Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

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?

Last month—to little fanfare beyond the scientific community—a study appeared in the journal Science. It detailed the 1999 discovery of an ancient slab of green stone inscribed by the Olmecs and its subsequent analysis by, among others, anthropologists Stephen Houston and William Saturno. The stone was originally found by villagers in the Mexican state of Veracruz.

What is so remarkable about it is that it has been tentatively dated to around 900 B.C., and it therefore contains the earliest known writing, so far, in the entire Western hemisphere. The text is currently indecipherable and perhaps likely to remain so.

Probably, its contents were a mystery even to the majority of the Olmecs, too, since in millennia past, it was not uncommon for the general populace of most cultures to be unable to read and write. Literacy, if it existed at all, was reserved for a select few, and those not numbered among them relied on oral communication to preserve the past and for information and entertainment. People gathered around campfires and in great halls to hear bards tell epic stories of adventure, danger, heroism, and romance.

Eventually, however, with the spread of literacy, these tales based on oral tradition began to be written down, giving birth to works like the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Illiad and The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the Scandinavian eddas and sagas. In the twelfth century, a Welsh nobleman, Geoffrey of Monmouth, wrote a wild “history” of the kings of Britain (Historia Regum Britanniae), a portion of which captured the public’s imagination and spawned an entire field of literature devoted to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table; and with his own Arthurian romances, Chrétien de Troyes introduced us to Sir Lancelot and popularized the notion of courtly love.

At some point, the modern novel was born. Just exactly when that happened is open to debate. But most scholars do agree that one of the earliest known novels is The Tale of Genji, a romantic story penned by a Japanese noblewoman, Murasaki Shikibu, in the eleventh century. With the advent of the modern novel, writers were no longer simply recording oral tradition (however they embellished or redacted it). Instead, they were creating fiction for an increasingly literate society to read and enjoy. No longer needed, bards were largely relegated to centuries gone by.

But all things do indeed come full circle, and in today’s hectic society, despite the fact that literacy is no longer the province of scribes and that bards are principally associated with the past, we are once again relying more and more on oral communication for both information and entertainment.

Audiobooks are a growing segment of that process, and an array of burgeoning technology allows us to hear their stories anytime, anywhere.

Last month, PWDaily reported that:

“Total spending on spokenword audio rose 4.7% in 2005, to an estimated $871 million. As expected, sales of downloadable audio are showing steady gains. Downloads represented 9% of total audio sales last year, up from 6% in 2004.”

This month’s RWR reports that:

“The portability, flexibility, and high storage capacity of iPods and other digital media devices, combined with the convenience of on-line delivery, has made listening to audiobooks easier than ever. Digital technology is driving new listeners to audiobooks—many of whom had never considered ‘listening’ to a book before….With more than 58 million iPods sold to date (and a growing array of competing devices also racking up sales), it’s easy to see why digital is the fastest-growing segment of not only the audio industry, but the entire publishing industry.”

But although the technology is new, the concept is ancient. Far older than books and their writers, stories and their storytellers have existed since time’s beginning, and today’s audiobooks are merely a modern twist on the bards of millennia past. For those who can read, audiobooks serve to make long commutes or exercise routines interesting and entertaining. For those who can’t read, they open doors to worlds that would otherwise remain unknown and unexplored.

Our ancestors wrote to preserve oral tradition. Nowadays, audiobooks are not only following in the footsteps of yesteryear’s bards, but also blazing new ground in the process by preserving the written word. Ultimately, storytelling, literacy, and technology have combined to offer us the best of all worlds. Wouldn’t it be fascinating if we could not only read the ancient Olmecs’ stone slab, but also hear one of the Olmecs themselves reading it aloud?

That’s not possible for us, of course. But someday, historians will be able not only to read the literature of the twenty-first century, but also to hear it. What else do you suppose the future might hold in store? Holographic books? Programmable books? Do you think that perhaps one day, you will be able to open a book and have a 3-D projection of your favorite author sit down beside you and tell you a story, just like the bards of old?

