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

NR has a smoking heroine in a relatively recent (within the past 5 years, I think) book that was released as a hard back, so I don’t think she has entirely gone the way of PC’ness.  The smoking heroine was Lena, who owned a bar in the French Quarter in New Orleans.  Except she didn’t smoke that much—one pack per month.

I’m not jarred or offended by smoking characters, unless I read about someone who smokes in the office at work.  Since smoking has been banned in public buildings for as long as I’ve been working, that grabs my attention. 

The most recent character I can remember smoking?  Phury, from JR Ward’s vampire series.  He wasn’t smoking regular tobacco, but I don’t remember exactly what it was—some sort of vampire version of tobacco?  vampire pot?  Dunno.  He’s not a hero yet, though, so it’ll be interesting to see if he still smokes when his turn comes.

Victoria Dahl & I were just discussing this on Tuesday. One of my adult romantic comedies has a heroine who *pretends* to smoke as part of a threatening no-nonsense bitch facade, and I was thinking of cutting it out because it makes her too harsh, even tho she is only *pretending.* Vicki pointed out that a very very very funny recent Lani Diane Rich book has a smoking hero who smokes at the beginning and is still smoking at the end--so whatever the reason my book didn’t sell, maybe the smoking wasn’t it. *shrug*

Come to think of it, two of my YAs (SB Sarah has one of these on her TBR pile) and one of my adult WIPs use smoking as a marker of eeeeeeeevil or foreboding or stress or desperation. I think I’m following the culture in this, after Cancer Smoking Man on the X-Files, and Chandler smoking when Ross & Rachel fight on Friends, just as he smoked when his parents fought when he was a teenager.

Funny this should come up.  I am reading a NR book from the 80’s and was surprised when the hero lit up.  So surprised that I looked to see what the pub date was. Once I saw 80’s date I could see why it would have been a natural thing for him to do.  It bothers me though.  The smoking scene was my first introduction to the character and now, in my mind, he has this nasty habit.  Emotional problems, narrow mindedness, arrogance, these don’t phase me and make a hero more real, more human.  Smoking, that just makes him icky.*

*Not that I won’t read the rest of the book and just pretend the smoking thing didn’t happen.

Ceilidh
Duchess of Cocqueringue

I don’t see it much in recent books, but in older ones, and in non-romances smoking comes up a lot.  It only irritates me when it’s described in loving detail as the next best thing to sex.  Or when, in sf/f or paranormals, someone who’s never encountered tobacco before is immediately enthralled by the pleasures of smoking--I was of the impression that one has to get used to it before it’s pleasurable, but since I’ve never smoked, I suppose I could be wrong about that.

Yeah, the Lani Diane Rich book was The Comeback Kiss, and I called Jennifer to tell her that she COULD get a romantic comedy published even with all sorts of un-PC-ness! Very exciting!

Do middle class people smoke anymore? I don’t know anybody who does. Two of my three sisters quit. None of my neighbors smoke. I mean it’s not really very fun anymore, what with all the huddling on the street corner at least twenty feet from a building’s entrance. *shrug* How much have the numbers gone down? I’d think substantially.

Personally, I think it could work for some characters, but the only person smoking in any of my books was a vampire who couldn’t stand the smell, but still indulged about once a year. Hey, that’s me! Wait, not the vampire part.

NR has Roarke smoke occasionally through the In Death books--and several of the secondary characters do too, for one reason or another. It’s acknowledged as an addiction while not making a huge deal out of it.

Suzanne Brockmann has a SEAL struggling with quitting in two of her Silhouette’s TD&D, if I’m not mistaken [Wes Skelly].

Personally, even back in the 80s smoking characters bothered me--the breath thing, because I have never smoked but shared a room with my sister who to this day smokes like a chimney. Add the health risks and consequences…

... and I’m rather happy to have less cigarrette smoke drifting around the pages of the books I read.

Off-topic hot promo hype:

Oh, SB Sarah! Look at that beautiful blank spot under “SB Sarah’s TBR!”. . . Jennifer’s book would look PERFECT there!  :cheese:

Now I know I’ve read some smokers in the past, but I can’t recall what they were. They were either cowboys or some kind of throwback-type hero, and they were all definitely in the past.
Heroine who smoked were even more rare--and when they did, the heros were all “that’s not ladylike” because they were probably historicals or something and then he’d have to beat her into submission and giving up the Virginia Slims or whatever.
The only romance I’ve read recently where smoking is a problem habit, but the character doesn’t really care enough to make a serious effort to quit has been the Bridget Jones books. There’s the times when she goes on a self-cleansing kick and gives up, but she invariably goes back to smoking in the bathroom and needing to buy more cigarettes and freely hating those characters who are all blithe and cheery about having given up smoking ages ago and having no problems with it.

