First of all, thank you for letting me guest blog at this fabulous and fun site.  I was honored when Terri Brisbin  asked me if I’d like to blog here. Let’s hope I don’t goof this up too bad.

My latest release with Samhain Publishing, Wolf, was a fun venture in so many ways. Primarily, it was an opportunity to put my own spin on one of the fairy tales I loved as a child–Little Red Riding Hood.

Fairy tales. No matter the story there’s always a few commonalities–a woman in trouble, some nefarious individual, a handsome prince and a happily ever after.  What more could you ask for?

From an early age I was always fascinated with the hero of these tales. And I must confess, I always tweaked the handsome man on the white horse just a bit. After all, who in their right mind would want a man that flawless?

But who would make a great hero?

Well, if I had a hero blender and could concoct my ideal hero from traits, characteristics or pieces of celebrities and characters, I can easily identify a few people I’d add.

The first was easy–a decision I had to make in my formative years. Ken versus G.I. Joe. I know Ken was Barbie’s ideal. But he was metro before we even knew what metro was, and I always thought she deserved more than that. So sorry Ken, but G.I. Joe is getting tossed into my concoction for his ability to take charge and overcome adversity.  Go Joe!

With him in my blender rather early in my life, I’d have to say a few years passed without many possibilities.  A woman cannot be satisfied with G.I. Joe solely. She needs more than massive amounts of testosterone and brawn.  Brains were the next necessity to satisfy.

MacGyver was tossed into my hero blender the moment he appeared. The things that man can do with a roll of duct tape and a chocolate bar are scary imaginative.  Knowing my ideal hero could use ingenuity to get the heroine out of any circumstance provided a new level of comfort.  And anyone whose name becomes a brand new verb deserves to be in my blender. After all, how many of us have MacGyvered our way out of a situation?

Comfort can only get you so far, though. Sometimes you need the darkness, the primal instincts only a real bad boy would have.  Fortunately for me, there were quite a few bad boys during my rebellious teen years. Hair metal was all the rage and pretty boy Jon Bon Jovi was an easy conclusion. But he wasn’t the one who made my insides quiver like a swarm of drunken butterflies.  Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue, on the other hand, opened my innocent mind to all sorts of hedonistic lifestyles I couldn’t fathom–much less fully understand.  Ah, the things that bad boy could do if given half the chance. He had to be added.

Heroes need to be larger than life, stronger than feasible–the stuff of those mighty fairy tales forged from centuries of tradition and imagination. For this feat, I had to turn to two characters — Duncan MacCleod and Hercules.

Why? Do I really need reasons to add Adrian Paul and Kevin Sorbo? Okay, I didn’t think so either. But I’ll give them, just in case. J Who wouldn’t want an immortal hero with superhuman strength and a deep-seeded need to right injustice? And of course, they both provided a tender side rarely exhibited, but certainly appreciated when shared.

So, writers and READERS, that’s my hero concoction. Who’s in yours?

Cara Carnes is celebrating the release of WOLF over on her website www.caracarnes.com and will give one lucky commenter here at Jaunty Quills a copy of the book in the format of their choice and a little survival gift pack for when/if they get lost in the woods! (Oh my!)

Stretch!!!!

Have you ever taken yoga? If you have, you’ve probably found yourself in some pretty awkward positions as you stre…ee…ttttch. We do this in an attempt to bring balance into our world, to ease the tension in our bodies and basically to become more well-rounded and a healthier individuals.

Stretching is, well, it’s good for us. But let’s face it. Stretching isn’t always easy. i.e. They want me to put my leg where? It requires us to push our limits, to extend ourselves just a little bit beyond where we’ve gone before. We often tell ourselves that stretching can be dangerous. We could pull a muscle. Or as in yoga class, there’s plenty of times I felt I made an idiot out of myself. Heck, a few times in yoga, I found myself seeing parts of my own body I’d never seen before. Believe me, it wasn’t pretty.

Ahh, but I’m not really talking about yoga or physically stretching. I’m talking about stretching ourselves in other ways. Stretching ourselves mentally, or maybe just getting out of our comfort zones, trying something new, something different, and opening our minds to other possible paths. And I guess yoga could even be part of your new path.