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

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

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

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

These are questions romance authors have begun increasingly to ponder.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Today, Americans celebrate Independence Day. I wish there were an Independence Day for writers, too — to celebrate our freedom from the Rules Police.

Just who are the Rules Police? I don’t really know. But still, I often see or hear about the laws they’re laying down for the rest of us: When writing a book, do this; don’t do that. Worse, every year, their do’s-and-don’ts list appears to grow longer.

It’s a bit like taxation without representation. I didn’t have any input into all these so-called rules. Did you?

There are some rules we need, of course — primarily those about grammar, punctuation, and spelling, etc. Nowadays, however, those are frequently ignored. For instance, I can’t tell you the number of times lately that I’ve been jarred from a book or a TV show by an incorrect usage of “you and I,” as in “It was Jane Doe who gave you and I the romance novels.”

But erroneous indirect objects, misplaced and dangling modifiers, the loss of the subjunctive mood, the mixing up of verb tenses, etc., are things the Rules Police seldom rant about. Instead, they have a plethora of other complaints — usually having to do with little more than their own personal likes and dislikes — that have metamorphosed into the so-called rules.

These should not be confused, however, with what publishers actually will and won’t accept and what they know they can and can’t sell. Further, just because one publisher will or won’t do certain things doesn’t mean that all publishers will or won’t do them, either. So sweeping generalizations about such things are simply misleading.

Let’s take fonts, for example. Debates have raged for years over whether one’s manuscript should be printed using a Courier or a Times New Roman font. Over the course of my career, I’ve written books for several major publishers, and to tell you the truth, I’ve never known a single one who cared whether you used a Courier or a Times New Roman font or some other font, as long as it was legible (warning: you really won’t do yourself any favors if you think BuxomD is appropriate for a romance or Shotgun for a western).

For my first several manuscripts, I used a Letter Gothic font, because that was the only font ball I had for my typewriter (we didn’t have personal computers then). No publisher ever sent me a rejection letter telling me I had used the wrong font. In fact, to this day, the subject of fonts has never even come up. From Letter Gothic, I moved on to Palatino; my publishers never said a word. Nor did they speak up when I eventually switched to Century Schoolbook, then finally to Times New Roman.

I also know that every publisher has its own ideas about what does and doesn’t sell — and that those ideas will change over time, as well. Over the years, I’ve had everything from a publisher who insisted on a love scene in every first chapter to a publisher who didn’t care if there were any love scenes at all, publishers who initially didn’t care about time periods and place settings, but who gradually came to care very much when it became clear that books set in certain times and places sold much better than those set elsewhere.

Many long-time authors will tell you that during their careers, they gradually lost the joy and the magic they experienced when writing their very first books, which, being ignorant of all the so-called rules then, they wrote straight from the heart. But the joy and magic needn’t be lost.

At her own blog, Brenda Coulter advises, “No rules. Just write.” In the end, I think that’s the one-and-only rule that truly counts — because it’s the one that frees your imagination and encourages it to soar.

Happy Independence Day!

Where do you get your ideas?

That’s probably the number-one question asked of all writers. In response to that question, author Agatha Christie once had this to say:

“The temptation is great to reply: ‘I always go to Harrods,’ or ‘I get them mostly at the Army & Navy Stores,’ or, snappily, ‘Try Marks and Spencer.’”

This is often a writer’s viewpoint—for the simple reason that authors’ heads are invariably stuffed so full of ideas that could be turned into stories that it’s difficult for them to imagine that other people’s heads aren’t equally brimming with characters and plots longing to escape into the real world.

Christie went on to declare:

“The universal opinion seems firmly established that there is a magic source of ideas which authors have discovered how to tap.”

