Romance therapy and book trailers

My monthly(ish) column is up at Romancing the Blog. It's supposed to be funny (one guy is giving romance advice to another), but I'll let you be the judge of that.

Speaking of guys, yesterday I came across a very entertaining video, How to give the perfect man hug. Not having a Y chromosome, I'm not sure this information is particularly useful to me, but I loved the video because the actors' facial expressions are hilarious.

In the excuses department, I didn't blog on Thursday and Friday this week because I was on a crazy creative jag, putting the finishing touches on a book trailer I'll be showing you very soon. (Those of you who remember what I posted almost a year ago about the pathetic quality of most book trailers can just stop laughing. You'll be surprised when you see what I've done.) I'm doing this just for fun, as an experiment in viral marketing. More on that later.

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Harlequin's Romance Report

Because I blog about the romance industry, today I received an e-mail teaser about Harlequin's annual Romance Report, a press release on which is scheduled for tomorrow. Here's a snippet:

This year’s Harlequin Romance Report survey (www.press.eHarlequin.com/), which polled more than 3,000 men and women across Canada and the U.S., discovered that the U.S. is a nation of romantics. Ninety-two percent of men and 94% of women consider themselves romantic and surprisingly, almost half of all men (45%) consider themselves hopeless romantics. While the majority of American men (64%) and women (72%) want more romance in their lives, the problem is that 72% don’t know how to get it, believing that television and movies set impossible romantic standards.

Much like the sexual revolution that liberalized sex and forced discussion about sexuality out of the bedroom and into the public domain, The Romance Revolution, the focus of this year’s Romance Report, is all about helping people get in touch with their inner romantic. The report also explores how romance has changed and where it is headed, identifies the barriers to romance and explores romance in its new domain – online.

Here's something that's not romantic: according to the report, 16% of men and women have broken up with someone by e-mail, text message or instant message. The sniveling cowards.

Harlequin Enterprises Limited is the global leader in series romance and one of the world's leading publishers of women's fiction, with titles issued worldwide in 25 languages and sold in 94 international markets. The company produces over 115 titles monthly and publishes more than 1,300 authors from around the world. Harlequin Enterprises Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Torstar Corporation, a broadly based media company listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TS.nv.b). Harlequin’s Web site is located at http://www.eharlequin.com Harlequin has offices in 18 countries, including Toronto, New York and London.

I'm one of those 1,300 authors because I write for Steeple Hill Books, which is owned by Harlequin. (Yes, the mighty Harlequin machine publishes Christian romance.)

The last paragraph of the e-mail message invited me to contact Harlequin to arrange an interview with a "romance expert." Goodness only knows what that is, but I don't have time to wonder about it this afternoon.

I have a romance novel to write.

Romance: for the birds

My backyard is surrounded on three sides by stands of mature trees, which means, particularly at this time of year, that the neighborhood birds sometimes make such a racket that I have to close my office window so I can think straight. I did that yesterday, then rushed back to open the window a few minutes later because I'd heard the lovely, haunting call of a mourning dove.

That pleasure was short-lived. The mourning dove moved on, and I soon found myself yelling at a cardinal. He was perched in the viburnum bushes next to my patio, and his staccato chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp was driving me crazy. For the first time ever, I wished the neighbor's nasty bird-chasing cat would stop by. I stalked over to the window and realized that the noisy cardinal was trying to impress his lady love.

"Just shut up and kiss her!" I said. "I'm trying to work in here."

Yes, the crazy romance writer is now offering love-tips to birds.

A friend sent me this link to a short video of some birds of paradise. It's both fascinating and hilarious. One bird is shown cleaning up debris and even polishing his branch to set the scene for the seduction of his potential mate. She's having none of it.

It just started to rain here, so the birds have run off to wherever it is that they go when it rains. It's quiet now, so I'm going back to work on my novel.

On hating chick lit, romance, and [insert your genre here]

Diane Shipley has a post in today's Guardian Blog titled, "In Defence of Chick Lit," but there's nothing new in the article or the dozens of reader comments following it. It's the same tired old playground argument we've been hearing for the past several years. You know, the one about how chick lit is or isn't all about shoes and how it is or isn't Serious Literature....

I was tempted to post a comment, but then I thought, why do that when I can post my response here and fulfil my blogging obligation for the day?

I've read more than a dozen chick lit novels, three of them by the amazingly talented Marian Keyes, and I still don't care for the genre. I realize it's not all about shoes and shopping, but those things do seem to figure prominently in the majority of chick lit novels I've seen. I've never been a terribly enthusiastic shopper, so any mention of Prada handbags makes me yawn. But even without the giddy consumerism that seems to permeate the genre, I'd find chick lit off-putting. What irritates me most is the way the books' first-person narration emphasizes the protagonists' total self-absorption.

Of course these things are simple matters of taste. When friends ask, I give my honest opinion of chick lit. I've even blogged about it a couple of times. But what's it to Diane Shipley if people like me disparage her favorite genre? As Ms. Shipley points out,

Chick lit authors are making millions, having their books made into Oscar-nominated films and receiving fan letters by the sackload. The genre's thrived for 12 years and counting and dominates bookshops all over the world.

I suspect her enthusiasm has driven her to overstate the case just a tad, but I ignored that because I was still laughing at a bit of fuzzy logic she presented earlier in the article. Attempting to refute a charge that every chick lit novel is about "the protagonist's relentless pursuit of money, a makeover and Mr Right," Ms. Shipley wrote:

It's true, those once were the main preoccupations of chick lit novels (and what's wrong with that if readers enjoy it?) but the genre has evolved: my favourite chick lit book is Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes, about a young woman's recovery from drug addiction. Keyes, who arguably invented chick lit with her debut novel Watermelon in 1995....

Wait a minute. Rachel's Holiday (which I have read; it's the chick lit novel I came closest to genuinely liking) was published in 1998, when the genre was (arguably) just three years old. So it's ludicrous to use that book to demonstrate the genre's "evolution." Besides, Ms. Shipley's suggestion that the genre is no longer centered on "the protagonist's relentless pursuit of money, a makeover and Mr Right" is demonstrably untrue: walk into any bookstore and you'll find a plethora of brand-new books whose back-cover blurbs describe exactly that type of story.

It's a shame Ms. Shipley is so eager to show that the genre has "matured" to the point that it's no longer all about shoes and handbags. I'm no chick lit fan, but that doesn't mean I assume books containing those elements must be of poor literary quality. I'll agree that there's quality and variety in the genre--just as there is in every other genre.

Here's another eye-roller:

I always find that the people who criticise chick lit, both in the press and to my face (when they discover I edit a chick lit website) are those who know the least about it.

Now she's sounding like my romance-writing sisters who shrilly insist that people who don't like romance novels have never tried romance novels.

That's a stupid assertion. That's like saying if you feed enough lima beans to a recalcitrant toddler, he'll learn to love them. Trust me, he won't. (I tried it with two different kids.)

I know what it's like to have my genre trashed and my own writing unfairly categorized by people who haven't even read it; I write romance novels, after all. Not only that, I write Christian romance novels, which are widely ridiculed even in the romance community. But my intended audience is happy, so when some self-important ignoramus attempts to demonstrate her superior intellect and impeccable taste by wiping her feet on my genre, my response is a slight lift of the eyebrows and a calm, "Excuse me, but I'm not writing to please you."

It takes the wind out of their sails every time.