MyRomanceStory Blog

But Will I Meet Harrison Ford? or the Romance of Travel

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Wed, 16 May 2012 04:33:00 +0000

Why do so many romances take place in faraway lands? Is there something intrinsically romantic about visiting dirt-poor countries where the majority of the people still work at subsistence agriculture using stone age tools? Most of us would say not, yet many a romance does take a heroine to the old world, or the third world, or even to no world at all, if she happens to be on a cruise or get stuck on an island in the Pacific.

It’s standard that our romance heroine hobnobs with of the elite in these foreign climes. Depending on the era, the elite could be a batch of fellow tourists, a group of hardcore expatriates, or, most romantically, someone from the ruling class of that foreign country. A man with a title, perhaps. Or a man with a huge plantation. Possibly a man who is the master of some vast capitalistic enterprise.

We like a romance heroine to taste something of the exotic. That’s why she falls in love with a man from a different land. But so she doesn’t have to go too far out of her comfort zone, and thus the reader’s, the man she loves is usually Western-educated, affluent, and forward-thinking about the role of women. In fact, like all romance heroes, he’s a bundle of appealing characteristics.

But why a romance while traveling? Where they’d live once married does automatically become a huge issue between them. Plus in theory the heroine could meet the same hot foreign guy when he comes to New York on business or pleasure. Or San Francisco. Or LA. Or London.

Possibly travel romances happen because when we leave our daily grind behind, our senses become heightened. We come more alive, and we notice all the details of our surroundings. We notice other people more, too. The excitement of seeing new places can also make us a little wired, a little more apt to be daring. For a heroine who feels straitjacketed by her social world at home, traveling can be an opportunity to try on a new style, both in clothing and in behavior. If the travel is missionary work or eco-tourism, she’s likely to come into contact with people who think as she does, whatever their country of origin. Being thrown together with a very small group of like-thinking individuals can lead to romance. So can meeting a man who seems her complete opposite, yet who turns out to have a heart full of love for her.

There also are numerous adventure romances in which the heroine needs rescuing in a foreign country, and an all-American guy is the man for the job. In these, the hero is a familiar type--perhaps a rugged archeologist like Indiana Jones--and the rigors or difficulties of being in a strange country test the heroine’s mettle. Once again, the foreignness of another country becomes key to the story.

There’s another reason romances are set in faraway places. Although most of us can find beauty in our normal surroundings if we look, familiarity tends to dampen their allure. When we visit new places, their sheer majesty strikes us. Even the dire contrasts between the well-heeled in their mansions or tourist hotels and the impoverished locals selling postcards on the streets strike an emotional chord. Our heroine may hate her job back home, but seeing barefoot women carrying bundles on their heads reminds her how enviable her position actually is. At the same time, seeing how the other half lives, really seeing it, can connect the romance heroine emotionally to the people around her. Which also explains how she can even consider throwing up her old life to make her future with that aristocratic stranger she meets while traveling. It does not quite explain why she'd consider doing the same with a man like Indiana Jones.

Listen to Marcia Roberts on The Wellness Authors Show

noreply@blogger.com (MyRomanceStory Staff) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 16:21:00 +0000

Tune into the Wellness Authors Show at www.thewellnessshow.com this weekend to hear author Marcia Roberts talk about her book, “New Day: One Woman's Journey Through Domestic Violence”. Marcia is a teacher, a mother, a writer and a survivor of domestic violence and abuse. Her compelling story is a must for anyone caught in the cycle of abuse. Marcia’s book is available from Amazon.comand the App Store.

In the author’s own words: “I am a survivor of domestic violence and abuse, but I am also a teacher, a mother and a writer. Because of all the great support I got during my four plus years of abuse, I would like to give back. I have compiled a story of my experience, based on current research and my own personal journals and emails that I kept for the last years of the experience, as recommended by my counselors at a local abuse center. I am looking for a way to get my work out there so maybe other women can benefit, and not feel so alone or quite so hopeless. There is little out there on the topic that is autobiographical, and yet, as a former victim, I can tell you that that is the very thing that abused women or men need, to convince them to get out. This story needs to be told, as do the stories of so many other women and children. Their voices need to be heard. My story is meant to be a mirror that might reflect reality to a victim who needs that clarity to be sure what to do next.”  

—From Marcia Roberts’s journal  

Author Bio:

Marcia Roberts is the daughter of a pastor and homemaker, the mother of five, a classically trained singer, a teacher, a writer and a domestic abuse survivor. It is through her own experiences that she can speak to this serious threat for many women and their families. She was inspired to write this book through her research on domestic violence and its effects on children in the classroom while working on for her teaching re-certification. It soon became evident from her research that her own children were the textbook models for children growing up in a domestic abuse environment. She wrote this book to help other families who are trapped in this same cycle of abuse. The book is the outgrowth of a journal she kept for three years to record her experiences and those of her children with her now ex-husband. Roberts is also the author of several children's stories and fables as well as some poetry, all of which she hopes to publish in the future. 

Congratulations to the Winners of the Cooking with Honey Recipe Contest!

noreply@blogger.com (MyRomanceStory Staff) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 15:06:00 +0000

We announced the winners of the Cooking with Honey Recipe Contest in our last newsletter, but we thought our Facebook friends would like a chance to get to know them and their recipes a little better. As we’ve said before, it wasn't an easy decision to pick from all the delicious and imaginative recipes submitted to the contest, but we want to thank the judges for meeting that challenge. So, a big thanks to Judy Endicott Manzone, author of Family Honey: Five Generations of Beekeeping, Jonathan Korsen, General Manager at La Prima Food Group and Kyle Vermeulen, Corporate Executive Chef at La Prima Food Group.

In case you missed them our winners were…

1st Place

Jessie Grearson 
Honeyed-Raspberry Crostini Bites with Mascarpone and Pecans

2nd Place

Mellissa Clark 
Honey Hummus

3rd Place

Holly Bauer 
Sweet and Spicy Baked Shrimp with Angel Hair Pasta

Honorable Mention

Cathy Mealey 
Poppyseed Salad Dressing

All entries were judged on the use of honey as an integral part of the recipe, originality, taste, presentation and ease of preparation.

Congratulations again to all!

Love and Money

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 15:22:00 +0000

As millions of Americans scramble to put their federal income taxes together at the last minute, let’s briefly ponder the roles that taxes and money play in romances.

Romance heroines are almost never rich. They usually must work or acquire income to cover their basic needs, or someone in their family must support them. From this economic situation spring numerous romance themes, but none of them are about the ordinary money issues most people face. Almost zero of them are about taxes. Too mundane.

The marriage of convenience is a classic romance plot, in which the heroine is essentially sold off to a high bidder in exchange for major financial help for her family. In what we call historical times, the virginal girl has no say in the matter because she has no legal standing to determine her own life. Her father brokers the deal, and forces her to marry a stranger. In more modern marriages of convenience, the heroine may be equally unwilling, but her agreement is emotionally extorted by family members. She puts her happiness in jeopardy to help them. Sometimes it’s a father in danger of being beggared by death duties, the British version of estate taxes. (This is usually the only mention of taxes one ever sees in a romance.) Sometimes it’s an ill mother who desperately needs a specialized medical treatment, certainly a worthy cause. And sometimes the heroine is foolishly enabling a brother who’s addicted to gambling and immaturity of all sorts, a very unworthy cause. Still, she exercises free choice and sells herself into the marriage. In even more modern romances, marriage may not be an option. The heroine needs major money, and she contracts to bear a child for some rich guy who just wants a kid, no wife. (Or so he thinks.)

What’s important about these situations is how large the financial payoff is, and who gets the money. The extra cost of returning a rental car that the heroine has run into a snowy ditch is never a topic in romance, even though many cars do get crunched that way, leading to cozy cabins in the woods and relationships with wounded-paw loners. Even romance heroines who are in tight financial circumstances don’t freak out at such ordinary incidents. Mundane money issues usually get ignored in romances. Including taxes.

Romance readers are to some extent like people who play the lottery: they’re looking for a big payoff. That’s a fantasy. Romances are another kind of fantasy, and they also can focus on big money. Usually, it’s a cash total far more than the heroine’s yearly income if she works, or than good management could make up for if it’s a historical romance and a gambler in the family has amassed enormous debts as encumbrances on the estate. In today’s world, our heroine is not going to sell herself as a surrogate mother to the rich hero for the price of a car repair. It’s more like the price of cancer treatment or, more popularly, an experimental and expensive operation.

The other important element in a romance that involves money as a major theme is that the big cash a romance heroine seeks (usually from the hero) is almost never for herself. She’s doing it to save a family member, to help her child, to help her mother, etc. She may receive a collateral benefit, such as a huge wardrobe of designer clothes, jewels, and social status. She may or may not appreciate all these gifts. The heroine may yearn for her family or her previously simpler life, or whatever. In fact, romance readers prefer her to be initially uncomfortable with sudden wealth. That’s how lottery winners feel. Money can cause a disorienting change in circumstances. Big money, that is. The use of money in a romance is to thrust the heroine into a challenging new situation and test both her moral fiber and her ability to adapt to a major change in her financial situation. Of course the true payoff in a romance is the love of the hero, to which there’s no dollar value attached.

To Talk or Not to Talk?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 12:20:00 +0000

Do you want to “hear” the thoughts of both main characters in a romance? Does knowing the feelings of the hero help the story or hinder it? How much is enough? Can we know too much?