The thing is, it’s so easy for us women to get to some place in our lives. Be it a new job, a new title as: wife, mother, AARP member, published author, or maybe it’s just reaching an ideal weight. And generally we got to the new place by stretching, by challenging ourselves. Yet once we arrive, what do we do? We master the new challenges and then we build ourselves another comfort zone.

We tell ourselves that we’ve earned this reprieve and it’s true we did earn it. We worked hard. The problem is that some of us, myself included, get too comfortable and we simply aren’t stretching anymore. We aren’t growing. Or, we’re only growing in one way. And is that enough?

A little over a year ago, I had an editor from a big publishing house call my agent and ask if I would consider writing a paranormal young adult series. When my agent first told me, I laughed. “Me? Write a young adult? Are you joking?”

Thankfully, I was smart enough to ask for thinking time. Then I called my good friends and asked for advice. The answers I got all sounded pretty much the same, “Are you an idiot? Of course you’ll do it.” Or “Hang up right now, and start writing. Now!”

But I still held back. The thoughts running though my mind were: But I know how to write a contemporary romance. I’m actually getting pretty good at it, climbing the latter of success. Shouldn’t I just stick with what I know I can do and work on that? I’d have to really study up on what makes a young adult novel work if I expect to make this happen. I’d have to put in a few more hours. And then there were my two biggest fears: What if I embarrass myself? What if I try . . . and fail? And then of course, What if they want me to put my leg somewhere that I can’t put it?

I had forgotten how good it felt to stretch. You know, when you’re just a little sore because you had to work just a bit harder? I forgot that learning can be fun. I forgot that like an athlete, cross-training in most anything in life is beneficial. That studying, and building skills in any genre could help me write better, no matter what I’m writing. I forgot what it feels like to come face to face with a challenge. I forgot that every now and then we all need to try something new, to mix things up, to push the fear aside, and just go for it. I forgot that taking a risk is sometimes a risk worth taking.

So how did it turn out for me? In April of 2011, the first book, Born at Midnight, in my Shadow Falls series will hit the bookstores. I’ve completed the second novel, and am busy plotting the third. Already, the foreign market sales tell me I made a wise decision. My friends like to rub it in, too.

Oh, I’m still writing my humorous romantic suspenses. That was another stretch I made. Because after I sold my YA series to St. Martin’s Press, my agent suggested I come up with a new adult romance series to shop around. But to do so, we would have to turn down the offer from the house I was already publishing with. No stranger to rejection, turning down a contract didn’t calm my nerves. I’m happy to say that my next romance series, Don’t Mess With Texas, will be released by Grand Central in late 2011.

For me, stretching was writing in a new genre and writing that new proposal, turning down one offer, without knowing if I’d get another. For non-writers, stretching might mean taking a class, learning to speak French, or going for that promotion at work. It could mean trying for a second child, deciding to date after your divorce, or going on a new diet. Maybe it even means taking a yoga class. My point is, change is scary, but if we want to grow as humans, we gotta learn to stretch and we gotta keep stretching. We can’t let ourselves live in only our comfort zones.

When opportunity knocks, you can’t run to the bathroom and claim you ate bad chicken. You have to answer that door, you have to spit fear in the face; you have to be willing to take risks. And if you open your eyes and see one of your own body parts that’s less than pretty, well, just shut those eyes and keep on stretching. Sooner or later, you might even get that leg where you didn’t think it would go. Remember that to try and fail is better than never trying at all. We can’t win them all, but when we do win … Wow!

Thanks for stopping by. And today, what I’d like to hear from you is: how are you stretching? How do you face the fear of change? What steps are you going to take that will help you grow into a more well-rounded and healthier person?

I’ll be giving away a copy of Shut Up and Kiss Me to one commenter. So make sure you leave a post.

(And the Jaunty Quills are offering two additional posters signed copies of Christie’s Divorced Desperate and Deceived and Divorced Desperate and Dating! Three lucky people will win books.)

Susan was delighted to randomly select the following commenters to win a free copy of her debut novel, MONEY, HONEY!

