The Story on the Cover of a Romance

What kind of romance cover makes you want to pick up the book (or comic) and read it? I’ve always been attracted to covers with brides on them. Bridal gowns are so special, so elaborate, and so individual. And women usually only wear them once. Sure, celebrities or Hollywood types may have fabulous white (or off-white, oyster, pearl, or cream) designer gowns for each of their innumerable weddings. But for the normal woman, there is usually just one wedding in white, and then the other weddings, if they happen at all, are far less formal. I even know a couple whose second wedding was in Vegas, officiated by an Elvis impersonator. (Considering the number of people who do that every year, you probably know someone, too.) I never thought much about what I liked on the cover of a romance, what drew me to pick it up and maybe buy it or check it out from the library, until an editor told me that romance readers play favorites. And then I realized she was right. Certain themes, such as marriage of convenience, or amnesia, appeal to me. So if a cover of a romance hinted at either, I would pick up the book. (Sales professionals say that if a customer gets the book into her hand, the book is pretty much sold.) Thus a bride on the cover would not just signal “nice dress,” but would also signal the kind of story set-up I like to read about. Obviously, showing amnesia isn’t as easy as showing that there’s a wedding in the story. Usually a tag line will explain that amnesia is involved. And maybe the hero and heroine look a bit puzzled. I love to read those stories. They always seem so fantastic. And I love how the person with amnesia gets to start over in life for a brief period and discover their personal likes and dislikes anew. But I have a friend who does not find amnesia in the slightest bit romantic ever since a relative suffered brain damage in an accident. So it’s not a romance theme that is to everyone’s taste. Perhaps if you know someone who actually had to contract a marriage of convenience, you might not be amused by that storyline, either. And then some people like stories set on islands. I hadn’t thought of myself as a big island fan, but come to think of it, I’ve been watching “Lost” on TV and that all takes place on an island. Or supposedly it does. Or maybe twin islands? Who knows? Often, island settings are beautiful. And private. So there’s a back-to-Eden theme underlying many romances set on islands. Of course they could just be inhabited islands that cater to tourists, such as in the Caribbean or the Mediterranean. Then there’s the having-a-fabulous-vacation theme. Beautiful clothing on a heroine appeals to me. (See bridal gowns, above.) Every once in a long while, the actual faces of the characters depicted on a book cover appeal. But since they are meant to be rather blandly beautiful, they usually don’t do much. When I think about it, probably the people on book covers who are most appealing are the ones taken from real life. Either cover models with something distinctive about them, or swipes of celebrity or movie star faces. Needless to say, no politicians! Bodies? Especially hot bodies? I know it’s been a big thing for years to have clinch covers and semi-nude heroes, especially on historical romance covers. But despite my visual orientation, these depictions don’t excite me. I think the reason is that the men are too muscular, too beyond what I would find comfortable in real life. (True story: I once shared an elevator ride with three men from a professional sports team. They were enormous, just enormous, and not one of them had an inch of fat below the waist. It was way intimidating physically. And I am neither short nor tiny.) On the other hand, I do enjoy a good looking cowboy or a sheriff. Not a city cop. That uniform doesn’t appeal, probably because I spent enough time in big cities to encounter plenty of those guys. Way too beefy for me. But highway patrolmen seem more lithe, gracefully manly without the excess meat. And that vertical stripe on the side of the uniform pants makes any man’s legs look long and strong. Now, is this a sexist, objectifying series of comments, or what? Sorry guys. We do look and assess. Hmm...what else? What do you look for in the cover or the instant visual for a romance? The setting? The hair color? The time period? The apparent wealth of all involved? A big castle in the background? Scottish tartans? Glamorous locales or industries such as movies, music, or sports?

