Tag Archives: publishing

And I’ll Never have that recipe again.

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Swell agrees with me. Someone left freshness seal open on contemporary romance novels.

Walk into the romance section of any book store. Pull a contemporary romance off the shelf. You know exactly what you’re going to get, don’t you? Big city girl returns to her small-town roots.  Small town good girl goes bad to get the city bad boy to go good. If it’s not the return of the Andy Griffith Show crossed with Northern Exposure, it’s a reissue of an 80s Janet Evanovich, or, as Swell put it, Lori Foster, AKA an author who’s jumped the shark.

The Contemporary is as stale as last year’s Christmas sugar cookies. No, wait. As stale as week-old white bread–the soft, squishy kind that’s laden with preservatives. I’m talkin’ Wonderbread stale.

Screw the small town.  I don’t give a rat’s about "character driven small town romance." Bring back the character driven romance. Period.

Please?

I’m not alone in pining for a contemporary. Carly Phillips is too. On the Romance University Blog, Carly said: As a reader, over the last year when I would go into a bookstore and look for a good, light contemporary romance, they were few and far between. Yes, the staple authors of the genre put out their contemporary romance novels, but for fast readers like me, there weren’t enough contemporaries to sustain my appetite.


There aren’t enough contemporaries to sustain or satisfy my appetite and you know what? I’m BORED.

No. I don’t want another paranormal. Sorry about this, Swell, but am I REALLY the only one disappointed that Contemporary GODDESS Jenny Crusie and Bob Mayer chose to go paranormal with Wild Ride?

Well, am I?

Where, oh, WHERE have the freshly baked contemporary goods gone? Look. I am not a fan of white bread. It’s spongy and bland, just like the few contemporaries I’m finding on the shelf. Where is the caraway rye? The pumpernickel? The cinnamon swirl?

Enough with the cookie cutter stuff. As much as I love cookies, I’d really love it if a publisher, some AGENT would wake up roll out some new contemporary romance. I have money and I will buy.

If you need some starter dough, I have a nice one. It’s yeast free.

My Inigo Montoya Whinge

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You know him you love him, you’re familiar with his cry, "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my Father. Prepare to die,"  but less known are these even more impactful words he utters, " I hate waiting."

Waiting. I don’t think about it until someone asks about my writing, then it seems all I do IS think about how long I’ve been waiting.  And waiting. Waiting to hear if an agent wants to represent me, waiting to hear of a publisher wants to offer me a contract, as Vizzini said to Fezzik, I’m waiting.

And as I wait, there’s part of me that worries that there must be something wrong with my email address. Sometimes I believe my reply is trapped in the junk mail filter. Other times I think my ISP is on some kind of spammers list so whatever reply I sent was simply bounced back to the sender.  Then reality hits and I remember waiting is the nature of the game. Once I waited nine months. The next time I waited eleven. There was one instance a rejection letter was sent out to me in May, but it took until October for me to receive.

Waiting.  I hate waiting. 

Patience, you and Yoda say. Ok Fine. I’ll be patient. I’ll learn to move the rock with my mind raise the X-Wing from the Fireswamp, but an ROUS is nibbling away at my resolve.
Yes, I’m mixing up my genres and the only word I can think of to describe my frustration is Humperdinck!

Feeling Muse-ical or How The Pulp of My Creative Juice Was All Wrapped up in a Bathroom Renovation

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Is it just me or is it odd that the Muse has dragged her bony ass out of bed at the exact same time the bathroom floor is being grouted? 

Yes, Biteyites, that’s right. She’s stretched her legs, had some breakfast and is lounging macside in a modest-yet-sexy tankini. She tossed on some Andy Gibb and made suggestions for writing sex scenes, and while the littlest Gibb told me, in his clear falsetto, he just wants to be my everything, she whispered ‘explorer‘ in my ear.

And I was off, off and writing. About Vasco de Gama and Ferdinand Magellan and Men who explore things. With their hands. All for their Queen.

All right. So it’s only a page. It was a very important page. It LIVES, much like the juicy Muse I squeezed this afternoon.

Today, I get my bathroom back and breathe a sex life back into And She Was, and tomorrow, the plumber comes back to replace my toilet, install my sink and hook up the drainpipe on my tub. Then, not only will I have my Muse back and my characters doing it, I’ll be able to have a bubble bath.

