HelenKay Dimon

Karen Fox reprints recent sales from Publisher’s Lunch on her website, along with a host of other helpful information such as Brenda Hiatt’s "Show Me The Money" regarding romances advances.  The Publisher’s Lunch replay provides some insight into who is buying what, when, for how much and with what agent.  Familiar names pop up over and over.  New names, folks who blog hop, folks with blogs and folks who have been writing forever – you can find them all here.  It’s interesting reading.  Here are two highlights from the April selections so far:

Shelley Bradley’s first two eroticas, one about a personal security specialist who lures his enemy’s sister into a trap he’s set for revenge – only to find that his trap is a two-way street, and the second about the sexual lessons an idealistic ingenue seeks to learn at the hands of a brash ex-Special Forces soldier, to Louisa Edwards at Berkley, by Deidre Knight at The Knight Agency (NA). Deidre.Knight@knightagency.net — Publisher’s Lunch, 4/8/05.

After a quick check of her website, her previous books appear to be Zebra Historicals from 1999-2002.  Her new deal is with Berkley Sensation and she calls the August 2006 release a "rompy, erotic suspense novel."  Looks like a new-to-erotica writer snagging a multi-book deal with Berkley.  Not EC or Black Lace or even Brava, but one of the less-usual suspects, Berkley.  Berkley has made a grab for several writers lately for erotic anthologies.  Half of Brava and a third of EC seem to be headed to Berkley.  No question about that.  If you write sexy, looks as if Berkley could be a good starter (or forever) home .

And what about this one:

Catherine Gilbert Murdock’s debut DAIRY QUEEN, about the summer that a fifteen-year-old girl running her family’s dairy farm in Wisconsin, simultaneously decides she wants to play on the high-school football team and falls for the rival team’s quarterback, who she happens to be training, to Margaret Raymo at Houghton Mifflin Children’s, in a significant deal ($251,000 – $499,000), for two books, by Jill Grinberg at Anderson Grinberg Literary Management (NA).  Karen_walsh@hmco.com — Publisher’s Lunch, 4/5/05

A debut writer getting a two-book deal in that price range is, well, shocking.  Maybe not to others, but to me it is.  Do you hear that sound?  That’s the thundering of footsteps as hordes of unpublished (and some published) writers run to their keyboards to try their hands at YA.  I don’t know what else to say but, damn, that’s quite a deal.  There isn’t much writing related stuff out there in virtual land under this lady’s name.  Guess that’s what "debut" means.  And, what a hell of a way to make an entrance.

Congrats ladies.

Tried to buy another book where the plot goes something like this:  divorced (or almost divorced) parties meet up after an estrangement and then somehow mange to get back together.  Picked the book up.  Put it back down.  See, divorce is what I do for a living.  Not get them but help others to do so.  Every day is filled with folks fighting over custody, over who gets the tupperware, over which family gave them the curtains, over which one of them is the bigger idiot.  Fight, fight, fight.  As a result, any romance that even remotely hints at a divorced couple getting back together loses me.  Makes me want to throw things.

The realization that this perfectly good hook is ruined forever is a bit depressing.  You’d think the idea of two people finding their way back to each other against significant odds would be a great romantic read.  Problem is this storyline strikes too close to my work life.  This type of reconciliation is rare out there in non-romanceland so it tends to ring as unrealistic to me.  Most divorcing folks would never ever think getting back together with the dumbass on the other side of the conference room table is a good idea.  Some do but not many.

I didn’t realize I was ruling out a certain subsection of romance reads, until I was looking through Linda Lael Miller’s backlist and found Used-To-Be-Lovers.  The cover blurb turned me off.  Since I had already read her vampire stories – a subgenre I really dislike – it seemed as if it might be time to try to the divorcing-spouses-reunifying story.  Again.  See if after a few years the idea now worked for me.  Answer: nope.  Didn’t hate it.  Didn’t love it.  But, the book didn’t work for me.  Spent the most of the reading time forcing myself to plow ahead.  Not really an enjoyable leisure experience.

I figure I’m not alone.  That most folks have something from their personal lives that leeches over and ruins a hook or storyline.  Unfortunately, when one of your favorite reads is romance and the reunification story is a problem, that rules out a great number of books.

