Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

This week, I’ve been burning the candle from both ends, and the middle, and if there were any other parts left to burn, trust me, I was torching those, too. I needed to write about 10,000 words in a week for a book due Thursday, plus a few articles that were long overdue, a gazillion blog entries for blogs (this blog, my own blog and my MySpace blog). 

The list was long, but the rewards on the other side for meeting my goals was sweet enough to convince me a little melted wax was a small price to pay. 

A beach. A week’s worth of margaritas and not a deadline in sight. At least until I get back home. 

So I got up early, stayed up late, locked myself in the writer bat cave and didn’t come out until it was all done. I’m on way to get a fake tan, just so I look like a real person and not a ghost. 

But all the work this week got me to wondering–how many of us do exactly that, burn the candle at both ends, and what price do we pay for it? I know I’ve done it before, without the promise of a condo on the beach waiting for me. I’ve done it when the kids’ schedules have gotten out of hand (guitar lessons, soccer, wrestling, you name it, all at the same time, and there’s only one mom who has to be everywhere all at once, and suddenly we’re on a steady diet of McDonald’s for a month). 

Then again, the cool thing about weeks like this is that it lets me know I can do it. I can step up to the plate, make miracles happen (I consider those 10k words in a few days a major miracle, and I made dinner, too. Is there an award for that?). And I can survive with my sanity intact, though my kids will probably disagree. And, when I’m done, I go back to a relatively normal schedule. When you have kids, nothing’s ever normal, but there’s something that can approach normal, at least until summer vacation. 

Do you have weeks like this? If so, how do you survive? What are your tips for getting through the candle-burning insanity? 

Shirley

Readers and writers aren’t only found in bookstores—you’ll see them in movies as well. This column lists ten movies featuring writers or readers as characters. If you know about other movies, we’d love to hear about them! Let us know your favorites in the comments.

Dead Poet’s Society

The End of the Affair

Finding Forrester

Misery

Moulin Rouge

Paperback Hero

Romancing the Stone

Shakespeare in Love

Stand by Me

Stranger Than Fiction

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

Adultery in romance novels chills me to the bone. How can we expect a “happily ever after” ending when one of the lead characters has strayed? Isn’t the saying “once a cheater, always a cheater?”

I purchased a historical romance novel a year ago; it came highly recommended by a friend and received nothing but stellar reviews. It’s currently sitting on my bedroom floor, in a small “To Be Read” pile. Not since I discovered that the hero was a married man and the heroine, a prostitute he enjoys during a night out on the town, was I able to read the novel. There are obvious problems in the marital relationship that push the hero to find solace and gratification elsewhere (excuses…excuses), but the mere knowledge of his marital status was enough to chill my reading ardor. As is typical of any romance novel, the hero and heroine soon become more than part-time lovers, ’til the end of the novel when circumstances make it possible for the two to finally wed (…and they lived happily ever after). The romance is not of the syrupy sweet variety; on the contrary, its dark passion and depth make it a must read for any fan of romance…so I hear…because I still have not garnered the will to read it.

I’m not a prude, nor am I naive. I understand perfectly well that in the real world, adultery exists and sometimes circumstances will push one partner to stray from the other. I get it, but I don’t have to like it…especially in romance novels. The mere knowledge that the hero committed adultery was enough to nearly destroy my desire to read a book considered by many to be one of the author’s finest (I will not reveal the name because I do not want to spoil the book for others). I will eventually read the book, but right now it’s been one year and all the book has been doing in my life is collecting dust.

There are many things I tolerate in romance novels - virgin widows, spies, Americans in Britain, alcoholism, bodice ripping - but adultery is not one of them.

In recent years, several novels have been written with a cheating spouse (usually the hero). I’ve read a few. The writers all did an exceptional job; unfortunately, despite their best efforts, I could not completely look past the fact that someone in the relationship had cheated. I could never shake off the knowledge that the hero (let’s face it; it’s usually him depicted as the adulterer) had slept with someone other than the heroine WHILE in a relationship with the heroine! “Happily Ever After” was no longer an option for me; there would always be that lingering doubt, that underlying anger, that…gulp…sadness in their lives. For a brief moment (or maybe even a few years), the heroine simply wasn’t enough and the ultimate betrayal was committed. Would the hero stray again? The question always remained.

