Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

I don’t know about you, but I’m a sucker for studies.

Studies, as in “studies show.” Studies, as in science.

Studies, as in “something cool I read about, and hope that someone else has verified.”

The bad thing about studies is that, unless you have some sense of how to judge the research, they can be all-too comforting. Give me an hour–heck, with Google on my side, give me a quarter of a second–and I can find a study that claims to prove just about anything I want to believe.

Taken with a healthy grain of salt, though–wait! Can I find a study that says I shouldn’t worry so much about eating salt? That was a tough one: .33 seconds to find this piece from a few days ago– So, taken with a healthy grain of salt, “studies” provide me with conversation topics, endless entertainment, and plenty to think about.

The study that caught my attention this morning showed up on one of my favorite news sites, Science Daily. I’d started by clicking on one of the recent headlines: “Married With Children the Key to Happiness?” (Answer: maybe, but two other studies in the “related stories” column found that children “take a toll on marital bliss.”) The quirky, memorable headline, though, was the one about whether having a happy spouse or partner could make you happier, too.

“Research Says,” the story goes, “Your Happiness Makes Your Partner Happy – But Only If You Are Married.”

If you’re a sucker for studies, you can click over and read the actual piece. It’s short, and, as usual, it’s a bit less dramatic than the headline suggests. Still, it’s got me thinking–not at all scientifically–about one of the novels I taught for the first time this quarter, here at DePaul: Laura Kinsale’s Prince of Midnight.

As the novel ends, our hero and heroine, S.T. Maitland and Leigh Strachan, are trying to figure out what love means, or at least what their love means, and why S.T. should stay with Leigh, despite the flaws that he thinks forbid him to marry her.

“What can I give you in return?” he demands of her. “Give me your joy,” she responds. “Give me all your mad notions and your crazy heroics and your impossible romantical follies. And I’ll be your anchor. I’ll be your balance. I’ll be your family. I won’t let you fall.”

Studies have shown that this is one of the most moving betrothal scenes in all of romance. OK, maybe no one’s studied that. But the notion that one test of a couple is how they deal with differential happiness, spreading the wealth, rings deeply true to me.

Freud said that everything he knew about psychology, poets had figured out first. If only he’d read romance novels–or Science Daily–too!

My family and I have recently moved (as in last week; our entire garage is filled to the brim with, oh my goodness, So. Much. Stuff).  We’ve been working room by room to unpack and organize, though there are still little piles in each room.  Don’t get me started on the boxes, either in the house or in the garage.  

My books remain packed; the bookcases where they’ve resided in various organizational constructs over the past 12 years are empty.  It’s so sad. And I feel badly for my books as I pass them going in and out of the basement.  Bless their hearts, they don’t deserve to be shut up tight in those darn paper boxes.  Until I have the time and motivation (the real key) to unpack and shelve them, I’m living on borrowed books: library books. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love the library.  Absolutely love it.  One of my favorite places to go, and I’m so very thankful my mother took my brother and I to the children’s area every other Saturday.   I’m lucky enough to work across the street from the library now, where the employees know me by name and aren’t surprised when my library holds come in at  one time.  [I shouldn't be surprised either, but I always am.]

So, I must offer a great big THANK YOU to all the librarians out there who’ve kept me high on the written word while my brain is numb and my body is tired.

I have a very tall TBR pile. In fact, it is more than one pile, it is several. I have more than enough books to get me through the rest of the year.

Yet, I want more.

I want more books. I am a book-a-holic. I should add that I am a voracious reader, so it’s not like I don’t read a lot or that I read slowly. There are just always more books to want. I have a wish list of books. Some of these are books that are next in series I am reading, some of them are my auto-author buy books, some are just random books I’ve chosen after seeing a cover or reading a blurb. I shouldn’t even be adding to the wish list, because I’m sure I have enough on there to get me to the middle of next year. Or, at least, until Easter. Then someone will Tweet about a book. “Oh, that sounds so good” and off I go to check it out and, yep, you guessed it, 9 times out of 10 it will be added to the list. Author friends of mine have releases and those get added.

I’m not a snob. I add a wide variety of books, across many genres. Although, I do admit to not adding certain things, just because there’s been too much buzz (Dan Brown, anyone?), but that might be another story (or it may just prove that I’m stubborn – it did take me a while to finally read Harry Potter and then, of course, I loved it.)