There is, in fact, just such a source—and although it may seem magic and even mysterious to those who aren’t writers, the truth is that it’s not, because the real Idea Store is simply, as Christie herself observed, nothing more than one’s “own head.” What sets authors apart is just that they tend to think differently from other people.

If a non-writer were to see an elderly gentleman sitting on a park bench somewhere, mumbling to himself, she might think: Poor old man…he must be lonely or perhaps not all there anymore…how sad. And then she would walk on, now thinking about running late for an appointment at her doctor’s office or whether her son Johnnie had made the football team at today’s tryouts.

An author, however, seeing the same elderly gentlemen on the park bench, might think: Poor old man, he must be lonely or perhaps not all there anymore. But what if neither of those things were true? What if he turned out to be some eccentric scientist who had been missing for years? Maybe he was working on something really important—a top-secret formula—and enemies of our government were after it. In order to try and get it, they broke into his house one night, scuffled with him, conked him on the head, and left him for dead. They ransacked the place, broke into his computer and safe, stole all his notes, and decamped. But he wasn’t actually dead, merely knocked unconscious. But still, when he came to, he had amnesia, couldn’t remember a thing, not even his own name. Stunned and disoriented, he wandered out of his house and disappeared. A search ensued, but he was never found. Now, suddenly, today, he was mugged in the park and conked on the head again. As a result, his memory has abruptly returned. He’s mumbling his formula to himself. He was previously something of a rebel, and our government had had difficulty controlling him, getting him to do all his work at the office or laboratory or wherever it is that scientists invent their formulas. I’ll worry about all the details later. But no matter what our government thought, he was still careful. Fearing he was being spied on before, he had written nothing but gibberish on his computer and put false documents in his safe. His real research was in his head. But no one knew that. It was his little joke on our government. He was brilliant, had a photographic memory, and had destroyed all his genuine notes after he had read them and committed them to memory. I could write half the story as a flashback, showing his past, what led up to the night his house was broken into, make him younger, give him a girlfriend who has never married, because she’s still in love with him—readers always love a good romance. Or maybe she is married now, so she has to make a choice…yes, that’s even better, because it will create more conflict, but of course, he’ll wind up with her at the end, or maybe he won’t. No, he will, because I really don’t want to write a downer (I’ll have to make her husband a brute or something, so she has a good reason to leave him). And the formula, although important previously, will be vital now, and it’s yet to be developed, because he’s still the only person who knows what it is…. Good grief! Is it really ten till three? I was supposed to be at the doctor’s office twenty minutes ago, and I’ve got to pick Johnnie up after the tryouts today…I hope he made the football team…he’s worked so hard. Wouldn’t it be bizarre if that elderly gentleman on the park bench really did turn out to be an eccentric scientist who had disappeared…?

Seeing an elderly gentleman on a park bench has sent the writer to the “Idea Store.” Did s/he tap into some magic source? That’s what readers will decide if and when the author actually writes the story.

Did you know that every single day, all over the world, thousands of romances are written?

Just like those we see on bookshelves everywhere, they run the gamut of time periods, place settings, and characters. Some feature fairytale damsels in distress in medieval castles, rescued by tall, dark, handsome princes who brave moats and briers to claim their fair maidens. In other stories, dangerously thrilling vampires hunt the night, in search of innocent victims who bravely—or foolishly—roam the menacing, modern city streets after sundown. Still other tales are rife with aliens who land their spaceships in desolate terrain, hoping to abduct an unwary victim or two.

From girls next door to kick-butt femme fatales, from shy guys who can barely stammer out a hello to macho males loaded with testosterone and cologne, the heroines and heroes of these romances are dating, marrying, making whoopie, having babies, building houses, casting spells, fighting and breaking up, and sometimes even committing murder and mayhem (not necessarily in that particular order).

Most of us, however, will never read any of these romances. Even the dozens I’ve penned will never be published anywhere beyond my own computer. Why? Because they’re all being created inside two games called The Sims and The Sims2.