Perhaps I look for more romance than most when reading a romance novel. I don’t want a hero or heroine who cheats. I want someone who will be faithful to the heroine, despite the many temptations surrounding them. I don’t want a hero who will cheat on his wife and remain married while engaging in an affair with the heroine either. Call me simple. Call me innocent. Romance is romance. Reality is the last thing I want to think about. I don’t expect the lives of romance characters to be depicted as shiny and perfect; I like a good dose of trial and tribulations, like the next person, but adultery…..adultery is just not romantic. Sorry.

What do you think? Can you look past adultery in a romance novel? What novels, in your opinion, were able to win you over, despite the adultery of its lead characters? For authors, how challenging is it to write a novel in which one of the leads has strayed?

I recently discovered that I seem to be a bear. Do I mean cranky, apt to snarl? Well, sometimes (just ask my kids). But what I really mean is my tendency to hibernate.

At the end of November, I took a kind of break from the Internet. I didn’t mean to, and the urge was partly due to the coming holidays, a looming deadline, and the onset of the Season of Sickness in our house, but it lasted for a while. Until…this past week, as a matter of fact.

I didn’t blog. I didn’t even read other blogs. I was well and truly holed up with my own thoughts, recuperating on one level and gearing up on another. And it made me wonder what happened to some other authors that it seemed, to me at least, had gone missing at one time or another?

When I first started working at Kensington Publishing, I wasn’t a huge romance fan. I’d read some oldies but goodies — Victoria Holt, Dorothy Eden, the occasional gothic — and the new romances Zebra published were fascinating to me. So many different settings! So much action! So much sex!

Some of those books remain favorites of mine, but it struck me when I was thinking about my own mini hiatus from the web that I hadn’t seen anything new by those authors in a while. Had they stopped writing? Had the market changed and left them behind? Had I simply not been paying attention? (Always a possibility with me.)

Guess what? Tracking people down is a lot easier with the Internet – come on now, a big round of, “Duh, Amy!” – even if the results are sometimes as disappointing as they are satisfying.

I started with Deana James. I loved a few of her historicals, one in particular – sadly, most of my older romances were lost in a move – and I was pretty sure she hadn’t written anything in a while. I turned out to be right about that, which made me sad, but I found new (or newish) books from a bunch of other authors I had lost track of, author who apparently hadn’t been on hiatus at all. After loving Laura Parker’s historicals, I see she’s now writing women’s fiction as Laura Castoro. Stobie Piel wrote one of the first time-travels I ever read, and she apparently kept writing historicals (and one sci-fi romance!) long after I lost track of her. Janis Reams Hudson is now writing for Silhouette Special Edition, and Olga Bicos has been writing for Mira.

The news wasn’t all good, of course. Cindy Holbrook, the author of more than a dozen hysterically funny and heartwarming traditional Regencies, hasn’t had a book out since 2001, which is a really long time in the publishing world. And Taylor Chase, whose Heart of Deception floored me, it was so wonderfully dark and passionate, wrote only one book after that, at least under that name (which was a pseudonym to begin with).

Still, it gave me a little Nancy Drew-like thrill to wander through cyberspace, hunting down familiar names and remembering books I hadn’t read in years. But at the same time it made me wonder about how fast the world moves these days, how quickly tastes and trends change, and how little the Internet really means when you think about how many authors (and singers, actors, artists, reality show stars, and heiresses, and you get my point) are out there trying to lure you to their little corner of it. Is it even possible to take a hiatus anymore, without losing a valuable foothold in the marketplace and space in your readers’ hearts?

I mean, let’s face it, some of the authors I was looking up hadn’t disappeared at all. But in the crush of new authors’ releases, word of mouth, Internet buzz, blog posts, and my own life, I had forgotten some of those writers.

Have you ever lost track of any of your once-upon-a-time favorite authors? Have you ever taken a hiatus from the sticky charms of the web – or even from a certain genre of romance? Share!

You’ve just returned from the store with a copy of the latest book by your favorite romance novelist. You’ve been waiting for months, perhaps even longer, for this story; and while you’re sorely tempted to stay up late and rip through the whole thing tonight, you decide to save it for later. You want to take your time with this one. You want to savor it.