I feel sorry for the first books I put on that wishlist because they keep getting pushed further down. When I do make my purchases, I buy whatever I’m in the mood for at that time, not necessarily what was the oldest on the list. And even then I can be found adding more books to the list as I browse away with the links that suggest “If you like XYZ, then you may enjoy ABC”. My husband would be appalled. When books arrive at the house he just shakes his head. “What? It was a good deal,” I say, then proceed to explain if I buy x amount I get free shipping and why not just spend that money on a book rather than on shipping. Or, how if I buy these two books together I get a discount. You’re with me, right?

And, look, on this very blog, there are covers tempting me—calling me! Um, sorry, talk amongst yourselves, I have to go add these to my list. Am I insane? Please tell me you do this too. Even though you have books? Is there a Books Anonymous?

By now most of you savvy members of the online romance community are aware of the stance the publishing industry maintains regarding not only African-American romance, but multicultural romance as well. However, after opening dialogue with a few unpublished African-American romance writers, the topic is rather thorny and a bit more nuanced than decrying the discriminatory practices that maintain the relatively homogeneous look of the romance genre.

A few years ago (2007 I believe), a group of black romance writers, galvanized by the surge of interest in and discussion of the segregation of AA romance, decided to form a writers’ organization to address their unique issues. I presume many either were not RWA members, or they felt the RWA was not amenable to forming a group of this type under the umbrella of the organization. Nonetheless, due to a variety of factors, the organization fizzled fairly quickly and as of today, I don’t sense a desire to form one again. Yet, is it truly in bad taste for AA romance writers to form a group within the RWA? Or to have a separate category for their work in writing contests like the GH or the RITA?

I would argue not. The 1896 ruling on Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate, but equal” law that ruled race relations and the institute of segregation in this country for most of the 20th century. Under this decision, blacks and whites were given separate facilities for eating, drinking, traveling, and so on, with the assumption that that given to both were equal. Needless to say, they were not. Brown v. Board of Education overturned this ruling in 1954, and the result was the forced desegregation of all-white schools by bussing young black students to them.

We can see parallels to this moment in American history with the publishing industry. The first AA romance was published in the early 1980s, but it wasn’t until the early to mid 1990s that publishers realized they had a crowd of black readers, thirsty for romances featuring men and women who shared their heritage. However, during that drought–and it continues today–black romance fans were essentially bussed to the all-white publishing industry out of necessity. A number of AA romance veterans started their careers hiding behind their white characters, and it could be that some of our early romance novels were written by black women desiring to be the next Linda Howard or Rosemary Rogers, but forced to “write white” out of financial and market pressures.

Here we are in 2009 and the case of “separate, but equal” rules how AA romances are treated. And yet, I feel that the lack of categories for AA romance in major contests is a sort of ostrich move. It denies that there are separate factors black romance writers face on their path to publication, and it denies the fact that the publishing industry is not colorblind. After all, Christian/Inspirational romance writers face their own set of guidelines and separate factors for publication. I for one feel that acknowledging the issues romance writers of color face is the first step to understanding, and ultimately, supporting the inclusion of romance writers–and characters–of all colors, creeds, and nationalities into the romance genre.

My To-Be-Read pile is growing out of control. More than a year ago, my husband and I moved out of our apartment and into our first home. When the movers came, they looked with dismay upon the dozens of “book boxes.” When I unpacked, I looked with dismay on how many of them were filled with unread books. I have unread ARCs from my first visit to BEA in 2006. Some of these books are out of print, and I’ve never touched them. I have unread books from my first visits to my local RWA chapters’ PAN booksignings. Some of these authors have since left the business.

That last bit is terrifying.

I started out with a single TBR shelf on my office bookshelf in my new office. It’s now taken over half the shelves on that particular piece of floor-to-ceiling furniture.

The rise of book review bloggers hasn’t helped. Over half of the book on my shelves are in my possession as a result of good reviews I’ve read online: The Clockwork Heart, Obernewtyn, The Flame and the Shadow, Sugar Rush, Palimpset (heck I even bought the Palimpset soundtrack!). Other are the professional hazards of being a writer and buying the books that are getting all the buzz in your particular genre: Intertwined, Bones of Faerie, Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Ash, The Possibilities of Sainthood. I’ve made a concerted effort to attend more author events this year as well. Form those I’ve gleaned Bad to the Bone, King of the Screwups, Love you Hate You Miss You, Stargazer, The Seems, Ice, The Stone Child, and many more. (These last provide a special hell of guilt, as I’ve looked the author in the eye, and had them inscribe my name in their book.)