 

Nome de bitey

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Since Shrinky’s really into notoriety and trumpeting one’s own horn, he doesn’t think much of authors who use pen names or actors who trade in Bernard Schwartz for Tony Curtis. Try explaining it to him and he simply shakes his head. Why an author would want to be anyone but who they are? What is that author trying to hide? To him, a nome de plume is sign of deep psychological issues. Then again, he thinks cosmetic surgery is too.

Which is probably why we disagree on an individual’s reasons for having a pen name or getting a nose job. 

An old friend, one who’s had a mustache since I met him back in 9th grade, recently asked me what my pen name was going to be. I’ve kicked around a couple of ideas. I don’t think publishers would be pleased if I went with Old Bitey, but it would put me at the beginning of the alphabet on bookshelves. So how does one go about choosing a name to be plastered on a book cover?  How did Nora Roberts choose JD Robb? I dig the initial thing, but could I go with a one-name nome de plume a la Madonna or Homer (and I don’t mean The Simpsons)?

I’m sure my old 9th grade buddy. who we’ll call "Fritz," would suggest Freda. Swell would tell me to go with my initials. And Shrinky would suggest therapy.

Then he’d expect I’d want to have my nose done, but he’d be wrong. I’d have a chin implant.

Faker: The Ongoing Saga.

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 Another Blog at Blogger has purloined my text.

There’s a ripped off from Oldbitey entry about Oldbitey’s ripped off entry appearing–with more Russian–at:
 http://underworkbed.blogspot.com/2008/09/mrand-mrssmithcom.html

You look and see. Go ahead. Prove that I’m not paranoid.

Wanna bet this entry gets sucked and posted onto one of those faker’s sites too?  Shall we wait together and see where it goes?

It’s a mystery…All this stealing could come from this LJ site directly. There are so few fans of Oldbitey out there my guess is the posts might have been lifted from the Oldbitey link to Facebook. I can pretend this is something worthy of investigation by say, oh the Bobbsey Twins, or Encyclopedia Brown, but to be honest, I love puzzling things. I’m really curious to figure this out. 

I contacted Blogger to let them know of the rampant thievery. I’m supposed to file a formal Terms of Service and DMCA complaint with Google–that’s a fancy copyright infringement doo-hicky. And yes. Oh, yes, there will be paperwork! I am filing.

Ya hear that, ya big fat fakers?

So watch ME get in trouble for pointing out the wrongness by naming names and displaying the links to the fakers.

OK, if you don’t believe me, ya’ll try this, if you write a blog. Google yourself as your Blogname and follow the trail. You’ll come upon all sorts of things.  Check through the links, really look at them,  and see if you too have been posted as an entry on another’s blog. 

Then get back to me.

I may be busy writing a novel based on this experience.

Can’t you see it? Romantic suspense. Using computer-to-man interface, the IT guy at Google, the one working with the blog author whose work is being ripped off by fakers, goes deep inside Blogger and discovers a contract has been issued on the author. She’s set to be "wiped out" because her complaint has uncovered a conspiracy to take over the net. And it’s an email race against time to sort out the copyright case, fall in love, and save her from being spammed to death!

Yeah. It’s a little Jumpin’ Jack Flash meets Tron meets The Net and I’m no Whoopi Goldberg or Sandra Bullock, but I’ll make it work.
 
And you just watch. This idea will get ripped off too! First it will turn op on some faker’s blog over at Blogger.  You keep your eye out.  Because then it’ll be turned into a shitty TV series starring the Cheerleader from Heroes.

And she’s too damn young to play me.

The murder of the muse

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Do we really need a movie version of The A-Team?  Seriously. What is this rehash trend? Is there no sense of creativity left in Hollywood–or in publishing?

What happens in films happens in publishing too. An audience it targeted. One portion of an audience. It’s most obvious with action movies where things blow up and lots of people die. Crime TV shows are all the rage. So are crime novels. These days, in Romance, once smokin’ hot Chick Lit has moved over for Paranormals. Chick Lit used to be everywhere you looked and it got tiresome reading about drinks, clothes, the boyfriend who wouldn’t commit, the boss who was a dragon…Now that urban angst has been  transferred to Vampires, Werewolves, witches, zombies…you name it. Now Paranormals have become the action movie of the Romance genre.

I’m not knocking paranormals completely. I’ve read several that are innovative (Charlaine Harris’  Sookie Stackhouse series) and it’s interesting how they span Horror and Romance. However, my point is this: Chick Lit and Paranormals  are two good examples of jumping on the publishing trend money train much the same way TV shows into movies have flooded cinemas. The sad truth is, the bottom line is, everything is about money.