Ever wished you could trade places with the heroine of a romance? Now, you can. Just pop into the CAS (Create-a-Sim) program and whip up an avatar, and you, too, can travel back into the past or forward into the future. Build a cottage in the woods or the mansion of your dreams. Surround it with a village, town, or city. Found a university, where your characters can study to become whatever they want in life, whether it’s a Wall Street wizard or the kind of sorcerer who brews potions from recipes carefully preserved in an ancient grimoire.

Many authors spend days assembling collages to serve as visual aids while they labor on their latest novel. I find it a whole lot easier and great deal more fun to open up The Sims2—where I can make my heroines and heroes look precisely as I envision them, and where I can not only build that towering castle or isolated manor that’s going to figure so prominently in my book, but also furnish it and actually walk through it to determine whether its layout is exactly what I need to make my story work.

And sometimes, if I’m lucky, the process operates in reverse. Recently, I constructed an old Victorian house. When I first began to build it, I had no real purpose for it, other than thinking that I wanted to try out various construction techniques. But the more I designed and redesigned, erecting some walls, tearing out others, adding a gazebo, stream, pond, and landscaping, the more I decided that it would make an intriguing house for one of my novels.

Who would live in it—and what would his or her story be? I wondered. I started imagining all kinds of different characters who might live in the house. I now have several from which to choose.

Here is a picture of the house I built.

Just for fun, I thought I’d share it with you, and ask you to tell me a (very brief!) story. If this house existed in your own imaginary world, who would live in it—and what would be happening in it? The sky’s the limit, so be as wild and creative as you like.

At the end of the day, I’ll tell you who’s currently living in this house in my Sim world.

Is the novel dead? That’s one of the first questions I ever addressed when I started my own blog, and I still believe it’s an interesting one.

While the publishing industry itself appears to be in relatively good shape, several articles and reports over the past few years have tackled the subject of weak growth and/or declining sales in adult fiction, particularly in the mass-market paperback format, with some (such as this article that appeared in Publishers Weekly) asking whether mass-market paperbacks even remain a viable format in today’s marketplace.

Since the explosion of the romance genre, beginning in the 1970s, most romances have been published as mass-market paperback originals, so these are questions that directly affect us, both as romance writers and as romance readers.

There are a number of different factors contributing to the sluggishness of mass-market paperback sales.

Traditionally, such books have been impulse buys. But as the cost of mass-market paperbacks has risen, so, too, has the impulse factor declined. Historical romances that cost, on average, $2.50 when I first began my career now have cover prices of $6.99 or more. This increase in the cover prices of mass-market paperbacks has, among other things, contributed to a burgeoning used-book market. The Book Industry Study Group reports that in 2004, used-book sales experienced an 11.1% growth over 2003, and grossed $2.2 billion. The fastest growth of used-book sales was through online outlets, with such sales jumping 33.3% and accounting for $609 million of the overall sales of used books.

But higher cover prices are not the only reason for the weak sales of mass-market paperbacks. Baby Boomers, who have traditionally formed the core of mass-market paperback buyers, have turned increasingly to hardback and trade-paperback formats instead, which have larger type that is easier for aging eyes to read. Unfortunately, however, these Baby-Boomer buyers are not being replaced by their younger counterparts from Generation X and the Millennium Generation.

Since my son is a member of the latter, I decided to quiz him and several of his friends (both male and female, aged seventeen to twenty) for this post. Although I had hoped to discover otherwise, the truth is that, aside from what is required for school, the vast majority of them don’t read a whole lot of fiction. That didn’t surprise me. Never before in history has the novel faced so much competition from so many other forms of entertainment. These are kids who grew up with ever-advancing technology and gadgets of every description.

When I asked them why they didn’t read, what they thought books were lacking, they shouted out, “Pictures!” We all had a good laugh. But the real irony is that that’s actually not so far off the mark, after all. These are kids glued to televisions, dvds, video games, and computer screens. They have been accustomed from birth to visual and mental stimulation from sources that simply didn’t exist for most previous generations.

