My pirate name is:

Red Morgan Flint

Passion is a big part of your life, which makes sense for a pirate. Like the rock flint, you're hard and sharp. But, also like flint, you're easily chipped, and sparky. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

Wow! I'm a Special Guest

Visit me at Romancing the Blog. You'll find my post on the announced demise of Harlequin Romances.

Since I'm into sharing my various theories lately, I'll share one more. Whatever publishers do to attract twenty something readers to romances--something they've seemed obsessed with for the last decade--they will never completely succeed.

Why? Because we all read to meet certain basic emotional needs. And the needs that are met by reading romances will never be as fulfilling and exciting as what late teens and twenty somethings are going through in their own lives. They are busy pair-bonding and falling in love themselves. They don't need to read about it during that estatic time in their lives.

We start to get fascinated by the thought of falling in love around puberty.

You'll notice the line in my Romancing the Blog contribution:

Unless ‘traditional’ romance survives, moms and grandmas aren’t going share with—and catch--young readers who will come back and enjoy a wider range of romances when they are more mature.

That's the best time in the world to capture young readers, when they are dreaming about Mr. Right and romantic weddings and stealing a first kiss. For me anyway, everything at that age was romantic.

By fifteen or sixteen, we quit having time to read. We're too busy 'going out' and talking on the phone and falling in love with every guy we see who presents possibilities. (We especially love the 'bad boys' we've fallen in love with reading romances.)

Then, the majority of us establish longer term relationships. And we're in our twenties. We're starting to set up housekeeping, getting married, having kids, getting a life.

Then bamm! mid-twenties to early thirties, depending on who we are and our own personal chronology, the 'romance' has worn off. (No, I'm not saying that the love has died, just that euphoric-falling-in-love-wonderful-magical excitement that settles into comfort and companionship and security.) And we're ready for a break from reality again. We're ready to escape for a couple of hours after the kids have gone to bed and we crave the fantasy and bliss of having a wonderful romance in our lives again. And we're willing to get it where we can, in a wide array of stories.

And that's why publishers are wasting their time trying to attract twenty somethings. That's why they should be concentrating on capturing the hearts of pre-teen and early teens...with books their moms and grandmas will let them read. With stories that let them dream and imagine their future. With stories that show how a healthy relationship works and doesn't work.

Don't get me wrong. The twenty somthings all don't get away. You can go to any college dorm in the nation and find a stack of romances being passed around. But they aren't being read by the ones who are living it. They're being read by the ones still anxiously awaiting it.

Kisses only???

I read Maili Ryan's Romancing the blog contribution yesterday with fascination. And the comments were downright insulting to those of us who don't especially love hawt (guess we can't spell it 'hot' any more) sex scenes in our romances.

I've had a theory about romance readers for a long time now. I think the people who are fortunate enough to have very good sex lives themselves aren't interested in reading 'hawt.' I'm one of the lucky ones. I have plenty and what I have is great. I rarely run across a sex scene that I don't skip because my reality is better! Occasionally, the love scenes (notice the change of adverb) are so much a part of the development of the characters and the story, that I do read them.

When I first started studying the romance market, I noticed that the people reading (and writing) the hotter stuff were, for the most part, people who weren't in a steady relationships. I drew an obvious conclusion. One of my critique partners--a fairly young widow--confirmed it for me. She LOVED the sexier reads. That, of course, was also what she wrote. She totally disagreed with my theory...until she remarried. About a year later, she took me aside and told me, I was right. She'd also started skipping the sex scenes and in fact, had quit choosing the books she bought with that in mind. That was all I needed to decide my theory wasn't just a theory. It was fact.

I do know that market trends have an impact both on what readers buy and writers write. (You can't sell a book with any sex behind closed doors if the editor who's interested tells you to revise that scene and add two more. You can't buy books without the scenes that some of us skip if that is all that's on the shelf.) But the trend toward more and more and more also explains the huge upswing in inspirational romances and the even more intriguing trend toward more realistic, 'edgy' inspirationals. Please, bring it on! (http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/index.php?p=296)

For those of you who may want to hollar at me because you read the sexy stuff AND have a great sex life, I'll point out that maybe your sex life is good because what you read spices things up.

In my ideal world, I'd find lots of wonderful books where the mental and emotional relationship was front and center and as intense as it could get. And the sex would stay behind closed doors because my imagination can fill in the blanks if I want to go there. My reality is much, much better than most writers can write it. And I DO know what happens after that long and luscious kiss!

Ten days later

The RWA conference is over for another year. And after--I'd have to go through lots of stuff to figure out how many RWA conferences I've actually been to--at least 12 of the annual events, I'm amazed to find that, for once, I didn't come home inspired and rarin' to write.

Ever since I got home, I've been trying to figure out why it didn't do it's usual magic. I went to some workshops. I saw most of the people I wanted to see. (I didn't get a chance to really 'talk' to many of the ones I would have liked to actually spend a bit of time with.) I met some new ones. Debbie Macomber and Susan Elizabeth Phillips were spectacular. Randall Wallace was ten times better than I expected him to be.

My presentation for the Scriptscene chapter was extremely well received. I met some wonderful writers involved with that chapter. (In fact, I joined because they are such a great group and I loved their optimistic, upbeat approach.)

Amazingly, Reno turned out to be a good location for the conference. I didn't hear any of the usual gripes about the hotel. Most of the conference food was actually good rather than just edible.

