year. And my next book is going to be a pregnancy book, too. I can’t write a baby into this book. It would be falling into a rut, and besides, it’s completely inappropriate for these characters and their conflict. I need something else, something fun and flirty, something…other than a baby. Pereferably with a lot of sex, which doesn’t lead to a baby.

Can I think of a plot? No. My brain is completely controlled by my hormones, and my butt.

Tell me. How do you work through this stuff? And do you have any good plots you could give me?

I once heard someone say that there was no point in writing a book if it wasn’t going to be published. That said book could not live up to its full potential if it wasn’t read. I was, perhaps, a bit surprised to hear myself reply and ask about writing for its own sake. After all, I’m an agent. Naturally, I want to sell books. Evenso, I felt there was something missing in the equation. Is it a failure if a book never sells? Or could it be that I’m actually treading back on the old question of art vs. commerce.

It got me thinking about how I measure success. I don’t think it should be dependent on the end product and/or the size of the deal. For me, it could be discovering a new talent. Or perhaps being able to call a client with their first sale (that is such a rush). Or cracking a new subsidiary market. Maybe it’s having a client’s book make a national bestseller list. I suppose it could be watching a client accept a RITA. Could there even be fulfillment in finishing off a pile of submissions?

What naturally follows is to ask where does success lie for a writer? Perhaps we should consider the aspect of writing as therapy. Some people may explore an idea in order to learn something about themselves or to expiate something internal in a way that allows them positive growth. One might also think of writing as teacher. How many people publish their first novel rather than the second, third, or fourteenth? If the last book allows the writer to learn a level of writing craft they had not previously obtained, then it contributes to the next book and therefore to a potential eventual sale. And what about the book as an experience in and of itself. Is there some measure of success in simply making the attempt and completing the journey?

Less thematically, let’s think on examples: (1) An author who spends ten years writing manuscript after manuscript, each one better than the last, and is finally published once and only once; (2) A writer who never is published despite sending out materials but who finds completion in the act of writing; (3) A writer who publishes a book once a year for many decades but never makes the bestseller list; (4) A writer who publishes their first book to great acclaim and makes the New York Times list but never writes anything publishable again. There are, of course, many other combinations. Are any of the books written by these people failures? I submit that they are not.

In the pursuit of writing it can be so very easy to get caught up in publication as the ultimate goal. So much emphasis is put upon focusing on the market and chasing trends. Or the secret handshake that separates the published from the unpublished. We need to remember that every writer’s journey is different. You need to define your own success.

Want to talk about the books you’re reading? This column includes links to ten reader and/or writer forums, where you can share your thoughts about books you love or network with other writers. Registration is required to view some forums, and we’ve tried to list that below. If you know about any other forums, let us know in the comments.

All About Romance

eCataromance (registration required)

RBL Romantica

The Romance Book Club

Reader Network (registration required)

Romance Divas (registration required)

Romance Readers at Heart

Romantic Times

We Write Romance

Writerspace (registration required)

This list is not an endorsement of any site and should be used for informational purposes only.

When you have a to-be-read (TBR) mountain of books, finding room for them is always a pressing concern. My return from last month’s RWA conference with more than 100 books turned this pressing concern into an immediate need for action. As much as I dreaded it, I realized it was time to go through my TBR and let some of them go.

Long Time No Read
I started this process by taking a good, long look at books that have been TBR for three years or more. If they’ve been around that long, it means I’ve passed them up dozens of times for some reason or other. So I reread dozens of back covers and removed several books that no longer caught my interest.

Remember Me?
As I scanned the shelves, there were several books I’d overlooked so often I barely remembered why I bought them. Sure, I know it was because of a review I read somewhere, but if I’ve had a book longer than a year and couldn’t remember anything more, I took it as a sign. Once again, I read back cover blurbs and weeded out a bunch of books.

Rinse and Repeat
Then I turned my attention to books by authors I haven’t tried yet. If I’d collected more than one book by a new-to-me author, I kept one and got rid of the others. This was tough, but it didn’t make sense to keep several books by an author when I didn’t even know whether I liked her books.

Check It Out
If I was on the fence about whether to keep a book, I asked myself whether I would be able to check it out of the library in future. This gave me just the push I needed to let go of a few, although I kept some books I thought might be hard-to-find.

Changes
There are many authors whose books I’ve liked in the past but don’t enjoy as much now. I’m not sure if that’s because the author’s style has changed or my taste has changed. Maybe it’s a combination of the two. I didn’t have much success sorting through these books; I kept hearing the “But I might like this book” chorus in my head. Maybe next time . . .

I Can’t Let Go
All this sorting still left me with hundreds of books I couldn’t bear to part with. When I do my next purge evaluation, I may try reading three chapters of a book and see if I want to continue reading. The only problem with this is that with most books, I tend to keep reading once I get started. Although, reading would be one way to get through the TBR books . . .

Take Turns
If I’m ever going to make a dent in the canyon known as my TBR books, I need to start reading them instead of skipping straight to my new purchases. So the plan is to alternate my reads. Before I can read another new book, I need to read another TBR book.

How do you decrease your TBR pile?

