Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

I’ve been a romance reader since I was fifteen and a classmate handed me Johanna Lindsey’s Hearts Aflame, a book which remains, to this day, one of my favorite historicals. At first, I just read Lindsey, (even then, I understood the importance of authorial voice) but then I branched out into Amanda Quick, and the rest is history.

Nice story, huh? It’s the one I tell when the conversation turns to discovering romance novels. (It’s a popular topic. For some reason, romance readers like talking about “their first.”) But it’s not true. No, I’d been a romance reader long before that. Read the rest of this entry �

One of my favorite reads of last year was an anthology I unearthed from the depths of my TBR. The first story was probably my favorite. It had a nice, Americana, small town setting, a plucky heroine and a hero who enjoyed nothing more than ruffling her feathers. Everything was working, I was enjoying it, and then the sex scene arrived and ruined everything.

This might sound odd coming from someone typing this column surrounded by her erotica collection, but that sex scene pulled me right out of the story. Like all good things in life, there is a time and place for sex. It’s hard to explain, but that sex scene was very jarring. It didn’t fit the tone, or what I had perceived as the characters’ personalities. As it was, a story that had started out as a keeper slipped down to the “good” range. I still liked it, but it could have been perfect.

Outside of the inspirational genre, finding a “sex free” read anymore is not an easy task. Traditional Regencies have disappeared from mainstream New York publishing, and Harlequin has merged their Silhouette Romance and Harlequin Romance lines into one. Readers looking for sweet have serious homework to do before hitting the bookstore.

The perception seems to be that with the erotica boom going on that readers aren’t interested in “sex free” reads anymore. Not true. The problem is that readers are tired of getting toothaches.

Sometimes I just want a nice story about two people falling in love. No vampires, no werewolves, no serial killers, and no sexual Olympics. That probably sounds boring, but it really isn’t. The problem with sweet romances is that so often the author takes a shortcut to get to the “sweet.” Readers end up saddled with a neutered man and a woman so cutesy, naïve, and innocent that you’re left wondering how she has survived on her own. The answer is, she hasn’t. She needs that neutered man to rescue her on more than one occasion.

What readers want is the sweet without the saccharine. I want to read about equals. I don’t want to read about the hero falling in love with the syrupy heroine because frankly, he can do better. Sweet has never been the problem; it’s the Stepford characters that have infiltrated the books. Kick them out, and start writing about characters that feel “real” to the reader and the “no sex” won’t register much on their radar. In fact, they might find your sweet story a breath of fresh air.

My last column, I talked about the difficulty of saying goodbye to a very special book. This month, I’m having the opposite problem. I hate my book. I loved it when I came up the idea. I loved it when I wrote up the proposal. I loved it when I get the call from an editor saying they’re going to buy the book. And then I loved it for about five more minutes.

Unfortunately, this is the norm for me. As soon as I have a deadline and I have to finish the thing, a little voice in my head pipes up, and it’s ugly. There’s something wrong with this book, it says. You didn’t think this through. Yes, there’s definitely something wrong with this book.

I try to write through it, all the while pushing aside that nagging voice in my ear. But it only gets worse. What made you think this was a good idea? This can’t work. It will never work. The plot is flawed, the characters weak.

I can rewrite it later, I tell the voice. Just let me get to “the end” and I’ll be able to see what’s wrong with it and fix it.

I write a few more chapters. By now, the voice is screaming. WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? This book sucks! They’re going to ask for their money back, fool! You can’t write! Give up and start over.

The voice has been known to taunt me at other times. What possessed you to eat an entire pizza? But mostly it hangs around when I’m writing.

The voice isn’t all bad. Once I’m done with the first draft, the voice changes its tune as I shift into revision mode. You can do this. You can fix this. Oh, this part’s working. Maybe you do know what you’re doing. Sorry!

So what is it? Where does it come from? It’s not a voice from my past. It’s not my mother, or a former teacher, or even a former editor. No flesh-and-blood person has ever told me to my face that I should quit, that I’m not good.