Not so long ago, heroes of romance were opaque. Romances were written strictly from the heroine’s point of view, and there was never a peek into the hero’s mind. Even worse, the strong, silent type of hero of old never said much to reveal his feelings. Not until the very end of the book, when he finally declared his love. For a couple hundred pages, the heroine wondered what the hero thought of her, but she had no definite knowledge, and neither did the reader. Frustrating.

Consider how little we know firsthand about Darcy, the hero of Jane Austen’s novel, Pride and Prejudice. We never hear his thoughts.. He seldom even deigns to speak directly to Elizabeth Bennet, the heroine, although they meet socially many times. Yet he has great appeal, because in addition to being rich and handsome, he is the unknown and the unattainable. He is larger than life. When he finally does reveal his love for her, his romantic declaration has tremendous impact. Elizabeth has to revise every thought she had about him previously, and so does the reader, while still not knowing him well. Although he begins to lose his opacity as he tries to redeem himself in Elizabeth’s eyes, he remains mostly an elusive, heroic character to the very end of the story. No wonder so many authors today have written their own sequels to Pride and Prejudice. They all feel the lure of the man who attracts by his very reticence. They’d like to know him better.

Today in contemporary romances we’re used to men whose thoughts we know, men who talk. These modern romance heroes even talk about their feelings (in a manly and heroic way, of course). We are frequently privy to the hero’s thoughts. We know how those thoughts alter as he falls in love, and in many romances, we even know exactly when he does fall. The author doesn’t hold it all back for a revelation at the story’s conclusion. Still, authors are careful to reveal just enough of the hero’s thoughts to maintain conflict and suspense and romantic illusions. Knowing too much of what the hero is thinking can reduce him from a hero to a mere man. In real life, we marry real men, but in romances, we want heroes. Our heroine may think of herself as ordinary, but she (and the reader) has to feel that the man she loves is extraordinary. A hero of romance is always someone who is larger than life. Not knowing exactly how mundane his thoughts are keeps his romantic aura intact.

Realism kills romance. A classic realistic play, Eugene O’Neill’s Strange Interlude, is a brilliant example of why realism and romance can’t mix. The play won the Pulitzer Prize, in part because of its device of having every character speak his or her thoughts out loud. These asides often are disjointed, but they clearly indicate what each character is thinking and feeling. Unfortunately, nobody comes off well. Selfishness, petty meanness, cowardice, egotism, and many other negative qualities are revealed. Three men, Charlie, Ned, and Sam, are in love with Nina, but none of the men is shown to be a hero. We learn too much about how weak or selfish they are. Nina, the object of all this attention, is no heroine herself, just a confused and often petty person. We know exactly how messed up she is because she tells us her every thought. Realism drains the story of romance.

(O’Neill forced playgoers to sit through over four hours of this dreary story of sickly entwined lives. The play is so long that there was a dinner intermission. I would not be surprised to learn that some of the audience never came back from dinner.)

Would the characters in O’Neill’s play seem more romantic and heroic if we did not know all their thoughts? Absolutely. We might think good old Charlie is a nice guy, instead of a prissy old maid type who finds sex repulsive. We’d surely hold Ned up as a romantic hero, since he’s a dashing doctor, if we didn’t know how selfish he is. And we wouldn’t pity Sam as dumb because he’d merely appear young and pleasant.

Somewhere between the opacity of a Darcy and the warts-and-all realism of O’Neill’s characters is the sweet spot occupied by today’s romantic heroes. We get to know them just enough to admire and respect them, but not enough to find them mundane or to dislike their personal quirks or their moral choices. Of course in a romance they always make the right moral choices, but then, that’s why they are heroes.

Looking for Love?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:04:00 +0000

We want love. We spend countless hours dreaming about love, imagining what love will be like. Then we devote more hours, days, and even years seeking love. We meet people, and we get involved. We try to discern if love exists in relationships we enter into that are possibly defined by lust, convenience, or even money. We think finding love means finding the person who will love us, who will give us everything. Mr. Perfect. Ms. Wonderful. Mr. Romance. But what if we’ve been looking for love from the wrong end of the telescope?

A line in Viktor Frankl’s holocaust survivor book, Man’s Search for Meaning, has sent me thinking about a different kind of quest for love. Frankl says love is one of life’s most essential meanings. He gets how important love is. A person who finds love has found something real and true to hold onto in even the most wretched of circumstances. This resonates with any of us who reads romance. We know love is central to happiness in life.

But Frankl isn’t talking about being loved, he’s talking about loving. To love someone gives your life meaning. You don’t have to do anything more—and that flies in the face of the typical American belief that life should be a series of accomplishments. No, if you love, that’s enough. From this emotion may flow heroism and many other estimable qualities and behaviors, but to have found the feeling of love is to have found meaning.

I like this message. As much as we all search selfishly for someone to love us, as much as being loved by someone is crucial to our daily happiness, the truth is, it must be the right someone, and the right someone is the person we love in return.

This idea is the key to most romantic conflicts in literature and drama. Another Victor, Victor Hugo (the same man who wrote Les Misèrables), wrote a play, Hernani, about a young woman whom three powerful men love. But she loves only one of them. Giuseppe Verdi adapted the play into an opera, Ernani, that is today known for its over-the-top melodrama. Elvira loves the bandit Ernani (a dispossessed nobleman). She spurns the king’s questionable advances. She resists marrying her guardian, who offers the security of an honorable position. Apparently, all three men sincerely love her, but the love we seek is the love we feel, so Elvira rejects the two men who offer her worldly rewards. She loves inconveniently, but she has found love and she won’t deny it. The story doesn’t end well, alas. Most romances didn’t, not until the twentieth century. Romeo and Juliet. Tristan and Isolde. Despite their unhappy endings, such classic love stories have resonated for centuries, and Viktor Frankl’s concept explains why. Finding love means finding the person you love, regardless of the surrounding circumstances.

The love we feel is the love we’re looking for.

H. Michael Bastien Walks the Talk

noreply@blogger.com (MyRomanceStory Staff) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:24:00 +0000

Whether demystifying the world of online dating or connecting the dots between two political icons, H. Michael Bastien writes with insight into how people act and react to each other in his book The Common Sense Clicker: Guide to Online Dating. Bastien’s background in psychology and information systems finds a niche in the electronic dating scene. In his latest release, Yes We Can: Obama and Clinton Walk the Talk (How Communication and Performance Win Elections), this insight is brought to bear on the political communications strengths of both Presidents Obama and Clinton. When not writing, Bastien consults with Internet companies to help them build better websites. He’s advised in the development of several online dating sites, and he was active in President Obama’s first presidential campaign.

ARROW: If you were writing your own online dating profile, what would it say?

HMB: I was born in Canada and I’m told I first learned to read and count in French. My family moved to the U.S. when I was child and I attended high school, college and graduate school in the Washington, D.C. area. I consider myself happily single, but open to a relationship. I’m at the point in my life when I’m ready to jump back into online dating myself. I’m a writer and Internet development consultant. My interests include music, astronomy, tennis and politics. I also enjoy photography and cooking. My favorite European country is Spain. I’d have to say Jamaica is my favorite Caribbean island. I love visiting Seattle with its seafood cuisine.

ARROW: Tell us what in your background prompted you to write these books.

HMB: I have an undergraduate degree in psychology and a masters in information systems. Both subjects came in handy when I wrote The Common Sense Clicker: Guide to Online Dating, my first published work. Since then I also co-authored Yes We Can: Obama and Clinton Walk the Talk with my father and stepmother, both political scientists.

ARROW: Let’s start with The Common Sense Clicker: Guide to Online Dating. What makes your book different from other books out there on the subject?

HMB: My book looks at other aspects important to successful online dating that I didn’t think were adequately covered in the other books I’ve read. For example, my book helps guide people in developing a common etiquette for online dating. There need to be common ways of interacting when dating online to avoid confusion and misunderstandings. If you don’t know the rules, you can wreck a great thing before it starts or not catch on to something wonderful.

ARROW: Do men or women have it easier when it comes to online dating?

HMB: No gender has a monopoly on hard luck or good luck when it comes to online dating. Men and women have different issues but need to remember that we are all in this together.

ARROW: What are some of the biggest mistakes men make when dating online?

HMB: Often men try to customize themselves and their online profiles to be what they think women want. What you need to do instead is be honest about what you like, what you look like and what you are looking for in a potential mate. When you aren’t honest about yourself and what you want in a relationship, you find that after one or two weeks into a relationship you and the other person are not a good match.

ARROW: What are some of the biggest mistakes women make when dating online?

HMB: The biggest mistake women make is not uploading complete and accurate pictures of what they look like. Dating begins with physical attraction. Never assume that your full body is not attractive. Upload the real you and let nature take its course.

ARROW: What can people do to date safely online?

HMB: When making your first online contact, there really is a progression for sharing information. Start with your name and real email address, but I advise never ask for a phone number or give your phone number in the first couple of emails. When it comes to the first date and your first face-to-face contact, meet in a public place and never share personal information like your home or work addresses. If you visit my website www.TheCommonSenseClicker.com you can read some of my other recommendations under Dating Tips.

ARROW: Earlier this month many people experienced Valentine’s Day alone. Can you offer some suggestions to someone hoping to be in a happy, healthy relationship by next Valentine’s Day?

