Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

Ah, it’s that time of year again. Dinners with three kinds of dessert, parties, dressing up, decking the halls, and shopping! Don’t know what to get for that friend, relative, co-worker? B&N Gift cards, baby. And while you’re there at the book store, it’s a good time to have a latte and curl up in a cozy corner with a book for yourself because holidays are hectic and a good book can be your best friend.

Best of all, unlike parties full of fat-laden treats and dinners with three kinds of dessert (and how rude would it be not to try ALL of them?) books will not make you fat. Load up, go back for seconds and thirds, go to the library for an all-you-can-read buffet.

I love all the holiday-themed books that come out this time of year. Stories that celebrate the insanity and the beauty of the season, stories that make us laugh or sigh. I’m a sucker for anything with mistletoe or turkey on the cover; in fact, a recent release at Cerridwen Press caught my eye because of the title, “Cold Turkey”. (It’s a holiday murder mystery) I’m hot for Santa Baby by Lori Foster and Jennifer Crusie, and I will go back and re-read my holiday romances and anthologies from the ghost of Christmas book shopping past.

Past, present or future, what are your favorite holiday reads? What do you re-read and what new book are you looking forward to this holiday season?

by Margo Candela

Think back on your favorite fairy tale heroines and their hairstyles. From Rapunzel to Guinevere to the countless busty heiresses in romance novels, they all had one thing in common—good hair. Not just good hair, but long, shiny hair they tossed around, used to its best advantage and even to get out of some sticky situations. One novel I read had the heroine cutting her golden hair off at the waist to save her lover. They, of course, went off to live happily ever after and her hair grew back.

Being that I’m a card holding non-romantic, I was pretty surprised to realize I’ve given most of my characters longer ‘dos then I’d ever consider for my own head. It’s been years since my hair has touched my shoulders and, until this year, it wasn’t even long enough to put in a ponytail. I’ve had it everywhere from Winona Ryder Girl, Interrupted short crop to a whole gallery of Ashley Judd cuts, all of them short. So why do I always give my character long hair? Well not the first thing I consider when putting together a character, their hair status always seems to creep in there somehow.

The main character in my second novel, Starting from Scratch, winds up with a Mia Farrowish pixie cut after a teenage experiment with a home perm kit goes horribly wrong. After that she sticks to the same safe shoulder length style until a sudden break-up has her rethinking a lot about herself, including her hair. And it makes sense for a character to take charge of her life by taking charge of her hair. In Underneath It All, my first book, the main character muses that her boss (who has it all, except great hair) envies her own thick head of hair. She might have to keep tabs on her bosses waxing appointments, but her hair is the kind money can’t buy. Hair is power, sexuality and status all wrapped up together. Tame your hair, and you might hook a hottie, land a promotion or have the kind of hair people envy.

Growing up I remember Wonder Woman’s never had a hair out of place, even when she was deflecting bullets or lassoing bad guys. Then Julia Roberts came along with her mass of curls and managed to make a hooker seem like an All-American kind of girl, albeit one with an unconventional job. Pamela Anderson and her other worldly blonde hair, influenced a whole generation of women to go blonder, not to mention bigger. For whatever their talents and skills, flying an invisible jet while impeccably coiffed is pretty nifty, I think their hair had something to do with their success. I mean, would Pamela Anderson still be Pamela Anderson with a sleek brown bob (and a bra cup size she didn’t have to special order)? Doubt it.

Nowadays they sell long hair, if you’re too busy to grow your own or your follicles just can’t manage it. You can walk into a salon and buy it, be it human (usually from India) or synthetic, which some claim is just as good as the real thing and get it fused to your head for weeks to months of enjoyment. Though it might not help you fight crime, win the heart of a repressed business mogul, or not look ridiculous running on the beach, who wouldn’t like to have long, silky tresses?

Me. That’s who.

So after giving it much thought and waking up to yet another morning where only a ponytail would keep my own hair out of my face and off of my mind, I finally put my hair where my ideal is. I sat myself down in the stylist chair, pulled out my trusty picture of Ashley Judd à la High Crimes, took a deep breath and said, “Give it the chop, please.”