If I exclude a short period in my late teens, I’ve been a romance reader from the age of thirteen. In the more that almost thirty years of reading romance, I’ve discover several gems that I sometime revisit because of the impact they have had on my life as a individual who lives in a world that’s far from perfect. Below is a list of five very special stories.

I’ve said on many occasions that Judith McNaught is one of my favorite authors, and her early historical romances are still on my list of favorite books. However, her WHITNEY, MY LOVE still haunts me with its beauty and passion. Despite several of the story’s elements we may frown on today, when I read this masterpiece years ago, it moved me in a profound way. With its compelling plot, intense emotion and feisty heroine, I laughed and cried as I read this enchanting tale.

Brenda Jackson’s ONE SPECIAL MOMENT is, in my opinion, the author’s best work and still sits in its rightful place on “My Keeper Shelf”. It possesses all the hallmarks of Ms. Jackson’s work. Intense passion, sensual romance, intriguing main characters, and a fluency of prose that makes any Jackson’s romance a special reading experience.

In 1984, Candice Camp, writing as Lisa Gregory, wrote the emotionally draining THE RAINBOW SEASON, one of the most powerful historical romance novels ever writing. The lyrical beauty of Ms. Camp’s prose, her vivid description and the complex main characters provides a story that touches the heart with its romantic purity. Its sequel, THE RAINBOW PROMISE, is an equally powerful story.

AGAINST THE WIND by Gwynne Forster explores the nature of interracial relationships. A quote of a review I wrote of this book sums up my love for this masterpiece.

“Ms. Forster’s forté has always been the complex characters she creates. Ms. Forster delves deep into the minds of her protagonists, revealing every nuance of their personality, peeling every layer away until they stand before the reader exposed and vulnerable. In AGAINST THE WIND, it is Ms. Forster’s hero whose very soul is bared. There is something special about Jordan Saber—a man who’s gentle, understanding, and who knows what he wants in life—Leslie Collins.”

Kathleen Korbel’s A ROSE FOR MAGGIE is a gut wrenching realistic story that is deserving of the Rita Award it won. Joe and Allison are wonderful central characters, but Baby Maggie is the heart of this touching story which does not fail to leave reading (me included) in tears. Ms. Korbel explores the frailties of human nature and teaches us about the beauty of love.

Of course, there are more I can add to this list, but space does not permit me to do this. I will, however, add a few honorable mentions.

Monica Jackson’s NEVER TO LATE TO LOVE, Beverley Jenkins’ INDIGO, Tom & Sharon Curtis’ SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS, LaVyrle Spencer’s VOWS, THE GAMBLE and MORNING GLORY, Penelope Williamson’s THE OUTSIDER, Carmen Green’s DOCTOR, DOCTOR and Cheryl St. John’s THE TENDERFOOT BRIDE.

Are any of these gems on your list? No. Why not share your own gems?

Lately I’ve been focusing on hooks and it’s made me think about my favorites and why they hook me. It kind of goes along with the hero’s journey and the call to adventure as described in Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With a Thousand Faces.

The call to adventure is the inciting incident, the beginning of the story. The moment when the heroine is bumped out of her business-as-usual daily life and pulled into something different. In a Harlequin Presents, it could be the tycoon who demands a marriage of convenience. How the heroine deals with this shift is the story. Will she find a way out, or discover she doesn’t want one, that the tycoon is pretty hot stuff?

Or maybe I want a single title contemporary adventure, with the woman from the city who finds herself with a rancher. Cowboys hook me, and they hook lots of other readers, too. Her call to adventure could arrive on horseback. (Pause for long involved daydream involving gorgeous hunk on horseback)

Since October’s coming, a spooky Gothic romance with a brooding hero could hook me in a heartbeat, as could a dark paranormal. Anybody else anxiously awaiting the first Silhouette Nocturnes?

I’m really a sucker for the classics, and I think a lot of readers are. They become classics for a reason, after all. Broad appeal that doesn’t go out of style, although the books will reflect changing times. Big difference between a cowboy hero today and one from the 80s, but the hook remains the same, the mystique of the western man.

A good amnesia story? I’m so there. That’s the hook that pulled me into The Bourne Identity when I read it as a young adult. Imagine waking up and having no idea who you are. Talk about being pulled out of your ordinary world and pushed into adventure whether you want to go or not! Yes, I know The Bourne Identity isn’t a romance, but it just shows the range of story types the same hook can offer, from suspenseful thriller to Presents-style emotional angst.

The ugly duckling/transformation hook is pretty timeless and broad, too, from La Femme Nikita to My Fair Lady. (If you’re going to watch La Femme Nikita, by the way, rent the original. It’s worth dealing with subtitles for.) The training of a female killer is not your typical Cinderella story, but she does meet her prince.

It seems like right now there are so many books, so many choices, that as a reader it helps me to know right up front as clearly as possible, what is the hook for this book, and what’s different about it? As a writer, I have to think the same way; how can I get the message across as simply as clearly as possible so people know what kind of book is this? That way, somebody in the mood for that type of adventure will be able to identify it out of the myriad choices on the shelf.

What are your favorite hooks?