How will you do that? And where, and when? Will you wait for a rainy Sunday afternoon, then make yourself a cup of herbal tea and retreat to a quiet corner of your home? Will you get someone to watch your kids and then steal away to the park, perhaps making a quick stop at Starbucks first? Will you draw a bubble bath and light some candles for scent and atmosphere? Or will you snuggle under your bedcovers and read the night away?

I read romance because it makes me feel good. When I read an extra-special romance novel, I like to enhance the experience by sinking into the soft pillows on my living room sofa, my legs tucked underneath me. The house has to be quiet, and I enjoy having fresh flowers on the coffee table so I have something pretty to stare at when I look up from the book to think about a great line I’ve just read. I also enjoy having a bowl of sweet cherries at hand. I love twirling each cherry by its stem and then slowly nibbling its succulent flesh away from the pit as I read.

How about you? What are your favorite romance-reading rituals?

Yes, I am.

It must have started back with those Nancy Drew mysteries, although I can’t be sure. I wonder if it’s because I hadn’t had a lot of permanence in my life at that point that I tended to like series. Oddly, enough I didn’t, and don’t, like miniseries on TV.

However, I did, and still do, love book series. Because I’m the kind of person that likes to know what happens after. What happens after that? Where do the characters go? How do they go on? In romances I’m good with the happy ever after but the happy for now always leaves me wondering.

Right now I’m reading Fern Michael’s Revenge of the Sisterhood series. I didn’t start with the first one as someone bought it for me. I believe it was the second one, Payback, and I was hooked. I still haven’t read the first one but am now on the fifth book. Some of them are a little hard core with the revenge, these ladies are quite serious about what they are doing – there were some scenes in Vendetta where I actually cringed. However, I will keep on reading these as there are still two more that I’m aware of and then, of course, I must get the first one.

One of my auto-buy series have always been Jonathan Kellerman’s Alex Delaware novels. I love those but I haven’t necessarily read all of them in order, although I would certainly prefer to do it that way. The thing is that he’s been writing them for so long that I have no idea where I started. I have kept buying them as the new ones come out and then looking for older ones as well. I love seeing how the character of Alex has grown, alongside Milo, Robin and a cast of other characters, some who only pop in and out and some who are mainstays. I remember being upset that I must have missed a book because I discovered that Robin and Alex were no longer together and they had been in the last book I read. It drove me batty – how could I have missed one?

Another auto-buy series is Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series. Although, I have to say her last one didn’t seem as good and I’m not sure I like where Kay’s character is headed. I don’t abandon series easily but this one may be done. I will try one more, although it looks like there’s only a re-release rather than a new release, to see if she’s turned them around.

A new series for me is Shannon Stacey’s Devlin Group. It started with 72 Hours and the next one is Over the Edge. I can’t wait ‘til its release.

Then, of course, one of the most famous series I like is Harry Potter, which will be coming to an end this year. That will be bittersweet for me because I long for the next book, and yet, I don’t. In between all of the series mentioned above, as well as others, are so many other books – I read a lot – but my love of a series never leaves me. I have read single title books where I have hoped the author will turn a supporting character into a new book. As you can tell my love of series runs deep. There is a continuity in series that satisfies me greatly.

Do you like books that are in a series? What intrigues you about series? Which series is your favourite?

by Kimber An

This column is question, as well as statement. I’ve read lots of articles in which authors explain they’ve been motivated by editors and agents, and sales, to include more explicit love scenes. That’s all fine and good. I also understand writing a good romance means fantasy. Hey, after a decade of wedded bliss with four resulting pregnancies, I’d rather go with fantasy than be hit with a requisite condom application sentence in a romance novel. That’s waaaay too much reality for me, Bub.

Nevertheless, even a fantasy done over and over in the same exact way gets boring. I’m not talking about gymnastics here. I’m talking old-fashioned plot and character development.

This is where the ‘Sex By the Numbers’ title comes in. The author feels the pressure of sales’ numbers to write a sex scene. She’s uncomfortable with that. It’s not her style and it doesn’t flow well with the story. Wanting to sell her novel, she labors away at it anyway. The result is a standard issue sex scene.

