Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

And then came humor! And Cussing! While discussing the use of slang and characters who speak in a casual, slang-filled grammatically incorrect manner, Ward said that allowing characters to embrace that language is often difficult in the face of copy editors who try to correct slang usage in dialogue: “Copy editors are wonderful people but they eat, sleep, live, and breathe the Chicago manual of cocksucking style.”

Ward was so horrified that she said that aloud that she got up and put herself in the corner for a timeout, and turned bright, bright red.

Jessica Anderson, whose book based on Mayan mythology comes out this year, is Ward’s critique partner and she talked about the critique process with Ward, and her hatred of Ward’s heroines. She said she thinks they’re weak dishrags and she especially hated Marissa.

Seems when Ward sent Andersen the draft of Butch and Marissa’s book, Andersen’s response to Marissa was along the lines of “I hate her, I wanna kill her, she’s a dishrag.” So Ward took it back, and she says she worked and worked and resent it with a note that Marissa was much better and so much stronger. Andersen’s response, as she tells it? “I don’t see any difference.”

Ahem: BWAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA.

The upshot of the candid, hilarious session? Two authors, one with an established, dare I say rabid readership, and another who is brand spanking new, earned great feedback and prospective sales by charming and cracking up the audience of readers. Author rapport and humor, with cussing, makes a big difference around here, and charms the pants off people.

You’d understand my confusion. Never in my life have I read a more confusing conference schedule, and I’ve been to popular culture conferences, composition conferences, fiction conferences.. you get the picture. Judging solely by the 2008 agenda, I can’t tell if this is a conference meant for writers, fans, readers, aspiring authors, or what. There’s sessions on how not to piss off your editor, and sessions all about this author or that author and I couldn’t tell you what the purpose of this gathering is just by looking at the schedule. Not to mention, the technicolor madness of the actual schedule is impossible to read unless one has ingested many, many tiny squares of funny paper.

Someone finally explained it to me: you know the sci fi conventions for sci fi fans, and the fantasy conferences for fantasy fans? This, it seems, is the romance equivalent. There’s costumes, parties, more parties, and sessions on all different things – and I suspect there’s a strong element of the “all romance fans are aspiring romance authors” attitude inherent in the selection of the sessions – but in essence, this is a four-day party all about romance. Romance fans get to meet up with other romance fans that they might only see once a year at RT. (Let me tell you – there was some squeeing in the elevator every time I was on it and long lost friends hugged it out at alternate floors.)

In prior years, I’m told, it was a party to celebrate romance, and now there’s a writer’s track, a reader’s track, booksellers track – and the layout of the program is like a migraine on paper.  But bottom line: it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. If I were a more party-oriented person, I’d be way into it. I might have even brought a formal gown – as it was, I was hideously underdressed for the Ellora’s Cave party this evening.

EC, while I’m discussing it, is a major player at this here partay. The EC men, and I believe there are 10 of them but I didn’t count, are everywhere. When I arrived, they were holding court to a line of countless people waiting to have them sign the EC calendar. Later, there was another line of women in formal gowns waiting to pay $10 to have their picture taken with them.

Between you and me? I felt kind of sorry for them. They were oozing charm (emphasis on ooze) but it was very much an act that was eagerly consumed by many of the women waiting in line for them. But every picture? Flex the muscles. Every spare moment greeting fans? Flex the muscles. These are not men who are given a second to relax and let the gut hang out. Every moment was flexed. I’d be exhausted – I’m tired just thinking about it.

The EC party (pictures coming as soon as I get them off the camera and see if they’re any good) was a whole other story. First the EC authors were escorted one by one across the stage to much cheering, each author led by one of the EC gentlemen, as usual without shirts on. Man, it is a tit nipply around here, if you catch my meaning.

Then, there was a show. Or a skit. Or something. Picture a throbbing sound system playing Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA” while the individual Ellora men lip-synched a verse. No, really. Picture that in your mind. Now add 1000 lbs. of OMGWTFBBQ and you will have an approximation of the expression on my face. Beefcake with added patriotism! Cover models who were proud to be an Americans! I was not aware there was a Yay USA Track here but apparently so.

So first there was a guy in a construction vest, then a dude in dress whites who pulled off the military posture marvelously well… and then another gentleman in dress blues that were at least three sizes too big for him. Major demerits. And each time a new costumed man appears on stage, they lip sync another verse of the song, and salute, and pose, and more flexing, and the crowd goes wild. Seriously – I was absolutely sure I’d stumbled into a strange universe where there was not a single soul who could taste the absurd floating on the air. It was one of those moments that I suspect I’ll have more of: this is clearly for fans of romance, but I am not among the group who “gets it.”