About  a week ago Rebecca Brandewyne posted a column on Romancing The Blog calling for a return to purple prose.  Specifically, she took issue with reviewers’ criticisms of some romance books as being "overwritten."  Her theory?  High printing costs first drove content and story length in newspaper articles and was now having an impact on the way we write fiction.  She says:

So when did all these rules that were originally designed to save on paper costs for newspaper publishers and maximize profits start to creep over from news reporting into the completely unrelated field of fiction? I don’t know. But I’ll bet it initially had something to do with book publishers also saving on paper costs.

Several folks agreed and gave her a RTB ‘atta boy for speaking up.  I wasn’t one of them.  Her rationale about paper and printing supplies didn’t make any sense to me.  None.  Like Ms. Brandewyne, I was a journalism major.  Nobody in my journalism classes told me to write more succinctly because paper cost too much and ink was scarce.  It was a long time ago, sure, but the professors said write clearly and without unnecessary verbiage because anything else is bad writing.  Use the right words, not all the words or extra words, to set the scene and convey your point. 

Next problem?  The idea of yearning for a return to purple prose, which Ms. Brandewyne later termed it as "lyrical prose" when responding to one of my comments, struck me as strange and, well, possibly even irresponsible.  This flowery, descriptive to the point of pain, repetitive writing is what romance writing used to be.  The kind of schlock we take hits for out there in non-romanceland.  What, in my view, is nothing more and nothing less than bad writing.  It hearkens back to the days of bosom-filled covers and first-time sexual experiences that sounded suspiciously like rape  scenes.  On a site visited by unpublished writers trying very hard to become published writers, this looked like very bad advice or, at least, advice and an argument well out of step with what editors are buying.

My third problem was that at one point Brandewyne’s argument seemed to change.  She went from wanting us to ignore rising costs and return to purple prose to taking a more defensive "this is what I like, read what you want" stance.  Those are two very different issues.  A personal opinion that writing of this type is a good thing is fine.  I disagree in the strongest terms possible but this is a preference issue and I would have respected Ms. Brandewyne’s position and never posted a comment. But, this did not appear to be her point in the column and arose, really, later in the comments section and in a later report on her blog when her view was challenged.  Changing an argument or refining it is fine, just be honest that you’re doing so.

I don’t know Ms. Brandewyne.  I’m sure she’s a lovely woman.  The disagreement was with her column and the comments that came after, not with her as a human being.   Since debates arise all the time on RTB and on blogs, I do have some general thoughts, not directly connected to Ms. Brandewyne or our professional difference of opinion:

1.  Learn to disagree, preferably without condescending remarks and childish shots.  Sometimes saying I don’t agree really only means I don’t agree and is not a cover for something underhanded and bitchy. 

2.  Having an alternate view doesn’t necessarily mean we all don’t get your point.  Maybe, just maybe, we get it but don’t agree with it and think it should be okay to voice that opinion. 

3.  Stop taking everything so damn personally.  You put something out there, be prepared to have someone disagree with you.  It’s okay we don’t all think the same.  We should be able to do so without having to decipher snide remarks in blogland for weeks after.

4.  As a genre, demand respect and earn it.  Do this with solid and dynamic writing, not the same old-same old.  Rise above the outdated stereotypes.  Ban forever the stupid romance covers ( in case you missed it Monica had a great post on covers) and lame hooks.  And, in my view, wipe out inane purple prose from romance writing.  Writing well is about not over-writing or under-writing.  Purple prose is a separate thing.  A very bad thing.  Use the right words, not the most words.  Solid craft, solid storytelling, solid writing – those are the keys, not seeing how many words we can use to describe a pencil.

But, that’s just my view. 

We chit chat all the time about the lack of respect romance gets from outside the community.  All is not well inside the romance writing kingdom either.   Sylvia has a discussion on her blog about this problem and the backlash she’s feeling for writing what she wants to write.  This touches on some of the same points from a discussion started by Wendy  about a month ago about the erotic romance versus inspirational romance debate. 