HMB: Treat dating like the serious endeavor it is. Get online, fill out your dating profile...FULLY and upload a lot of pictures of yourself. Of course, read The Common Sense Clicker and put those guidelines into practice. Devote the same amount of time to online dating as you do to your friends. Rely more on your personal tastes and desires and give less emphasis to what friends or others may think.

ARROW: How about suggestions for those just hoping to be happily and healthily dating this time next year?

HMB: Be open to meeting new types of people when dating online. Spend more time searching online than you do at a bar or nightclub. Minute for minute, dating online is a much better use of your time than getting drunk at a bar.

ARROW: If you have one message that readers can take away from your guide to online dating, what would it be?

HMB: Be yourself...that means showing the full, real you in pictures and in profile descriptions.

ARROW: You are also the co-author of Yes We Can: Obama and Clinton

Walk the Talk (How Communication and Performance Win Elections). Tell us a little about this book.

HMB: I’ve always been interested in politics. Obama and Clinton are two men that I admire. Interestingly enough, they have quite a few similarities...more than many people think. Whether you are a Republican, Democrat or independent, presidential history is important to us all. Understanding the people who rule our country is an essential part of fulfilling our duty as citizens of a democracy.
The Common Sense Clicker: Guide to Online Dating is available from Amazon’s Kindle Store, OmniLit, Barnes and Noble’s NOOK Store, MyRomanceStory.com and the iBookstore. Also available in paperback from Amazon.com.

Yes We Can: Obama and Clinton Walk the Talk (How Communication and Performance Win Elections) is available from Amazon’s Kindle Store and will be available soon from the iBookstore.

Listen to Bastien discuss The Common Sense Clicker: Guide to Online Dating at www.TheCommonSenseClicker.com.

Qualified to Read Romance?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 16:44:00 +0000

Recently a Romance Writers of America chapter decided not to accept Gay, Lesbian, Bi, or Transgender (GLBT, or LGBT) romance manuscripts in its annual writing contest. In previous years, this chapter had done so, and various LGBT manuscripts had won. There was no shortage of judges for such a contest, so no claims of not having any background to judge such mss. were made. It all seemed to come down to what felt unfamiliar and unwelcome to some people in the chapter. To say this sparked vast numbers of outraged responses (see Smart Bitches for a sample) is to understate the situation. I’m not going to pillory that chapter here, but the incident has caused other RWA chapters to review their own contest rules.

Whenever a group cries foul, all of us who judge, edit, or write romances pause and think seriously about what our standards are, and what they’re based on. Over the years I've edited several romance manuscripts with lesbian lead characters and with African American characters. I've been aware that, not being either L or AA, I can't fully share the authors' perspective because I don't have the direct experience. Thus it is possible I might be applying white hetero standards to their stories that I shouldn't. But then again, a good romance is a good romance, no matter whom it’s about.

Sometimes my lack of specific knowledge has skewed my opinion of the details of a story, though. If I don’t know what terms are considered romantic versus what are considered vulgar within a certain group, then I can’t tell an author if she has crossed the line. All I can do is apply the more general standards common in published romances. I’ve tripped up in the past over regionalisms, too, so it's not merely a sexual preference or racial issue. For instance, years ago I thought “cranking” a car was a strangely old-fashioned term, but then I learned it was a current southern usage. Similarly, until serious athletic gear became standard American clothing, spandex was only in girdles, and thus a mention of it was unsexy, I thought. Times change. On the other hand, regardless of my lack of personal experience with being Italian American, or coming from Texas, or being part of a huge clan of cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents, I feel confident that I can fairly judge, either as an editor or a reader, what constitutes an appealing and effective romantic take on those elements. As a reader, I know it in my gut, without consulting any issues of familiarity. After all, it’s impossible for me to have firsthand experience of the Tudor court of Henry VIII, but I can recognize a well-written take on that historical era and its major actors. So can you.

What is romantic to me today is not what I thought exciting ten years ago, but a well-told story should always be identifiable to a conscientious judge, editor, or reader. Many times, I have evaluated a well-written manuscript and had to tell the author that the story and the way it was told were not in fashion and her chances of being published were slim. Today, with self-publishing or assisted epublishing available from many sources (including Arrow, check out About Us), those novels, perhaps antique in style or content, or too outre for mass publishers to take a chance on, but still wonderful stories, now can be read by the public.

This controversy has reminded me how little most of us know before we start a new experience. People often joke that it’s a shame no one has to take a maturity test in order to get a marriage license or have a baby. The fact is, we embark on new experiences throughout our lives for which we have zero background. Luckily, there is no qualification to read a romance other than an interest in doing so.

Herd Instinct

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 02:11:00 +0000

Valentine’s Day, February 14th, has come and gone. Ah, but President’s Day is around the corner. Time to plan a festive meal with a red, white, and blue theme. Make a dessert with strawberries, white frosting, and blueberries. Maybe buy an actual flag, too. There isn’t much else to do on President’s Day except shop the big sales at the stores, but that’s the point, isn’t it? Commerce. I’m okay with that. I’ve never heard of anybody getting sad on President’s Day.

It’s a far different story with Valentine’s Day. It has been hyped to such a degree that now people have strongly unrealistic expectations that actively make them unhappy. They hope for lavish gestures from lovers, gestures pushed by ads in all media. If they don’t have sweethearts, then they are actively sad on Valentine’s Day. Worse, in advance of the day, people who aren’t in a romantic relationship get all miserable just because they aren’t---while supposedly, the rest of the world is miraculously happy on February 14th. I was surprised at the sighs and misery from people not looking forward to being alone on the 14th. One person actually expressed the hope that she would not be in tears on the day.

I’m gung ho on romance, but this is ridiculous. We’ve become a nation with constant quasi-holidays, fully half of which are propped up and pushed by commercial interests. Valentine’s Day was inspired by a saint, but has no religious rites associated with it. The customs we follow regarding St. Valentine are all commercially inspired. I doubt seriously that St. Valentine gave anybody a heart-shaped box of chocolates. Ever. He didn’t send greeting cards or flowers. But many multimillion dollar industries now depend on pressuring us to buy such items to celebrate this spurious holiday.

I’m not against red M&Ms, although teddy bears with red hearts on them don’t appeal to me. What I deplore is the sense of inadequacy over-hyping these secular holidays produces. Even as I write this, stores are clearing their aisles of Valentine’s Day flowers, candy, and all sorts of red-heart-themed items. I wish they could also clear the dark thoughts too many people suffer on Valentine’s Day if they don’t have a sweetheart. That’s the negative consequence of all these holidays. We have to do as the herd does, or we feel left out. On February 14th, not having a date, not receiving a romance-oriented present, or not being part of a couple often leaves people sad. They question all the life decisions that led them to this moment of singledom.

The irony is, we’re becoming a nation of singles. Marriage has declined, and the number of single people is fast approaching 50 percent. The Washington Post’s recent article about being single, “Some People Never Find the Love of their Lives. And Live to Tell About It” cites this fascinating statistic from the Pew Research Center: Only 51 percent of the adult population is married today, compared to 72 percent in 1960. Being single is more popular than ever. Living alone and liking it is more common than ever. Given this new reality, why should we care if February 14th comes and goes without the gift of a heart-shaped diamond pendant or a dozen scentless hybrid roses?

Somewhere, at any time of day, someone is having a good time. We don’t all have to go with the herd and insist our good time coincides with that of everybody else, or must be celebrated in exactly the same manner.

Men, Men, Men!

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:56:00 +0000

Every once in a while I have to devote some time to just admiring male pulchritude. Yes, men can be beautiful. They are handsome, attractive, cute, stern, adorable, tough, and sexy.

It’s February, the month when too much ice and snow annoy too many people in the temperate zones. It’s the month when some of us bake too many cookies, and eat too many Valentine’s Day chocolates. Or we wish we had a sweetheart to give us those chocolates, preferably in a big red heart-shaped box.

Some of us are shoveling snow. Others are watching too many television shows out of sheer ennui. And the ads. No, that amazing abs workout machine will not make any of us into super-models. We could be doing something better with our time. We could be gazing delightedly at photos of attractive men. Let’s do it!

Colin Duchin, our first pin-up boy, is at most a minor social celebrity because of his pedigree. He's related to some famous people in the arts by blood: Eddy Duchin and Peter Duchin, and by marriage: Brooke Hayward and Margaret Sullavan. But he's here today because he's a handsome man who looks like the embodiment of the businessman romance hero. Note the suit and yet the hair that's a little long. But is that too much fake tan or just a weird effect of the camera?

Robert Pattinson, our next pin-up, has the distinction of being the actor who plays the role of the vampire, Edward, in the very popular Twilight movies. He's young, he's British, and he's got a really nice smile.

Jonas Kaufmann is known throughout the world as one of the best operatic tenors today. He's easily the number one hottie in opera, too, and when he sings the flower song to Carmen, or the tender love song about Marguerite in Faust, you believe he is crazy in love. The stuff that dreams are made of.

What can I say about Isaiah Mustafa? Love him as the Old Spice Guy, love his smile, love his sense of humor. Hot? You bet.

And here's Clive Owen, an actor who can look either shady or heroic.

I prefer the heroic, don't you?

These dream men have real lives. Luckily, we can enjoy their attractiveness calorie-free and involvement-free. Just don't anybody start stalking, okay?

Crazy in Love

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 22:35:00 +0000

Love is wonderful. It can also make you crazy.