And don’t even talk to me about the books of personal friends. I still haven’t read my mentor’s latest in her series. My agent’s most recent ebook? Bought and sitting there in PDF format on my desktop (I don’t have an e-reader).

There are the books that friends have lent me (a biography of Abigail Adams, an editor friend’s pride and joy of a project), and the classics I somehow never read (why, hello there, Jane Eyre and Mrs. Dalloway — that last a particular source of guilt as Mrs. D was sent to me by a blog reader appalled I didn’t know her).

I need to take a week off to read all these books. Heck, I need to take a month. I need, perhaps, to go on a bit of a book-buying embargo until I can get my reading under control.

And yet, when will I have time to do that? It’s the end of October. I’m gearing up for NaNoWriMo. With my latest deadline off my plate, I’m looking forward to working on a project that’s been stewing on the backburner since February. And then another deadline, another project. And sometimes, it’s hard to read when I’m writing. Sometimes I need to be immersed in my world, my voice, not some other person’s writing, especially if their style is particularly strong or hypnotic (yes Lisa McMann and your sequel FADE, I’m looking at you).

And yet, all I want to do is read. I find nothing more inspiring than discovering a great new book — an extraordinary new book that reminds me why I got into this business int eh first place. That makes me think, wow, I wish I’d written that. That sends me back to my keyboard determined to create a thing of similar beauty and transformation.

What about you? What book (or books) on your TBR pile are making you feel most guilty right now? Go ahead and tell: confession is good for the soul. And how to you deal with the piles of unread books?

My first novel, Secret Vegas Lives, is published electronically from Red Rose Publishing. After years of using positive visualization of me, An Author, smiling and signing books at a Barnes and Noble, I had to scrap that visual and start over.

Marketing an e-book, I’ve found opportunities that are exciting and endless! As endless as there are wonderful sites like this one, dedicated to helping new authors – like me – share my journey from the first idea for a book, all the way through publishing.

When I contracted with Red Rose in January, I started compiling my promotion toolkit. Now, you have to understand that I’m a very frugal person. The suggestions I’ve listed are for people who – like me – don’t have a whole lot of money to sink into PR.
• Register your domain name as soon as possible
• Learn to do your own website, it’s easier than you think
• Blog anywhere and everywhere you can, and be sure to include your tagline and website, even on comments
• Set up your social networking on Facebook and LinkedIn
• Twitter often, and have it post to directly Facebook and your website
• Find a newsletter format, and set it up to match your website
• Research online press kits and create a Press Kit page on your website
• Learn to make a video book trailer, I used MS Movie Maker
• Set up a monthly contest on your website where readers agree to allow you to send them your newsletter monthly
• Send them your newsletter monthly, announcing your news and that month’s contest winner. And post your newsletters on your website
• Most publishers have a monthly contest. If so, participate! Put that link on the Contests page on your website BELOW your contest sign-up. You’ll have dozens of new readers on your site.
• Plan your blog tour. Sites like Romancing the Blog are kind enough to let outsiders post. Offer a giveaway (but not the book you’re currently promoting)
• Plan your traditional advertising – ads in Romance Writer’s Report, Romantic Times, newspapers, magazines, and online sites
• Find out where your publisher sends your book for reviews, then choose other sites and ask them for a review
• Contact authors in your genre and ask them to read your book and give you an endorsement – most will apologize for not having the time to spare, but one might just say yes!
• Do interviews – online, blogtalk radio, television, newspapers
• Buy stuff to give away – both branding stuff and book-specific stuff
o Vistaprint.com has wonderful free offers of paper items, magnets, t-shirts, bags
o Discountmugs.com sells pens in quantities of as few as 100
• Muscle your way into group book signings even if you don’t have a paper book – sign the inside cover of your CD
o A great place to create CDs is Kunaki.com
• Enter published author contests
o If they require a paper book, Lulu.com has downloads of templates, and you can print just one book, or ten thousand
• Find out where your book is available – sign up for that site’s author promotion opportunities
o Amazon and Barnes and Noble (and others) have author incentives for adding their link to your website
• Learn to make banners
o BannerFans.com is free and fun
• Make a Favicon for your website (that tiny icon at the top left of the internet tab)
o IconSushi.com is free and fun also
These are my main focuses this month as my first book releases. I’m sure I’ll find a few dozen more great ideas to share with you, and when my second book, Scandalous L.A. Desires, releases next year, I’ll stop back again and update my list.

