HelenKay Dimon

For those among us who like to think we know everything – I’m, of course, speaking about myself – here is the 2005 list of The 101 Best Websites for Writers as decided by Writer’s Digest. 

Now, I got a little skeptical when I saw the first site was about print-on-demand publishing.  There are some others that strike me as a bit shaky too.  And, I guess I need to apologize to the Long Ridge Writer’s Group since they show up on the list and I previously blogged about them, spelled their name wrong and suggested their services were, just maybe, the tiniest bit scam-ish sounding.  These were the folks with the online writing aptitude test and the promises of having at least 2 completed (note: they did not say publishable) books upon completion of the program.

Shows how much I know….or, maybe, how much Writer’s Digest knows.  Where exactly does a list like this come from and who decides?  With some of the choices and some of those left off the list, you do have to wonder.

A few weeks back Jorie and I chatted on her site about beta heroes versus alpha heroes.  This was part of my search for a book with a compelling – read: not squishy or boring – beta hero.  She made some suggestions and directed me to a Jennifer Crusie book that happened to be balancing in the middle of my TBR , right between Nancy Warren’s Turn Left At Sanity and something by Sandra Brown.  There are a few post-The Alibi books by Brown on that pile. 

Jorie also pointed to Nora Roberts’ Chesapeake Bay trilogy for examples of beta heroes – Sea Swept, Inner Harbor and Rising Tides (there’s a fourth based on the youngest brother, I know, but I still think of him as the kid from the first 3 so I don’t like to talk about him in a sexual way – EVER).    I have to admit, and I admitted to Jorie, I don’t see the heroes from these three books as betas.  They aren’t captains of industry and all that, but they are powerful and, you know, could lift small houses with one deep breath so I think of them on the alpha scale. 

From this conversation the only thing that became clear was that the line between alpha and beta is blurry.  You’d think there would be a damn bright line somewhere in romance writing.  Apparently not.  But, as with all things in cyberspace, there are approximately 900 websites out there offering help, many for a price but some for free.  This article,   Beyond Alpha – A Look At Hero Archetypes, offered some assistance.  Really, I only clicked on this link because I’m fascinated by any article with the word "archetype" in the title.  The term sounds so official but, really, I’m not sure it actually means anything so I always check. 

The most interesting – yeah, by this I mean interesting to me, probably not you – is the archetype (see, I like typing that word too) that best defines the beta hero, The Best Friend:

This is the beta hero. He’s kind, responsible, decent. Mr. Nice Guy. He doesn’t enjoy confrontation and can sometimes be unassertive because he doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. But he’ll always be there. This is the guy, who in school was often unappreciated. Women didn’t realize what all he had to offer until he was an adult. Examples of Best Friends: Tom Hanks almost always plays a Best Friend in his movies, Bill Pullman in While You Were Sleeping, Jimmy Stewart in It’s a Wonderful Life. In romance, you can often find Best Friends in some of the light comedy lines like Harlequin Duets. Many of LaVyrle Spencer’s heroes are Best Friends. Trapped in the basement, this man would at first be incredulous. "I can’t believe this is happening!" But his first act would be to care for the heroine. He, of all the archetypes, would seek her help. He’s practical, down to earth, so he’d assess what could be done and get to work. He’ll be very determined because he’s responsible for the heroine. He’s a people person and he’ll always put their needs first.

Okay, now someone needs to point me in the direction of a good book with this archetype.  Frankly, this guy doesn’t sound that interesting  – a bit squishy around the edges – but I’m willing to be educated.  For those afraid of posting anything on my site, and I do not blame you at this point, emails are fine.

It’s as if some reviewers look for ways to insult popular fiction.  The review of Jacquelyn Mitchard’s book THE BREAKDOWN LANE in People  – yeah, the magazine about all that’s good and popular in society – starts like this:

There are chick lit writers, and then there are novelists like Mitchard who write about – and for – flesh-and-blood females who musts cope with the vagaries of life and marriage.

So, and not to jump to conclusions or anything, I’m thinking the reviewer isn’t a chick lit fan.  She is a fan of Mitchard, an author who, I would suggest, might not be known to the reviewer at all had it not been for Oprah picking Mitchard’s debut THE DEEP END OF THE OCEAN for her Book Club years ago.  But, the important thing is that Mitchard doesn’t write chick lit.  Thank heavens for that.

