Another Tuesday. Another newsletter from yours truly.
So, here’s a snippet of news.
My next project will be a spin-off from the Dalthia series. It takes place in the same world. We’ll see some of the princesses. My main characters will be familiar to you because they appeared in the Books of Dalthia.
Have you ever been reading a book, and when someone asks you what genre it is, you kind of wince as you admit that it’s “just” a romance? I know I’ve had this inclination. Heaven forbid I be caught reading that mushy love stuff. What a waste of time, right? Except that, no, it’s not. The romance genre shouldn’t be viewed as less than any other genre, but somehow that’s the hand it’s been dealt.
But where did this need to undermine the value of the romance genre come from? Somehow action and comedy and sci-fi feel more acceptable. Is it because they’re more male-centric? Well…yes. I believe so. Action is about being tough. Science fiction is about sciency stuff. Comedy makes you laugh. But romance. Ooh. Geez. Romance is all about feelings. That’s girly stuff. As if men don’t experience emotions. As if valuing and discussing and wanting love someone makes a person less than.
This post was originally written as a guest post for Mythical Books.
A friend of mine pitched a story idea to an agent, saying she believed her story fit into the ‘New Adult’ category that has appeared recently. The agent’s response was, “Oh, is it erotica?” My friend assured her it was not, and the agent explained that in the publishing industry, the new category of ‘New Adult’ is used to put more explicit adult content in books meant for younger audiences than the usual ‘adult’ category.
This is more than a little disturbing to me.
Before I was lucky enough to find blogs and other resources that I could rely on for book recommendations, I would troll Amazon. If a description caught my eye, I would look at the sample pages. In doing so I discovered a disturbing trend in romance novel plots. Two books still stick out in my mind. One started with a drunken man stumbling into what he thinks is his room at an Inn. He then assumes that the girl sleeping in the bed must be a prostitute and he treats her as such. The second book started with a ‘gentleman’ (it was a regency, I believe) coming upon a lady in a garden. He only sees her from behind and mistakes her for someone he was supposed to be meeting for a romantic rendezvous. He ends up assaulting the poor girl before realizing she’s not who he thought she was. When he does realize, there is no apology. He just turns on the charm, brushes it off as no big deal, and they part ways. Later, during the social gathering they are attending, he winks at her from across the room.
I went back and read the descriptions of these books and realized that, yes, in both cases I had just met the hero and heroine of the book. These were the two people that were going to fall in love and live happily ever after.
What the crap??!! Are you kidding me?
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