Carrie Spencer
Catslady
eap
Gail C.
Kris

Congratulations, winners! Send your snail mail address to Susan at susan@susansey.com.

Welcome to the Money, Honey Blog tour, in which author Susan Sey celebrates the July 6 release of her debut novel by counting down the Top Ten Most Common Reactions an ill-groomed stay at home mom receives when confessing her secret career as a romance novelist. 

Hello, Jaunty Quills!  And thank you, Kristan, for inviting me!  I’m so excited to be here today.  I’ve been dying for a chance to chat with you guys about Response #2 on my list:  “Where do you get your ideas?”

(If you’re all aflutter to hear about the other nine responses on my list, feel free to check out http://www.susansey.com/pages.php?ID=5.)

You know what I love about this one?  What it means totally depends on who’s asking.

Most of the time, the asker is completely sincere.  You make stuff up for a living & they want to know how you do it.  Answering this one is fun, because let’s face it.  What author doesn’t love to talk about their writing?

But there’s another type of person who asks the “where do you get your ideas” question—a person with whom the author has A History.  It could be your mother, your sister, your best friend, your ex-boyfriend who somehow became Just A Friend.  But it’s always somebody you know well enough to blackmail if you wanted to.   And that’s the key.  Because when this person says, “Where do you get your ideas?” what they really mean is, “Am I in your book?”

And the answer, dear reader, is no. 

And yes.

See, I’m a big fan of escapist fiction.  Which, on the surface, is weird.  Because my life’s pretty awesome.  I’m married to the world’s greatest guy (no offense to your husbands; I’m sure they’re wonderful), we have two adorable, brilliant children and an income that stretches just far enough for me to stay home with them.  What on earth do I need to escape from?

Laundry, that’s what.  Bickering.  Cooking.  (Let me tell you, putting decent, healthful food on the table three times a day for people who express their appreciation with gagging noises is exhausting.)  Then there’s the ensuing pile up of dirty dishes.  And don’t forget the sleepless nights spent wondering if the kids are going to wind up in therapy because their mother is a heartless shrew with a Facebook addiction….

My point is, sometimes I need a little escape.  I need a little larger-than-life.  I need things to start at point A, end up at point B & make some sort of sense in between.  I need to see worthy people defeat a villain, have great sex & fall in love.  In other words, I need a fix of anti-reality.  So why would I look to reality for inspiration?

Quick answer:  I don’t.  My debut novel Money, Honey features an ex-jewel thief-turned-crime-novelist falling in love with a cult-survivor-turned-hard-nosed-FBI-agent who’s stalking a revenge-crazed, knife-wielding counterfeiter.  Got to admit, I don’t personally know anybody with even one of those qualifications on the old resume.  Which is a good thing, right? 

My decided lack of nefarious acquaintances, however, means I often have to make a few phone calls in the name of writerly research.  It doesn’t always go well, & Money, Honey was particularly interesting.  The Secret Service is in charge of counterfeiting (who knew?) and as it turns out, they call it the SECRET service for a reason.  It’s very secret.  It’s possible I’m on a few watch lists now.  I don’t know.  That’s probably a story for another day. 

The point I’m trying to make is, if you know me, you can rest easy.  I didn’t fudge your name & put you in my story.  Not on purpose, anyway.  But real life has a way of creeping in when you’re not looking.

For example, when I was writing Money, Honey, my now-seven-year-old was two & a half.  And this, if you haven’t been around a 2.5 yo in a while, is a hilarious age.  They have just enough language to engage with strangers, all the ego in the world & absolutely no self-consciousness that might check it.  They’re tiny, merciless little truth machines, pelting you daily with facts everybody knows but polite people refrain from yelling at top volume across the grocery store.  In short, they’re insanely cute but extremely uncomfortable. 

So of course I put one in my story.   Liz & Patrick are two of the most closed, wounded people I’ve ever written.  They have secrets on top of secrets, & defenses on top of walls on top of barbed wire.  Something needed to bust these people out of their comfort zones long enough to fall in love, especially Patrick.  So I gave him a niece.  An adorable, formidable, nuclear bomb of a child with an unstoppable mouth and energy to burn.  A little girl who loves him & demands love in return, even when she’s just peed on his favorite wool sweater.