The specific problem this time?  Well, nothing new here.  The folks on the "con" side of this argument have been unable to come up with an original thought or argument in a very long time.  Some folks who don’t read or write erotic/sexier romances have the never-ending need to tell those of us who do that what we prefer is pornography, as if by saying that we’ll all then bow our heads and ask for forgiveness for our fornicating ways.  Give me a break.  Does having sex make you a porn star?  No.  Reading and writing about it doesn’t make you a purveyor of porn either.

Bottom line?  People who don’t like erotic/sexier romance stories that go beyond hand holding or whatever else you find offensive should read something else.  That’s it.  Stop with the childish and nasty remarks about a subgenre you clearly don’t read.  And, here’s a thought, if you don’t like erotic/sexier romances, say so in a thoughtful manner and then shut the hell up about it.  What in the world is so threatening about having books out there that are different from what you like to read or write?  Brava, Black Lace, Ellora’s Cave and the others aren’t forcing 3rd graders to read their works in the classroom. 

Stop the pornography argument because you sound overly defensive and uninformed.  I didn’t say stupid but was tempted to.  You’re entitled to your opinion but at least have a reasoned argument that doesn’t depend on titillating buzz words like pornography.  Remember that others just may have a different opinion and use some respect when discussing those differences.  No one who writes sexier/erotic romances is out there boycotting inspirational and sweet romances.  What is the obsession in the opposite direction? 

There is room at the table for everyone.  Romance writing can be a spectrum, umbrella – pick whatever visual image you want.  We don’t all have to write and read the same thing.  Unless, of course, you’re looking to drive the romance industry to its knees financially.  If so, keep at it.  I can’t think of an easier way to ensure we never grow, never thrive and never exist past 2020 than to insist that all romance books have the same level of sexuality and all sound the same. If, instead, you want to act like mature adults who can get along despite having differing opinions, then stop using the insipid pornography reference and stop acting as if we’re all enemies.

One of my writing pet peeves – I have something like 785 of ‘em – is the failure of some romance writers to have men sound like men in their stories.  I’m never sure how this happens.  I mean, these writers do know men, have heard them speak to each other, right?  Well, to try to address this problem in my own work, in addition to listening to my hubby, brothers and numerous male friends and co-workers ramble on about every inane thing under the sun, I check out men’s magazines.  Or, magazines that purport to be for men but read more like women’s magazines with photos of near-naked women throughout (see: CARGO). 

The newest selection was the May 2005 GQ.  In addition to all of the other interesting ads and articles in there, including a STAR WARS feature, Walter Kirn has a funny article called, The Secret Lives Of Men.  Having said that, I’m hoping this piece doesn’t define any guy I know, any guy I’m married to or any guy I’d write as my hero.  But, it’s still funny.  In describing the difference between men and women regarding honesty, he says:

Women bend the truth, too, of course, but not like we do.  We break truth in half, then into quarters, and then feed it through a wood chipper to prevent the DA from gathering evidence for the trial that always seems to come.  Women fudge, but men construct whole chocolate factories.  When a wife tells her husband that a new sweater cost around $200, it probably means that the garment cost $299, excluding sales tax.  When a husband tells his wife that a new sweater cost $200, it means that the sweater cost exactly that, but he leaves out the fact the his girlfriend in Sacramento bought it for him as a birthday present in gratitude for the new Saab he bought her.

His theory?  Men learn this behavior as boys when they are trying to hide their sexual experiments (yeah, I mean jacking off) from their mothers.  He describes his first experience with this at age 12:

I remember the day it happened to me: a winter afternoon in Minnesota, my windowpanes frosted with vapor from the humidifier that had been plugged in to treat a flu bug I hadn’t actually contracted but had faked enough symptoms of, including vomiting, so that I could skip school and be alone with my shoplifted Penthouse magazine and borrowed jar of Oil of Olay.

He then goes on to talk about fantasies involving the chicks from Gilligan’s Island (minus Mrs. Howell), including where he made them strip and get on their knees, but then had no idea what to do with them next.

So….too much male realism?

I found an article, 20 Steps To Writing Great Love Scenes – Part One by Karen Weisner.  I don’t know Karen Weisner but her bio says she’s published with Hard Shell Word Factory.   Fine with me. 