Sidenote: I feel like I’m the only person who’s seen Thank You For Smoking. Tell me I’m wrong.

P.S. Y’all have a point about the cops and Navy people smoking. If WWII Navy duty could get my grandpa into two packs a day and alcoholism, it should do the same for romance novel heros.

>>… and I’m rather happy to have less cigarrette smoke drifting around the pages of the books I read. <<

azteclady, you remind me of how much I DESPISE checking out a good book from the library, cracking it open, and finding that it reeks of stale cigarette smoke. *gack!* Oh, and the time my library book reeked of old pot smoke was even worse.

Look at that beautiful blank spot under “SB Sarah’s TBR!

Ha! Patience, young Jedi. The long and luxurious wait for SB reviews is detailed under the link FAQ U. Tho I do look forward to hearing SB Sarah’s opinion, much as I looked forward to seeing my SAT scores.

I have to say that I’m one of those that’s extremely turned off when characters I’m reading about light up a cigarette. Same with characters who are snorting snuff every time they turn around. I was raised in a non-smoking household, and even though several of my siblings have smoked in the past, most of them have quit.

The possible exception to my smoking rule is cigars. Call me sentimental, but my favorite grandpa smoked cigars, and I loved the smell....still do. My older brother will occasionally light up a cigar, and I’m really not bothered by that. Would I want to date someone who regularly smoked cigars? Probably not. BUT...a hero who lights up the occasional cigar...especially a western character...for some reason does appeal to me in some way.

Go figure.

I sometimes have my heroes smoking the occasional ciggie, but not chain smoking. They’re usually trying to give it up though… I’ve had heroines who are ex smokers too.

Strangely enough though, I’ve never smoked myself, and I don’t like to be around smoke in real life.

But sometimes, alas, it looks so glamorous in the movies. Like Humphrey Bogart, and also Johnny Depp in The Ninth Gate. He has a cig on all the time in that…

I thought of another: Beverly Brandt’s Room Service. Here the heroine smokes as a marker that she’s a rich, spoiled party animal at the beginning. The book is being made into a movie starring Jessica Simpson. We’ll see if the cigarettes make it in.

This whole topic is hilarious. It had never even occurred to me as an issue, but then I write historicals. And yep, my hero smokes . . . and so does my heroine (since she was conceived as “a chick who’s a dude” if you know what I mean). No one has ever pointed it out as a problem . . . hell, no one has ever even mentioned it.

I don’t often read comtemps, but I think it might bug me. It would depend on the context. Bridget Jones smoked, but it was presented as one of her “adorable flaws”.

As smoking becomes increasingly a minority vice, I think that it is becoming harder to have a character who smokes without that representing something, to the reader if not to the writer.

If smoking is used to symbolise something - a character finally quits after some or other key event, for instance - then the writer is probably OK. If a character smokes just to give the writer something to do with her words, then the door may be left open for the reader to infer some symbolism of their own devising, and this may be something that the author never intended. That could result in an unsatisfactory read if the imputed symbolic issue never gets resolved.

The last book I read with a smoking main character was a thriller. The hero smoked, and I think that it was intended to indicate that he was his own man, somebody who bucked the system, did things his way. I’m not sure whether it was the smoking, or the fact that violence was fairly near the top of his list of responses to awkward situations, but one way or another I found him deeply unsympathetic.

But that may just be me, who finds anybody smoking in a restaurant about as appealing as Phelps at a funeral.

Hey! People are talking about me! Yay! I truly exist!

Sorry. :) You know us writers, horribly insecure, whores for attention, etc.

Yes, Victoria and Jennifer, it’s true; you can be very un-PC and still get published. I don’t deliberately try to not be PC, but I really work hard not to make choices for my characters that are based on anything but character and story. Finn smoked. He just did. He was planning on quitting when he turned 30, but at the end of the book he hadn’t yet, so he didn’t.

In Time Off for Good Behavior and Ex and the Single Girl, both the heroines are occasional smokers. Probably because I’m an occasional smoker, and it seems like every time there’s a smoking character, they’re three-packs a day, and either a villain or trying to quit. It’s like you can’t be a decent human being and smoke, which is totally stupid. And smoking has been over-villified, far as I’m concerned. Yes, it does have severe health consequences, but so does eating at McDonald’s, and those people aren’t considered evil.

Now there’s the “dirtying up my air” line, and I’m with you on that. I think all smokers should smoke outside, absolutely. But smokers aren’t evil simply because they’re smokers. They just have a bad habit that’s hell to quit.