I must admit that my reading is all over the place these days. It used to be that I’d only read romance novels. Seriously. I wouldn’t read anything else. Not even on a bet. That slowly shifted to only reading erotic romance novels, particularly paranormals. Oh, wow, I ventured far there. Didn’t I? Snort. Luckily, that all changed the day I hit a reading wall. I’d been sprinting head-down, eyes-closed for a while. It was only a matter of time. I’m actually surprised it took so long.

Smashed. Bug-like. No identifiable body parts. All that remained was a pile of yellow and greenish goo.

I couldn’t seem to concentrate on any book for more than a few seconds. To say that it was frustrating is an understatement. I missed reading. I craved books. My TBR piles were mountainous and threatening to bury me in an avalanche of words. Yet, every time I picked out a title and began to read I felt like tossing the book against the wall. Nothing could keep my attention. Not even my comfort reads could save me from the malaise. (Cue growls and groans here.)

Out of desperation, I ventured out of my ‘reading’ comfort zone. Like an explorer discovering the New World, I was in awe of my surroundings. Who knew so much flora and fauna existed? Certainly not I. And you know what? In this pristine foreign wilderness, I found joy in reading again. No one was more surprised by the revelation than me.

But one taste was not enough. No. I needed more. More. MORE, I tell you. I dove in feet first and started devouring everything in sight. So many new flavors, aromas and textures. It was too much. I was in overload. At first, I didn’t know where to begin. The covers and teasing blurbs that once frightened my sensibilities now enthralled me. Did I dare act upon these impulses? Abso-friggin’-lutely! I didn’t hesitate. I was desperate. In need of a fix. Preconceived notions—be damned.

I recently feasted upon Jim Butcher’s ‘Fool Moon’ and Tess Gerritsen’s ‘The Mephisto Club’, then licked my fingers clean. I’m currently dining on Disappearing Nightly by Laura Resnick, Greywalker by Kat Richardson, 30 Days of Night by Steve Niles, She’s No Fairy Princess by Christine Warren, Watchers in the Night by Jenna Black, The Traveler by John Twelve Hawks, Rahab’s Story by Ann Burton, The Bone Collector by Jeffrey Deaver, The Edge by Dick Francis, and Stefan’s Salvation by N.J. Walters. As you might have noticed from the above list, I do not read one book at a time. I juggle and play with my ‘food’.

My TBR pile has morphed into a perfect amalgamation of material. No longer will I limit my preferences to one genre. I realize now that I caused the bottleneck in my joy of reading by continuing to force feed it, when I knew it was already bloated from past glut. I should never have limited my scope to such a narrow view. Lesson learned. Perhaps the next time you are in a reading rut you’ll remember my words and heed my warning. Sometimes all it takes is stepping out of your comfort zone to regain your passion. Trust me, it’s not as scary as it looks.

What have you found effective for breaking out of a reading rut? Have you ever tried reading outside of your preferred genre? If so, what happened?

Christmas romances. They typically begin to show up in September and October, about the same time as the Halloween, Fall, and Christmas decorations, which at some point in October, overflow in an eclectic holiday mix on store shelves.

Being a huge Christmas fan, I enjoy reading Christmas romances. I do, however, limit my holiday reading to the season. A wintry story just doesn’t evoke the same warm, fuzzy feelings for me when spring flowers are blooming or while reclining in a poolside lounge chair in the hot summer sun. I prefer that it be late in the fall or even better, chilly with a few snow flakes flying when I snuggle down to read a toasty tale. And yes, I do keep my favorite Christmas romances and reread them (or my favorite scenes) every couple of years or so.

What is your opinion on “noel novels”? Do you love them? Hate them? Or are you somewhere in between? Just as with other romances, I suppose some readers only select full length novels as opposed to the very popular anthologies. Do you have a preference? I personally prefer anthologies, mainly because my reading time is seriously limited during the holiday season; those shorter stories are a nice fit in my busy schedule. I know that I can’t be the only one whose “snuggle down and read” time is at a minimum during the holidays.