Then I found a conference attendee in actual dress blues – an actual member of the military. Being the shameless nosy woman I am, I asked him a few questions, and he was kind enough to answer all my nebby questions.

Staff Sergeant W., who is in active duty and on leave presently from the 101st out of Ft. Campbell, currently stationed outside of Baghdad, is here with his wife Annie Marshall who writes for Dark Castle. SSG W. is home in the US for a little over a week or so, celebrating his daughter’s birthday, enjoying some leave time, and… attending Romantic Times. Now that is a hero right there: vacation from service in Iraq, and he’s drinking watered down mimosas at the EC party watching cover models pretend to be military personnel.

So I asked SSG W. what he thought about the men on stage saluting and posing as Navy and Army service men. He was the one who pointed out the exceptionally oversized dress blues, and he was rather irritated that they folded the American flag completely wrong – but then he said, “They don’t come to Iraq and tell me how to do my job, so I’m not going to tell them how to do theirs.”

He definitely didn’t know it, but he adjusted my attitude right quickly: this may not be how I choose to be a fan of romance, but this conference sure makes a huge number of people really, really, REALLY happy.

While I am definitely not the target audience for the models and the Mr. Romance (one of whom campaigned HARD for my vote until I had to tell him I couldn’t stay for the pageant) and the costumes and the formal gowns (I didn’t pack one – lame of me!), there are 1500+ people here who are still downstairs having a ball dancing at the EC party, and that party will go on until after midnight. It’s like a bar mitzvah only everyone is older than me instead of younger. It’s a hedonistic celebration of romance, and I don’t honestly understand a lot of it, though I can tell there are some people here who look forward to this all year.

Meeting SSG W., for me personally, was much more inspiring than any of the men on stage pretending to be military or lip synching to God Bless the USA, and the ten minutes I spent talking (ok shouting over the music) made the rest of the EC party totally worth it. That and watching this one woman’s endowments slip their surly bonds while she jump-danced to “Come On Eileen.”

Who wanted to be the statistic-wielding shrew outing every instance of prejudice and injustice? Most women prefer to think of themselves as what Caroline Bird, author of Born Female, has called “the loophole woman”—as the exception. The success of those women is frequently cited as evidence that feminism has met its goals. But too often, the exceptional woman is also the exception that proves the rule.

Indeed, it might be said that the postfeminist outlook was a means of avoiding an unpleasant topic. “They don’t want to have the discussion,” a management consultant who worked at a top firm for nearly a decade told me, referring to her female colleagues. “It’s like, ‘I’m trying to have a level playing field here.’ ” Who wanted to think of gender as a divisive force, as the root of discrimination? Perhaps more relevant, who wanted to view oneself as a victim? Postfeminism was also a form of solipsism: If it’s not happening to me, it’s not happening at all. To those women succeeding in a man’s world, the problems wrought by sexism often seemed to belong to other women. But as our first serious female presidential candidate came under attack, there was a collective revelation: Even if we couldn’t see the proverbial glass ceiling from where we sat, it still existed—and it was not retractable....

It is perhaps cold comfort to say that if she loses the nomination, her candidacy leaves behind a legacy of reawakened feminism—the fourth wave, if you will. But this is in fact what is happening.

The past few months have been like an extended consciousness-raising session, to use a retro phrase that would have once made most of us cringe. We’ve parsed the gender politics of the campaign with other women in the office, at parties, over e-mail, and now we’re starting to parse the gender politics of our lives. This is, admittedly, depressing: How can we be confronting the same issues, all these years later? But it’s also exciting. It feels as if a window has been opened in a stuffy, long-sealed room. There is a thrill at the collective realization. Now the question is, what next?

In my more ambitious moments in writing on this site, I ponder whether romance and the online community of women who read and write it are a microcosm that mimics the larger state of women in the US, one that is representative of the political polarity and diversity of women in this country, only in much, much smaller numbers, which when making sweeping generalizations are easier to approach. The pressure to be nice, the forces that storm the tower to demand change, the number of women-owned and -operated small businesses in competition with established, largely male-run corporation conglomerates, the part where we’re a majority shareholder of the nation’s fiction dollars spent yet sometimes act like a minority afraid of criticism from within our own community, even if that criticism creates needed change, the idea that loyalty is more important than appropriate business conduct… yeah, all of that. So often the deeper thoughts I have on romance novels and the community here online link so neatly and seamlessly into thoughts of the State of Feminism and women in general that I have a hard time separating one from the other.