Today’s very open society, in which men and women mingle freely at work and at play, in public and private spaces, has led to complicated, intimate romantic expectations. Lots of them, major and minor. In this we have an advantage over people of past eras, because we can pick and choose among annoying traits that various potential life partners display. We are able to learn enough about them to know who they are. Thanks to the Internet, we can even check out what other people have publicly said about them, or if they have outstanding warrants, or if they are married and playing us along. If we live together before marriage, we can see it all without even making a serious legal commitment, and we can get out and save our sanity.

In past eras (and of course, still today in many parts of the world), women and men were kept apart during courtship. Thus they found it hard, if not impossible, to discern who was sincere and who was fronting. Only their parents, their relatives, or their social circle could provide them with enough pertinent information to make an informed choice, and often, all three had an agenda to push the marriage despite the obvious poor fit of the bride and groom. With marriage being for life, it was easy to make a BIG mistake, and then be stuck with it. The odds against choosing right were enough to drive a person crazy. Sometimes, that’s exactly what happened.

In the 19th century, women were believed to be prone to hysteria, and some women surely found hysterical outbursts a relief from the social constrictions of their lives. In 19th century fiction, many romantic heroines, delicate virginal creatures that they were, succumbed to fits of madness, which was even more genteel than hysteria, but substantially more permanent. Heroines also were at risk of being declared mad by males with legal rights over them, such as a husband, father, or brother, and being shut in an asylum. Stuck there, then they’d go mad for real. Who wouldn’t?

The archetypal 19th century mad scene takes place in a famous opera, Lucia di Lammermoor, based on Sir Walter Scott’s novel, The Bride of Lammermoor. In it, a young woman is driven mad by family pressure to marry for money. She loves another man, who supposedly has betrayed her. But poor Lucia, or Lucy, doesn’t just go mad from the stress of marrying the wrong man. She kills her bridegroom at the beginning of their wedding night. In the opera version, she then sings at length in a delusional state about being married to the man she loves, while still wearing her blood-stained nightgown. Good stuff, but unfortunately, Lucia/Lucy can’t live after this incident. Murdering her unwanted husband is beyond the pale. So this fragile heroine dies before anyone thinks of arresting her.

Later in that same century, Wilkie Collins penned the first of the “sensation novels,” The Woman in White. He used madness, identity switching, marrying for fortune, illegitimacy, and forgery to create his detective romance in which not one but two innocent heroines are taken for insane and shut up in an asylum. In the 19th century, romantic heroines sometimes needed a lot of rescuing.

Gothic novelists of the 20th century carried on the tradition when writing about the 19th, often creating heroines and villainesses who succumbed to “hereditary insanity.” Usually, the heroine lived in fear of getting the family curse of madness, and then conveniently discovered she wasn’t actually a blood relative of the crazy people. Or the villainess, once her wicked deeds were exposed, started gibbering and was certifiable from then on. “Heredity insanity” is a concept that is great in fiction because nobody has to go through a trial or serve time in prison or ever be let go. But it has little specific validity in medicine. There are genetic disorders we can have a strong possibility of inheriting, but no one is doomed to suddenly go full-blown crazy just because Aunt Rose shot her husband. Anyway, Aunt Rose probably had her reasons, although they likely were not the same as Lucia di Lammermoor’s.

In the 21st century, we have a long laundry list of disorders and diseases that can account for bizarre or antisocial behavior, but we generally see very few of them in romances. We don’t need them, because women and men have so many examples of each other’s behavior that there is plenty to worry about and conflict over without sanity being an issue. Relationships can and do drive us crazy, but we mean they exasperate and exhaust us, not that we will suffer a psychotic break because of a boyfriend’s lying, cheating behavior (or other annoying actions). Women today aren’t trying to do a full analysis of a potential husband based on how he waltzed at the debutante ball. They’re seeing men being ruthless in business or gentle to kittens or never taking out the trash, and everything in between. Including sexual behavior, of course. Some people do still lead secret lives, but we don’t have as many out-and-out fortune hunters, or young women forced into marriage to save the family estate, or the like, whether in fact or in fiction.

We can be so crazy about someone that we ignore every warning sign and plunge into deep and dangerous waters. That’s what we mean today about being crazy in love. Not that we will be forced into some desperate act. Luckily, marriage is no longer a lifetime sentence that deprives people, especially sensitive young women, of their sanity. It only seems that way sometimes.

Anything Goes

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 21:09:00 +0000

“Anything Goes” isn’t just the name of a Broadway musical that has been successfully performed in every decade since it debuted in 1934. It’s also the truth about our society in the 21st century. Never have there been as many choices available to women at every step of their lives. As we look at the romances available for our entertainment in a wide variety of media, the romances enacted in the public arena in real life, and the romances in our own lives, “Anything Goes” is probably an apt description.

There may be women reading this right now who feel constrained and repressed by whatever ethnic, religious, or social group they were born or have married into. We can feel prisoner to our choices freely made, or to the choices our families tell us should be ours. But our laws and our social customs today allow us to make choices on our own, as Amanda Palmer details on her blog about getting married to Neil Gaiman. We also can repudiate the past and change our choices at any time. In “Anything Goes,” the young society girl, Hope, is engaged to a wealthy British aristocrat, Lord Evelyn. It’s a purely financial deal in which she’s an unwilling pawn. But Hope is free to turn it down. She can back out of the engagement without any legal ramifications, unlike the situation of a young woman only a century before, who was under the legal rule of a male parent. Only influence, not law or religious vows (in an even earlier era, an engagement ceremony had the legal and religious force of a wedding ceremony), can force her into the marriage. When her love for the chance-met Billy overpowers her desire to help her family’s financial situation through a sacrificial marriage, Hope wants to back out. But her emotions war. She still is under the moral influence of her mother’s fear of poverty. Hope needs the help of the other characters to show her a different path to happiness. After Lord Evelyn finds a way to break the engagement, Hope is emotionally free to choose her own happiness. It’s a matter of her moral choices, not her lack of choice, that puts her in a fix during this story. She wants her mother to be wealthy, and they both see the marriage to Lord Evelyn as the only answer. But they’re both mistaken, because her mother finds her own solution by marrying another wealthy man.

Women today are far more powerful economically than Hope and her mother, socialites left without any money by the Depression, but our emotions often are the same. We want the people in our lives to be happy. We take their views on what will make us happy very seriously. Sometimes, we even do what they want us to do instead of what we really want to do. But it’s our freely made choice. And if we do get pregnant too young, enroll in the wrong college, marry the wrong man, start the wrong career—or no career—we can choose again. We can’t undo the past, but we can change the future. In “Anything Goes,” the nightclub entertainer, Reno, clearly a gal who has been around the block a few times, ends up marrying the British aristocrat. She remakes her life story just as surely as the beleaguered Hope does.

The world portrayed in this farce has a lot of social mobility despite the seeming class and financial barriers. Our society at large needed a few more decades to catch up with this amount of freedom, but catch up we have. Now, at all levels of our society, we listen to our emotions more carefully than at any other time in history. We make life choices more often based on what we believe will suit us personally than what will be convenient for the social group into which we were born. We have the social and the physical mobility to walk away from a life that is too rigid, too lacking in opportunity, too joyless. Or the reverse, if we feel bewildered by too many choices and too much freedom. We can remake ourselves into whatever we think we ought to be. As a devoted romantic, I wish every person can find true love the first time around, but often we make mistakes or are not lucky. What we want and need at one age isn’t the same as at another. Families sometimes are toxic, and social groups sometimes are very restraining or just not our cup of tea. In an “Anything Goes” society, we can leave it all behind and start fresh.

What a wonderful idea for the beginning of a new year: Leave the past behind. Start fresh.

Looking for Love?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:22:00 +0000

You’ve probably explored YouTube’s vast collection of video kisses, which includes movie kisses, television kisses, music video kisses, behaviors just like kissing, passionate glances indicating a desire to kiss, and more. I just found them and am totally surprised. I thought I was the only person in the world who treasured a few seconds of this or that movie, or TV show, or whatever. I’m a sucker for a romantic gesture, whether it’s a hand on someone’s cheek or merely a pregnant glance. Apparently, so is the rest of the world. Try the topic “romantic” on YouTube for even more montages of memorably romantic moments. If you get tired of that, you can Google “romance” and see an enormous number of romantic images without a sound track.

Why was I looking for love on the Internet? Like many people, I had a question in mind and just wandered across town, as it were. I started out looking for photos of Zerlina, the comic character in the opera Don Giovanni who almost lets the aristocratic Don seduce her on her wedding day. After that foolish action gets foiled by one of his many ex-lovers, Zerlina has to woo her new husband, Masetto, out of his angry mood. He of course knows exactly what Don Giovanni was after with Zerlina, but Masetto’s plebian station in life made him unable to stop his upper crust rival for his wife’s favors. So he’s mad at her. We don’t have droit de seigneur anymore, and it’s a good thing, but if a charismatic, age-appropriate movie star suddenly dropped in on your life, you, too, might forget everything and want to just go with the moment. George Clooney for the older set. Robert Pattinson for the younger. Perhaps People Magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive this year, Bradley Cooper? Cooper even speaks French, the language considered the language of lovers. Don Giovanni is usually sung in Italian, which can sound just as sexy, as Thomas Hampson shows in this clip.

