HelenKay Dimon

When I checked out the B&N hourly Top Ten romance anthologies yesterday – uh-huh, I do that kind of obsessive thing – I noticed a pattern. It goes like this:

#1 Bad Boys of Summer by Lori Foster, Erin McCarthy and Amy Garvey (Brava, June 2006)

#4 Bad Boys Southern Style by JoAnn Ross, Jill Shalvis and E. C. Sheedy (Brava, July 2006)

#7 When Good Things Happen To Bad Boys by Lori Foster, Erin McCarthy and, well, me (Brava, April 2006)

Not bad. Is it the “Bad Boys” in the title? The covers? The packaging? The implicit promise of hotter stories? A love of Lori Foster and Erin McCarthy (if so, explain #4)? Or, ummm, a coincidence.

Since I have a Bad Boys anthology coming out in August (if you somehow missed all my hints, it’s Viva Las Bad Boys!), I wonder what the secret is here. You know, so I can capitalize on it.

The Librarian of Congress (yes, that’s a real job title) named the country’s newest poet laureate last week. What may come as a surprise to some is that this guy – Donald Hall of New Hampshire – is the 14th such individual to hold this important post.

In taking the post, Hall said:

[H]e would like to follow in the tradition of Mr. Kooser and other laureates who have tried to expand poetry’s reach. “I’d like to encourage NPR to pay more attention to poetry,” he said, referring to public radio, “and the cable networks, with the possibility of HBO doing something.”

Who, you ask, is Mr. Kooser? Maybe you knew, but I had to google the guy. Ted Kooser was the 13th poet laureate. A guy from Nebraska who held the post from 2004 until now. As for me, I didn’t know Kooser got the post two years ago, or that he left it and Hall now held the position. Poetry must not be on my writing radar.

What exactly is a poet laureate…ummm, anyone? Here’s all I know: it’s a renewable one-year appointment that includes an award of $35,000 and a $5,000 travel allowance. That’s all the information I have.

In case you aren’t familiar with Hall – I wasn’t – here’s what I know about him now that I read this article in the New York Times:

Mr. Hall is an extremely productive writer who has published about 18 books of poetry, 20 books of prose and 12 children’s books. He has won many awards, including a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1989 for “The One Day,” a collection.

And

Mr. Hall, a poet in the distinctive American tradition of Robert Frost, has also been a harsh critic of the religious right’s influence on government arts policy. And as a member of the advisory council of the National Endowment for the Arts during the administration of George H. W. Bush, he referred to those he thought were interfering with arts grants as “bullies and art bashers.”

That’s all impressive. Still don’t know exactly what a poet laureate does, but I’m now convinced the country needs a romance laureate.

Using the advanced scientific formula of “Honey, pick a number between 1 and 27″ we have chosen a winner. The early copy of Viva Las Bad Boys! goes to Stacy – Congratulations!!

Email me with your contact information, and I’ll get it out to you. You’re not even obligated to say nice things. Really. I mean, come on, what are the chances I’ll actually get in a car and drive to wherever you live and try to convince you of my brilliance? Believe it or not the answer is pretty low. My innate laziness tends to overwhelm my fragile ego on these issues. So, you’re safe to speak your mind. For the most part I only stalk agents and editors anyway.

But you do need to be wowed by the cover. On the computer it looks a bit dark. In person, it’s pretty awesome. The suggestion by my editor and design by the Kensington art department – all perfect.

More chances to win are coming…

Reminder: I have a short summer blog contest happening. You have until midnight tonight to enter.

Now two items about people other than me from Publisher’s Marketplace:

First, we have this: “Senator Hillary Clinton disclosed receiving $873,000 in royalties last year for her 2003 book LIVING HISTORY. So far she has received almost $9.5 million in earnings from the book.”

Yeah, you know, my royalties look just like this. In fact, I often think, “Gee, I wonder if my royalty check will be for $873,000 or some paltry amount like $650,000.” Earnings of $9.5 million – that should just about cover the family’s outstanding legal fees.

Second, a sale item that…well, see if you stumble over it at all:

FICTION: DEBUT
Natasha Bauman’s THE DISORDER OF LONGING, following a woman in Victorian Boston who flees her husband and his obsession with tantric sex to hunt for rare orchids in Brazil, to Molly Barton at Putnam, in a very nice deal, by Lisa Grubka (World).

Why I had to read it 3 times: Victorian Boston, orchids and tantric sex? For some reason those things don’t fit together for me. I blame Sting. I can’t hear or read about tantric sex without thinking about Sting. But kudos to Bauman for her impressive debut deal.

Here’s the back cover blurb:

Yesterday? My life was perfect.
I was a full-fledged New York gallerista, gossiping all day about my favorite subject—art—while selling hundred-thousand-dollar paintings I would have died to own. The only thing better than my job at the Emerson Bond Gallery? The whopping promotion I was just about to get…

Today? Emerson Bond just dropped dead.
Now we may all be out of a job: my fabulous boss Freddie (love him!). Our absolutely adorable receptionist Kimmy (love her!). And devoted, well-meaning me (love me!).