I can’t shut off the voice, but I can ignore it when it’s acting snarky. I don’t let it trick me into quitting. I push ahead despite the doubts. Yet, sometimes I wish I had the confidence some other writers have, or seem to have, the ones who love their books from start to finish and never falter in their absolute belief in and passion for their stories.

Do you have a still, small voice–or a really loud, nagging one? What does it tell you? What do you tell it? Does it serve a useful purpose? Can you get rid of it, replace it, or at least train it? If you’re one of those writers who love, love, love their books from beginning to end, how do you do that? Please share!

by Heather Davis

I’ve come to the realization that I need more than a critique group.

I moved this fall, after six years in a small town, where I met every Monday night with a group of other aspiring writers. Those years of weekly meeting got me through finishing my first novel, receiving rejections, finding RWA, working on my craft, writing more novels, receiving more rejections, getting an agent, winning the Golden Heart, and making my first sale. Those women lived every word of my manuscripts. They were my first readers and kindred spirits.

But now, at this point in my life and career, I need something else.

In my new city, I have a regular critique partner with whom I trade work, but in terms of meeting in a group for that purpose, I’ve gone a different direction: A few writing friends and I are forming something that goes beyond critique. It’s a group that will encourage us, hold us accountable for goals we set, help us brainstorm when we’re stuck in a plot rut, and keep us writing.

This isn’t to say that you can’t get similar support from a regular RWA meeting or an online list you belong to, but there’s something about meeting with a dedicated small group. They know intimately your struggles and kick your butt when you whine about them. And they are there for more than just the words on the page.

People outside the writing world are not the right kind of support – at least not for me. I need people who have been where I’m going and someone who maybe could glean something from where I’ve been.

Don’t get me wrong — families are great. They’re there to raise a toast when “The Call” comes… but they can’t talk you out of trashing your opening fifty pages when you’re convinced they stink. They can’t remind you to ask your agent to ask for more ARCs in your contract. They don’t understand your grief when a proposal you’ve poured your heart into gets rejected with a resounding NO.

Other writers understand because they’ve felt it. They know that place you go to in your head when you feel like giving up, or doubt that you’re good enough, or wonder if you can summon the magic one more time.

I love that connection. It’s the beautiful part of a career lived mostly in isolation. And it keeps me writing.

*For information on how you can submit to Open Blog Night, click here.

Note: My definition of a group blog here is a blog with multiple, regular contributors.

Group blogs are popping up left and right and everywhere. Authors who are not in group blogs are signing up for group blogs. Sometimes, they are even signing up for more group blogs.

As a blogger myself, I see why bloggers think that it’s a wonderful idea. It’s less work for everyone, usually a post every week or two, and well, not everyone’s cut out to be a daily blogger. Or at least, a regular enough blogger to warrant keeping a personal blog. The sum total of the readership is larger, even though there’s certainly going to be some overlap. Hence, more exposure for all the bloggers.

It just doesn’t seem so fantastic from the blog reader’s point of view any more. I like being able to read blogs by five different people without committing to adding five different blogs to my Google Reader. Plus when a blogger only has one post a week to post, I think it’s more likely to be something substantial, simply because they have less time and space to get a conversation going.

But there can be a disjointedness that I find very irritating. Sometimes, the voices of the bloggers just don’t fit together, or, if you’re an unlucky blogger, your voice gets drowned out by other members of your group.

On the other hand, I very much enjoy reader group blogs. Think Dear Author or Smart Bitches. There’s a dynamic they have that I’ve not found in author group blogs, even in the ones where it’s clear that the authors are close friends. Possibly it helps that the number of contributors involved is smaller; there are just two Smart Bitches, for instance.

Perhaps even more importantly, I see Dear Author, and I think Jane, Jayne and Janine. With most of the author group blogs, I couldn’t rattle off the names of the authors involved. Name recognition? Nada.

So is it that authors are going about group blogging the wrong way? Or is it simply that group blogs are a far less ideal promotion platform that authors have realised?

Thanks be to Sybil whose own post on group blogs helped me sort out my own thoughts on the matter.

Legend (a/k/a my mother) has it that I taught myself to read somewhere around four. Much to her chagrin, I might add, since I’d read the ads on the busses, thus making it problematic for her to convince the bus drivers I was still young enough to ride for free. Precociousness definitely has its down side.

