A Good Story, My Way

Molly O'Keefe's post on Drunk Writer Talk the other day started an interesting discussion.

But reading Anne Stuart I realized, sure it helps to be Anne Stuart - but editors are dying for different. Readers are dying for different - the envelope is DYING to be pushed. And ANYONE can do it. Any one of us.

and

I know there are so many writers out there thinking - I write totally different heroines and no one will buy my books but e-press or small press or no one and I'm totally pissed off and disillusioned. My answer to you is -- write better. Be better.

Her point is that you can't give yourself excuses for not writing something challenging because you've heard "the market" won't like it. She's right.

First off, though, the rules are different for historical writers. There are certain eras we just can't publish, no matter how good we are. I thought I was crazy until I read Amanda Elyot's comment on another blog post:

I love the French Revolution and every time I've proposed setting a story there, my agent (who personally loves France, and the period) throws up her hands and tells me that it's not commercial and that American readers hate the French.

and

The ancient world is underrepresented in general (Asia, Greece, Rome), and editors will insist it's because there isn't a market for it, unless you're writing about someone insanely famous, a household name such as Helen of Troy..

and

Some editors will tell you, "I just want a good story!" but they don't really mean that. What they really mean is "I just want a good story -- set in a commercially marketable era."

(And because I used so much of her comment, I'll give her linkage: Amanda Elyot's next book is called All For Love and will be out Feb. 5 according to Amazon.)

I think the equivalent for a contemporary writer would be a novel that brings 9/11 into it in any way, shape, or form. I think even Anne Stuart's editor would say, "I like it, but cut out the 9/11 bits." The only romance I've ever read that made mention of 9/11 at all - Deborah Smith's Crossroads Cafe - was published by a small press.

"But look at paranormals - they weren't big a few years ago," we say to each other. "It only takes one." But what was the big paranormal book that broke the mold? Can't think of it, right? Interview with a Vampire was published way back in 1980, so we don't owe it to Anne Rice.

I'll tell you what happened - Buffy the Vampire Slayer happened. A TV show. It's never a book, alone, that changes the trend - and don't say the word Potter because we all know that's a once-a-century occurrence. We got Buffy and then we got Buffy-like books. And Buffy went but we still have Supernatural and all of that feeds into the movies that get made and the books that get published.

By this logic, should Rome mean we get lots of ancient-period romances and Deadwood mean we get Westerns? No, because crap on a stick, those stories are dark. Buffy had cute guys and sexual tension and all that stuff that makes a good romance.

When you're looking at trends in books, you can't just be looking at books. You have to look at all of it - TV, film, because the big trends happen in all of them together. Which is funny, 'cos now that there's a writer's strike, where's the next big trend going to come from? Reruns of Family Ties? Golf?

Or, for once, that book you're writing?

How Far to Pittsburgh?

In between the endless, lonely work of querying agents (2 rejections and one request for pages so far), I did a little daydreaming about being able to afford to go to the Romantic Times convention. In browsing the site I couldn't quite believe my eyes when I came across the Cover Model Dinner.

To spice up our 25th Anniversary Convention we've rounded up several cover models for an exclusive, intimate dinner with these gorgeous hunks that will make a lifetime of memories.

For an extra $100 you get dinner with Fabio, Adrian Paul (not sure what he has to do with romance covers?), and the ubiquitous, uni-expressioned John DeSalvo, who you may recognize from this:




And this:




Oh, the drama.

But it gets better:

Fortin and Sanders Illustrations have been commissioned to paint Adrian's and Fabio's portraits, which will be raffled with proceeds going to The Peace Fund, and Support Our Soldiers America, Inc.

If you think a painted portrait of Fabio sounds bad, it could be worse. One of the other models at the dinner looks like this:




And one looks like this:




That is some scary shit on your bedroom wall. Scary. Shit. Will anyone keep their dinner down?

I'm tempted by the portrait, if only for the Ebay potential, but... nah. I think I'll keep my money and stay home. You can send out a lot of pages with a hundred bucks.

Romance and Movie Stars

I've started to sketch out my next novel. I don't know everything about it yet, but I've decided my heroine will look like Julianne Moore.




Beauty, brains, and all that self-confidence - I only hope I can do her justice.

Of course, Ms. Moore is in her early 40s, and as ageism is alive and well in Romancelandia, I'll have to make my heroine younger. I think one's 40s are quite awesome and I'm looking forward to them myself, but the next book will be another historical when lifespans were shorter. To make it that far with all your teeth and no puerperal fever was a decent achievement.

Here she is again:




Why is it so common for romance writers to use actors and actresses as character models? It's extremely frequent - most of us who blog about writing have mentioned it at some point or another, some writers even posting pictures over their computers to keep them inspired. But why?

I think part of it is that we're writing about people who fall in love. A large part of falling in love is physical attraction, and if the writer doesn't have a sense of the character's physical attractiveness, she can't really bring it to the reader. A convincing sex scene needs some hot people, even if they're only in the writer's mind.

We get so much of what we consider attractive from the media. Television has the advantage of seeing a gorgeous character over time, episode after episode. Movies are larger than life - we see the actors in big situations, their faces 20 feet high. We can't help but respond to a face in a situation like that, be awed, be inspired. Fall in love.

It rarely comes through to the reader, what actor or actress was used to inspire a character. It doesn't really need to. It's enough that we know who we were thinking of - whose picture is over the monitor. And whether we admit it or not, we all do it, sooner or later.