Tomorrow? I can’t even think about it…
…because I’ve definitely gotten off on the wrong foot with the insufferable star artist who’s responsible for my professional future. And then there’s the new blood at the Bond Gallery: Avery Devon, the man so gorgeous I can’t even speak to him. The man now in charge of my whole life. The man who, if I’m really, really lucky, will teach me all about the art of love—and not just in my dreams…

Why this one:

1. Catchy cover. Saw it on the B&N new trade table and instantly wanted to pick it up and read the back.
2. Catchy tagline. In case you can’t read it, it says: An urban comedy about fine art – and even finer men.
3. Booklist said:

There’s a Sex in the City vibe to this novel that will attract some readers, and a sentimental side that will appeal to the true romantics. Izzy is entrenched in the glamorous world of artists and celebrities, but her own hopes and problems seem realistic. This book is bound to please young women seeking the same sort of fulfillment in their work and love lives that Izzy is.

4. She appears to be a debut author and we all know my weakness for them. We should support them however we can. ::ahem::
5. Haven’t read anything set in the art world in…actually, maybe never. Can’t think of one.

I found a romance novel website called Sheikhs and Desert Love . Don’t ask how I stumbled across this. You wouldn’t believe me if I tried to explain. Rest assured I am not writing a book about sheikhs and romance or even about sheikhs without romance. No sheikhs coming from me – promise.

I’ve read, maybe, two romances with a sheikh plotline. I’m thinking they were by Linda Lael Miller and Diana Palmer, but it was so long ago that I’m not sure if that’s correct. Apparently, this is a popular niche market. One that stumps some experts. Brian Whitaker tried to figure out the fascination with what he terms “desert sheikh” novels. He says this about the popularity – and I’ll trust him on this since I don’t know – and its growth:

Sheikh novels appear to have taken off around the year 2000. In the 1980s and 1990s only a few such stories were published but 12-16 new titles have appeared every year since. The events of 9/11, the war on terror and the invasion of Iraq have done nothing to diminish their popularity – if anything, they have increased it.

This paragraph sums up his confusion:

It is very curious, though, that in a time of widespread Arabophobia, when so many negative stereotypes abound in the media, in non-fiction books and in films, and when the US is horrified by the idea of letting an Arab company run some of its ports, so many western women are attracted by a different kind of stereotype: the sexy Arab.

He can’t figure out the “why” so he just offers some thoughts:

Personally, I’m not sure what to make of these sheikh novels. They are clearly rooted in an absurd, outdated orientalist view of the Middle East, of the kind that the late Edward Said robustly condemned. Equally, they could be considered as a form of harmless escapism that gives pleasure to lots of women.

I asked Chris Doyle of the Council for Arab-British Understanding for his opinion. They are “cheesy, inaccurate rubbish,” he said. “They are as far removed from the reality of the Middle East as one can imagine – for a long time it has been an urban culture, not a desert culture.”

It was this fictional setting that troubled him most, because it gives a misleading impression of life in the Middle East today.

I’m still not understanding the fascination. At least now I know it’s out there.

I’m still not quite sure what Lad Lit is. This article by Professor Michael Kimmel offers some insight into the genre. Be forewarned – this isn’t a particularly flattering look at Lad Lit. I don’t know enough and haven’t read enough Lad Lit to agree or disagree with Kimmel, but the comments are interesting.

In answer to the “who are these authors” question:

Virtually every writer of guy lit is an almost-thirtysomething graduate of an elite college or university. Their college pedigrees read like the college rankings at a certain national magazine: Brown (Sam Lipsyte), Harvard (Benjamin Kunkel), Stanford (Erik Barmack), Wesleyan (Scott Mebus), Yale (Kyle Smith). Each writer, and their characters, lives in New York City. Each work is written in the first person, by a destabilized, unreliable narrator; these books are like one long run-on sentence of self-justification and rationalization. “I don’t want your wholesome values, your reasonably good judgment,” says Jeb Braun, protagonist in Erik Barmack’s The Virgin. “My goal isn’t to please you. So if you’re expecting the whole handshake and nod routine, you can stop reading right now.” (Several authors refer to “the book you hold in your hand,” as if to distance themselves even further from their own sad story.)

Where Lad Lit takes a wrong turn in Kimmel’s view:

The characters in these books are as unmemorable and faceless as the men in the gray flannel suits they hold in such contempt. None will hold up like Holden Caulfield because what makes him so endearing, and The Catcher in the Rye so enduring, is that he actually believes his own hype. Holden believes that he and he alone is morally superior to all the phonies he sees around him. The purveyors of guy lit implicate themselves. They know how inauthentic they are. Salinger is at heart a romantic; Kunkel et al. are cynics. Holden feels too much; Dwight and the others feel too little, if anything at all.