Now, some folks complain that chick lit characters aren’t real, or are too cool and hip, or that all the books sound the same. Since the complaints about romance sound a lot like this  – yeah, in my mind there’s a distinction between chick lit and romance – and I think the criticisms against romance are too general and unfair, I say we give chick lit another chance.  My admission goes like this:  I haven’t rushed out and bought every chick lit book on the market.  When the craze first hit, I bought a few straight chick lit books (whatever that means) and thought they were okay but preferred romance and romance with a chick lit feel to straight chick lit (again, whatever that means).  But, there’s been an explosion in chick lit.  It’s a changing and growing genre.  Then there’s this review which, for some reason, makes me want to buy chick lit.  So, in that spirit, I ordered some.  Borrowing from Beverly’s previous posts where she set out some blurbs and covers for chick lit and chick lit mysteries, I came up with this list to get started:

1.  THE DIVA’S GUIDE TO SELLING YOUR SOUL by Kathleen O’Reilly - Not my usual thing but the cover and premise were tough to pass up.

2.  AMERICAN IDLE by Alesia Holliday – This woman’s career is on fire and she’s been nominated for the RITA and she’s posted on my site.  All those things guarantee a buy from me.

3.  SEX, MURDER AND A DOUBLE LATTE by Kyra Davis – There’s a lot of good buzz for this book.  It also combines chick lit with a mystery so I’m in.

In case you’re wondering, the reviewer in People gave THE BREAKDOWN LANE 3 1/2 stars out of 4.  I might read it anyway.

Keishon has some ideas about what’s wrong with heroines in romantic suspense novels.  We can probably sum it up in one word – stupid.  They tend to act off-the-charts stupid.  She lists out 9 ridiculous things we accept from these women – you know, the same acts that would land a real woman in jail, the morgue or a mental institution if she tried them. Now, not every romantic suspense heroine fits this type but I will say some of these scenarios looked familiar enough to send me racing back to my single title manuscript for a quick check. 

I tried to pick my favorite but couldn’t narrow down past these 2.  Here they are:

-decide for herself to save her father, sister, brother, cousin, long-lost uncle from terrorists with ZERO knowledge on how to even go about saving anyone’s ass along with her own

-thinks that the hero is just too good for her, accepts the fact that she’s just a one night stand and is ready to spend the rest of her life in loneliness and despair having never caught the love of her life

Are these examples of realistic women?  Well, I have to admit I’ve known several who fit into the second category.  Of course, they weren’t rushing around trying to defuse a bomb, stop a runaway train or save a kidnapped baby.  They were too busy crying over some dumbass guy.  And, who wants to see that in a romance book.

For anyone who has ever dreaded the pitch – those 10 minute sessions with either an editor or agent at a writing conference where the goal is to garner some interest in your manuscript – take heart.  We are not alone.  The USC School of Cinema-Television has taken this practice to a new and vomit-inducing height.  Now, this sounds a bit like dancing and maybe a little like dating.  If I were a participant, I’d need a big tub of valium with a prozac chaser.  One pitch at a time is painful.  Now multiply that by 20 and you get what Newsweek describes as this:

Every year the USC School of Cinema-Television – alma mater to George Lucas, among other luminaries – sponsors a program called First Pitch, which trains graduating screenwriting seniors and master’s students in Hollywood’s lingua franca, the pitch, and then puts them in a ballroom of the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills with three dozen industry players….At each table sat someone with the power to kick-start their careers (So, you know, no pressure).  Each student would get five minutes with a CAA agent or executive from Warner Bros. – five minutes to dazzle the listener into requesting a copy of the script – before a little bell rang, and the student moved to a new table and started all over again.  They would repeat the process twenty times.

Don’t know about you but I’m now very clear I made the right choice in book writing over screenwriting.

I’m not an Anne Rice reader.  I saw INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE under protest.  It was 1994 and the cast including Christian Slater, Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise was supposed to be a compelling draw for an unmarried woman in her 20s.  It wasn’t. Apparently the vampire craze didn’t thrill me then either.  Again, I like my men, oh, alive.  I’ve tried to pick up Rice’s books since but never quite get there. 

But, things have changed in Rice-land.  The rest of you may know this.  I didn’t.  I barely care now.  See, Rice has a book coming out in November ‘05.  It’s called CHRIST THE LORD.  Doesn’t sound like a vampire novel, does it?  Well, according to Entertainment Weekly, the magazine in the know or almost know, Rice’s book is about, obviously, Jesus Christ  – the non-vampire version, in case you’re wondering – and is partly based on "the most respected New Testament scholarship."  Okay, to be honest, I don’t know what that even means.  But, again, this is interesting, you know, in a petri dish kind of way.