What about storylines? Have you grown tired of the seemingly limited storylines? The couples who, whether they’re unacquainted, or old friends, or former lovers, find themselves stranded in a secluded mountain cabin, a hotel, or in an office building, during a blinding snowstorm? Maybe you prefer the hugely successful executive who finds himself back in his hometown, bumping into the girl next door that he has surprisingly never noticed before, the high school sweetheart that he lost track of after graduation, or maybe the college lover who has never completely left his thoughts?

I suppose there is only so much you can do with a holiday story, which is why the storylines are so often repeated. Often, the characters don’t have any family or are estranged from their family so no one will miss or worry about them while they’re stranded. Do you find this realistic? I understand the premise, eliminating the need for additional characters whose inclusion would require a longer story, but sometimes this severely solitary lifestyle seems just a tad too convenient.

Share your opinion about holiday romances. What you like, don’t like, or even hate. Do you have time to read during the holidays? Do you have a favorite Christmas tale? Are you like me and prefer to holiday reads close to or during the season, or are you happy to read them any time of year?

Happy Holiday reading to everyone!!

Once upon a time, authors wrote books, and reviewers reviewed them. Usually, the reviewers were professionals who worked for newspapers or magazines, were paid by same for their reviews, and possessed at least some qualifications for the job. As a result, most of these reviewers, whether their reviews were positive or negative, could be counted on to get their facts right about the books they reviewed.

But with the advent of the Internet, suddenly, anyone could review a book, and since that time, countless people have done so, posting their comments at Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and elsewhere. In the process, some have made names for themselves and established themselves as respected reviewers. Others are simply readers who want to voice their opinions about the books they have read. Still others are persons with their own private agendas, who are hoping to help or to hurt specific authors.

Not surprisingly, just like everything else on the Internet, the result of all this has been a melange of reviews ranging from the professional and factually accurate to the unprofessional and factually inaccurate.

But while it’s invariably easy to recognize a purely spiteful review penned by a person who is clearly a sociopath, it’s not nearly so simple to spot sheer misinformation about a book under review, unless one has actually read that particular book — and it’s this latter case about which I’ve increasingly heard rumbles and grumbles from my colleagues.

If an author can’t even recognize his or her own book from the description provided in a review, how in the world is the public ever going to know that the information contained about the book under review is just plain wrong?

Nowadays, mix-ups like misnaming the hero and the heroine are just the tip of the iceberg. Heroes are confused with villains. Books set in one country are inexplicably transported to another. Incidents that never take place in the novel are unaccountably described in detail as though they do. Paranormals are somehow transformed into time travels. And the list goes on.

Those who actually wrote or who have actually read the book under review are left wondering: What book did this “reviewer” read? Because it sure as heck isn’t the same one the author wrote or that other reviewers and readers read.

But what if you haven’t read the book under review? Will you miss a great story because some “reviewer,” for whatever unknown reason, gave you a cartload of misinformation about it?

And just how does such misinformation about a book get posted in the first place? Is it deliberate? In some cases, yes. But I suspect the vast majority of it is merely the result of the reviewer having been somehow distracted while reading the book under review.

These days, it’s virtually impossible for most people to sit down and read a book uninterrupted from beginning to end. Instead, we have dozens of other things competing for our attention. People often read while simultaneously engaged in doing chores or watching television, for example. Commuters listen to audio books while battling rush-hour traffic. People also read when they’re tired or otherwise incapable of devoting their full attention to the story, when it’s easy for them to be compelled to reread a page two or three times or more — and still not register what they’ve actually read. It’s hard to get engrossed in any story if little Johnnie and Janie have jerked you out of it several times already, arguing over whose turn it is to play the new video game.

So, what’s the answer? Authors have two choices: either set the record straight themselves, or else hope that other reviewers and readers do — and most of us are grateful to reviewers and readers who do just that.