So how about you?  Do you draw on real life when you write (or read), or do you just make stuff up?  How far would you go to research a book?  (I’ve always wanted to do one of those FBI citizen academies myself.)  Don’t be shy—fess up!  Up to five lucky commenter will win a copy of Money, Honey for their very own!

Thank you to Kristan Higgins and the rest of the Jaunty Quill sisters for allowing me to guest post today!

I came upon this lovely group blog because I adore the novels of Kristan Higgins, and she was gracious enough to invite me to write a guest post to coincide with the release of my debut novel, Free to a Good Home. There is something about a group blog, especially one called a “sisterhood,” that is so inviting to a new author, especially when one of its members is as warm and nurturing as Kristan. (Note from Kristan: I hope everyone’s listening!) What surprised me, though, when I first came for a visit is that The Sisterhood of the Jaunty Quills featured so many romance authors. It got me thinking about what draws us to romance as a genre. Because lately I find it difficult to finish a book if there is not at least the possibility it will reward me with a subplot involving matters of the heart.

In one of my favorite romantic movies, Before Sunrise, the character Celine says (to the adorable Ethan Hawke): “Isn’t everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?” I think that’s so true. Love is what makes us get up in the morning. It’s what gets us through the day. It’s what keeps us sane as we stare at the photocopier or the computer screen, or as we wait in line at the DMV or take abuse from a customer at the deli. Everything we do, it seems, is for the benefit of someone we love or to make ourselves worthy of being loved.

My debut novel is about a woman named Noelle who is trying to find love, but comes up short because she searches in the wrong places or sabotages her own efforts at happiness. Throughout the course of the novel, she experiences many kinds of love: she loves her ex-husband even though he no longer loves her back; she loves her Great Dane, Zeke, who loves her back unconditionally; she loves her family although they exasperate her to near insanity; she learns to love a woman whom she thought she hated; and she tries to love a new man even though her heart is still broken from the last. Every one of her mistakes and misjudgments, her triumphs and tragedies, emerges from this pursuit of love.

But she won’t be truly happy until she learns to love herself, and this is sometimes the most elusive kind of love to attain. In another of my favorite movies, Shirley Valentine, the main character leaves her oppressive life and lackluster marriage in London for a vacation in the Greek Isles. When her husband accuses her via telephone of having a sordid mid-life affair, she says, “The only holiday romance I’ve had is with myself. And I’ve come to like myself, really. I think I’m all right.” What better revelation can we ask for in life than the moment when we finally learn to accept ourselves after all the years of insecurity, heartache, and self-doubt, the moment when we stop trying so hard and embrace who we are—warts, bad habits, cellulite, and all—because underneath all those flaws, we find a person with strength and resilience, compassion and integrity, someone who is, after all, “alright.” Ironically, this is usually the moment when we become the most lovable.

That’s essentially what Free to a Good Home is about—coming home from that long and lonely journey of self-discovery and realizing that you do have a place where you belong, you do have people who love you, and despite all the struggle and grief, you have ultimately become the hero of your own life.

In your own life, what was the moment when you finally learned to accept yourself? Share your story in a comment below. Also, be sure to check out my website for a chance to win a free copy of Free to a Good Home or a book club package that includes eight signed copies and a Skype call-in to your book club. www.evemariemont.com The deadline to enter is July 18.

Please welcome Helen Brenna. Helen is the RITA award winning author of romances for Harlequin’s Superromance and NASCAR lines, and her April 2009 release, FROM THE OUTSIDE, is a current RITA nominee.  She lives with her family in Minnesota.                                                     

                                     Timing is Everything

Ever think about what your life might be like today if something major in the past had been different?  What if you’d … let’s say … moved to Kansas with that one guy instead of that other guy moving with you to Miami?  Or you’d bought the BMW rather than the VW Beetle?  You’d chosen the apartment near the lake rather than the one by the park, or bought that house in the city instead of the one in the burbs?

