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

Laura Kinsale emailed us her comment regarding our discussion on “author as novel” and the encouraged symbiosis between the two, and said that it might make for a good blog post to provide another point of view on our debate about accountability, author-as-novel, and close connections between author, book, self, and readership.

In the great AAR-splosion lately, Fair wrote a comment regarding the challenge facing romance authors in particular in terms of marketing and building relationships with readers. Because the publishers have let the authors down as far as marketing, she writers, authors are pressured to connect with readers in a far more personal manner than in other genres, often through methods that irk the readers and the authors themselves.

Far from a few television ads a la Patterson with the author holding the book next to a close up of his own head saying ‘Buy my book Cat and Mouse,’ authors are asked to write “letters” to the reader thanking them for reading the book and inviting the reader to closely link the book to the author, and vice versa, by grounding the inspiration for the story in the author’s personal experience. One contributor to the thread placed part of the blame on the internet for allowing such personal interaction between writer and reader, and while others disagree, the advent of writer blogs, websites, and email address availability, coupled with a person whose profession asks that she park herself in front of the computer, means that personal contact can only increase. Anyone remember the days when you wrote letters to your favorite authors in care of their publishing house?

Candy and I go back and forth about whom to hold accountable when we find a book ineffably shitty, whether writing is entirely a service industry, and who is in service to whom (more on that topic at length soon on an SBTB near you), but for the publisher to invite or even demand the personal attachment of the author to the work seems just over the line. And I say that in full acknowledgement that as a reviewer, and I’ve said this before, I am ever mindful that when I bang the drum of “Damn This Sucked” about a book, I am addressing the book’s flaws, and not the author’s.

The entire idea of a symbiotic relationship between author-as-novel and novel-as-author is damn hell creepy, should you ask me, and certainly makes my job as reviewer potentially sticky, not that I give much of a crap. But I’m curious what the Bitchery thinks of this trend. 

Update: Most of the posts in the thread I linked to have been pulled, including the awesome messages by “romance author” defending grammatical illegibility (and by awesome, I mean “WHAT THE SHIT?"), as well as Emma’s wonderful and articulate response. *cries* But if you want to ogle another train-wreck-in-progress, check out this other a-splosion, in which an author who’s at least brave enough to sign her name writes some more about...how the bad sentences in her book were taken out of context. Oy.

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Via crankyreader, check out this “romance author” who tries to argue that grammar, spelling and, well, general coherency don’t matter. Aieeee. A poster named Emma summarized what I would’ve wanted to say, with much less profanity and a great deal more eloquence.

Man, I wonder who this romance author is. People who don’t bother to at least come up with SOME sort of username and instead resort to “anonymous,” “a reader” or “romance author” and the like strike me as singularly uncreative minds. Look, if you want to be chickenshit, be a CREATIVE chickenshit.

Candy and I got an email from a blogger who is doing her own survey of the best work of fiction in the last 25 years, and while we were honored to be asked and are trying to come up with a response, both of us kinda went, all intelligent-like, “Uhhhhh.... ummmm. Yeah.”

We’re all erudite and shit, huh?

But it also got us a-thinkin’ - which is often dangerous - about the opposite: what’s the WORST piece of fiction in the past 25 years, specifically romance fiction? What’s the worst romance you have ever freaking read? We have asked this question before, but let’s revisit now that we have a much larger and much more eager-to-vent readership: what’s your “F” book, a romance so bad that you forever judge all other bad romances against it?

And while we’re at it, what’s the worst piece of fiction, non-romance, that you’ve ever encountered?

For me: worst romance, and I’ve said this before, Honey Moon by Susan Elizabeth Phillips. For Candy: Desire’s Blossom by Cassie Edwards. And every time I see that title, I think it’s some gnarly euphamism for vagina, and that’s just sad.

Michelle Buonfiglio of the online radio broadcast Romance Buy the Book is featuring a two-part interview with a right studly individual, Nathan Kamp, romance cover model. Part one went up May 9; part two appears next week.

Mr. Kamp and his ‘licious pecs have been featured on many a fine cover, including the Hot Spell Anthology and Teresa Medeiros’ new novel, The Vampire Who Loved Me.

Seems Mr. Kamp is somewhat bashful about his cover modeling, and likes best that his career gives him the wherewithal and freedom to do the things that he really wants to do, a work attitude that I can absolutely appreciate.

But here’s my question: does getting to know the cover model in any way make him less attractive to you? Or more? Or do you prefer to superimpose your own fantasy into the image of the hero and ignore the cover altogether?

And also, what about the more popular female cover models? Are there profiles of them? I can’t find any.