All hail the almighty buck.

Hey greedy movie makers and publishers! I’ll happily line your pockets, but you’ve forgotten the largest demographic! You hide behind myths (like vampires) and buy into that idea that youth is beauty (like vampires). You slay our muses with a stake made of money. You blooksuckers!

Ahem. Now buy my book. Please. It’s vampire free.

Or is it?

My theory of why paranormals sell so well is simple; it revolves around the very nature of vampires. It’s all about the youth-fixated, youth-aimed, youth-embracing media. Vampires perpetuate a big ol’ myth.  Gee, if you’re a vampire, you get to live forever. You get to be ageless and beautiful forever. Hell, no wonder paranormals are hot. At $20 a book, reading about a gorgeous, thin person with a fabulous night life is a cheaper fantasy than $300 a pop for Botox.

Of course, It’s a trend that’s going to fade like a vampire in the sun.

So what comes next? Seventy-eight million Baby Boomers (and the entering their 40s Gen-Xers) with money to burn. Make the movies, like Nancy’s Myers’ Something’s Gotta Give, publish stories with heroines over 40. Read about beautiful 50 somethings falling in love. 

Wait a second. Once you’re over 50 you’re supposed to be dead.  Who needs romance when you’re heart’s stopped, you only look good in the dark, and you’ve sprouted hair all over you body?

Oh dear, God, You’ve turned into a vampire or werewolf.

So I guess that means you’re part of the trend already!

I hear a sequel comin’ on.

Full brains

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 Going against the spirit of disgorging it NaNo style, instead of writing, I chopped 1300 words, all in one axing poke of the delete button. Of course I saved what I cut. 

So why’d I cut?

I perused the most recent updates for submissions for St Martin’s Press. They publish Rom Com. They are looking for more, they are open for queries right now but yet they want 80-90K. 

Cue Oldbitey.

Cutting 1300 words isn’t going to put me there. I’ll still be over, but not by much…I hope. The scene, a bathroom semi-boink scene was padding. Padding, like a lot of those bras out there now, does not give the story more lift. Sure, sometimes pading smooths and masks imperfections, but in my case it was not necessary to the story that remains and there was no real transition from that scene to the action.

Plus trying to figure out how I was going to moved from there to what happened next was making my head hurt. 

Makin’ whoopee

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I once had dinner with this guy, the son a friend’s friend. He was 28. Over the complimentary bread with extra virgin olive oil and Balsamic dip, he let slip how he was dreading the idea of turning 30 because that signaled the death knell of his sex life. 

For a minute we thought he was joking, but he was dead serious and he told us why.  To him, sex was strictly for teens and twentysomethings. Sex over thirty was a dirty, flabby, saggy, unpretty thing no amount of Botox or cosmetic surgery could ever fix. Furthermore, anyone over thirty having sex was a deviant.

Of course, he also believed women who didn’t have perfect bodies should be banned from beaches, gray hair was just wrong, and no self respecting man would surf after the age of 18. Clearly he had issues. 

That dinner sat in the back of my mind for a few years. He bought right into the myth that beauty is bound by age. Men, and women especially, have a use by date. He was/is the product of the machine that glorifies youth and dismisses age, and he right to led to my masters thesis on the need for older heroines in Romance novels.

Over at murdureshewrites.com they’re having a discussion about older heroines. I put in my two cents there and I’ll do it again here as I do from time to time–all in the name of my masters research, of course.

Thank you Hollywood. Thank you publishers. Yes, we like fantasy, escapism, but we are hungry for realism, for truth, for something we can realte to. You want to tap into a market and line your pockets with even more money, wake up and look at the largest demographic out there. Cater to those who are shamlessly having sex at mid-life. Make movies and books with heros and heroines who are age appropriate! Speak to us and we will fork over our money. 

Don’t perpetuate myths that cause 28 year old men to think their sex life is over!

Adolescent Rapture = Research Fodder

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Oh man, at six-one, Jon-Erik Hexum as Phineas Bogg (big ol’ nod to Mr Verne) was this adolescent girl’s fantasy…A time traveller with Viking blue eyes and reddish blonde hair…Damn, had the man survived his accidental, on-the set of Cover Up, self-inflicted gunshot wound (pre and scarily like Brandon Lee) he could have been Jamie Fraser!