It’s easy to believe that major decisions do indeed change the outcome of our lives, but what if something minor had changed in your life?  What if you’d missed that one stoplight this morning?  Or went into the other checkout lane in the grocery store last week?  What if the outcome of our lives isn’t determined by our big decisions, but by every little minor thing that happens or doesn’t happen in our lives?

 ALONG CAME A HUSBAND, my June Superromance, is in a lot of ways all about timing.

Missy Charms and Jonas Abel (an FBI agent) meet one night about five years before the book starts.  It’s a chance meeting in a bar and they make a spit second decision to have hot and heavy sex in the parking lot.  Only thing is that this supposed-to-be-a-one-night-stand night turns into a whole week of hot sex, a week turns into three months, and three months turns into until-death-do-us-part.  Yeah, they get married.

Except that it wasn’t the right time for them for a lot of reasons.  

Missy ends up asking for a divorce and Jonas, thinking he’s doing her a favor, accepts a long-term undercover assignment and fakes his death.  Four years later, Missy’s living on Mirabelle Island and owns Whimsy, the new age gift shop.  (And no, there is no secret baby!)  When Jonas’s undercover assignment goes bad – he’s shot and bleeding – the only person in the world he knows he can trust is Missy.  But is their timing any better this time around?

So do you think there such a thing as bad or good timing?  Anything ever happen or not happen to you that you just know was all about timing?

ALONG CAME A HUSBAND is the fourth in my Mirabelle Island series, stand-alone books set on a fictitious Lake Superior island off Wisconsin’s northern shore.  With cobblestone streets, Victorian B&Bs, horse drawn carriages and a lot of undeveloped wilderness, Mirabelle is a place I hope you’ll want to come back to again and again. 

I’m giving away a copy of ALONG CAME A HUSBAND, so take a minute and chat with us today.  And stop by my website to learn more about my November release, THE MOON THAT NIGHT, and the 3 more Mirabelle Island books coming in 2011.

Thanks to Margo and all the other Jaunty ladies for letting me visit today!

Helen (Helen’s website)

Please welcome our guest, Michele Hauf today!

Just got back from the office supply store. I don’t know about you, but office supplies dazzle me. I can spend a long time in that store, marveling, dreaming, wondering at usefulness, imagining what I could possibly do with that. Today I got those divider thingies you put in a 3-ring binder. One set for Topics, and another set for the Alphabet. Joy!

You see, I’m finally figuring out that since I’ve written so many paranormal romances set in the same world, I should probably start organizing that world. Take some notes on it, perhaps? Write down characters’ names and details about them like where they live, hold old they are, what they look like, what they are. Other things I’ve neatly arranged in my precious World Binder are maps, a term list, character quotes, character cheat sheets (with their pictures so I can remember what they look like), creature lists (so I remember that my vampires bite, but my werewolves do not), and anything related to my world.

Oh, and I have to give this grand world a name, so I’ve called it BEAUTIFUL CREATURES. I like it. It works for me. Right now I’ve got 60+ characters listed, over a dozen creature types, and too many terms to count. This organization idea was a life saver. Now I can actually scan through and see who that guy was seven books ago that liked butterflies and called his lover ‘Dear’. Or who lives in Berlin, and can do a cameo scene in my current WIP, set in Berlin. And what, exactly, happens when a vampire bites a faery (it’s not pretty, trust me).

I love clutching my 3-ring binder to my chest and knowing I hold my whole world in my hands.

Heck, I just love a good excuse to go to the office supply store.

I have two copies of my latest ANGEL SLAYER, set in the Of Angels and Demons series and available from Harlequin Nocturne, to give away to two commentors today! And if you’ve read ANGEL SLAYER, I also have a short story, “Halo Hunter” currently available (and about Michael Donovan, a secondary character in Angel Slayer) that is an electronic book you can download at Amazon, eharlequin or any of your favorite online retailers. Read the first chapter of both stories at my website!

Tell me, do office supply stores beguile you? Do you take joy in organizing, no matter if it’s a world, a shelf of books, or a pantry full of groceries?