Especially since she couldn’t keep me in reading material, my Sears Tower-sized stack of Little Golden Books notwithstanding. And so, before she reached the point of having to take in laundry to fuel my reading habit, we got on the bus and went downtown (me undoubtedly “reading” the entire way), to the main branch of the Enoch Pratt Library in Baltimore. And from the first moment she tugged me inside the cathedral-like building with its soaring coved ceilings and marble floors and ornate plasterwork, the velvetlike hush redolent with the scents of ink and slightly musty paper and binding glue, I was as one transformed by an almost religious experience.

And the children’s room! Total and complete magic, an enormous, dark-wood-detailed room with an oversize curved bay window at one end facing a cobblestoned or brick courtyard (this was nearly a half century ago, after all). And an inside fish pond, the entire length of that extraordinary window, filled with chubby goldfish and sparkling with coins. For years, I associated reading with the sound of gently gurgling water.

What I most remember, however, was the thrill of realizing that all those books were mine for the borrowing, a thrill I still experience even in my little Albuquerque branch library, with its utilitarian, exposed ductwork and dull brick walls. The architecture may be a far cry from the amazing nineteenth century opulence of my first library experience, but even after all these years my soul still reacts like a Golden Retriever seeing his human reach for the Milkbones box.

All those books, all those words and worlds and stories, there for the asking. A miracle, to an insatiable five-year-old. Even more so later on, when I’d load my skinny arms to the max – ten books, back then – staggering out of the library with the pile precariously balanced against my flat chest. Historical fiction for the most part, laced with just enough romance to make a twelve-year-old alternately sigh and blush. I might have been the palest kid on the block, and the most myopic, but my summers were never boring.

Fast forward twenty years, and I was borrowing picture books by the minivanload, as fascinated as my kidlets (if not more so – I was an artist before I was a writer) by the often sumptuous illustrations. Although this house is definitely a testament to the fact that readers live here, and the boys had no shortage of books of their own, we could have never afforded to buy the hundreds of books we went through over the years.

Libraries are truly one of God’s greatest gifts, for both readers and authors. Libraries buy a lot of books, introducing stories and authors to readers who might not otherwise ever hear of them, often spurring personal purchases that might not have happened at all, if it weren’t for libraries.

And for some reason, I actually read the books I get out of the library, as opposed to – truth be told – probably ninety percent of the books I buy. Because, you know, there’s no rush – the TBR isn’t going anywhere (alas), so I can get to those books whenever. Except whenever seems to happen less and less often these days…probably because the library keeps singing its siren song, that irresistible promise of magic in exchange for the simple scan of a library card.

The same promise that hooked a kindergartner equally fascinated by shiny coins and fat goldfish and pretty pictures and stories, stories that transported her into worlds far beyond a third-floor apartment in Baltimore in the late fifties…

…and undoubtedly started her on her journey from reader to writer.

In 1809, when she was 63, after a life spent excoriating the novel and its dangerous effects on the impressionable minds of young women, Hannah More went over to the Dark Side and published a *gasp*novel called Coelebs in Search of a Wife. It sold more copies in a single year than any other book of its time.

Hannah More used the novel structure to lure, one may even say to trick, those impressionable young women about whom she was so concerned into reading an “improving” novel, a novel that really wasn’t a novel but was instead a series of sermons linked with a weak narrative, a novel that is very difficult to read 200 years later because it is so conservative and, to be perfectly honest, so mind-numbingly boring to our modern readerly sensibilities.

But Coelebs was the popular literature of its time, the mass market romance of the early nineteenth century — many readers adored it — and as such, it deserves to be examined and analyzed to understand quite WHY so many people bought it and WHY so many people read it (Jane Austen’s sister thoroughly enjoyed it, for example). Despite its popularity, however (or maybe because of it?), feminist scholars have studiously avoided Coelebs. It is so conservative, so apparently anti-thetical to our modern feminist principles. WE aren’t interested in reading it, feminist academics sniff, so therefore it can have no value, nothing to teach us about readers or the novel of the early nineteenth century.