Will Trade Sex for Shoes

A joke has been going around the Internet that features a series of flow charts explaining what a man can do to try to obtain sex from a woman, and how nothing works, he gets no sex, until he finally buys her designer shoes. It’s pretty funny. Designer shoes have become a big deal in our culture recently. I think I know how. The popular TV show, “Sex and the City,” featured a heroine, Carrie, who was nuts over expensive shoes. She had an entire shoe closet. She even got mugged for them once. (Just as well. They looked terrible with that dress. Actually, that dress looked terrible, period.) A certain kind of very high heeled, pointy-toed, usually red shoe even has a name: F**k-me shoes. You get the point: Do not engage me in business or intellectual discussions; take me to bed. I once saw a woman shopping in a discount store (Wal-Mart, to be precise) wearing those shoes. In all other respects, she looked like a normal young woman out with her husband and two young children buying necessities. But those towering red pointy stilettos said: “I am not just a wife and mother. I have another life. Maybe I’m even a stripper. I am powerful because I am sexy.” Whew! A decade or so before this high-heeled shoe thing, there was an anti-heels thing going on. Actually, what happened was that New York City had a transit strike and a lot of people had to walk to work. The NYC pavement is very hard. The whole city is built on granite, which doesn’t help. So fashionable women stuck on the upper west side or the lower east side trudged miles to work, but they wore sneakers to do it. In pointless imitation of New Yorkers, other women in other cites wore sneakers to work and changed at the office, too. Well, that couldn’t last. How many pairs of sneakers does a woman need? Even an athlete? Only a relative few, because all sneakers create pretty much the same mood. But heels—ah, heels can be different for every single reason a woman leaves the house. Meanwhile, black became the de rigeur costume in the big city. Whereas before, women only dressed in black for funerals, cocktail parties, and to work the perfume counter at Macy’s, now women were wearing all black, all the time. Black looks good on some people; on others, it looks terrible. But slaves to fashion wore that black, to prove they were fashionable, or professional, or young. Whatever the black clothes were supposed to mean, they drew a distinct line between colorful suburban dressing and sober city garb, that’s for sure. And then a funny thing happened. Women started accessorizing the black clothing with colorful, impractical, silly little shoes. Glaringly impractical, very high-heeled shoes. Nasty, red, F**k-me shoes. Without admitting they were getting tired of black, women simply transferred their desire for color, originality, and fun to their shoes. We all know what happened then. Manolo Blahnik, Jimmy Choo, Prada, and a lot of other designers have cashed in on women’s suddenly revived focus on shoes. "Sex and the City" just helped tell the world. I went to the Manolo Blahnik shop in Manhattan a couple of years ago and examined his shoes carefully. Aside from them having kicky designs, arty ideas, or just plain expensive crocodile leather (which was hard, not soft), I did not see a shoe that would last if one actually had to walk anywhere in it. The soles are very thin. They are meant to be worn from a limo to a club, and then back to the limo. Totally impractical. I shudder to imagine wearing them on the ultra-hard NYC pavement. But practical shoes are never going to be important to women as long as economic inequality keeps them in competition with each other for men. We need every bit of weaponry possible to vie for the richest, handsomest, sexiest, and most powerful men. How do we do it? We cripple our feet with high heels. Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid (the original one, not the Disney G-rated version) was willing to walk on knives (i.e., accept horrible pain in her feet), just to have a chance with the handsome prince—a prince who was not worthy of her adoration. Short women admit to wearing very high heels just to be taller. Why? Because height gets you noticed. They’ll pay later, but now, they’ll mess up their feet in order to look more like the American ideal of the tall, thin woman. And speaking of thin, the wonderful thing is your shoes usually fit you whether you’ve been spending your nights in a rock star’s bed or in front of the TV with Ben and Jerry. Have no life? Get shoes. Have a great life? Get even more shoes. They work whether you are up or down. Heels always hurt my feet. But I guess in the long run these shoes hurt less than men do. And you can kick them off with far less trouble. So maybe giving her shoes is the perfect way to woo a woman. It shows her that her man sees her as sexy, powerful, and fun. And the right size. Good message. Maybe sex will happen tonight after all.