If you could read a novel about Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, and her adventures, watch a movie about her and her adventures, or play a video game in which you actually became her and experienced her adventures, which would you choose to do? Most of these kids are selecting the last option.

Still, I pressed them. Eventually, from among the young men, one author’s name emerged: Chuck Palahniuk. I wasn’t surprised to hear it. But I was startled to hear the amount of scorn heaped on what they termed “Palahniuk wannabes.” Originality is highly prized, it seems. Copycatting is not. Nor was this exclusive to the young men. “With all due apologies to you, Mrs. B.,” I was informed by the young women, “romances are all the same.”

Hearing that, what struck me was that despite all our best efforts, we in the romance genre have not done as well as we might at educating potential readers about our genre. Obviously, romances are not all the same. But still, the genre’s insistence on adhering to a series of “Rules” has given many potential readers the impression that every single romance novel follows one specific formula and that if you’ve read one, you’ve read them all.

Whole subgenres within romance were written off with a wave of the hand. Chick-lit was for thirty-somethings (who were old). I smiled ruefully and pointed out to the young women that, being fifty, I must be ancient, and that being the case, they would have to tell me what, if any, romances they actually did read. Finally, Bantam’s Love Stories series was agreed upon as their pick. Why? I asked.

A number of reasons were given, but primary among them was the fact that the young women could relate to the heroines of that series. Interestingly, the hero was merely a secondary consideration, and despite the fact that these are all savvy young women, sex didn’t even figure into the equation. Erotica was a turn-off. They wanted what we have long called sweet romances.

Is the novel dead—and the romance genre along with it? No, not yet, not quite. But more than at any other time in history, both are in jeopardy, facing increasingly stiff competition. While the format of books themselves is evolving, we, as authors, still bring stories to readers via the written word. We already have interactive books for children. Maybe, in the future, there will be adult versions, in which readers can in some way actually become part of the story: Lara Croft, Tomb Reader.

I think it’s an idea that has possibilities. What do you think?

For many of us today, it’s Christmas Eve. For others, this is the season for a multitude of other holidays, including Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. Regardless of which one, if any, we observe, they all share a common bond: They are all celebrations of life, love, hope, and faith.

As a child, I was exposed to a number of different religions, my mother being of the firm opinion that religion is a personal matter about which everyone should make his/her own decisions. So, in this regard, I had an extremely eclectic upbringing, and perhaps that’s one of the reasons why I became such an equally eclectic reader, as well.

Still, over the years, I did find myself drawn to certain beliefs and certain books. Looking back today and analyzing all this for this post, I realized that the main reason romance became my favorite genre both to read and to write in is because, just like all the various holidays we
celebrate at this time of year, romance novels consistently send positive messages.

Like most eclectic readers, I have a good grasp of literary fiction and all the other genres, too. So I know that whenever I choose something that falls into one of those sections of bookshelves everywhere, I may be letting myself in, for example, for main characters I can understand, but can’t sympathize with or relate to, motives and themes, etc., that I find depressing or despicable, and, last but not least, reads that are, ultimately, for whatever reasons, real downers. And that’s okay, because I wouldn’t have wanted to miss books like William Styron’s Sophie’s Choice and Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun.

They’re brilliant and tragic. I admire and appreciate them for what they are and the profound insights they offer. But the truth is that, even so, I really don’t want to read them again. Once was enough.

On the other hand, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reread Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights and Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. There are countless others, but I mention these two romances especially, simply because they don’t have the traditional happy endings we’ve come to expect from romance novels. But because their endings are ambiguous at best, we, their readers, are free to imagine whatever we wish. We can envision the spirits of Cathy and Heathcliff reunited on some wild, windswept moor on some plane of existence far beyond our ken or Scarlett winning Rhett back, after all.