Visit Michele at her website: MicheleHauf
Blog: Michele’s Blog
Facebook: Michele’sFB
Twitter: Michele’sTwitter

Irrevocability

Ah, the thing that can’t be undone. Ringing the bell that can’t be unrung. Saying the thing that makes people stare. Doing the thing that makes you scared. (Hmm, I didn’t mean for that to rhyme. I’ve been reading too many kids’ books.)

There is nothing like doing something people will remember. Because that means you can’t take back. It means you’re committed. In for the long haul. The act, however unconsidered, is now binding.

For good or ill, that’s one of the most exciting parts of reading—and writing–fiction.

It’s part of the reason why the character’s in our novels don’t do mundane tasks in their lives on stage. It’s because things like cleaning the house don’t matter, in terms of Story. (Did you hear that?? Just tell your family it doesn’t have a fundamental turning point within it, so you’re giving it up entirely.) Cleaning and most of the other mundane tasks of daily life, are revocable. Nothing ‘turns’ on them. You could take them back, and no one would know or care. Nothing is fundamentally different as a result. They’re forgettable. Cleaning is almost the antithesis of irrevocable.

They never made a difference.

You can walk away from a clean OR a dirty toilet. That is . . . unless you found a diamond ring resting there, after you’d pushed back the hair from your sweaty forehead with a forearm and knelt to scrub your 20th toilet of the week. And then you saw it. Sparkling. A diamond ring. Which means someone lost it. Or tossed it. And your rent is due.

NOW you have a story. Now you have a protagonist. Someone with a choice to make.

Make the right ones and you have a hero. And a heroine.

In all our ‘keeper’ books, I think one of the things we’ll find is characters actively getting themselves deeper and deeper into worse and worse trouble, particularly with the hero/heroine, and there’s simply no backing out. Nothing they do can be reversed.

Sometimes this is hard for us as authors. We actually like our heroes and heroines. We discover their histories, and fall deeply in love with them. They’re part of our family. We want them to have a happy life.

But we also like you, the reader. We know you want a good story. Happy, easy things happening to nice, good people is not terribly dramatic.

And, in the end, we’re storytellers at heart. We know true heroes and heroines have to walk through the fire first. Sure, they can have their Happily-Ever-After, but the old-fashioned way: they have to earn it. The happy endings in our stories are earned, they are not handed out.

Check out the books on your ‘keeper’ shelves. I’ll bet you can find at least three or four places the storyteller had the characters make irrevocable, un-take-back-able choices. Decisions that—even if done in the spur of the moment, especially if done in the spur of the moment–pushed them closer to the dark edge of What They Known, then straight off the cliff, into peril and danger and their worst fears, right in the hero’s arms.

My sophomore release, The Irish Warrior, came out this week. Winner of RWA’s 2008 Golden Heart® Award for Best Historical Romance, it’s a super sexy, adventurous medieval romance. You can check out an excerpt here (http://kriskennedy.net/143), and I’m giving away a copy to one commentor.

My debut, The Conqueror, came out last May, and I am currently at work on two more historical romances for Pocket. Please stop by the website (http://www.kriskennedy.net/), check out excerpts (http://kriskennedy.net/143), sign up for the newsletter ( http://kriskennedy.net/subscribe-to-newsletter), and I’d love to hear from you ( http://kriskennedy.net/contact-me)

The Weather: An Old (and New) England Obsession . . .

Miranda Neville lives in Vermont, but in her writing she reverts to the accents of her native England. Her second historical romance, The Wild Marquis, is now available from Avon. In the first of a series featuring Regency book collectors, she draws on her former experience working at Sotheby’s auction house. One commenter will win a signed copy of The Wild Marquis.

Spring has come early to New England, at least a month early. My Vermont garden is eerily free of snow and little green things are sprouting. Not that I’m allowed to enjoy this unnatural state of things. Old-timers gather in the Post Office and general store, muttering dire warnings of storms to come. These are the old Yankees, utterly stoic and laconic on most occasions. But when it comes to the weather they like drama.