Write Something Good

At romance writing conferences, some author usually stands up and humbly asks the editors “What would you like me to write?” The editors always tell her vaguely and rather helplessly to write something “good.” Everybody goes away frustrated, yet what they want is no secret: Authors look for direction, and editors look for imagination. The author’s lack of vision is depressing. When an author asks an editor what to write, she’s asking the editor to do an essential part of her own job as a writer. It’s up to the author to create new personalities, new situations, and new angles. True, she’s doing it in a vacuum, largely unaware of sales figures or genre trends. (Although the Internet is a big help.) And some authors don’t read much, except research material. The authors are depending on instinct, so they look to the editors for advice. But though the editors may have vast market knowledge (and then again, maybe not, since sales figures sometimes dribble in to editorial divisions), editors also are operating on instinct. They can never know for certain what the public will enjoy tomorrow, only what it enjoyed yesterday. Sometimes editors take a chance on a manuscript simply because a gut feeling says the time is right. But sometimes the book doesn’t find its audience right away. It is labeled a mistake until reading tastes shift and it is reissued as part of an established trend. (Think of all the people who wrote vampire stories before the paranormal trend arose. Any editor who published one was stepping out on a limb.) Meanwhile, if the editor isn’t willing to take a risk, she’s tempted to accept a story but fiddle with it to make it more like what is already out and popular, what is recognizably of a genre. If the author wants to create a story similar to a particular trend, then the editor’s suggestions for changes may help. The editor does usually know more about what will go over with an already established audience than an author does. But what if the author is trying to do something a little different, and the editor thinks it’s a mistake, or doesn’t recognize this as a breakthrough? Then the editor and author argue over what to change. Who wins this battle is largely decided by who holds the upper hand. The less financial or artistic recognition an author has, the less likely she is to have full control of her words. And just to get published, many writers will willingly cede control. This isn’t necessarily a fatal mistake. Some of the finest literary writers have been materially aided by their editors, so why not romance writers? Unfortunately, romance writers are basically commercial writers, who have a very modest view of themselves (less so lately, since we all know that romances account for over 50% of all fiction sold). They don’t claim their works are literary masterpieces to be etched in stone. This modesty makes them too open to manipulation and persuasion. And to artistic suicide. They are too willing to put themselves in a subservient position, too willing to forget about art and be little more than writers for hire. They often define themselves as contracted craft workers instead of as independent artists. Yet no author does her best work while writing under someone else’s orders. And too many romance writers are being milked dry as they replay the same stories over and over with new gimmicks and new character names. Some people envy the fabled authors who can write a book a month, ignoring the reality that burnout awaits these marvels. Audience burnout, too. If these authors don’t develop in new directions they could find themselves out in the cold. How far out in the cold? Many years ago, gothic romances and nurse romances enjoyed a popular boom. But like all booms, those ended. After years of writing about distraught young governesses being attacked in the dark corridors of some ancient pile, many authors couldn’t wrap their heads around any other kind of romance. Meanwhile, the writers telling and re-telling Nurse Nancy stories (and I confess it; I once read a book called World’s Fair Nurse, whose only reason for being was to cash in on the world’s fair as a locale), well, these writers were not sure how to turn their girl-next-door nurse heroines, basically girls who could not afford to go to college, into characters who would appeal to the baby boom’s huge college graduate population. And then sex arrived. Romances went from having a kiss or two in a whole book to opening the bedroom door for every detail. An entire generation of writers suddenly needed to convert to a new paradigm. The trouble is, writing in a genre can get an author comfortable with crutches and blinders. (Sounds awful.) When the market changed, many authors simply could not convert from their gothic or nurse romance cliches. Some authors complained that the new sexy romances did not have