Have you ever read misinformation posted about a book? Did you know at the time that it was misinformation? If so, what effect did it have on you — and what, if anything, did you do about it?

My husband and I often have a conversation that goes around and comes back again. It has a lot to do with making ends meet and seeing things that we wish we had. Like…groceries. Hee hee. But seriously, the truth is, both of us grew up with a hunger for more than we had. We both come from very simple beginnings and though we’re not at all bothered by working for what we get, we sometimes get to thinking it would be nice if some of the pressures eased and we could have a few more luxuries. I like to call this our “When we get super-rich” list. On it, there’s quite a few things. Like “Buy house”, “Get maid”, “Have electrolosis because I hate plucking.” and my personal favorite, “Have an office.” Oh, the dreams we have for our someday office. When we’re feeling super lofty, we plan TWO offices!

Then the other night we were making dinner and I realized just how far we’ve come in our eleven years of marriage. I was surprised to realize that I expect meat every day. I mean, I’ve always liked meat. If you can slap it on a spit and make it taste good, odds are, I’ll eat it. But when I was a kid, getting fruit was a treat. Veggies not so much of one, but still, exciting. Meat was a reward for something spectacular, and here I am, expecting it every single day, and I’m not always satisfied with once a day. It seemed strange. So I asked hubby, in all seriousness, “Do you think I’m ungrateful?”

After all, my expectations have swelled so far beyond my beginnings. What right did I have to expect? To demand? Had I forgotten the hungry days of my youth? Was wanting more and having goals an indication that I no longer cherished the things and relationships I already had?

Hubby says no. That it’s only ungrateful if we resent what we have, instead of working to preserve it, to build from it. He’s a pretty smart guy, hubby, but I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It seemed fitting, as this is going to be the holiday post, to commemorate what I’m grateful for and to share it with all of you. Hopefully, you’ll all be able to reflect on what you’re truly grateful for and be able to take on what this holiday has become about and why it means so very much to Americans from coast to coast.

My top five list:

5) I’m grateful for little toes. Not mine, my son’s. He’s 8 and nearly my size. He’s funny and crazy and goofy and gross and huggy and kind. And when he hops into my bed first thing in the morning, he tosses his lanky limbs every which way and I often get the imprint of frozen little toes on my leg, right before he laughs and shrieks that I’m too warm. I just love those little toes.

4) The sound of my husband’s laughter. He doesn’t think much of it. I don’t always mean the hoots or the guffaws. My favorite is the chuckle, when he doesn’t want to laugh and does it anyway. If he laughs once a day, just once, I’m thinking that maybe we’re doing okay and I can breathe.

3) Teachers. Especially Moo’s teachers. They’ve given me back my son, taught him ways to communicate and do more for him every day than I could ever imagine how to approach. Teachers are not thanked enough in my opinion. And the special needs teachers? Even more not enough.

2) Miracles. When I first got married, I knew already that having children was going to be a bit harder to do. We got lucky with Moo. We discussed having children and discovered I was already pregnant. (Thus hubby’s hard and fast rule about no longer discussing it.) He’s been a miracle every day of his life, bringing sheer joy even on the hardest days. It makes me wonder what these two girls are going to add to our lives. To have my children and my husband and my career… I’m not only glad that miracles exist, but that I’m so lucky to have so many in my life.

1) Family. This is a bit different. I have a reeeeaalllllly odd family situation. I have divorced parents. There’s been a remarriage. I have 4 siblings remaining and we all have a total of 13 kids. And one neice has two kids of her own. Hubby has divorced parents and two siblings and Moo has one cousin from that side. That’s 29 people in our immediate family. We’re weird. We’re confusing and confused. We have five cultures blended in there and we’re totally insane. But I love them. The ones that don’t make sense. The ones that get on my nerves. The ones that only call when Oprah is doing something neat she simply HAS to share with me. They keep every day interesting and challenging and my life would be so empty without them.

There’s lots more to be grateful for in the world. In my life. These are the things I think of when I’m honest about what I have to lose, what means the most. Even if you don’t celebrate Thanksgiving, take a moment to hug close those things that mean most to you. It shouldn’t have to be one day a year for that.