I saw Don Giovanni recently in a suburban movie theater as an HD simulcast, a venue which is becoming all the rage for high-class entertainments including Shakespeare and ballet. Also wrestling and pop concerts. My companion was someone who had never seen an opera up close before. He was blown away by the seductive sexuality of the Zerlina. Granted, he might have been impressed by any movie screen–sized image of any sexy young woman, but this Zerlina was charming and sexy as she confidently seduced her own husband into forgetting how mad he was at her. All was soon well, despite her moment of being distracted and lured by the glamorous Don. At the end of the opera, Don Giovanni gets dragged to hell and the young couple is happy. Score one for the good guys.

But what does trying to find a few cute photos of Zerlina have to do with finding a treasure trove of romantic scenes on the Internet? Aha, we’re now in a Bing ad, in which the search engine company reminds us how distracting the Internet can be when we have too many choices. Scientists have proven that people with too many choices become paralyzed and can’t make any choice at all. That’s probably why a romance story usually offers a heroine a choice of one or two men only. As Zerlina’s escapade with the Don illustrates, sometimes even having the choice of two men is confusing. Kind of like my experience on the Internet looking for love.

Happy Ever After or the Seven-Year Itch?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:23:00 +0000

Romances seek the ideal of lifelong married happiness. In reality, many marriages end in divorce, sometimes as many as half. The trend is not completely negative. According to a fascinating scholarly study of marriage and divorce, divorce has been declining since 1970. So has marriage, by the way.

Why then do we imagine our romantic heroes and heroines can find true love, get married, and be happy together the rest of their lives? Are romance readers deluded?

The short answer is: probably no more than anybody else. We are no more deluded about marriage than we are about other aspects of our lives. We tend to think whatever we strive to achieve will become permanent. Yet people change careers, move from one part of the country to another, go from urban to rural or the other way around, and constantly bring new people into their lives. Our bodies change over time, from the cellular level to the visible signs such as scars fading or hair graying. Even so, wherever we are in our adult lives our basic tendency is to believe this is where we will stay. Humans like permanency, even though that is not our reality.

Many people do find true love and a happy ever after. Unfortunately, to my knowledge no one has ever studied romance readers to learn if we have a higher proportion of long-lasting marriages, and also describe them as happy, than the general populace. I would like to believe romance readers have a corner on good sense and good luck, but until scientists confirm this, it’s just a hope.

When we hope for long-term success and get failure instead, we have a choice. We either dump the failure as a regrettable instance of bad luck, and continue to hold the same ideals as before, or we revise our view of life, and look for something different. Many divorced people marry again, in what Oscar Wilde called the “triumph of hope over experience.”

Hollywood gives us constant examples of such behavior. The predictable bust-up of the Demi Moore–Ashton Kutcher marriage is just another in a long line of high-profile Hollywood relationships that have gone sour. While some people ascribe this particular failure to their May-December ages, the fact is many such marriages don’t make it past the seven-year mark.

Is this frequent churn of partners the famed seven-year itch in action? What is the problem? These people are handsome, rich, and famous, not to mention some of them are talented. Why can’t they stay married? One web page suggests many actors marry for the wrong reasons. They do a movie together and the intimacy of the work makes them crush on each other. Then they discover they can’t sustain those feelings when they return to real life. Another problem could be they get hung up on disparities in their fame or income (the "A Star is Born" syndrome, where one partner’s fame rises as the other falls). A third reason for Hollywood marriages to fail is the work obligations that keep couples apart. Hollywood couples experience the loneliness of being without their partners while at the same time often being in a strange new place surrounded by attractive new people with whom they are required to be intimate on camera. It’s a recipe for infidelity.

Considering how often Hollywood marriages churn, it’s not surprising that few romances feature big movie stars as their protagonists, either male or female. Even in our fantasies, romance readers know some marital combinations are doomed to fail.

Those poor Hollywood people. How sad. (Really. They look so happy when they get married, but it ends so soon.) The good part is, they get to leave. The wealthy and famous have advantages over ordinary citizens when a marriage goes bad. They have enough money to take care of their children, so they don’t stay in bad marriages strictly to ensure the kids have new clothes and dental work. If they are abused, they split right away. High-profile marriages often involve prenuptial contracts, so their money is protected far better than that of ordinary citizens. They don’t automatically fall into poverty because they divorce. They don’t necessarily lose their social circle, either. Finally, because their bodies are part of their stock in trade, they always are attractive to other people. They have immediate opportunities to fall in love all over again. And they do.

Today, people are often advised to start any job with an exit strategy in mind. We know employment is unlikely to be long-term anymore, and so to protect ourselves, we need to consider the endgame. Not everybody does, of course. People who contract serial marriages, such as Demi Moore (who now is a three-time loser), may have hopes for each future relationship, but they also have business managers who advise them how to protect their assets should the marriage end. The rest of us are on our own, and we still aren’t thinking of marriage as a life stage that requires an exit strategy. Perhaps we should. Instead, just like these hapless movie stars, we look for love, we hope we have found it, and we hope it is permanent. Since we can’t look to the lives of the rich and famous for perfect outcomes, we look to romance fiction, where the ideals of happy ever after still burn bright, and there is no seven-year itch.

Fairytale Wedding vs. Real Life

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:18:00 +0000

There’s been plenty of publicity about the lack of judgment shown by reality-TV star, Kim Kardashian, who filed for divorce after a mere 72 days of marriage. Many aspersions have been cast on her character for going through with a wedding extravaganza for which she supposedly was paid millions of dollars by celebrity magazines. She claims not to have made a profit on the wedding, and so on and so forth. I take anything this young woman says with a large grain of salt, but one quote struck me.

She expected a fairytale life after her fairytale wedding. Oh, really? Why? What makes her think she’s immune to the ordinary problems of real people?

Without having access to any factual details, I wonder if the breakup of Miss Kim’s marriage went something like this:

She: Now we’re back from the fairytale honeymoon, we can sell the rights to a tour of our lavish new fairytale home.
He: I’d rather hang out with the guys. I’m tired of all the hoopla.

She: We’ll name a charity after me, and throw a huge party and get other celebrities to attend and even perform at our fairytale event.
He: Training season is just around the corner. I won’t be home.

She: Oh, pooh on your silly little career. I can make us millions.
He: I’m a star athlete at the height of my powers.

She: Your team is locked out and you’re not doing anything to keep us in the news. Stop being so lazy. Get us a magazine spread or a TV interview about our fairytale marriage.
He: I’m just living, that’s all.

She: I know. Let’s get me pregnant so I can sell the rights to my fairytale pregnancy photos and the fairytale birth, and the first look at the fairytale new baby.
He: You gotta be kidding. I wouldn’t adopt a dog into a family like yours.

She: Adopting. Great idea. Then I won’t have to ruin my figure. What country has the cutest orphans?
He: You’re nuts.

She: I’ll have my publicist start talking up adoptions, maybe get some photos of you and me shopping for baby clothes at an upscale baby boutique.
He: No baby, dammit.

She: We’ve got to do something to keep in the public eye. How about if you have a brawl with the owners, or a teammate?
He: No way. I could get a huge fine or be tossed out on my ear. Lose my career.

She: You hardly have a career anyway.
He: Gee, thanks. I wanted a traditional supportive wife, not a shrew who cuts me down all the time.

She: Traditional wife? This is a fairytale, remember?
He: And you're the witch. Happy?

She: How dare you! You’re not the fairytale husband I fantasized about.
He: Get real. You’re not a fairytale princess.

She: I’m going. Goodbye.
He: Make sure the tabloids pay you plenty of money for your exclusive fairytale story about our fairytale divorce.

Covers that Tell the Story

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 05:28:00 +0000

On Halloween, children and adults run or slink around in costumes, most of them trying to look like superheroes, fairies, or spooks, scary or sexy as they choose. For the last several years, the hottest trends in book covers have been what amount to Halloween settings. Dark and spooky. Sometimes bloody. Often featuring young women garbed in tight leather, toting enormous weapons. Yet some of these books are romances dressed up to look spooky, just as we dress up at Halloween and pretend. Given this popular cover trend, how can we tell if there’s a romance inside?

It certainly helps if there’s a clinch cover. The hottest new romance self-promotion item this year is trading cards. Author Keri Stevens had them made to promote her paranormal romance, Stone Kissed. You can check out both front and back on her Web site.

Sometimes, we know the book is a romance because the cover is beautiful and features a woman who does not look as if she’s about to kill someone. Take Darker Still, by Leanna Renee Hieber, for instance. This cover impressed me with its beauty, its simplicity of design, and its artful, romantic glow. The sales copy describes a yearning, otherworldly romance with a tortured aristocrat trapped in the world within a portrait. That’s fine, but the cover itself sold me. I truly did not need the details. In the past I have bought many romances because I loved the covers. A picture is worth a thousand words and sometimes is more effective, too.

I picked up these promotional pieces at the New Jersey Romance Writers conference. I had to ask author Lisa Dale if Slow Dancing on Price’s Pier was a romance or what’s called women’s fiction or a "book club read," often a story of an older woman and possibly several of her friends, and entanglements of the distant past, or about a family problem, or even a coming-of-age or a coming-to-terms heroine. Lisa says this story is a strong romance with additional elements. The cover is attractive but misleading, I think. Someone looking for a romance might pass it by.

Vicky Burkholder, an author whose bookmark I picked up at the same conference, has some books out whose covers didn’t immediately appeal to me. She told me she did not design them. Ah, but her bookmark, which was her choice, spoke strongly of a romantic sensibility. It’s so romantic. Her Web site header is a sunset afterglow, which I find equally romantic.