stories. Few wanted to face the fact that they had gotten used to expressing themselves in one mode only. They lacked creative agility, perhaps in part because they had followed their editors’ advice so carefully. The waves of audience enthusiasm continued to roll over writers. Historical romances dominated for a while. Regency romances rose to great popularity. Contemporary romances made a big hit. At their height, 100 paperback books were being published every month in series featuring contemporary romance. By now, they, too, have become passe, although a few lines linger on, sometimes healthy, sometimes not. In today’s writing market, there are more individual opportunities, such as paranormal, fantasy, women’s fiction, chick lit, and many other variations. But it doesn’t matter what the market is like if an author is unwilling or unable to keep changing and growing. Yes, certain favorite authors are prized for doing the same thing over and over again. And their rut may be big enough, their following large enough, that it seems not to matter. Readers probably do want each Sue Grafton mystery to be just like the last one. Or each Diana Palmer romance. Or each Stephen King horror story. But it’s an artistic mistake to rewrite the same book, and the best writers, genre or otherwise, make an effort to find something new to say. Some, like Elizabeth George, even make sure they say it a different way each time. It took me until the end of one of her British police mysteries to realize that one narrator’s storyline had not been not running simultaneously with another’s. Cool. I love it when a writer works extra hard to make reading her book a unique experience. But what about writers, maybe beginners, maybe just moderate sellers, whose careers are much more at the whim of the market? When a major market shift occurs and leaves some authors hanging, some blame the editors who told them what to write. And some editors blame the writers who continue to turn out the same old stories over and over again even though the audience has moved on. Fairly or unfairly, final responsibility for the writing belongs to the writer. It’s up to the author to decide what she is willing to do, as well as what she is trying to accomplish. Whether defining herself as an artist or as thoroughly commercial, an author needs to be constantly new, fresh, imaginative. She cannot expect an editor to feed her new ideas. She must develop them herself. She cannot expect the audience to enjoy the same story she wrote last year. She must write something genuinely new. An author who doesn’t change and grow skimps on herself as an artist. And eventually she has little to offer an audience, either. It’s not nice, but it’s the truth. So, authors, write something “good.”

Red-Headed Stepchild to the RWA

I’d never heard of the term “red-headed stepchild” before a friend of mine started editing a professional wrestling magazine and sought in vain for any kind of cooperation within that industry. He and his magazine were treated like a red-headed stepchild, he told me. Ignored, pushed aside, not given a fair share of the family (industry) resources. New publishing ventures in the romance world are often in that same situation. Press releases sent to the major romance industry publications do not generate any editorial interest. Instead, they get shunted to advertising departments, where the new publisher is handed a consolation prize—an opportunity to buy ads. Offers to go to conferences and make presentations are either refused or again directed to the ad department. The RWA (Romance Writers of America, and where have you been?) simply won’t talk to a new publisher that doesn’t have a year’s track record. Huh? If you’re brand new, how can you have a track record? It used not to be this way. New romance publishers were welcomed at romance conferences, and specifically at the RWA conferences. Let me tell you about a few publisher presentations that I went to at the big conventions. One time it was a company that was going to do films of romance novels. They sponsored a luncheon at the con, and at each place at the table was a pair of sunglasses with the glass in the shape of a heart. Cute, and very 1980s. I may still have them. Then there was the presentation for Torch and Torchlite, two digest-sized magazines. Then there was a company that did tabloid-style, photo-illustrated contemporary romances (not fumetti). These romance publishers all went bottom up. But to my knowledge, none of them were fly by night. The crooks of the world generally want your money; they don’t want to spend their own on publicity. All these publishers were allowed in at the major romance conferences and were able to alert the thousands of RWA members attending that they existed. And the RWA members could make their own individual evaluations of the likelihood of success or