I’d love to hear your ideas on marketing the e-book. Please post a comment and share your insight! I’m giving away a goodie bag of all my promotional items to one commenter.

Happy Promoting!

No, I’m not going to share my backwoods recipes with you. This is about being proven wrong.

In my last post, I mentioned that I don’t like romances told in the first person. I admire them, the same way I admire modern art, but as with modern art, first person romances don’t do it for me emotionally. I’m hero centric, a failing, yes, I know.

‘Course the moment I posted that preference, I was forced to read a first person romance. It was Biting Nixie written by Mary Hughes. I was certain I’d hate it. I don’t like first person and vampires scare me the living daylights out of me.

I loved it.

I can no longer say I dislike first person. I have to fess up to liking a vamp romance. Biting Nixie has bumped another favorite off my deliberately small ten book wide keeper shelf.

A month ago, I also had issues with romances where the heroine starts out in love with one man and ends up, 300 pages later, in love with another man (one of the reasons I’m a last chapter reader). Why? Because I usually fall in love with the first love, or I feel the heroine will change her mind yet again after the happy ever after.

That prejudice created conflict. I’m addicted to Lisa Kleypas’ historicals. Her latest Tempt Me At Twilight starts with Poppy in love with someone else (not a spoiler as it is clear on the back cover who the hero is). Oh, no, what is an addicted reader to do? Well, this addicted reader grumbled, grumbled, grumbled, but bought the book anyway.

I loved it.

Due to Lisa Kleypas’ skillful writing, I didn’t fall in love with the first man. I felt Poppy’s love for the real hero would last. It worked.

Another reading prejudice thrown out the window.

This isn’t an entirely happy thing because I use these preferences and prejudices to help me choose what to read. I can only read about 400 books out of the 8,000 plus romances published every year. Life was a lot easier when I could go into the bookstore and automatically skip over the vampire titles.

Have you had any reading prejudices challenged lately?

This is, for reasons that will become obvious, a short blog post.  More like a plea, really.  Or a nag.

You’re at a computer right now.  Please, if you can, stand up and stretch.  Yes, right now.  Then please check your working area.  Is your monitor at the right height?  Does your chair support your back?  Are your mouse and keyboard comfortable and do they allow a natural hand and arm position?

(Here is a guide to proper workstation setup.  There are others.)

If your working area isn’t promoting good posture and healthy work practices, please change it so that it is.  And then please set some sort of timer for yourself, to remind yourself to take breaks from your computer at regular, sensible intervals.

I didn’t do any of these simple things.  For nine years, thirteen books, and gazillions of emails and blog posts and social media interactions, I ignored my posture, my crappy keyboard, my looks-pretty-but-makes-you-twist-your-forearm mouse.  I sat at my computer for hours at a time without a single break.  And I would not wish on anyone the pain, weakness, and frustration of repetitive stress injury.  The fear that your career might suffer.  The inability to do simple things with your child.

Especially because it’s preventable.

Nag over.  Have a great Thursday.  And don’t forget to wash behind your ears.

In casting about for a topic about which to write, two people suggested independently that I talk about the military and romance. Not military romances, mind you, but how the (US) military and the romance genre interact.

I am a romance reader. I am an academic. But I also recently received a medical separation from the North Carolina Army National Guard after 7 1/2 years of service. I enlisted after 9/11, commissioned in 2003, and attained the rank of captain just before I was kicked out for the distressing habit of throwing up a lot if it’s more than 90 degrees. I was never deployed overseas, but I was involved in the National Guard’s nationwide response to Hurricane Katrina, spending 20 days in Louisiana.

What does this all have to do with romance? Leaving aside the obvious issue of the devastating Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy (which, yes, affected me), I’ve got three thoughts:

1. Research
I recently read a story in which a platoon sergeant was called “sir” by a lieutenant, ordered the lieutenant around, and was saluted by a private. All of which is so completely, unconscionably WRONG, I was utterly boggled. I was flung out of the story so hard I got whip-lash, and I couldn’t trust the story after that (and that was the first three paragraphs of the story!). I mean, the most basic of research would have told anyone that this was just wrong wrong wrong. And yes, this matters. If you’re writing a story about a world that’s not your own, don’t confuse the reason of “never been a part of it” with the reason of “making it up.” Don’t world-build something that should be researched.