“It was minus 18 at my house this morning,” one will boast. “Minus 22 at mine,” says his friend and rival. I refrain from suggesting they get their thermometers checked. Mine said minus 10, and so did the weather report on the radio. If the weather forecast says we should expect six inches of snow, in my experience we’re more likely to get two inches, max. But the old guys tell me to expect a foot, two feet, even.

I enjoy listening to the weather exaggerators, because they come from a tradition I know well. I grew up in old England and over there everyone talks about the weather. Admittedly there’s not much to inspire drama, but the cool, damp climate is a fruitful subject for moaning and complaining.

So imagine my shock when reading a section of an early manuscript to my critique partners. “You can’t do that!” they shriek. “Your hero and heroine have just had an emotionally fraught exchange and now they are talking about the weather.” I’m baffled. I’m writing about English people. English people will always retreat from an emotionally fraught exchange into a discussion about the weather. If, that is, they are unfortunate enough to have an emotionally fraught exchange.

This was a moment when I learned one can overdo realism in fiction. My characters no longer talk about the weather. But they do suffer from it. They get rained on, sleeted on, occasionally snowed on. They freeze in unheated bedrooms (good excuse for nooky). They get splashed with mud (homage to Miss Elizabeth Bennet’s petticoats). Because in the end I find I cannot entirely escape my roots.

Climate is destiny.

Do you like to talk about the weather or does it bore you silly? Do you like to read about the weather? (I’m really hoping the answer is yes, so I can return meteorological observations to my books). One answer will win the prize.

Thanks, Margo, and all the Jaunty Quill ladies for the invitation to be here today! I haven’t blogged in a long time, and during the last couple of weeks I kept struggling with an idea for a topic – and then, in the most unlikely place, it came to me.

Two weekends ago I was in Phoenix to celebrate my father’s 70^th birthday, and at the party, before dinner, as about 15 family members were mingling over cocktails, my aunt asked me the typical questions we authors often get asked: Are you still writing romances? How’s the book business going? Do you still enjoy it after all these years? And of course my answers were the standard: Yes, sure, I’m still writing romances. The book business, as far as romance goes, is plugging along just fine. I enjoy it as much as anyone enjoys a really cool job. Yada, yada… My mistake, however, was adding this:

Me: “Sometimes I struggle to write love scenes after all these years, though. I mean, aside from different characters and places, sex is sex, and it’s never my favorite part to write in any of my books. Writing sex – for me – is hard.”

My aunt: “Well, why don’t you just stop writing the sex part? Can’t you just skim over that?”

Me: “Um, it’s kind of hard to do that. Actually, the love scenes are a very integral part of my stories. I just find them difficult to write. But intense love scenes are part of my books, and my readers love and expect them.”

Now, before you all decide this is a topic on writing sex, it’s not.  Though feel free to discuss that if you want! But my aunt’s response was the shocker. Here’s her reply, not kidding:

My aunt: “Well, I imagine most of the women who read romances are bored housewives and reading romance novels is how they get their jollies.”

Ugh.

Unfortunately, I’m one of those people who always thinks of a really good reply to an insult three days late. Of course my aunt wasn’t trying to be insulting; she’s just totally uninformed. I get that. And that’s the most difficult part – responding to an ignorant statement without sounding defensive and repeating the mantra, “I promise you romance is not about the sex! Smart women read romance! On the RWA website they have these statistics, and it says…” Blah, blah, blah.

So what was my genius reply?  My answer to my 64-year-old aunt at that moment was, “Well, that’s kind of a romance-reader cliché, actually. Most romance readers are educated women, and they don’t read them for the sex alone.”

Yeah. Okay. I’m sure that was convincing. Yes, basically, I just muttered the mantra, the standard RWA/respect-a-romance-reader/author defensive reply without thinking. I can’t remember if she just nodded or commented after that, but I was totally befuddled. I mean, I would have expected a comment about bored housewives from some guy on an airplane, but from a woman who’s lived through the sexual revolution and fought the stereotypes?