failure, and decide whether to do business with these publishers. Or not. So what happened? Why, did the RWA in 1997 adopt a set of criteria to determine whom it considers a legitimate publisher? Why does the RWA now specifically refuse to allow “non-recognized publishers” to make presentations or sponsor anything at their annual national conference? Why does the RWA treat new romance publishers like red-headed stepchildren? Two important technological advances have changed the face of publishing: The Internet and Print on Demand. It appears that the RWA has decided it must protect its members from both. We all know what the Internet has done. An epublishing industry has sprung up to capitalize on the Internet’s potential connection to millions of people worldwide. Because little or no capital, and zero editing, design, production, printing, advertising, or distribution expertise are required, anyone can set up as a publisher. Whether they hew to accepted publishing industry standards, or whether they are able to sell books on the Internet is a different story. All is not rosy in epublishing, although in theory the opportunities are limitless. Some epublishers want their authors to pay for their own printing. And royalties have been reported in such tiny dollar amounts that the epublishing industry’s standard model contract created by EPIC (Electronically Published Internet Connection, an authors association) even requires that when royalties reach $10 in a calendar quarter, they must be paid promptly to the author. Ten dollars! At the same time, Print on Demand means that anyone can arrange to have an economical number of books printed. If an author does it herself, she thus avoids a garage filled with copies of a book she can’t sell to anyone but her relatives. But she still has paid someone to print a book instead of finding an existing publisher who believes in her writing, edits it, and pays her for the privilege of publishing it. When the author pays for any part of the printing process, most respectable people in the publishing industry consider this to be vanity or subsidy publishing, not real publishing. And vanity presses are flourishing through Print on Demand, conning the unwary or the impatient author into paying for publication. Just as dishonest editing and agenting services of all kinds continue to exist. It’s decent of the RWA to want to protect its members from subsidy and vanity publishers, many of whom are either unscrupulous or inept or both. And maybe it’s even necessary, given that the RWA makes no requirement of publishing experience before a romance writer may join the organization. Potentially, a very large percentage of the RWA membership is wet behind the ears. At the same time, the RWA is creating a paradox that does its members a disservice and harms new romance publishers. Because a publisher must have been in business for a year, must not charge its authors for publishing their books, must have sold 1,500 hardcover copies or 5,000 copies of a specific romance in any other format (not an aggregate total of many different novels), and must have national distribution-—all reasonable enough proofs of legitimacy per se-—because of these requirements, no new publisher gets substantial access to the RWA membership until after it has already found an alternate source of writers. Yet getting in on the ground floor of a new publisher is a priceless advantage to a writer. And getting access to writers who love and understand romance is a priceless advantage to a new romance publisher. The two were made to go together. But instead, the RWA now treats all newcomers like red-headed stepchildren, basically ignoring them and leaving them to find their own road. RWA members whose publishing credits are with non-recognized publishers are pretty angry at this situation. I know; I’ve heard them bitterly complaining. Possibly as a response to members’ anger, the RWA has decided to stop even considering publishers for recognition. Instead, the organization plans to reevaluate their evaluation process. Make that red-headed stepchild to an unwieldy bureaucracy. I wonder if the RWA even realizes that by avoiding contact with new publishers in their infancy, the RWA loses a key opportunity to influence them on the behalf of writers. If the practices or contract terms these publishers come up with unaided are not to the eventual taste of the RWA, any motion to correct must come after the fact instead of during the publishers’ earliest and most malleable period. By the time a publisher is accepted as recognized by the RWA, the publisher has established its way of doing business, probably has felt the effects of the RWA cold shoulder, and frankly no longer cares what the RWA thinks about anything. Well, the stepmom never gets it about the red-headed stepchild’s worth, does she?

The Tudors: Truth or Lies?