Would it happen in real life? I don’t know. But in romance novels, whether contemporaries or historicals, inspirationals or paranormals, suspenses or time-travels, love always triumphs in the end, or, at the very least, there is the hope that it will. If there is one secret to the tremendous success of the romance genre worldwide, I think that’s it.

Yes, there are those who criticize the romance genre for its perennially positive messages and idealistic happy endings. I can only wonder why any in the romance genre pay any attention to these Grinches and Scrooges. If these critics don’t want to read about love conquering all and happily-ever-afters, there is plenty of doom and gloom for them to choose from. But as a romance writer myself, I’m glad it’s rarely to be found in the romance genre.

As all the holidays at this time of year remind us, we are at our best when we celebrate those ideals that have the power to change us and our world for the better.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Happy New Year, and Happy Reading!

I learned to read when I was three years old. My mother taught me by reading to me every afternoon. Once I could read on my own, she took me to the library once a week while I was growing up, where I checked out countless books over the years, steadily working my way through the children’s novels, then progressing to both the classics and the popular fiction of the day.

I didn’t know anything about the differences in literary and popular fiction then. I read anything and everything that struck my fancy. To me, a good book was a good book. Period.

Lately, however, I’ve been hearing a lot of discussion about literary versus popular
fiction—usually coupled with complaints that the romance genre isn’t taken seriously and doesn’t get any respect.

I find that, for me, such discussions tend to go in one ear and out the other. I’ve heard them for nearly thirty years now—and also heard the very same complaints from colleagues who write in the horror, mystery, science fiction/fantasy, suspense, and/or western genres.

According to the Guinness Book of Records (aka Guinness World Records and the Guinness Book of World Records), the best-selling fiction author of all time is Agatha Christie, with two billion books sold worldwide. She wrote mysteries and, under the pseudonym Mary Westmacott, romances.

But do all these sales add up to her work being taken seriously, to her receiving respect for it? Not according to BBC News Magazine, which reports that:

“Novelist Anthony Burgess, for example, accused her of flimsy characterisation and cliché, and the Oxford Companion to English Literature notes her ‘undistinguished style’ and ‘slight characterisation,’” and “Christie may be a great writer but having her studied in schools is taking it too far, says crime writer Robert Barnard. ‘I’m dubious about this. We have been fleeing from the 19th and early 20th Century texts in education. Christie is a fine read. Read her when you’re 13 but then forget about her and read Great Expectations. She doesn’t stretch them as far as language or psychological complexity is concerned.’”

That sure sounds like a lot of the stuff written about romance writers, too. In fact, here’s some of what Zoe Williams had to say about the romance genre, in an article that appeared in both the Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald:

“Mills & Boon is changing. It would like to reflect real life a bit more. It is bored with its sexless courtships and happy endings. It is launching a new line, Next, that will tackle the harder edges of life – cancer, divorce, difficult children, the dissatisfaction that might beset the modern female as she lights some candles, sinks into a bath and, er, does those things that ladies do. Depilates. It’s being heralded as a swerve towards Thelma and Louise, so we can probably expect some rape, murder and suicide as well, though please don’t think this will make for a depressing read, since the suicide vehicle will be pink and everything will feel very upbeat.”

Many of my colleagues were outraged by what Williams wrote. But the fact is that in the final analysis, despite all these kinds of criticisms and sweeping dismissals of popular fiction by those who value only literary fiction, Christie has sold two billion books worldwide, and according to Romance Writers of America, the romance genre is a billion-dollar industry accounting for 48.8% of popular paperback sales and read by 51 million people a year.

The truth is that regardless of what our detractors appear to believe, a book doesn’t have to qualify as literary fiction to be either good or enduring. In his own time, Charles Dickens, for example, was considered a writer of popular fiction. A book doesn’t have to qualify as popular fiction to be either bad or fleeting. Plenty of books classified as literary fiction have received scathing reviews and sunk without a trace. The reality is that both literary and popular fiction have their own share of outstanding novels and bottom-scraping books.