2. Women and the Military
Women make up 14% of the US military and with the asymmetric wars we’re involved in, women see combat even if they’re not supposed to. They are also victims of the most vicious forms of sexual harrassment and are disproportionately represented in DADT discharges. And yet (maybe, somehow, as a result?) a woman just become the head of the US Army’s drill sergeant school. And we have our first female four-star general.

In not unrelated news, we have some serious kick-ass romance heroines nowadays, who overcome huge obstacles, go after what they want, save the world, and get their man. Women, in general, broad brush-strokes, don’t let much hold us down anymore. We can conquer the heights of military rank structure in ways that are not just tokenism. We can save the world–literally. That’s reflected in our books and that’s just awesome. Can I just say, “Go us!”

3. Military and Romance
Do you know how many of our beloved romance authors are veterans? I think many of us follow Jessica Scott’s blog as she’s deployed in Iraq and yet still writing. But to discover that so many authors are veterans fills me with pride.

And again, I think these things are connected. People join the military for lots of reasons, but I think the loyalty and honor, optimism and love for and pride in country that pervade the military mindset (at its best) are reflected in many romances, whether or not the authors are veterans. We all want our heroes (and heroines) to be honorable, steadfast, loyal. We all want them to believe in something larger than themselves, or at least to act that way, even if they profess not to believe. We want the love of two people, or the military service of one, to mean something, to be part of a greater good. And the soldiers, sailors, air-men and -woman, and Marines we honor ideally represent the best of the nation, as romances present and represent the best of humanity.

Melodramatic, maybe, but let me tell you how much I *miss* putting on that uniform once a month, the uniform with the American flag on one shoulder, US Army over my heart, and my family’s name emblazoned on my chest.

Do you have an alter ego?

I do, and no, I’m not schizophrenic.  My alter ego’s name is Lola Cruz.  She’s a smart, sexy, sassy, Latina detective.

Let me just say this.  While I am smart and I have the potential to be sexy (at least according to my husband–*wink wink*–and when the stars are aligned, I’m having a good hair day, and I’m down those dastardly five pounds that make or break a great dress), I’m not terribly sassy, am not Latina (though I do like to say that I’m proud to be Latina by marriage), and am not actually a detective (unless you count all the detecting that is a natural part of motherhood–like figuring out just who finished off the bag of chocolate chips in the freezer, or where the missing band t-shirt is five minutes before your child NEEDS it for a competition).

But still, if I were smart, sexy, and sassy–the whole enchilada–, I’d be Lola Cruz.  She lives in my head.  Not in a she tells me what to do scary multiple personality kind of way, but in a she’s real to me way and I want to be her sometimes–or at least have her rub off on me.  I want to do the things she does, be empowered to follow my dreams the way she does, and have a personality that sparkles–like she does.

What is it about Lola, and other fictional characters, for that matter, that make us want to be them for a little while…or at the very least be their friend?  It’s not that my life isn’t great.  It is.  I’ve got the same kinds of ups and downs that Lola does–minus the danger and threats to my life, but hey, she doesn’t have 5 kids, 2 of whom are in high school band.  Not sure she could handle that.  Enough said.

I’ve given this a lot of thought and the answer for me is that those characters who we really respond to actually compliment who we are and those parts of our personalities that are tucked away.  The characters represent something in us that isn’t fully realized.  Don’t we all want to have a little bit of Scarlett O’Hara’s determination and fighting spirit?  Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have the calm and peacefulness of August Boatwright?  Can’t you just see those Bridgerton siblings loaning you sugar if you were all out and desperately needed a cup?  Aren’t they the kind of people you want to surround yourself with?

That’s what good books do.  They give us built in friends (or alter egos) whom we adore spending time with and who bring out something that’s in us, and that isn’t accessed in any other way.

The characters we respond to are three-dimensional, are flawed, have hopes and dreams, and are painted in such a way that we can see them, hear them, feel them, and almost smell and taste them.  They appeal to each and every one of our senses and seep into our consciousness until we almost think that they are real.  That’s what I love about Lola and my other fictional friends.  They’re like comfort food.  They’re there when I need them, when I want the comfort of someone familiar.  It’s what’s so appealing about romance.  We’re guaranteed the HEA, and with our fictional friends, it’s even more meaningful because that HEA is about someone we care about.

So, back to my initial question.  Do you have an alter ego–from your own fiction or from someone else’s?  Who is it and what is it about that character that speaks to you?