The cover for Echoes at Dawn, by Kathleen Ann Gallagher, struck me as even more dramatic and romantic. And nary a weapon to be found. Thanks, ladies. I’m looking for romance, after all.

But I admit I couldn’t resist picking up the sexy cover to Surrender to Sanctuary, which clearly is a tale of another gun-toting strong female. Her spike heels and black hose also give an indication that this romance is likely to be hotter than some, as the sales copy also states.

These book covers all impressed me visually, made me curious, and made me interested in the books themselves. The best of them also gave an accurate indication of what kind of romance I would find beneath the covers.

Models or Role Models?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 14:59:00 +0000

Throughout history, people have claimed the latest generation is going to the dogs: they haven’t learned good values, they don’t know anything, and they don’t care about anything except shallow pleasures. The advent of television gave rise to a tide of such bemoaning. The advent of the Internet has done the same. Even before these, the advent of the romance novel was similarly greeted with dismay and suspicion. As I and many others pointed out earlier this year, people are still attacking the romance novel as if it were singlehandedly guilty of scooping out women’s brains and turning them into loose-moraled zombies.

The latest round of concerns include an independent film, Miss Representation, which speaks to how female images in movies and other visual media don’t show anywhere near an accurate or respectful picture of women. Concern over how much time young people spend on computers is the huge second prong of this eternal worry. Manga, imported comics from Japan, have become very popular with young American women, but they feature fantasies about subservient females in a notoriously chauvinistic society. Oh, and let’s not forget the celebrity craze, the constant publicity churn of gossip and photos about women in the movie and television business, including individuals with no discernible talent, morals, or wit.

Are these concerns justified? Yes, and no. The most serious of the concerns is the charge that women see themselves misrepresented nearly everywhere they turn. This is definitely true. In the media, we are all extremely slender and have long, lustrous hair, and wear body-baring designer clothing that reveals only well-toned flesh. In the media, there are no muffin tops.

All we have to do is look around us to know that media representations of women are false. If we women were so stupid as to take all our cues from the oversimplifications of the media, we would all aspire to be high fashion models, women who are paid to do nothing but stand or sit all day and make clothing look attractive. Are we that vapid? Most of us are not. Are models that stupid? No, the top models and former models are entrepreneurs, television and movie stars, women who have leveraged their images to sell clothes, accessories, scents, and more. These are not passive avatars of women. Movie or pop stars get the lion’s share of media attention because they are pretty or visually interesting, and because media outlets are paid to promote them. Yet all around us today we also see images of successful women, from politicians and journalists to educators and scientists. Probably not enough of the nonglamorous ones, it’s true. Media coverage of starlets is flashier and sexier, but does that mean we take them seriously? Isn’t the biggest success of modern television the reality show, in which real people are shown with all their personal foibles?

Even if we fearfully agree that most public images of women are toxic, there’s an antidote easily to be found in any romance novel. Heroines of romance usually are not super beautiful, not super rich, and not super lucky, either. They have battles to fight, and often have to overcome immense obstacles to win. Plastic surgery and stints in a celebrity rehab facility are not their weapons of choice. Neither are boob jobs and designer gowns, although sometimes a pretty dress does play a role in a romance. Romance novels are written about ordinary women in challenging situations. Passive glamour has little place in today’s romance novel. Instead, heroines are the architects of their own success, either through their own personal growth, or through their heroic actions. It is not by accident that the typical paranormal romance heroine is a kick-ass savior of the universe. Women in our society today feel their strength and want to read stories embracing their strength. Even if these stories take place in dystopian futures (although the world economy today surely presents a strongly dystopian situation right now), these women are powerful. They have strong moral cores, they don’t care about superficials such as appearance or possessions, and they are not afraid to do the right thing. Heroines of contemporary romance may not save the universe quite so obviously, but one piece at a time, they fight to improve their lives and those of the people around them. Whether in small towns or huge corporations, the romance heroine strives to do the right thing, and achieves her goal. Romances empower women.

What is unique about romance novels is they tell the woman’s story, and from her point of view. As such, they are a tremendous asset in the battle for young women’s minds. Detractors might argue that romances teach women that finding the right man is the most important thing ever, but that is to oversimplify the definition of the right man. Finding the right person is in fact a serious goal for all humans, and the more carefully rightness is defined, the better understanding we have of what constitutes a basis for happiness in life. Thus finding the right man is another version of doing the right thing.

Bottom line, people are not as stupid or vapid as we worry they are, and there are media alternatives to shallow representations of women.

Men Are Romantics Too

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 05:51:00 +0000

Lately I’ve noticed something: Evidence that today’s young men are romantics. What makes it weird is that we frequently hear critics claim women (and girls) who read romances get unrealistic ideas about the world. These females then try to live their real lives with exaggerated expectations. Romantic tales, people say, are supposedly the origin of that modern monster of selfishness and greed (not to mention angry tirades), the Bridezilla. I’d argue that a more likely culprit is the princess fantasies of the Disney empire (the expensive princess costumes, the elaborate accessories, the professional makeovers, the photo shoots, etc.). Regardless, we’ve all been assuming that ONLY WOMEN HAVE ROMANTIC ILLUSIONS.

Wrong. Men do, too. On a recent Suze Orman money advice show, a young man wanted to buy a diamond engagement ring he could not afford, which he planned to give to a girl he hardly knows. She lives in a foreign country far from him. What makes this young man think that a large diamond ring will win her heart? A romantic illusion.

Recently on the net we’ve seen several instances of young men who (deliberately or otherwise) proposed in public and got caught on camera. The footage of the big moment then went viral. Most times, the woman accepts. Sometimes, she turns the guy down. Awkward. Why do these men do it? Because they have romantic illusions. They harbor romance in their souls.

We all know cases of men who have hidden engagement rings in drinks, desserts, and what-have-you, to be discovered during a romantic dining experience at a fancy restaurant. We also see men buying flowers, buying jewelry, and other tokens. Or arranging complicated trips or special events, including surprise parties, all to enhance the moment of the proposal. The young man who wanted to buy the enormous diamond thought that all women like to show off their engagement rings and so a big diamond would win his lady’s love. But where do men get these romantic ideas?

They certainly don’t get them from reading romance novels. Plenty of reader studies have proved that the audience for romance novels is mostly female. Do they get them from romcom movies? Men hate those movies and try to avoid them. Do they get them from bromance movies that feature a lot of gross-out humor? I doubt it.

Men do what women do: They notice the behavior of the people around them. If a boy sees his father bringing his wife flowers, taking her out places, giving her gifts, he’ll do the same when he's a grown man. If his male friends achieve romantic success via music, walks in the park, or “tickets to that thing you love,” to quote the Old Spice Man, young men will follow that path. The fascinating thing to me is that young men are romantic enough to make these gestures. In an era in which many men are already living with the women they love, it may be that their eagerness to make outsize romantic gestures seems necessary. How else do they make the proposal special? There’s no first kiss or first lovemaking as the hoped-for aftermath of a successful proposal. The woman has already been won, at least as a girlfriend. Thus the only “first” left becomes the proposal itself.

Skywriting, renting a billboard, getting the proposal on a jumbotron, making a poster and waving it frantically during a baseball game are all efforts men have made to turn proposing into a very public event. What makes these efforts romantic is not merely their outsize nature. It’s the element of risk men add back into the relationship. They don’t have to create these public spectacles. They could just come home from work, pull out the ring box, and hand it over, saying, “I thought Wednesday would be good for a wedding at City Hall. You up for it?”

But they don’t. Although there might be some men who pull that kind of offhand proposal, the majority try to match the real or imagined sensitivities and expectations of the princesses in their lives, act the hero, and deliver a proposal that involves dropping down on their knees and begging. Pretty amazing. Pretty darn romantic, too.

Marriage or Bust

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 05:12:00 +0000

Considering how liberal our society now is about men and women living together without marriage, I am amazed that advice columns constantly carry pleas from women who are desperate to get married. They’re already living with men they love, and after some years together these women want to proceed to the next stage. But the men aren’t interested. These women are either walking on eggs around the men, afraid to bring up the subject of marriage and trying to hint at it instead, or they bring it up only to be dismayed when their boyfriends shrink from the idea.

At this point, the cynical among us think, “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk free?” There’s definitely an element of that in the typical modern live-in relationship. It’s very convenient, yet it’s easy to walk away from. Men love that. They hardly need the old excuse of going to the corner store for a pack of cigarettes, never to be seen again. Instead, they string along the girlfriend for years, letting her hope and dream. One day these men suddenly decide they want to be with someone else instead, and it’s all over. To be fair, men can be as indecisive as women. Living together instead of marrying allows men to remain indecisive and to avoid growing up. That’s not good for them, and clearly it’s confusing to the women with whom they cohabit.

Who would have thought that women secure in their sexuality, women who have careers and do not need a man to support them financially, women who believe they are in love and that their feelings are returned, would in this modern day be so eager to get married? And at the same time, so mealymouthed about telling their men what they want? How did women end up being silent, resentful, fearful victims all over again? Why are they acting like they’re wallflowers at a ball who are desperately hoping and waiting for a man to ask them to dance? Because they value marriage for all its positive aspects, yet living together without marriage does not automatically produce marriage. They are not engaged to be married. They are not even on a clear path to marriage.