Besides that, I finally worked out my Simon Baker fixation came from (See Simon over there): A TV show that ran for one season.

 Voyagers! is now available on DVD. Of course I realise if I bought the set my teenage fantasies would all be dashed, because we’re talking 80’s adventure TV show aimed at kids. But just look at the man, he was beautiful—As is Simon Baker, whose face has a bit more of that crinkly handsomeness that comes with age. Check out the Romantic Comedy Something New for ultimate smiley crinkles
 
Maybe I’ll kick up a bit of fuss with the he could be Jamie Fraser quip. Diana Gabaldon might actually read this blog and laugh her arse off (just like you laughed your arse off at the idea she’d stumbled onto Oldbitey), but it’s my opinion and I’m stickin’ with it.

So how does this relate to my master’s research?

Outlander, Diana Gabaldon’s historical series features a rather scorching romance between the hero (Scotsman Jamie) and his time-travelling doctor wife (Englishwoman Claire). The books are masterful at showing the relationship between man and wife as it progresses over time. From when they meet in their 20’s, to the most recent book in the series, which finds them nearing sixty, their romance (and sex life) still burns brightly. It’s not a “relationship novel” or “womens’s fiction (she calls them historical fantasias)” I like the fact these two characters are each other’s Great Romance, a romace that didn’t end when Claire turned forty. It’s part Science Fiction, part Historical Fiction, and part Romance. It works on so many levels, especially on the romantic plane because true romance threads its way through a marriage, regardless of age.

Gabaldon’s series is probably the best-known example of mature, mid-life Romantic love. There is a small list of other books, or other stories where the mid-life romance is a subplot. TV and film are making a bit more headway with the mid-life romantic hero and heroine–e.g. Desperate Housewives & Something’s Gotta Give. Maybe publishing will catch up soon.

Cue Me.

Academic WIP

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It’s fascinating to read about what others suggest, to learn about the “structure to success” and what makes a winning Romance novel. It didn’t take long to establish that, for me, using a How-To manual (I don’t mean a style guide for grammar and mechanics) to write, is counterintuitive, counterproductive, and frustrating. While I find the process of how others put their puzzles together, intriguing, I find it hard to believe it works. When I apply the suggested methods I get wrapped up in character grids, time lines, and collaging—all that stuff that fed directly into my first ever anxiety attack—writing takes a backseat. And then it slips under the seat with loose change and dirt the Dust Buster can’t suck up. I can’t do forced storytelling without the seven veils, dancing, and thousand and one nights.
 
Yes, it’s interesting to observe and discuss the process other writers use. The curiosity gave me the idea to do a comparative study where I’d write one novel with manuals and one novel without, in a year. It’s taken me 7 months to get to 65,000 word of the manual-free novel. In that same time, using the guides, novel number two has 3,000 words.
 
So let’s face it, I’ve sunken my teeth into a bit more chaw than I can chew and spit. Plus I hate the taste. Which mean I’m scrapping that comparative puppy.
 
What is it I really want to do, to accomplish? Intuition tells me to scrap the two novel idea and go where my real interest lies. There’s a dearth of heroes and heroines searching for love mid-life. The need and desire for romance does not end at 35, after divorce, or menopause. Half of all marriages end, the majority of people remarry between the ages of 40-43. The population is aging and a huge chunk of us are being left out…of Romance. The books aimed squarely at women 35+ are Relationship novels, Women’s Fiction, the what happens after I do (Hello, Harlequin Mills & Boon’s NEXT line). Romance dries up, or gets relegated to a secondary plotline or character. This is where the real idea, the actual interesting part of my thesis springs forth. This is how I can marry the How-To manual work to my premise.
 
While using the basic framework of those How to Write Chick Lit/ How to Write A Romance, handbooks, I’m going to focus on writing a Romance for an older audience. My theory? If it’s romantic, if it fits the bill of romance, the age won’t matter. Granted I can’t make the H&H 70 (even though recent studies prove seniors enjoy active sex lives), but I can sit them squarely in midlife and make romance the focus of the story.
 
Then I write, This is a single case study. Blah blah blah. The dry, academic part goes here and it pleases the committee. I get awarded an MA. The novel is picked up by a publisher, and I make my name as a “new” subgenre in Romance develops.
 
That’s the new plan.
 
Now, how do I convince my advisor it will fly?