Political opinions aside, the idea that Clinton’s campaign has uncovered a latent and refueling effort on behalf of women is fascinating. But the best part, for me, was this comment, which stopped a lot of the pounding of “women haters!” drum set and robbed the trolls of their sticks. This comment, it’s like ice cream once you’ve had to eat something good for you that you hate the taste of. Reader SJL33 wrote:

Feminism does not suggest that men are evil or that they hate women. It only suggests, particularly in the 3rd wave (Michel Foucault), that femininity and masculinity are false concepts. They are nothing more than roles created by culture to define and divide, roles we have allowed and perpetuated endlessly.
I do not suggest that men act more like women or that women act more like men. I suggest that there is not any such thing. Just as there is no such thing as a Black person acting White or a White person acting Black. These roles do not exist!

They only injure and shame, and I am tired of it.

As a Black woman in college, I see the racial and gender dynamics at work all around me. As a feminist at a time when it is very unpopular I only wish to build up all of the wonderful, beautiful men AND women around me, including myself. We all want the same things, regardless of race or gender. I hope that has not been completely forgotten.

Word. To. That. Person. Like. Merde and Mon Dieu (TM Nathalie Grey)

So - back to romance:

Sexism and RomanceLandia have a long dance-card full of history - are romance novels sexist? the opposite? both? neither? a duck with sheep’s clothing? a pocketful of kryptonite? - but conversely, racism and/in RomanceLandia is debated with shouting or whispers. Debates about romance novels written by or perhaps about black women and where they are shelved in comparison to white romance novels usually end up with much hollering online or use of capslock, or devolve into a complete lack of solution and much offense. The racial and sexual/gendered dynamics of the romance community online (OnRomCom? romcomon? Rom Cum-on? *snerk* sorry.) are vast and deep and twisty as all hell, and I don’t think I can do them justice in one entry.

But I’m curious about what you think. Are we an accurate microcosm, or am I navel gazing to previously uncharted heights of self-indulgence? Which is more of a present and pressing issue, out there or in here, sexism or racism? And has the Unfeasibly Tall Greek Billionaire met his match? Only the shadow knows.

Note the blue defined area on the map - free transport, baby, yeah - until 7pm for the PATransit buses, and all day and all night for the T Light Rail. So drink up and never have to drive back to the hotel.

For awesome interactive maps of dining establishments in varying price points, the Downtown Pittsburgh Partnership’s dining page is bootylicious.

Of note:

99 Primanti Brothers: 2 Market Square.

Back in the day, steelworkers didn’t have a long lunch break, and they didn’t have a place to sit down and eat. Primanti brothers sandwiches started putting the French fries IN the sandwich so as to give the steel workers a portable and freaking enormous lunch they could eat standing up with little mess. Primanti’s sandwiches are a Pittsburgh insitution, and keeping with what I frequently say about my hometown: the portions are huge and the people are friendly.

The 1902 Tavern: 24 Market Square

I used to go here all the time with my family for lunch on weekends. The French dip roast beef sandwich and fries with beer cheese were a favorite of mine - back when I didn’t know what a calorie was. The bar here is gorgeous and the setting will probably set an historical romance author to daydreaming, because the whole place looks like something from the past. Befriend a Liquid Silver Press author for a free drink coupon good at the 1902, and say hi to the staff there. Event and conference planners familiar with the ‘burgh tell me these folks are among the nicest and eager to meet the RT convention attendees.

Market Square in general is awesome - there’s the Ale House, a Starbucks, and various other places to eat, and a park in the middle.

If you’re really, REALLY looking to drop a fair load of money, there’s a Morton’s at 625 Liberty Avenue, which is east of the hotel up Liberty, and a Ruth’s Chris in PPG place, which is south of Market Square. You can get your eat on and drop some serious dough there.

Another place I’m going to try because I used to eat there ALL the time is Max & Erma’s on Stanwix Street (Up Liberty, left on Stanwix), and Cuzamil, (a a review of their second location scored a pretty good review) because I love Mexican food.

Mallora, on the South Side, if you feel like a bit of a hike, has fantastic Spanish cuisine, and is the restaurant where Hubby and I went on the night of our Senior prom - though we weren’t dating each other at the time.

See you in Pittsburgh, y’all.