This stance might sound familiar to romance readers and writers. Maureen Dowd, after all, recently repeated the tired criticisms of romances in her badly-researched diatribe against chick lit. Romance readers and authors across the blogosphere responded quickly and brilliantly to the perceived attack, as we should have. But it’s “criticism” like Dowd’s that make some of those same romance readers and authors throw out the baby of romance-positive literary criticism with the dirty bath water of condescending “intellectuals” who sneer at anything deemed “popular” or anything that doesn’t fit their narrow view of what they deem “feminist.”

I spend a lot of time with my students trying to overcome the idea that literary criticism just sucks the life out of a text, whether a 14-line sonnet, or a 400-page novel. “Why can’t we just enjoy it?” they ask plaintively. “Why do we have to kill it by analyzing it?” This perception of literary criticism as giving no added value to a text holds doubly true for literary criticism of the romance novel, which for so long has been so negative, even while pretending to take popular romances seriously. Why read criticism of something you enjoy if it merely sneers at your reading choices?

My response to my students is that literary criticism can help us understand why we enjoy something. As a critic, knowing exactly what it is I enjoy about romances or individual authors and why I enjoy those particular things has not diminished that enjoyment in the slightest. And my response to romance readers tired of being sneered at is that today’s romance critics are themselves readers, a sharp change for the better. Rather than looking down our ivory-tower noses at romance readers and branding all romances as formulaicly the same, romance criticism can now help us appreciate a particular author’s skill (What IS it about Jenny Crusie’s humor?) or a novel’s characters (Why are the males of J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood so magnetically attractive, despite their excesses?), or more broadly, the appeal of a sub-genre (Why paranormals? Why now?) or an unexpected twist of the romantic convention (Why do women like male/male romantic erotica so much and not female/female?).

While a 200 year gap makes it difficult to understand the appeal of a novel like Coelebs, romance-positive literary criticism, as seen on Teach Me Tonight, for example, can help illuminate the appeal of modern mass-market romance novels from the insider’s loving perspective. What we do as academic critics is not so very different, after all, from what readers are doing every day across the blogosphere–we’re trying to figure out why we like these books so darned much.

Lately, I’ve been receiving a lot of project proposals from already established romance authors whom I would define as being solidly in the mid-list. They aren’t debut authors but nor are they break-out bestsellers either. They are solid writers with decent track records.

And I’m noticing something about these projects that inspired me to write this blog post. Established mid-list authors might be hampered by the fact that they are already established.

Let me explain because what I’ve just stated is obviously a paradox.

I imagine that writers who are still pursuing that first elusive deal might think that hey, established writers with solid track records have it made. They’ve already fulfilled their publishing dream. What obstacles could they be facing?

Well, I believe they might have one. When writing that first novel (or second or third since it often takes writing 2 or 3 before one sells), an unpublished writer can start fresh—with an original idea. There’s no “this-is-what-worked-before” to inhibit them. There is no sophomore effort to fear. There is no understanding of “this is what my audience expects” that might actually interfere with a mid-list author moving up to the next level.

An unpublished writer has a blank slate. Anything is possible. An unpublished writer is completely inventing him or herself by writing that first book. And in doing so, sometimes magic happens.

Established writers often forget that “anything-is-possible” space that allows them to create something wholly new.

I suggest this because what I’m seeing in these proposal submissions is talent (indisputably), solid writing, and a storyline that just feels too familiar–like this is the author’s comfort zone and he/she can do it fabulously but that’s not what will reignite the career.

Reignite is the key word. You want to reignite a reader or an agent’s excitement and imagination because the story is so different, fresh, and original that it reinvents the genre.

And it’s missing. In this sense, mid-list authors can be hindered by their previous solid (if not stellar) success. And what established authors might need to do is to look at their writing and their career from the perspective of starting completely new as a way of breaking free of the mid-list constraint so as to move to the next level.

And I’d like to propose that this is what the top bestsellers in the romance field do all the time. They throw out all their previous notions of what works. What was their former success and they pretend like it’s brand new and for the very first time. They mimic the world and creative space of an unpublished, debut writer and the results can be stunning.

They reinvent themselves by avoiding the tried and true and taking risks. Time and time again.