So why didn't RWA do its usual magic for me? Hmmmm? (I know there are those who would suggest that my mood should be attributed to the 'downer' at the end--the controversy surrounding the RITA awards. But I know it wasn't that. Frankly, imho, if the Prez, the board and Nora weren't slashing it out so publicly, the majority of people who attended would probably say the ceremony was okay, it had it's entertaining moments. It had some wierd ones, too, and most of us would have preferred that it focussed more on RWA history and honoring people who deserved at least a mention and less on a negative history lesson. But, mostly it should have been shorter...)

The annual RWA conference has suddenly, mysteriously become, for me anyway, a 'maybe' rather than an automatic. Atlanta in 2006? I guess we'll see.

Publishers: Wanted, new readers

When I was 'attending' the BEA via C-Span, I saw an interview with Laurence Kirshbaum, resigning Chairman and CEO of Time Warner Book Group. One of the major things he seemed concerned about was the future of publishing because..."We have to get new readers."
I hate to tell him, but there are plenty of new readers out there. Hasn't he been watching the news? Harry Potter just made history by selling over 5 million copies in 24 hours...and it isn't out yet! Those are all pre-orders. The books won't be in stores until mid-July. Although a lot of grown-ups read and enjoy the Harry Potter books, the vast majority of the sales are by grown-up but for kids!
So what is the problem? Why do book sales continually go down every quarter as they have for several years?
I know. I know. I jump up and down, waving my hand. I really want someone in a position of power to figure this out.
I wonder when the publishing industry is going to figure out what the music industry did when they started losing sales because of Napster.
Before computers and the internet, used books didn't hurt new book sales. When you went into a used bookstore or found a box of books at a garage sale, new sales weren't impacted. The buyer couldn't pick and choose; they took what was available. Buying a used book was pot luck and I'll bet a lot of authors garnered new readers because of used book sales. Now that you can type in the title of any book you want on your computer and come up with 69 choices to buy used, right along side the new one that is ten times the price, what person with any common sense is going to spend 24.95 (or more) for a book they want when they can buy it used without having to wait or hunt; heck, without even leaving home.
The book industry is in trouble, but 5 million people buying the new Harry Potter book before it's even out should tell someone that the biggest problem may not be a lack of new readers. Duh!

Fakin' It With the Best

I love CSpan Book TV. I've never had the pleasure of attending the BEA--yet, but I always feel like I have, via CSpan. Last Saturday, I was right on the front row for the most highly touted events. (Not the parties, darn it. But the 'official' events.)

I was amazed--but not really since I've had the conversation with so many other authors in the kinds of private, late night sessions we tend to have toward the end of writer's conferences in some 24 hour coffee shop or over the phone with only the closest of friends--to find that Nick Hornby, and I have a lot in common. We are both not 'really' authors. He also doesn't think 'like an author,' at least not the ones you hear in public.

When he hears an author say, "Write for yourself. Write what YOU want to read," he thinks, "Why would you do that if you want to get published?" What if what you want to write is 400,000 words and what the publishers are buying is 100,000? No one is going to read it. And if you were really writing for yourself, why wouldn't you write 40,000 words. (It would take a lot less time and effort.) Why spend all that time writing background that you already know? Or adding in detail so that someone else can share your vision of the scene. You have the vision. You don't need the detail.

My major catch phrase for feeling like I'm not really an author is "I've always known I would be a writer." (I didn't know until I was almost 30.) And listening to other authors talk about their backgrounds, I'm always sure I'm a really lucky fake. Every other author seems to have at least one traumatic incident that defines them. Some of their childhoods sound like they could be plopped straight into a tragic, tear-jerking novel. (Comparatively, my life has been a heartwarming, occasionally amusing anecdote.)

The surprising part was that Hornby is a man and a bestselling author whose books always hit the Times list, who even started his own genre. (Lad-lit.) It's kinda nice to know the I'm-only-pretending-to-be-an-author phenomenon isn't strictly a female thing, felt only by those of us who aren't household names. Hey, I'm a fake in good company.

In his speech, Hornby expressed a lot of my feelings. This weekend, I'm attending the Virginia Festival of the Book. The Bookish Obsessions panel looks interesting. http://www.booktv.org/schedule/

I'm almost a Grandma...sort of

My daughter, who is NOT going to be a writer--"Hey, I just had an idea. I thought I might as well write it down."--recently finished revising her first complete manuscript. I helped her research a few agents. She sent out 5 queries. She's had three "Sure, I'd like to see it" responses so far. So tonight she called. She decided to surf and do a little deeper 'investigation' of the agents. She discovered all the comment and bulletin boards where writers actually talk to each other. So her call tonight? "Did you know I could get rejected by these agents?"

I had to laugh. Somehow, growing up in a household with a writer, where did she miss THAT particular fact? Was she only paying attention to the good stuff? (I guess we did 'celebrate' and make a lot bigger deal of the sales and the good news. I tried hard to ignore the rejections and the disappointments.) She said she knew she'd probably get rejections from publishers. But it never occurred to her that she might get the same responses from agents. She thought she got to pick and choose. Personally, I hope she's right.

Though I may never get to know what it feels like to be a grandmother since neither of my children seem inclined to find 'the one' and settle down, I have a feeling it must feel something like this.

Keep your fingers crossed for the 'birthing' of this particular dear-to-my-heart, but not-quite-the-same-as-my-own book. It is soooo hard to send your babies out into the world, isn't it?