To me this phenomenon is a strong indication that marriage is not an outmoded concept, that it is still seen to offer women a better future than merely living together does. Does it offer men a better future, too? I believe so, but stripped of a sexual imperative to marry (since they can get the sex without it), men have become too leisurely and too insecure about committing themselves. And heck, live-in girlfriends clean their apartments for them, just like wives. Why rock the boat, they think. Why be an adult and take on responsibility to another person?

Why should a woman or a man waste their youth staying with a person who will not commit to them? Why therefore be romantically unavailable to the right person? After several years of wishing and hoping, many women finally realize they need to get on with their lives, whether it is marriage to this man, or bust.

Happy Ever After versus Disappointing Classics

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 19:08:00 +0000

There are lists of classic plays we all are exhorted to read or see in our lifetime, in order to become literate and cultured. I’m here to tell you that we should pick and choose. Classic plays sometimes just don’t stand the test of time.

Uncle Vanya, by Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, is world famous. Like a lot of plays written around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, it daringly covered what then was new dramatic territory. The men in it chased after the attractive and bored young married woman in their midst, although she kept fighting them off. The women in it were unhappy in love, but stuck in their lives. Plain young Sonya loves the doctor in vain. Beautiful Yelena mistook hero worship for love and now is trapped with a crotchety elderly husband. Uncle Vanya feels he has wasted his life away. At the advanced age of forty-seven, he has nothing but a lot of hard work to show for it. People sit around slumping, their sad posture emphasizing their miserable lives. Oh, phooey. By the play’s end, when everybody is miserable, I wanted to leap up onto the stage, grab Vanya’s gun, and order them to start dancing. Then at least the play would end in laughter. Ironic, sometimes sad laughter, but with the promise that these characters would find some joy in their lives in the future.

Come on, folks, make something of your lives. No romance heroine would be content to keep on hopelessly working in the same rut once she knew definitively that her doctor love did not love her. After getting a makeover, she’d strike out in a new direction, find a better path to happiness, and along the way, make her dear uncle happy again. The advanced age of forty-seven is not too old for a man to marry and have a family. Things could improve for all these people. Where is a romance writer when we need her?

The miserable ending to this play, in which the abandoned characters sit around morosely contemplating their future, probably is what gave Russian plays the reputation of being depressing. That’s because the playwright leaves them at their lowest point. Romance writers often start their stories at their characters’ lowest point. And then they work up, way up to a happy ever after ending. Chekhov needed a romance writer to give his story new hope at the end. Of course that was not the fashion of the day. Serious playwrights, such as George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, and August Strindberg tended to leave their characters isolated and unhappy. If they even left them alive.

We live in a far different age from the hypocrisy and overt social structure of Victorianism, or even the similar smugness of the 1950s in America. We don’t need depressing plays to show us the truth behind social conventions. At all levels of society our culture has pretty much dispensed with such niceties. That being so, what can a play that is over 100 years old tell us today about human nature that still applies? Obviously, that people can get stuck in a rut, that some people love in vain, that others are users, and that others simply can’t use their energy in a positive direction. All of which makes my fingers itch to get Mary Poppins or Georgette Heyer’s Sophy (of The Grand Sophy) on the case. They’d have these people tidied up and set on a happier path in a trice.

If we call a classic play a problem play, then we should call a romance a problem-solving story. When a romance is honest, and the conflict is honorably resolved, the characters will be happy in the future. While we often are told we should not meddle with other people’s lives, it’s clear to me that the co-dependent characters in Chekhov’s play need someone or something to shake them up and reconnect them to hope. The playwright does not offer that; instead he shows how the introduction of two irritants—the professor and his lovely wife—are the catalysts who cause frustration to burst forth, to no good end. Obviously both men in love with Elena can’t succeed, and the ruination of her marriage is not what she wants, either. This story needs a fixer, some element that would pull the characters out of their funk. If it was written as a romance, that fixer person or element, even as a hitherto undeveloped element of a character’s personality, would be there. In the ashes of defeat and misery, that element would give the depressed characters new hope, and point them toward a happier future.

That’s what romances do. They show us how we can solve problems, how we can have a better and more hopeful attitude to what we see in our lives as problems. How we can achieve happiness. This is huge. This is classic. If only Chekhov had his characters start dancing at the end of his play.

100, er, 10 Most Romantic People

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:37:00 +0000

Time Magazine does a list of the 100 most influential people on the planet. I’m all for Angela Merkel running Germany, but I’m not feeling her immediate influence. People Magazine has a list of the 100 most beautiful people. The first ten or twenty are familiar names, but most of the people on the list are fairly obscure up-and-comers. I found a list of “the most famous people of all time” that evidently was a popular vote. Elvis topped it. I admired his talent, and in his day, he was hot, but he’s nowhere near the most famous person of all time, even thinking just about the U S of A.

Aren’t we most influenced by the stories we encountered as children? If so, which are the ones that speak to us about romance? Can I even name ten of them?

1. Zorro. What could be more romantic than an aristocrat who secretly robs from the rich and gives to the poor? But who is his girlfriend? She never made much of an impression. In some incarnations, she’s a proper and helpless girl of gentle birth, needing rescue. In the movie with Catherine Zeta-Jones, she’s a spitfire who knows how to use a sword. She and Zorro have what you might call a modern romance, with the balance of power constantly shifting until they are firmly on the same team.
2. Robin Hood. Another aristocrat, he openly robs from the rich and gives to the poor. He and Maid Marian had a thing going, plus as a court lady she was right in the middle of the intrigues of Prince John and the Sheriff of Nottingham.
3. King Arthur? Nah. Sir Lancelot. Uh-oh. He and Queen Guinevere did Arthur wrong. But it was true love. But it was adultery. But it was true love. Oh, dear.
4. Abelard. His medieval romance with Heloise became more of an intellectual thing after her relatives took strong objection to his courtship and had him castrated. Ouch. He became a monk and she a nun, and they settled for an epistolary romance.
5. Tristan and Isolde. Their illicit romance captured the minds of romantics in Europe for centuries. Was it the love potion that made them betray her husband, or did their love “just happen”?
6. Romeo and Juliet. Teenagers. You know how those stories end. Melodrama, behavior to extremes, perfect love because they don’t live to grow up and compromise.
7. Beauty and the Beast. Not the Disney version, in which the Beast really is abusive, but the original fairy tale, in which he treats Beauty well, just frightens her at first because he is ugly. It’s a story of seeing beyond surfaces, and it’s redemptive. Plus she ends up rich and happy with her true love who gets a makeover in the looks department. Nice.
8. Heathcliff and Cathy. Now you’re talking romance. This extreme couple shared a love no one understood, not even they themselves, expressed by the wild winds and rugged terrain of their favorite meeting spot. Their tragic love is always on anyone’s list of most romantic stories.
9. Mr. Darcy. He’s got to be on any list, because the romance between intelligent, funny, socially beleaguered Elizabeth Bennet and the snooty rich boy Fitzwilliam Darcy rings all the changes. The delicious proposal scene in which Elizabeth tells him off turns her into the champion of all young women in love who have been treated to the ill-mannered disrespect of men who claim to love them. You go, girl.
10. Rhett Butler and what’s-her-name from Gone with the Wind. I’m never sure why people love them both, since apparently this couple fight to a standstill, and then he finally gives up on her, even as she schemes to figure out her next move. There’s a lot of ego on display, but the dramatic times that are the background to their romance make strong will necessary.

Some of the romantic icons I’ve listed are famous from popular movies and books rather than from real life. Some of the real-life stories are substantially misrepresented in our imaginations, or obscured by the retelling of their stories over many centuries. I thought I could easily whip out ten or twenty more names, but when it comes to romance that has stood the test of time, and not just the last few decades, I’m drawing a blank. Should I list brilliant political figures like the Kennedys? Tragic royal figures like Princess Diana? Sexy movie stars like Angelina Jolie?

Who is on your list of most romantic people?

Do You Want Romance Retreads?

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 16:59:00 +0000

Random House announces it will start up the Loveswept line of romances again as ebooks only. The line is supposedly going to be a mix of reprints (Can we call them that when nothing is getting near a press?) and a few new novels.

Loveswept was a line of 900-plus contemporary paperback romances published by Bantam Books starting in 1983 and ending in 1999. Carolyn Nichols, an author turned editor, founded the line, after she’d started Second Chance at Love over at Berkley Jove. I worked with Carolyn and her small editorial staff to put together some of the earliest books in the series. Carolyn Nichols had some interesting ideas, but basically, the series was a success because she bought manuscripts from several terrific unknowns and beginners, the premier of them being Iris Johansen. Johansen now has a hugely successful career as a thriller writer. Loveswept heroines tended to follow Johansen’s then standard of a hard-done-by, martyrlike heroine, who absorbed plenty of pain before being allowed a happily ever after.

Other authors who made a splash at Loveswept were Sandra Brown (who already was being published by multiple romance publishers and is now also a bestselling thriller writer), Fayrene Preston, and Kay Hooper. Contemporary romances were big at the time, just as paranormals are today, and there were too many being published per month (around 150) for even the most devoted of fans to buy and read them all. Perhaps there is a potential audience of older romance readers who never got around to reading these titles when they first came out.