She raises quite a few points  – 20 to be exact – but one struck me as a bit odd.  She talks about the need for an  "exaggerated awareness" in romance novels.  She says, "In romantic fiction, an exaggerated awareness between the hero and heroine is so crucial, it can’t be overstated….every single look, touch, sense is made larger than life between them."   Further, "When he looks at her, a profound feeling comes over the characters and the reader.  The emotional impact needs to be conveyed through their every encounter." 

Is this true?  I really have no idea what this means.  Seems you’d sacrifice realism and believability and risk your conflict by making every phone call and cough part of the overall emotional awareness between the parties.  Maybe sometimes it’s just a sexual awareness or, maybe, something else is happening that isn’t necessarily emotional or sexual at all.  I don’t know.  But, I’d be afraid this idea might lead to everything feeling overblown and overdone. 

One of her other points was to suggest how you get in the mood when writing a love scene.  Her suggestion, "Set the scene in your own living room if it helps you.  Take note of things in their natural form.  Scents, sights, tastes, sounds, textures.  Indulge in pleasure.  Light scented candles, peel an orange, play romantic and/or sexy music, put silk or lace or velvet against your own skin."

I admit, I don’t do this.  Maybe others do.  My characters are characters, not me.  There likely are pieces of me or others in there, but I don’t act out the book as I write it or set a sexy mood to write.

Every day I become more and more convinced I’m doing this the wrong way.

There’s been a  lot of talk lately on Wendy’s blog and others about national reviewers and their disregard for romance.  Thinking the answer might be to look somewhere other than in big stodgy newspapers, I picked up Entertainment Weekly.  Being a magazine about all manner of popular culture, surely there would be at least a review of a book in a genre as popular as romance.  Nope.  A story about Corey Haim of the 1988 movie, License To Drive, yes.  Romance books, no.

The lead review was for The History Of Love by Nicole Krauss.  This sounds like a romance but isn’t in the sense of how we view genre romance.  It was also clear from the first paragraph that Krauss’ book, while it received an A- review and lots of good buzz, was, at least in part, the main feature because Krauss happens to be married to Jonathan Safran Foer, the author of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close which was reviewed the month before.  Foer’s book is the one with the strange looking red hand and all the handwriting on the cover.  The reviewer compares the books and decides Krauss’ book is better than her husband’s, which leads to comments about the state of their marriage in light of their respective reviews.  The reviewer also asks, "Did Krauss learn to be cute from her husband, both of whose books seem  somewhat desperate to amuse?"  Yeah, it’s hard to imagine the little lady learning to write all by herself without the hubby’s help. 

The remaining reviews shake out like this: 1 nonfiction, 1 memoir, 1 sports, 1 stories and 1 story collection – the difference between these two categories is not clear – 1 fantasy, 1 debut novel (about a murder) and 2 thrillers.  No romance.  Zero.  The genre that makes up almost half of all paperbacks sold earned exactly 0 reviews.

Maybe if  Carly Phillips or Stephanie Bond or Erin McCarthy could all get their husbands to write books, they could get a mention in Entertainment Weekly too.

I stumbled across a website for the Longridge Writers Group.  Never heard of ‘em.  Can’t tell you if this Group is legitimate or not, but I have a theory. 

There is a link for instructors.  Not exactly household names.  The photos appear to be circa 1979.  There are claims, all written in bold, of this Group producing "thousands of published writers" which might be an embellishment.  Surely if there were a miracle cure out there someone would have said something before now.  The Group makes the following claim, again in big bold letters:  You will complete at least two manuscripts suitable for submission to an editor by the time you finish the course. 

This made me a tad skeptical.  My first book – the one where I changed the heroine’s first name by accident somewhere around page 812, right after I inadvertently killed off the hero  in Chapter 42 – was technically "suitable for submission" in that it wasn’t written in crayon and had margins and page numbers.  It looked manuscript-ish, so long as you didn’t actually, you know, read it.  Being suitable for submission is far different from being suitable for publication, at least that’s what everyone keeps saying.