The Standard Issue Sex Scene. Regardless of time period and setting or the cultural climate and religious mores which go along with them, there is one or two explicit sex scenes. The progress of the relationship up to that point is also irrelevant. The hero is always highly skilled (regardless of experience) and selflessly concerned (even if he’s only one step up from a Neanderthal) with pleasing the heroine who is always fantastically pleased. No matter how skillfully written, I’m jarred right out of the story and I toss it over my shoulder.

Like me, most readers of romance novels are over 25 and experienced with romance. We’re trying to avoid the Standard Issue in real life. We don’t want it in our reading material.

We’ve all read beautifully developed stories in which the couple makes love. The difference between that and Sex By the Numbers is glaring. So, I wonder, how much pressure is there really? Are otherwise good stories sacrificed to the sex goddess for the sake of sales numbers? Seems to me that would backfire.

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Some of you may know (because I never shut up about it) that I had my first child in December. I was in the middle of page 72 of my current manuscript at the time. I know this because at some point I typed PAUSE HERE TO HAVE BABY on that page. (I think this was before I went into labour.)

I started the book in November. My deadline was the beginning of April. Five months to write a book, and have a baby. Some may think I am insane. Some may think I am naïve. Some may be acquainted with me already, and know that I cannot say “no”. In any case, I have recently found myself with a newborn and a deadline.

Well, it’s the end of March. And I’m going to make my deadline. I have about a chapter to write, and some editing to do, and I’m done. I’ve also managed to keep my child alive and happy most of the time (except when he’s screaming), and to do more laundry than I knew was physically possible.

I have done this through the Power of the Hour.

A newborn sucks your brains out through your nipples (I have heard this is true even if you are bottle feeding, though possibly the brains come out somewhere else and it doesn’t involve as much scabbing). It’s very difficult to concentrate on anything, or to find any time to yourself to write. Even when the baby’s asleep, there’s tons of stuff to do: washing, showering, sleeping, calling your mother, going to the bathroom.

Every day when I can, however, I’ve taken one hour to do nothing but write. I ignore the washing. I don’t answer the phone. I go without a shower. (Okay, I do go to the bathroom if I have to.) Usually this is after the baby’s gone to sleep in the evening. Sometimes it’s grabbed by walking him a mile to Starbuck’s, thereby lulling him to sleep so I can type furiously over a decaff latte. When my husband is home, he kindly takes the baby out of the house for an hour, on a walk, so I can be alone and write.

I’ve been able to find a single hour most days. Some days, it’s only fifteen minutes. But fifteen minutes is still enough to get some words on paper. And an hour is enough, usually, to write a thousand words. And a thousand words nearly every day gets you a book done in time for deadline, even if you did have a baby on page 72.

My husband tells my son it’s called “Mummy’s Mucky Book Hour”. Long may it continue.

And then I’m free for the rest of the day to feed my son my brains.

Please note: All reader names have been changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

“I love, love, love Margaret Moore,” my buddy, Miss Measuring Tape, gushed, “I’d buy anything she wrote, even her grocery list scribbled on a used piece of snot paper.”

“Oh, really,” what the heck, it was a slow day, I’d call her bluff, “if that’s the case then why are all your books the exact same height?”

Uh…uh…uh…Yeah, busted, girly. Didn’t think I’d notice your neat and tidy bookshelves, did ya?

You see we readers might talk a good game, about loving our authors no matter what their books look like, about it being “all about the writing”, but secretly, we have our…well…freaky deaky formatting fetishes.

I should know. For me, its font size. Sure, I have an excuse. I read mostly in moving vehicles and no, not while driving. In buses, taxis, planes, trains, while other people are doing the driving, flying, engineering, whatever. Anywho, you try reading some of the microscopic fonts out there while riding the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Not fun.

Just last week, I had the choice between reading my brand new, never been read copy of the (alleged) funny Ten Ways To Melt A Man’s Heart by Phyllis Campbell or rereading Teresa Roblin’s (confirmed) funny Hocus Pocus. Call me shallow but I picked the latter, my choice based completely on font size.

My male friend, Hard Body, first narrows his book selection down to anything published in hard cover. Why? Because Hard Body feels that if the publisher really thought it was a good book, they would charge a few more dollars and print it in hard cover.

Speaking of publishers, another friend, Agent X, refuses to buy books with those double covers that romance novels so often come with (and I personally like). This suspicious gal feels that using a double cover is equivalent to the publisher trying to pull a fast one. Why does the inside cover have to be hidden? What else is the publisher trying to hide? Was there a second shooter? Is Elvis still alive? Conspiracies are everywhere.