What do we make of the idea of reprinting these stories? They are a time capsule, representing a period when it was controversial for a woman to have a real career. Far more problematic, brutish male behavior was more tolerated then than it is now. Romances written thirty years ago had partner rapes, shaking and slapping, smoking, drinking jags, catty other women, and a lot of high-handed behavior that young women today consider outrageous and, worse, deeply unattractive. Is a modern romance audience willing to read this kind of material, even taking it as a snapshot of a bygone era? I doubt most of these stories will hold up well. I can’t imagine how the Loveswept type of heroine, especially the martyr heroine Johansen was so good at creating, will speak to today’s romance readers, the younger women who eat up paranormal romances about kickass heroines who save the world themselves and take no guff from any man. We’re all still seeking romance, but some of the rules change as society changes.

Jumping on the bandwagon (now there’s an antique phrase), Harlequin has just announced plans to bring out 11,000 backlist romance titles as ebooks. Who will want to read these old books? (And how old are we talking about, since Harlequin in theory could digitize romances it published over 50 years ago?) Again, it is not the age of the books, it is the outdated attitudes expressed or tolerated in them that could be a serious sticking point for readers. In America and all across the world, women today have a larger image of who they are and can be than ever before. Does the releasing of older romance titles do anything to help or hurt that hard-won standard of self-determination and self-respect? Or will these older books simply not catch the fancy of today’s romance readers?

Or, concerned with the books appearing dated, are these publishers planning to revise all the older novels they intend to release as ebooks? For many years, Nancy Drew books were updated, with mixed results. Obviously they were easier for readers to get into if they had Nancy driving the latest car instead of a 1930s roadster. But many believe that the updating also toned down Nancy’s original feisty character to fit a more conservative era. With these old romances, would the revisions be the opposite? Making the heroines stronger? That would be very weird, yet it would also fulfill a long-held fantasy of mine. Probably yours, too. You know, the one about how a certain story had a good premise and characters but then took a terrible wrong turn? And we daydreamed about what these characters should have done? Some of us got feisty ourselves and wrote brand new books in which people like these characters do the right thing after all. Many a romance writing career has started with a reader thinking she could pull off the same idea better. Strictly as readers, though, a book that feels wrongheaded is a waste of time and an irritant. We want the story to go in the direction we believe is right. Over time, as society changes, our definition of a happy ending changes, too.

Will romance readers buy 12,000 old titles of dubious relevance to the issues that interest women today? Only time will tell.

Stupid Mainstream Journalists Writing Dreck About Romances, continued

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 14:52:00 +0000

Yes, there are more silly articles continuing the summer fashion of mainstream journalists hating on romances. One from the LA Times claims romances are bad for women’s sexual health because they don’t show use of condoms. The comments rightly blast the study as 1) not recent (done in 2000), 2) including books published as long ago as 1981 (pre-AIDS), and 3) surveying only 78 college students (not the main bulk of romance readers or even a statistically valid sample). Other commenters throw the ball back to the article writer, pointing out the use of the outdated term "bodice ripper" (which correctly applies only to some historical romances published in the 1970s), and the contradictions between the article's beginning and its conclusion.

If that’s not enough, a British-written article in the Guardian quotes the same flawed outdated study and includes a patronizing suggestion that the lower class women who seek public health help are too stupid to know fiction from reality. It’s a shame mainstream journalists prefer to seek out ridiculous so-called professionals willing to pontificate on subjects they know nothing about. The comments on this one are priceless, well worth reading (unlike the article itself).

Some link back to high times at our beloved Smart Bitches Trashy Books, such as these laugh riot classics: The Playboy Sheikh’s Virgin Stable Girl and Pregnesia.

Do not drink any beverages while reading these, for you will spew.

Leave it to NPR online to publish a balanced, careful analysis of the study, pointing out in convincing detail all the scientific flaws, the prejudice against women, and the true ignorance the psychologist shows about romance fiction. In particular, the most telling part is her description of men asking women not to use a condom, and persuading them to have abortions. Huh? She's the one confusing romance fiction with romance reality, for the scenes she's talking about never take place in romances. They happen in real life.

Not to beat a dead horse here, but it's already hot enough outside in July. Do we need to be made hot under the collar by these continuous nonsense claims about romances? A tiny percentage of people even read one book a year, let alone one work of fiction. Psychologists need to look elsewhere for causation of society's ills, and let us lie back under the summer sun (well-protected by high SPF sunblock, of course) and enjoy reading our romances in peace.

No More Scarlet Letters

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 15:29:00 +0000

We all know the theme of The Scarlet Letter, the classic novel by Nathaniel Hawthorne, or think we do. It’s about a Puritan woman in 17th century Boston, who is punished by her community for having a child out of wedlock. Hester Prynne holds out, though, and will not name the father, and all kinds of complications ensue. The Puritans have been called the American Taliban; their extreme persecution of anyone who deviated from a joyless and seemingly pious existence is well known. Punishing a woman for having sex outside of marriage was all part of the program. It’s easy in a society that has no effective birth control to identify women who are having sex because usually women get pregnant as a result and thus cannot deny the evidence. Meanwhile, the men involved slink away. That’s why The Scarlet Letter is not a romance. In romances, men voluntarily own up to their love and their responsibilities. No wonder women prefer to read romances rather than classic American novels. Classics usually detail miserable situations that don’t end well. Romances can be miserable as the story develops, but they always end happily.

Writing in the 19th century, Hawthorne vividly describes how women are punished for having sex and men evade responsibility. The lover who won’t speak out and share the blame does a pretty good job of killing himself out of self-loathing, but he doesn’t want to lose the good opinion of his community and reveal what he really is. His hypocrisy (he’s a minister, the 19th century equivalent of a charismatic politician) and his cowardice don’t help the woman he seduced, who has a baby she can’t pretend does not exist. Hawthorne rings lots of changes on the complications of guilt, revenge, and most of all, social obloquy, which is why this novel still can speak to us today.

Blaming women for behavior engaged in by both sexes has substantially subsided in this country though it still exists. Only a few decades ago, women had to hide unmarried pregnancy. We’re not totally over that, but pregnant unwed girls no longer have to make long visits to some hitherto unknown “aunt” many states away, there to give birth in secret and give up their babies to adoption. Our society has at least evolved that far. The “secret baby” theme so popular in romance novels of recent years acknowledges how hard it is to be a single mother, and yet how right it is to keep one’s baby if one wants to, regardless of the circumstances of conception. We now face the problem that many men still do not own up to their moral responsibility in procreating. Today, a lot of men owe back child support, which is a scandal in itself. Too bad we can’t have those men wear scarlet letters. At least in romances, men are eager and loving fathers. No wonder we read romances. In romances, life goes right, and it’s important to note that life goes right for both women and men in these tales. They both end up happy, and that’s the true happy ending for which we all hope.

Romances Equal Good Reading

noreply@blogger.com (Poison Ivy) — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 03:18:00 +0000

An article in Utah-based KSL.com that claimed “romance novels can be as addictive as pornography” raised a stir in the Twitterverse, and not a complimentary one. Galley Cat, a publishing site, linked to some hilariously sarcastic responses, among others. Romance writers have been very offended and many have blogged about the stupidity of likening reading romance novels to being addicted to pornography.

On first reading the article my response was the usual: “Romances are good-for-you reading and how dare you be so ignorant!” But really, taking this approach is too much like shooting fish in a barrel, too easy. Someone with a degree makes an outrageous claim and suddenly this is a “serious study”? Would you believe everything a psychologist pronounced, especially if you had some in-depth knowledge about the topic and the psychologist did not? Didn’t think so.

Let’s widen this discussion. Disapproving people have always believed that reading fiction is bad for you, any kind of fiction. Some people want you to only read religious tracts or holy books or whatever. Others want you to read nonfiction, as if nonfiction is actually any less fiction than admitted fiction. The continuous recent scandals involving supposed memoirs that have turned out to be fiction should be convincing about how much any of us should trust nonfiction. If that’s not enough, consider any supposedly factual article you have ever read about a topic you know a lot about. Usually, you are horrified to discover that the writer gets it all wrong. Typically, even if the writer includes new, important information, the article wrap-up reiterates commonly held stereotypes that an ignorant public has about the topic. The writer does not make much effort to illuminate a different way of viewing the facts. This is not always the case, but it happens so often we should be suspicious and even cynical when trying to absorb any information presented to us as factual. So-called "facts" do not equal truth.

Serious-minded people believe we should read serious writing that elevates us, teaches us something true about the world, and generally motivates us to be the best we can be. They believe these elements cannot be found in fiction, and especially not in romances. Of course they are very wrong. Fiction is equally elevating and even more motivating than any speech or sermon or essay, no matter how sincerely meant, well thought out, or effectively delivered. Why? Because the reader bonds with the main character and gets inside the story’s conflict in a way that few of us can through the sympathy created by hearing about a real-life situation. That’s the basic reason fiction is so powerful. We become the protagonist, and we struggle, and then we overcome. A great reason to read more fiction, of any kind.

Reading, like any other activity, can be an escape from dealing with our real lives. Whether that is a good or bad thing per se, reading too many romances is no more dangerous than reading too much Newsweek. You can get very depressed if you read too much about middle east wars and terrorists and serial killers. I defy you to get that depressed reading a romance.

Preposterously, the writer claims reading romances endangers our relationships with real people, implying that our husbands are schlemiels we dare not compare to the handsome, stalwart heroes of romance. Most women are perceptive enough to see how the men they love resemble the heroes of romance, how kind they are, how brave, how moral, and more. To suggest that real men can never be the spiritual equivalent of the heroes of romance is to insult all real men.

People who read fiction are not idiots. They know the difference between reality and fantasy.