And that may be guy lit’s biggest problem: Its readers are unlikely to resemble the guys the books are ostensibly about. As long as the antiheroes stay stuck, and the transformative trajectory is either insincere, as in Kunkel’s Indecision, or nonexistent, as in Smith’s Love Monkey, these writers will miss their largest potential audience. For it is women who buy the most books, and what women seem to want is for men to be capable of changing (and to know that a woman’s love can change them).

Why women aren’t buying them:

Women won’t read these books unless there is some hope of redemption, some effort these guys make to change. And men won’t read them because, well, real men don’t read.

The characters in guy lit are stuck in boyhood. Their creators may use up every clever undergraduate phrase they’ve ever jotted down during a boring literature class, but stringing together such back-of-the-class witticisms does not make a novel, and feckless indifference is a posture hard to sustain. Yeah, sure, Kunkel and the others are funny once in a while. But frankly, I’m not at all sure that Holden — or I, for that matter — would want to be friends with them.

Hmmmm. It is that ” real men don’t read” or is it more like real men don’t read these books because they prefer mystery, suspense and intrigue?

Yes, it’s the beginning of June. Yes, Viva Las Bad Boys! is scheduled as an August release. To Kensington this means July 26th. To B&N this means August 28th. To me it means June 10th because [imagine a dramatic drumroll here...] copies of Viva Las Bad Boys! have arrived at my house!!!!

Okay, 22 copies arrived. Not sure why I got that number and don’t really care because, again, they’re here!!! Very, very pretty. No typos on the cover. My name is even spelled correctly. Really, this is a good day.

In order to celebrate this momentous occasion, I’ll give a copy away on Saturday June 17th to an individual randomly selected from those who comment on any entry on my blog from today through midnight on Friday June 16th. I know it’s summer and no one is around and all is quiet. Whatever. All that just makes your odds of winning even better if you do take two seconds and leave a comment. I even promise not to send the one I’ve already drooled all over.

In two totally unrelated book stories we have a biography sell for $4.5 million in what’s considered a low figure for the deal, and we have an author who tests the First Amendment principle that any damn idiot has the right to say (almost) any damn idiotic thing he or she wants to without fear of being thrown into a Turkish prison. One of these individuals is Ted Turner. The other is Ann Coulter. Neither are on my “Must Buy” list.

Yes, for those worried about Turner’s financial security now that Jane has left him and written a tell-all book of her own, fear not. Turner got his deal. All can rest easy. No need to write that check to the “Send Ted Turner To Lunch” fund. He’ll be okay despite the less-than-predicted sale.

Ann Coulter. Since I can’t say anything nice, I’ll let Coulter’s brilliance speak for itself. Apparently one bookstore nearly had a riot when she appeared for a booksigning. Gee, what a shock. It’s not as if she’s a woman who seeks out controversy or anything:

Coulter drew several hundred customers to the store, located in a town where 34 people died on 9/11. She signed copies of the book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” and was interviewed by conservative radio commentator Sean Hannity. In the book, Coulter directs her scorn at four New Jersey women who demanded a federal investigation after their husbands died in the terrorist attacks. Coulter called them “the witches of East Brunswick.”

“I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much,” Coulter wrote. “How do we know their husbands weren’t planning to divorce these harpies?”

Very classy broad. Don’t really care about her politics. Liberal or conservative, the woman is a pontificating moron. The fact anyone gives her a bully pulpit to say anything at all is the mystery here.

I’m in a bit of a deadline crunch and am driving home from North Carolina, so… Here are a few deals from a few different genres courtesy of yesterday’s Publisher’s Marketplace.

The one romance listing – looks as if paranormal is alive and kicking at Berkley:

FICTION: WOMEN’S/ROMANCE
Anya Bast’s MORE THAN MAGICK, the story of a woman who is being hunted for her rare magical power and the man sworn to protect her, to Cindy Hwang for Berkley Sensation, in a nice deal, in a two-book deal, by Laura Bradford at Bradford Literary Agency (World).

In a tie for the two most interesting listings of the day (to me anyway):

First – NON-FICTION: HUMOR
Jason Joseph and Rick Joseph’s 101 WAYS TO GIVE THE BIRD, “fratire”-style guide to the universal obscene gesture including line drawings and descriptions of moves such as The Pointer, Glasses Adjuster and Ear Plugs, to Becky Cole at Broadway, by Jake Elwell of Wieser & Wieser, on behalf of merch agent Jonathan Close (World).

Second – FICTION: THRILLER
Mutulu Shakur’s untitled novel, in which Tupac Shakur, having faked his own death and living in the midwest under an alias, is forced to go on the run with both the CIA and a vengeful record company executive out to kill him, to Anita Diggs for Thunder’s Mouth, in a nice deal (World).

And in the “just because” category:

FICTION: DEBUT
Patricia Weitz’s COLLEGE GIRL, a kind of cross between PREP and ORDINARY PEOPLE, in which a woman finds herself at the top of her senior college class and that her all-or-nothing temperament has the potential to do her in when she lets down her guard to a young swain, to Sarah McGrath at Riverhead, by Mary Evans at Mary Evans (World English).