The site also contains an online aptitude test.  This is usually a bad sign. This test is meant to separate "qualified" people (that’s their word, not mine) from those who, I suppose, are somehow unqualified (disqualified maybe) to write a book.  Included in the test is a section called "Think Like A Writer."  The goal is to have the potential qualified person write a 30-50 word paragraph on one of three topics: 

1. A person in a long supermarket line with an inept clerk at the checkout counter [Since I haven't been in a grocery store since I got married in 1998, I probably can't  do this one.]

2. A member of your family trying to deal with a cantankerous relative [Are there people who could do this using only 30-50 words?]

3.  A person telling his/her spouse about a promotion [ For me, this one goes something like, "Honey, I got the promotion.  Now we can afford to eat."  All of 11 words.]

To be helpful, the Group gives an example of writing by a qualified being:  Bundled in a hairy overcoat, the man drummed his fingers on a box of oatmeal, tapped his feet, rolled his eyes and set his lips in a thin straight line.  Finally, he shrugged.  Muttering something  inaudible, he stomped off, abandoning his crammed shopping cart.

Hairy overcoat?  Yeah, I’m exhausted just reading the example paragraph.  The good news?  You can earn college credits for this program and deduct the tuition as a business expense.  Uh-huh.  I’m convinced.   

In keeping with the  hubby’s god-awful movie preferences, he has found two new coma-inducing entries into the category of Most Boring Sounding Movies Ever.  He actually believes we should see the following documentaries.  Actually go out in public, spend money, find parking and sit in a theater with the three other people on the planet who thought these sounded perfect for a Saturday night. 

You decide if these sound even mildly interesting.  If you say yes, go find another blog.  Really, go.  This is not the place for you.  I don’t know where your place might be, but it’s not here.

1.  The Wild Parrots Of Telegraph Hill – The tagline for this movie is, "A homeless musician finds meaning to his life when he starts a friendship with dozens of parrots."  Try to think of something more boring.  I dare you.

2.  March Of The Penguins – Now, this little cinematic gem is not in theaters yet so don’t go rushing to call fandango to buy tickets.  I did find a description on yahoo movies that goes like this: "Emperor penguins overcome daunting obstacles in order to return to their breeding grounds for mating season.  This tells the story of one year in the life of a flock – focusing on one couple in particular – as they trek across the Antarctic on an annual journey that invokes just about every major life experience from birth to death, from dating to mating, from comedy to tragedy, and from love to fighting for survival."  I know what you’re thinking – gosh, I wonder if this will be out on DVD in time for my holiday shopping.  Well, we can only hope.

A few months back I dodged The Story Of The Weeping Camel.  You probably know it by its captivating description, "When a Mongolian nomadic family’s newest camel colt is rejected by its mother, a musician is needed for a ritual to change her mind."  Yeah, ick.  I was yawning as I typed that out. 

If you’ve seen any of these or plan to, don’t tell me because I’ll have to block your IP address.

Frequently I’ll be reading along and come to a part in a book, regardless of genre, and get lost because the scene strikes me as unrealistic.  Contrived.  Poor writing.  Bad craft.  I’ve said it all.  Of course, real life can be pretty unrealistic.  Stuff happens that a writer would get nailed for if the situation were part of a story.  One of my new favorite examples happened yesterday morning. 

Man attempts to rob post office outside D.C. with submachine gun then flees.  Seems innocent enough.  Well, not innocent, but you get my point.  The facts really went something like this:  A dumbass dressed all in black (it was about 80 degrees) tried to rob the closed post office  – yes, I said closed and I also said post office, not bank or store or coffee shop – right around the corner from my house at 7:45 a.m.  He came into the employee entrance, waved his gun around, asked if anyone had any money and when he was told no – yes, he trusted the victims on this, thank goodness – told the employees they were lucky and left.   Crime thwarted, due to lack of money and any brain cells in the offender’s hollow head, our criminal then jumped on his bike – yes, I said bike – with his gun strapped to his side and escaped down a busy street.  You know, the street with all the traffic sitting at a dead stop trying to get into D.C. during rush hour.

Whuh?  I’m not in any rush to put this sequence in my romantic suspense story because no one would believe it and my cp would kick my butt for coming up with something so stupid.  It’s true this guy did get away so he might be smarter than I think.  I, however, am now afraid of stamps and men on bikes.