I’ve read the various posts on author branding and when authors switch genres (and whether or not a reader appreciates when a favorite author jumps ship and floats in new waters).

I’m curious, though. And I’d like to pose some questions to the readers out there.

When you pick up a book by a new to you author. And let’s say for arguments sake it’s a historical romance. You really, really like this book and the author. So much so that you’re going to be on the lookout for her next release. Six months later, you’re in the book store and you see the author has a new release out. But it’s a contemporary romantic suspense. Do you buy it? Are you upset because it’s not a historical? Do you harbor any feelings of betrayal?

I ask this because I’m becoming more and more convinced that it’s a matter of timing. If an author writes in one genre for a lengthy period of time, it’s more likely that their readership is going to be resistant to the author writing something new and different. But I wonder when the cutoff for this is?

I’ve witnessed authors who write, say their first book as an erotic contemporary, then their second might be a historical, and perhaps their third is a suspense. I don’t see much complaining amongst their fans, but I wonder if it’s because an expectation was never built into their work of “Author A writes only sizzling erotic romance.”

Would it have worked so well if Author A had written her first four books as an erotic romance author then made her fifth a historical? Or maybe it takes six books to build that expectation.

I know for a fact when Julie Garwood stopped writing historicals, I was horrified. HORRIFIED. I wasn’t angry with her, but I just could not imagine reading something by her in a contemporary setting. But had she sprinkled in the contemporaries with her historicals through the years, I wonder if I would have had the same reaction. I’m thinking no. It’s that whole expectation thing.

How many books do we give an author before we began to expect certain stories from them? Are we more forgiving of an author who genre hops from the very beginning? Are you annoyed with an author whose second release is a stretch from their first? And is there a middle ground? Some sort of a place between immediate genre hopping and years of writing the same genre that we tend to be more forgiving of an author who makes the change?

I don’t normally watch sitcoms, because there’s a great deal I don’t like about most of them. The primary exception to this is an old British sitcom called Are You Being Served?, which I used to watch reruns of on a regular basis when it aired in my area. But that was the only one. So, as you may imagine, when sitcoms are all the rage, I don’t watch a whole lot of television, there being little or nothing to interest me.

That’s what happens when markets begin to focus on certain things, to the exclusion of most others. Consumers who don’t like the current focus start to avoid that particular market. This has occurred in the romance genre for years, but lately, it seems to be receiving far more attention than it has in the past. Recent posts here at RTB, for example, have examined and bemoaned the narrow scope of the romance genre, wondering when today’s trends will pass and speculating on what future trends will be. In essence, they have asked you, the reader, the question “Are you being served?”

Many of you have responded with a resounding, “No!” However, the fact that you’ve answered at all shows you’re still here, still interested in the romance genre, and still optimistically hoping your own favorite type of romance will once more come into vogue.

But what if it doesn’t? Where will you be then?

These are questions romance authors have begun increasingly to ponder.

Recently, at her own blog, author Tess Gerritsen addressed one of the reasons why people don’t read anymore: because they are listening to critics who are telling them they should be reading books that are “Brussels sprouts,” rather than “ice cream.” She advises, “You don’t have to listen to anyone. Just read what you want to.”

That’s excellent advice, of course — except, what do you do when what you want to read is no longer on the market?

In a recent post here at RTB, Lori Devoti asked:

“What are you sick of? What makes an evening of slogging through Babbit, War and Peace (just the War parts), and Moby Dick sound entertaining? And what have you read lately, or seen on TV, or just heard tell of, that makes your heart skip a beat, and your wallet start slipping from your purse almost under its own power? What do you want to be the next hot thing?”

Actually, when it comes to reading, I can think of several things that make “an evening of slogging through Babbit, War and Peace (just the War parts), and Moby Dick sound entertaining.”

But in the final analysis, they all come down to the fact that as a reader, I’m finding that my desires and expectations aren’t being met by the current market — and I know I’m not alone. How many readers, I wonder, are former romance readers? How many have finally given up hoping their favorite type of romance will once more come into vogue and, instead, moved on to other genres, never to return? How many, like the woman who sparked Tess Gerritsen’s post, have stopped reading altogether?

For me, it’s never been a question of what critics have to say, for the simple reason that I’ve never listened to critics. I’ve always made my own choices about what to watch and what to read, based on my own likes and dislikes. It wouldn’t bother me to learn I was the only person in the entire world who enjoyed (or loathed) a particular movie, television show, or novel.

What does bother me is having my own choices sharply curtailed. So my own answer to Lori Devoti’s question is that, as both a writer and a reader, I’m not so much interested in the next “hot” thing as I am in a market that caters to many readers and not just those who can’t get enough of the latest fad. One of the main things I loved about the romance genre in its early days, in fact, was that there was usually something for every reader, whether one’s taste ran to contemporaries or historicals, or to sweet or spicy.

So, serve me a banquet, a buffet, a feast, a smorgasbord — not just Brussels sprouts and ice cream, but everything else in between, too, because some days, I want Brussels sprouts, and others, I want ice cream, and still others, I want something else entirely.

How about you? Are you being served? Or have you switched genres or quit reading altogether because a steady diet of anything, no matter how good, is ultimately unappetizing?