Here’s to you and yours. Stay safe and feel free to share your top five!
Dee

For the first 23 years of our marriage my husband would pontificate about my “lousy” choice in reading. “It’s trash. Why waste your time? Read something decent…blah, blah, blah”—can you see my eyes glazing over? At first I did the “How would you know? You’ve never read one.” thing. But as time went on rather than fight I’d simply ignore it and continue to read my “trashy romance novels.” His words, not mine. But, recently we’ve had a conversion of sorts, it wasn’t easy but we have a new believer. Well kind of, every time I hear that country song with the line “Daddy’s been a back row Baptist…” I think my husband’s now a back row romance reader.

A few months ago he was desperate for something to read. I’d just finished Jennifer Armintrout’s The Turning and thought he might like it, it’s not really a romance, and hits the horror mark throughout the story. He’s a horror, thriller and biography reader. I was convinced he’d like this one. Getting ahead of myself I’d planned all sort of books, ones that lean more towards the horror rather than angst side of paranormals—yikes, big mistake. It wasn’t scary enough. It was “okay,” but a little too “melodramatic.”

Okay, I had to rethink this. Paranormals are out, romance paranormals just aren’t as scary as Stephen King or Dean Koontz. What to do? Hmm, how about suspense?

Next I gave him Holly Lisle’s I See You. The thriller part was “pretty good, but a little too much romance.”

So, what do you think I gave him next? How about the Queen of Romance—Nora Roberts’ Northern Lights. He likes the movie “Mystery Alaska” and I thought he might like this book, not that it’s about hockey, but it’s set in Alaska with quirky characters, suspense, a strong hero, with an interesting back story, but not overwhelming romance. Alleluia, he liked this one. He felt of the three he’d read the hero in this one thought like a man, and not like what a woman thinks how a man thinks—did that make any sense?–LOL

Romantic Suspense it is. Next up was an old Tami Hoag romantic suspense. I’ve hid a couple of Linda Howard’s books and a Lisa Jackson in his TBR pile. When I pulled out Son of the Morning he was absolutely against it, he knows it’s one of my favorites and wasn’t about to read a “real romance.” Like Nora Roberts doesn’t write “real romance.” What the heck does he know—LOL. I stuck it in there anyway.

At his 48th birthday party while talking books with several of my family members he announced “I read a Nora Roberts.” My sister’s hoping someone got a picture of her jaw hitting the floor. Ah, the conversion was complete, we’ve got a new believer. Not only is he reading the books, he’s admitting it to others. He may never read a contemporary or historical, but hopefully he wont complain about what I’m reading anymore, just about how much I spend on books, but that’s another column.

Have you aided in a conversion? Have you helped a non-believer see the light?

I urge others to go forth and convert the non-believers in their lives.

by Laura Vivanco

Are romances more similar than different or vice versa? Like the saying about the glass which is either half full or half empty, it does depend on one’s perspective. In terms of the romance genre, those who have been critical would seem to have looked at the genre and considered it the
equivalent of a row of glasses, all filled with pink liquid. The romance readers, on the other hand, know that some of those glasses contain bubbly alcoholic beverages, some are filled with spirits, some are decorated with tiny cocktail umbrellas, some hold the healthiest of fruit juices (perhaps cranberry, strawberry or tomato juice), and yet others look suspiciously as though they might contain a vampire’s favourite liquid refreshment.

Romances have tended to be seen as mass-produced, repetitive and formulaic, and academics have often studied them by looking at ‘representative samples’. Of course, romances do all have certain things in common. According to the RWA ‘every romance novel’ has ‘a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending’ but, as Janice Radway discovered, ‘Despite the overtly formulaic appearance of the category, there are important differences among novels for those who read them that prompt individual decisions to reject or to read’ (1991: 50, her emphasis).