So, what are our critics missing? Author Peter Swirski has some ideas about that. My own thought is that it’s as simple as what I learned at age three: A good book is a good book. Period. What do you think?

Many years ago now, an acquaintance of mine, Steve Heller, wrote a marvelous first novel titled The Automotive History of Lucky Kellerman. When I met Steve, we were both in the early days of our writing careers, out trying to promote our respective books, and because, at the time, we were fellow Kansans, we wound up doing a book signing together. So of course, I went home from that with an autographed copy of Steve’s novel.

Had I seen Steve’s book in a bookstore, I would have passed it by, the title putting me off. A novel about the history of cars? No, definitely not my thing. Except that when I read it, it definitely was.

The cars, you see, represent the various stages of Lucky Kellerman’s life:

“Squinting at the purple Moon 8-80 Prince of Windsor sitting up on blocks, the green Hudson Hornet, the Jimmie Truck, the Studebaker Silver Hawk, and the battered Corvair all lined up beneath the canopy, he understood why he had parked them in that order, in perfect view from the window above his worktable. The reason was so obvious he had overlooked it all these years. Yet there it was, right in front of him. Each automobile represented an unmistakable stage in his life. By lining them up in the order they had come into his possession, he had assembled his automotive history.” —The Automotive History of Lucky Kellerman

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about Steve’s book and that particular plot device.

Off and on for some weeks now, I’ve been working on my website, cleaning up folders, getting rid of old graphics, freshening up others, and rearranging pages, etc. This past weekend, I worked on all my actual novel pages. At the time I first uploaded my website to the WWW, it seemed like a good idea to give each title its own individual page. But since those have now crept up to more than thirty, that’s an awful lot of pages to maintain—and at this stage in my life, I’m unabashedly all for whatever makes my life easier.

That being the case, I decided to consolidate all my title pages, condensing them to six. So I spent the weekend going through them all, deciding what bits to keep, what to get rid of, rereading synopses and quotes, and basically reacquainting myself with novels I haven’t thought about in years, despite the fact that I wrote them.

While I was doing all that, it occurred to me that like Lucky Kellerman’s cars, each of those books represents a stage of my life.

Lucky Kellerman needed a big carport to house the stages of his own life. I only need a
bookshelf.

When you talk to them, most writers will tell you that when they look back over the novels they’ve written, they don’t remember which passages just came pouring out of them, inspired by their creative muse, and which passages they struggled with and labored over, feeling as though said muse had deserted them forever. I’m no exception to that rule.

Glancing back over the body of my work, I realized that what I do recall is the events that
occurred in my life at the time I was writing each book.

Yes, believe it or not, writers are actually real people with real lives that take place in the real world.

No Gentle Love, my first novel, will always be special to me simply because it was my first. I was twenty-one when I began writing it, and a year later, right in the middle of it, I decided to return to college to obtain my master’s degree. In the process, I received a graduate teaching assistant’s post, and I remember all my fellow teachers periodically dropping by my office, fascinated by the fact that I was writing a book. When they learned I’d finally finished and sold it, they threw a big party for me to celebrate. I still have the T-shirt they gave me. So whenever I think about No Gentle Love, it’s not actually the novel itself, but all my college chums and college days that come to mind.

And Gold Was Ours — my sister had to be rushed to an emergency room and almost died. Desire in Disguise — I was a brand-new mother with a colicky baby keeping me up at all hours. As I went down the list of my books, I passed one milestone after another, each time struck by a wave of memories, some happy, and, yes, some sad. At one point, I recalled having drinks and laughing it up with good friends and colleagues who have long passed away, and I realized how much I still miss them.

So, now, I’m wondering: Do other writers associate their novels with various stages of their lives, the way I do? Do readers associate books they’ve read with various stages of their lives, as well? If so, what novels do you best remember, and why?