On a lighter note, Mathphobe won’t buy any books without chapter titles (no numbers for him). If the author thought the chapter was important, Mathphobe argues, she’d take the extra minute and give it a title.

Then there’s The Book Peeker. The Book Peeker is so paranoid about breaking the spine that she opens the book just wide enough to see all the words. Obviously she prefers wide inside margins. Oh, and not reading anywhere near me ‘cause watching her drives me downright batty.

Now, some of you are reading this and thinking that we’re a bunch of weirdos. Well, maybe so (I know that I certainly fit that description) but before you judge, look over your own bookshelves. Is there a trend? Are most of your covers blue? Got a metallic font? Roughly the same number of pages? If you answered even one maybe, then I have your weirdo membership card ready and waiting.

And I want to hear about it, every glorious nutbar detail. Comment under a pen name, I don’t care (pen name Kimber Chin is taken). Stand up and say “I’m a formatting freak and I won’t be ashamed any longer.”

Four weeks ago, I found myself rather unexpectedly in hospital. As is so often the case with these things, a quick, routine day surgery turned into a three hour extravaganza and when I came ’round following the anaesthetic, I was informed by my surgeon – with surprising relish – that I wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. I paled. Bugger. Husband, please go get me something to read. Now!

He did well. He brought in a couple of TBR titles that had been sitting on my bookshelf and, determined to make good of a bad situation, I thought of how often I’d fantasised about being stuck just like this - in bed and with nothing to do but read, read, read until my eyes burst or maybe caught fire. Once visiting hours were over (and the painkillers had kicked in), I settled down as best I could and picked up the book closest to me. I think that the coma patient in the next room must have heard my groan.

Being confined to a catheter and crappy hospital bed (not to mention on a six bed ward with no bloody TV) meant that I couldn’t just up and change my mind about . . . well, about anything. Which was why, on the first Saturday night in hospital, I was stuck in bed with no visitors to rescue me from THAT book - the one I’d been putting off for almost as long as I’d owned it.

This particular title I’d started three times before, each attempt resulting in an exasperating deferral back to the bookshelf. From what I’d already read, it was beautifully written with the seemingly perfect balance of romance and real life for me to fall desperately in love with everything in that imaginary world . . . everything, that was, besides the heroine.

I. Didn’t. Like. Her.

As a romance reader, I engage in this particular genre because I like (need?) to escape. I like to live other lives, particularly if they’re full of love and lust and ludicrously gorgeous men. And as a rule, I’m not particularly fussy on who they are, where they live or what they do – as long as the essentials - did I mention the love, lust and ludicrously gorgeous men? - are intact, I like to think that I’m pretty easy to please. Turns out, I’ve found another essential to add to my scant list – if She’s not likeable, I’m not liking the book. Period.

That’s not to say that I don’t dig flaws. My own characters have their fair share, and I think it’s difficult to maintain any sense of realism if your leading cast could double as the robots from Stepford Wives. I certainly don’t deny myself a little escapism from time to time, and if that means becoming someone who lives five thousand miles away and being paid a salary with more noughts than a lottery win, then all the better (particularly if that someone has a sexy guy in the wings, too). That said, they still have to be likeable and tick all the boxes that, to my own fickle and exacting standards, I expect from friends in my non-fiction world. That means that spiteful and cruel narcissists are definitely out.

Of course, we’re all different, and we all have differing standards and priorities, but that heroine - whilst demonstrating a little growth at the story’s end - didn’t seem to learn enough for me to ever stop truly disliking her (and in the end I didn’t like him much either, fearing of his decidedly dodgy tastes in women). It resulted in a very lukewarm reading experience, but I think that what disappointed me most was that the author was undoubtedly talented with a strong voice and a satisfying storyline . . . but thanks to that two-dimensional and utterly unfriendly female role, I doubt I’ll ever pick up a book by that particular writer again.

And so begs the question . . . am I alone in this? Am I the only one who has been turned off a book by an unconvincing cast even though it promised so much? How important is it to you that you like your leading characters, even if you strictly can’t relate to them? And the final question mark of this essay . . . it is even possible to fall in love with a book when you can’t even find it in you to like the leading roles?