She is including a note to her readers with the book.  The note says, in part:  For over ten years I’ve wanted to do this book – Jesus in his own words…. The ultimate questions, the ones distilled from a thousand others, were so obvious as to be frightening.  What did it feel like to be Jesus?  What did it feel like to be God and Man as a child…"

Ehhh?   Is that clear out there to anyone else?  I’m thinking that means a first person account by Jesus.  If so, that’s pretty gutsy.  The opportunities to get your ass kicked by, well, everyone from the religious right to fellow writers who think this is a ridiculous project seem pretty high.

Since I’m not a Rice follower I admit to having very little insight into her writing.  I’ve picked up some chit chat about her leaving New Orleans.  Why we are supposed to care about that, I still don’t know.  There was also a fracas awhile back about a response she wrote to a nasty review.  There was much "was it really her" and "has she lost her mind" discussion.  Since I didn’t care, I just read and chuckled.  But this?  Anne Rice’s version of Christ?  Now, this is interesting.  Not enough for me to buy it, mind you, but still interesting.

Now, a post about something other than me.  Well, something not totally about me.

Sunday’s Washington Post, the same newspaper that brought us Watergate, has once again attempted to tackle a compelling topic of great intellectual debate.  The article?  Well, it was a hard hitting news story about men in chick flick movies called, Chick Flick Boyfriends: Guys Gone Mild.  If you have the super secret code and the special decoder ring, you can read it here.     If that doesn’t work, and it probably won’t ’cause I can never get those damn newspaper links to work, don’t panic.  I’ll tell you everything you never wanted to know about this article. 

The basic premise of the article is that chick flick boyfriends are a certain type – think squishy.  The "perfect guy" is defined as:

· He is the consummate straight man. He may react in an adorably bemused way to the antics of the heroine or her wacky friends, but he does not deliver the punch line.

· He’s experienced. No virgins or loners, please; he’s had other girlfriends, whom he tends to trot before the heroine in a well-meaning way. But they turn out to be vapid, or duplicitously evil, and he comes to recognize the error of his ways within 90 minutes.

· He is supportive and wise. He can deliver the piercing observation that spurs the heroine to action or onto a path of self-improvement. ("No more trying to be someone I’m not!" weeps Reese Witherspoon in "Legally Blonde," and Luke Wilson says, "What if you’re trying to be someone you are?") Yet his own character may never develop beyond his growing recognition of how wonderful the heroine truly is.

· He may occasionally throw a punch or two — in her defense, of course. But he never really kicks anyone’s butt.

To the extent any of this is interesting, and that is a matter of some dispute in my household, it’s in the difference between romance book heroes and romance movie heroes.  I don’t know about you but I don’t want my romance book guys mild.  Mild is boring.  Mild isn’t sexy.  Mild isn’t alpha.  Mild is the guy you dated in high school before you knew any better (not you Sean – even with the glasses you were cool). 

I’m thinking this might be the reason why I’m not a chick flick movie fan.  Apparently, and this is straight from the Post and its award-winning investigative staff, the guys in them suck.  That would explain it.  I don’t like sucky guys.  Mystery solved. 

Okay, the title of this one probably gives it away.  So what.  I’ll only get The Call, that first sale, once so indulge me while I ramble on about it for one full blog entry.  Here we go….

At approximately 3:00 p.m. – okay, at exactly 3:03 p.m., who am I kidding – on Friday, May 6, 2005 I got a call while sitting at my little desk in my little office.  Kate Duffy, editor extraordinaire for Kensington and specifically for the Brava line I’ve been targeting for what feels like 80 years but is more like 18 months, was on the phone.  I didn’t get too excited since I actually expected a follow-up call from her to discuss what she didn’t like about a novella submission we talked about a few weeks earlier – doesn’t that sound like a fun conversation to wait on.  We had planned to talk again, then she went to the RT Convention, leaving me to obsess and whine in her absence.  Be happy I did that in private.  It was not attractive.

The conversation at 3:03 p.m. went like this:

Kate:  HelenKay?

Me:  Uh-huh (I now know this is about as eloquent as I can be while on the phone with Kate)

Kate:  This is The Call…  (I’m sure she said something else after that but I have no freaking idea what it could have been)

Kate:  HelenKay?