This whole exchange got under my skin. For years, romance readers and writers have been trying to gain more respect for a genre we love by appealing to the mainstream and trying to gain acceptance. Even RWA has tried its best to better educate the masses regarding who romances actually appeal to, and who is buying them. We’ve even got websites dedicated to denouncing the clichés and stereotypes (think Smart Bitches and AAR). But maybe we’re just going about it the wrong way? Maybe we’re trying too hard or wasting time? Maybe we’re beating a dead horse?

After this episode, I thought long and hard about my last decade in this business, and how I’ve tried to get not only my family to understand it, but how RWA and educated woman readers and writers have tried as well. The women in my family are all very educated. Even my grandmothers had advanced college degrees from the 1930s. My mother has a Ph.D. My sister, aunts, cousins… all educated. And not one of them reads romances as a genre of choice. Now, that’s not a fault or anything. They don’t look down on romance; it just doesn’t appeal to them.

My mom is a rabid mystery reader, so I know she’s not highbrow all the time. My sister teaches high school and doesn’t have time, frankly, to read much of anything for pleasure. Both, however, do read my books when a new one is released. Both say they enjoy them. Yay for me. My mom has asked me more than once why I don’t want to “branch out” into something else. She probably thinks mystery is a better genre because it’s her preferred choice. Who knows? But why should I, or anyone, try to change her mind about romance? Really, who cares what she thinks about the genre? My mom still recommended my last book to one of her bookclubs for their monthly read, and she recently told me she found me a “new fan” on a cruise by introducing my books to someone she met who reads romances regularly. I know my mom and sister are proud of me, my profession, and will buy and read my books. That’s about it. Will either of them pick up a Kathryn Smith or Terri Brisbin novel? No. And you know what? That’s fine. I’m sure Terri and Kate have family to make up for the lost readership of mine.

Here’s my point:  Why are we trying so hard to make people love us? Why are we, as romance readers and writers, trying so hard to get respect from people who don’t read romances regularly enough to know the difference between the clichéd and the awesome? Or, more precisely, between Barbara Cartland and Lisa Kleypas? Why do we give a rat’s puckered butt what the “mainstream” thinks of what we read and write? Maybe in my middle-age I’ve become jaded and tired of everybody in this business trying so damn hard, but seriously, who’s making the money here? Which genre is keeping the publishing biz afloat? Uh-huh. Exactly.

 I think we have some serious respect already, from the only people who matter. And if someone like my educated aunt can say she thinks romance novels are only being read by bored housewives, then well, it’s a shame she’s so uninformed. I think from now on we should all carry around one great book we love (or one of our own if we’re authors) in our purse or backpack or car to hand out to the ignorant, so that when that ill-informed individual on the plane or in Starbucks says, “Wow, you write/read trash?” we can snicker with a shake of the head, reach into our handbag, and offer them our little book gift as we say with feigned sadness, “You poor soul, you don’t have a clue, do you?” Or, if you’re less feisty, just a simple, “Try this book. You do not know what you’ve been missing!” I mean really, what else can we do but recommend a really good book? The worst that can happen is that Mr./Ms. Ignorant will pass it along, and it’ll eventually fall into the lap of someone who will love it.

We can’t make people enjoy romance when they’re mystery readers at heart; or respect us, our work, or our reading material if they don’t want to give it a college try because the stereotypes are tattooed on their brains. Why get defensive and try to convince them with stats? I say better to let them think we know something they, as poor ignorant souls, do not, than to keep begging for friggin’ respect. Enough already!

Finally, a really good, bestselling author friend (who shall not be named because she’s never given me permission to repeat this) has discussed this topic with me more than once, and her feeling is summed up this way: “I know what I write. I know what my readers what to read. If you want to compare it to literature, then sure, it’s fluff. So what? What’s wrong with fluff? Why is there no respect in fluff? Why do we always have to compare ourselves to great literature? I don’t write literature, I write fluff and my readers buy it, love it and want more. That doesn’t make me any less of a professional, and I don’t have to apologize for it.”

Fluff is good! So let’s stop beating that poor dead horse named “Respect Romance or Die” and just offer a book to the uninformed instead. It isn’t nearly as exhausting! Any comments?

Be sure to check out Adele’s newest book, My Darling Carline – and be on the lookout this summer for The Duke’s Captive.