A young, handsome actor, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, is currently playing Henry VIII of England as a young, handsome king on the Showtime television series, “The Tudors.” It’s a startling new angle for the oft-told tale. It seeks to erase the classic image of Henry VIII as a fat, middle-aged monarch, an image made famous by Hans Holbein’s brilliant portraits and carried into the 20th century by several movies and TV miniseries. So far this new version is getting half the facts right, and half of then wrong. In his youth, Henry was handsome, athletic, and a devil with the women. He went at life with great gusto; it was always a party when Henry was around. He even wrote poetry and composed songs. So in this series Henry is sexy and charismatic. That’s fine and it’s the truth, too. But there are lies in this TV series. In it, Henry has a sister Margaret who is forced to marry the old king of Portugal and promptly smothers him with a pillow. How jolly! How completely untrue! Wrong sister! Wrong decade! Wrong old king! What’s going on here? Somehow the name and the actions of Henry’s favorite sister, Mary, have been fouled up and conflated with the name of his other sister, Margaret, who married the king of Scotland. The real Margaret just happened to be the grandmother of Mary Queen of Scots, so if this series is going to continue into the next generation, things could get awkward historically. Why? Because the real Mary Tudor became the grandmother of Lady Jane Grey, a different claimant to the English throne. And Lady Jane sure wasn’t Queen Mary’s sister. Whoops. But what’s more depressing from a romance standpoint is that Mary Tudor’s true story is a genuine romance that actually ended with a happily ever after. She dutifully married the old king of France, who promptly died all on his own. Then while still in France, she secretly married Charles Brandon, Henry’s good jousting and hunting buddy with whom she had grown up and with whom she was already in love. The new king of France even helped them. This did not please Henry, but he eventually forgave them after exacting a huge fine. Mary and Charles returned to England and remained popular figures at court for many years. The story was retold in Charles Major’s When Knighthood Was in Flower and has been the subject of a couple of romantic movies, too. And it really happened. So why tell lies about it? I don’t know the answer to that one, other than to speculate that the series writer wanted to shape Henry’s story differently from how it unfolded in real life. There is a line between history and fiction that has been repeatedly crossed by writers, and not just recently on TV miniseries. William Shakespeare’s “Richard III” is now considered to be a politically inspired hatchet job from beginning to end. But most people still think that Richard III murdered all those people Shakespeare had him killing. Sometimes writers want to make a real person nobler than he was, as when Friedrich Schiller wrote the play, “Don Carlos” and fabricated an idealistic personality that the historical Don Carlo (the mentally deficient son of the king of Spain, circa 1560) did not have. And then Verdi turned that play into an intensely moving opera that was equally historically inaccurate, and so on. “Alt history”—alternate history—science fiction is quite a popular subgenre. In such stories, writers openly explore worlds in which key historical facts are different, for instance, that the south won the Civil War instead of the north. But alternate history based on a cavalier treatment of historical fact—very common in movies and TV shows—is another kettle of fish. It’s historical fiction, and it purports to be the truth while twisting the truth, sometimes only a little bit, but sometimes almost beyond recognition. Hence Margaret instead of Mary, and Portugal instead of France. Where to draw the line between history and fiction, while still telling a good story, has usually been a matter of altering the mundane real events of history into something consistently dramatic. It’s hardly necessary to do that with Henry VIII, who led a fascinating life (we’re still talking about him 500 years after his birth). Even though we know what will happen to Anne Boleyn, we are mesmerized all over again as the awful tragedy unfolds. Do we need the lies to make this a spectacular story? Recently, author Phillippa Gregory has been very successful with a series of novels about the Tudors that she explicitly admits are not always strictly historically accurate. “It probably didn’t happen quite this way, but it could have,” is basically her rationale. (Not a direct quote.) We’re so used to this approach in the media that we all think Henry VIII was born fat and middle aged. Why? Because there was a Charles Laughton film, “The Private Life of Henry VIII,” that gave the public wide familiarity with the Holbein portrait. Which is the lie that this current TV series is trying to undo. The fat old king has to be turned back into the sexy young king. Are we going in circles, or what? What surprises me is that with all this meddling with the truth nobody bothers to just go all out and give the Henry VIII story a happy ending. I mean, why not? It’s just a gloss on history, not the real thing, so why not have Katherine of Aragon accept a polite divorce? And why not have Anne Boleyn give birth to a son instead of getting beheaded? Why is it okay to tamper with and obscure a real romance and yet leave in a real tragedy?