Me:  <<screaming, possibly some weeping>>>

Kate: <<wincing, possibly a gasp of pain>>

Once we got through this mess, she continued to talk.  She made sense, I’m sure, because she’s smart and professional and all those things an editor is supposed to be.  I, on the other hand, couldn’t string string words together into anything that resembled a coherent sentence.  Never finished a thought and, you know, forgot to use verbs.  I’m pretty sure I even used the word "humpfrickt" but, again, I can’t really remember because my brain went into full-stop shutdown mode.  I may have agreed to sell a novella for one of those $15 Starbucks gift cards.  It’s also quite possible I am now contractually obligated to  drive 5 hours to Kate’s house every other week to clean it.  I’ll have to check the fine print once the contract arrives at my door.

So, after a weekend hooked to a valium drip and a follow-up call to Kate this morning, I can report something that sounds like a book deal.  My debut novella will be in a Brava April ‘06 anthology release called  When Good Things Happen To Bad Boys with Lori Foster and Erin McCarthy.  Yeah, how’s that for a line-up… those two, not me.

There are a few administrative matters to be cleared up.  First, my non-violent stalking of Kate Duffy can now end.  I’m not saying it worked, mind you, but I’m not in jail which means she picked the more favorable option to get me to leave her alone.  Second, someone out there has promised a retraction of this obviously wrong-headed, blasphemous anti-anthology post.

I will take a risk and say Elizabeth Archibald, then senior at Yale and editor of the Yale Review Of Books, is not a romance fan.  In this article, she debates the virtues of writing romance.  Could be me, maybe I’m mis-reading her here, maybe I’m a bit slow, but I’m thinking she’s decided to pass on this career choice.  Apparently nobody bothered to tell her how easy it is to write and sell a romance novel… oh, wait, yes someone did.  See: 

Maybe I’m overconfident, but how hard would it be to devise adventures for young amnesiac bombshells who meet buff orphans and achieve perfect, pulsating harmony?

Lest you think that is her most clever line, read this part:

One publisher is seeking manuscripts that involve “marriage of convenience, secret babies, single fathers, amnesia victims, and weddings.” I wonder if I could create an ass-kicking bombshell who succumbs to a marriage of convenience (having given birth secretly) to an amnesia victim.

Now, I have to admit that I’m not a big fan of most of the hooks she mentions.  I’m on a bit of a Harlequin hiatus myself thanks to some of these.  And, every now and then, in the privacy of my living room, I’m sure I’ve chuckled and thought something like this even though I know better.  Of course, I’m not as clever as Elizabeth so I probably couldn’t have said it as well as she did.  See, I didn’t go to Yale. 

I wonder if she knows the young woman who wrote a similar article for the Harvard Independent and touched off this discussion.  Maybe the Ivy League chicks get together and think this stuff up over, uhhh, whatever it is they do in their spare time.  Reading Tolstoy in the mother tongue, maybe?  Hmmm.  Don’t know.  I guess I’ll never know.   

I’ve seen some version of this question 3 times this week.  I’ve hit my limit.  Disclaimer:  This isn’t going to be nice or even slightly politically correct so if you’re one of those "I only like warm, fuzzy blogs" types, stop reading now.  Come back Monday.  I’ll have some good news then.  Well, good for me but probably won’t matter to you much.  Until then, it’s time to start messing with people.

How do you figure out word count and does the font you’re using matter?

Here’s my new answer:  You actually have to count each word.  Every damn one.  Then you have to count the punctuation and spaces, do an excel spreadsheet setting out the number of each, have it bound and attach it as an exhibit to the end of your submission.  If you don’t, the editor will automatically reject your manuscript.  Also, there’s a rumor that some published folks are blackballing other writers.  This is one of those issues that may lead to blackballing.  At least, that’s what I’ve heard.

On the topic of font, I defer to a higher power.  I call him Professor Tod.  Wendy calls him husband.  Booksquare is in his class so she may have more profane names for him.  If so, she’s not talking.  In response to a similar issue being raised on my blog eons ago (that’s about 6 weeks, in case you’re wondering), Professor Tod had this to say:

What font should I use/what should the margins be/what goes in the header? Sweet christ on Easter Sunday, I’ve heard this question 100 times and its always asked by a man or a woman wearing a mou-mou and carrying around a dog eared copy of their own velabound novel. Times New Roman, people, Times New Roman. Unless you want to take up space, in which case Courier. Unless you’re a serial killer, then its wingdings all the way.

Now, he’s a writing professor, is multi-published, has been nominated for all kinds of awards and – here’s some free promotion – has a short story collection called Simplify coming out in September.  And, yes, he’s one of those literary writers.  They’re supposed to be smart and cool and stuff. 

So, listen to him.  Or, go buy a book that sets this stuff out.  Or, check one of 3 million websites out there that answer these questions.  Or, exercise some common sense.  Those are your options.