I had a light bulb moment. At least I think it was. Then the bulb started blinking. Now, it’s entirely possible we’re having power surges from the snow we finally got after the storms stopped skipping north and south of us for the last two months, but I think the blinking has more to do with the fact that it’s not so much a fully fleshed out idea as a question my subconscious is asking me to clarify.

You see, I’ve said before that I look for books by plot types or by themes if you’re more comfortable with that description. Things like best friend, secret identity, reunion, etc. Those type of labels.

It suddenly occurred to me to wonder how someone who doesn’t look for romances that way finds anything they like to read. That’s when the light bulb went off. So that’s what people mean when they say they only read one type of romance, like say Regencies. They just take the books as they come. Duh.

Only, (and here’s where it started blinking like mad) how can anyone do that?

I mean just the thought of sticking with one time period of romance makes me twitch because I skip all over the place. I read historicals, futuristics, and contemporaries. You name it. I mean I even read vampire romances and I actually kind of hate them.

Go figure.

For me it’s about the variety and . . . well, those themes I mentioned. Show me one of those I’m crazy about and I’ll try anything setting-wise at least once. Hey, I’m not even all that crazy about Westerns but show me a best friend Western romance and I’m so there. For some reason, some of the best secret identity romances pop up in Western settings. Must be the horses.

Anyway, don’t get me wrong, I’m not making fun or disparaging anyone who doesn’t read across the board. I’m just trying to understand how . . . well, how anyone can limit themselves that much. Of course, this is from someone who for years only read contemporaries and wouldn’t touch a historical romance with a ten foot pole. Why? Because she hated history in school.

Yeah, our brains work in mysterious ways. What can I say. ;p

Maybe that’s part of the issue, though. Once I broke free, I refused to go backwards. For me, the romance genre is now one big sumptuous buffet feast spread out to sample and chose from. Sure, I have my favorite dishes I like to have around as comfort food and, yes, gorge myself on occasionally but I also like to experiment with combining those with other flavors to see what happens.

Just because I like, say, a best friend romance doesn’t mean I only want to read them in contemporaries. It’s also fun to see the how the theme works in futuristics and historicals and paranormals or with the occasional secret identity twist. The thing is that the combinations really are endless. I guess my fear would be that if I limited myself to one time period or type of romance I’d miss something amazing somewhere else.

So, what about the rest of you? Do you stick with one truly gourmet setting? Or are you more of an “all you can eat” buffet style reader like me?

I’ve got a Sisyphean task at hand, and if Romancing the Bloggers can’t help me, I don’t know where else to turn.

Let’s begin the exercise by assuming your offer of much-deserved “our collective hearts bleed for you,” and “careful what you wish for” comments, for my problem is this:

I have too many gratis Advance Reading Copies and novels in To Be Considered (TBC) piles and don’t know which to look at first. Further, out of the scores I’m sent weekly, I can’t decide which authors and novels romance readers might like most. How can I select just four of these about which to write feature columns and author interviews each month?

Initially – back when I thought getting free books was gonna be so cool — I read a little of every novel I was sent, because I couldn’t stand the thought of not acknowledging an author’s blood, sweat, and tears. Now, I still treat the books reverently, but can’t possibly get to every one.

So I stack ARCs by release date. I sort them by theme. I separate out erotica to feature in my blog rather than my columns. I set aside novels of newbie authors who’ve emailed me to pitch their books. And sometimes I forget that I meant to read one because my child gets sick in the middle of my sorting and I don’t get back to it for a few days — by which time 40 more packages have arrived.

Truth be told, my job is awesome, and next to e-hanging with romance readers, getting free books really is the coolest thing ever. So I ain’t complaining. Yet I do feel a tremendous amount of guilt about not reading most of my TBCs, because I really get what authors go through to become published.

Now, as much as I enjoy a little guilt-related cheez-puff and chocolate eating, I know the emotion itself isn’t productive. Surmounting challenges is productive, and that’s where you come in, if you’d please be so kind.

Based on your experience with your own TBR piles, how would you organize my TBC piles? How would you try to give every book and author as fair a shake as possible? What would you do with remaining books? How would you enjoy doing my job?