For romance readers this seems obvious: just as we are individuals with our own particular preferences, so each romance author and romance novel is different. If we didn’t think so, there wouldn’t be so many romance review sites. For the non-romance reader, however, the differences between the novels seem less clear, and this has affected how the genre
has been studied because, according to Radway, academics and romance readers were two very distinct groups, segregated ‘by class, occupation, and race’ (1991: 18).

Then authors of romance novels demonstrated that the gap could easily be bridged. They analysed both the genre and their own works in essay collections published by academic presses. Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women (1992) and North American Romance Writers (1999) remain an important part of the body of academic work on the romance genre. We also know that there are academics who are also romance authors, the most well-known perhaps being Eloisa James, but there are others who, while perhaps not employed as academics nonetheless have a strong academic background.

But it’s not just that romance writers have been able to demonstrate academic credentials. We’re also seeing more scholarship on the genre which is being written by academics who are also romance readers, and I think this affects the way we approach the study of the genre. While we
don’t ignore features that are shared by all romances, we also note their differences. Jay Dixon’s The Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon (1999), for example, ‘challenges many popular myths about Mills & Boon’ (1999: ix) and Pamela Regis’s A Natural History of the Romance Novel, looks at the structural features of novels in this genre and then examines some specific examples in considerable detail. Some of us are also analysing individual novels at length, or focussing on the works of a particular romance author, treating them not as representatives of their entire genre, but as works to be studied as literature in their own right. Actually, a lot of this is so recent that we haven’t got it written yet, never mind published, but if you come over to our blog, Teach Me Tonight, we’re busy blogging about romance, from an academic perspective. Hope to see you there!

Bibliography

• Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the
  Appeal of the Romance, 1992. ed. Jayne Ann Krentz (Philadelphia:
  University of Pennsylvania Press).
• Dixon, jay, 1999. The
  Romance Fiction of Mills & Boon, 1909-1990s (London: UCL
  Press).
• North American Romance Writers, 1999. ed. Kay
  Mussell and Johanna Tuñón (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow
  Press).
• Radway, Janice A. 1991. Reading the Romance: Women,
  Patriarchy, and Popular Literature, With a New Introduction by the
  Author (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press).
  Original edition published in 1984.
• Regis, Pamela, 2003. A
  Natural History of the Romance Novel (Philadelphia: University of
  Pennsylvania Press).

by Kate Perry

My friend Liz phoned me a couple days ago. “John and I are having a baby.”

I asked the obvious question. “Are you calling from hell?”

“Excuse me?”

“Well, eight years ago you said you’d be damned before you had any children.”

Silence. Then, in the tradition of all my friends, she ignored what I said and went on. “I’m calling because I thought you could help us compile a list of names. You’re great at names.”

“Um.” I grimaced. “Maybe this is the moment to warn you that I just named the hero in my next book Ulysses.”

“But we’re having a girl.”

“I named my last heroine Philomena.”

“Oh.” Rustling. Then she asked, “Are you being difficult?”

Me? Difficult? Impossible to imagine. “I just don’t understand why you want me to help. She’s your baby. Shouldn’t you and John come up with a name you like?”

“But you’re the expert. You do it all the time for your characters.”

Sigh. “But there’s a difference. I know what my characters are like. I develop their personalities and then find a name that fits them. I don’t know what your daughter is going to be like. What if I help you find a name that’s all wrong for her?”

“But—”

“Like what if I suggested Brooke and you loved it? With a name like Brooke Weller, her career choices would limited to a TV newscaster or a manager of a women’s clothing store.”

“But Kate—”

“What if she wanted to be a ballerina? As Brooke Weller she’d be screwed. Or she’d have to come up with a pseudonym, which is overrated if you ask me. Not to mention confusing.”

“Uh, Kate—”

“Then she’d be totally psychologically scarred and it’d be my fault.” Flinging my arm across my eyes, I cried, “How would I live with that kind of guilt?”

“I thought actors were supposed to be the drama queens, not writers.”

“I’m just saying this is an important decision to make. A name tells a lot about a person’s character.” I pursed my lips. “Besides, with a name like Kate Perry I’d be laughed off the stage.”