So, yeah, sometimes my good characters smoke, and I haven’t heard word one about it. Haven’t heard much about the talking dogs in my books, either, but that’s another topic altogether. ;)

Smoking doesn’t symbolise anything for me.  A cig is just a cig…

And who is Phelps? Us thickos don’t know these things! :)

I’ve never smoked, so for me, smoking is a facet of a chacter that doesn’t resonate with me when it happens. Descriptions of a heroine lighting up throw me out of the moment, because it’s not something I would do or have done. It feels foreign to me.

Silly, isn’t it? I love books about people living lives I’ve never experienced, but smoking seems too alien to me and makes me feel less connected to the heroine.

I wish I could remember the books I’ve read where this happened. I know it has ...

Sometimes I think there are more smokers than non-smokers in my city, Pittsburgh.  Gawd forbid you take a 15 min break on the computer to surf the net to clear your head, but hey going outside to suck on a cancer stick, alrighty!

Rant aside....

You do see more paranormal characters smoking, especially vampires.  To quote Janette from Forever Knight, “Filthy habit.....,but at least I know it can’t kill me.”

azteclady, you remind me of how much I DESPISE checking out a good book from the library, cracking it open, and finding that it reeks of stale cigarette smoke.

Try working in a used book store and processing romance novels that reek of stale cigarettes and an oddly.... fishy smell.  Eww.

As one of the many people on this planet who is violently allergic to tobacco, I find that a character who smokes without consideration for the consequenses is highly unsympathetic.  Mostly because I’ve been around too many people who honestly didn’t care that their smoking was a danger to not only themselves, but also the people around them.

However, a charcter that knows that the smoking is a bad habit, and spends even a single sentence thinking about it is slightly more sympathetic for having enough depth to really think about the consequenses of their personal actions.

SB Sarah:  You should hear my mom rant about that.  She works as the receptionist at the Career Center in CMU and she has to get someone to cover for her just to go to the bathroom, while the two smokers in the office are allowed to take their own sweet time outside.

Btw, what part of the Burgh are you from?

Usually in my own writings, characters who smoke are trying to mask a psychological neurosis--they’re control freaks, or nervous people, or else they’re trying to damp down their own cynicism--so yes, the “bad guys” tend to smoke more than the good guys.  Cigarettes are my way of signalling to the reader that this character has emotions that s/he is trying to repress (In one particularly telling instance, a character was a former smoker who had kicked the habit for five years when a stressful incident, similiar to the one that started her original habit, reoccurred, triggering the subsequent return of a number of other identical behaviours).  But that’s just my two cents’ worth; as a writer, that’s what I use it for.

There’s usually a significantly smaller percentage of smokers in my little written world than I have noticed in real-life.  I myself am a smoker.  I hope this doesn’t mean I’m really a villain!

I’ve written one smoking hero (a vampire) and am in the middle of writing another (a demon, for whom smoking is not an unhealthy thing to do.)

Neither of them are heavy smokers, but I admit-I think it’s kinda sexy. My heroes tend to be flawed, and usually have things about themselves they’d rather forget. Smoking is an extension of that.

They tend to drink a lot, too.

Maybe because I, too, do both. I dunno. But characters whose health would be affected by smoking don’t, and my heroes pretty much never smoke around the heroines indoors, even if they normally do smoke indoors. Which gives me another way to illustrate stress-if the hero lights up in front of the heroine, things are pretty bad.

I wrote a smoking hero in 1999 A Magical Moment (It’ll be out in August again in the Perfect Passion volume). 

The heroine was a new age, psychic, vegetarian health nut.

He was trying to quit, but couldn’t, hated vegetables and was red meat and potatoes all the way.

I HATE smoking.  I’m completely turned off by characters that smoke.  Both my parents smoke.  They have 5 heart attacks between them, I have asthma, and my dad died a long, painful, gruesome death from smoking-related mouth cancer.  So, I’m kind of a nut about it.  And yes, I am also formerly of western PA (Greensburg in Westmoreland County).

I used to work in the drug and alcohol field so I’m very anti smoking. I hate characters who smoke and everytime I see Nora Roberts make a hero smoke, it pulls me right out of the story. I find it socially irresposible so it doesn’t sit well with heroic behaviour. When I saw Good Night and Good Luck at the movies, that was the thing that struck me so much, everyone smoked. In that case it was totally true to the time and well done but I’m grateful we live in different times.

I’m from Greenfield; graduated from Allderdice, too.  :-)

In the JD Robb books, Roarke smokes.  Yuck, yuck, yuck!  I’d rather have a hero with a paunch!

I’m fine with it in historicals, weirdly, when it’s the after-dinner cigar.  Cigars aren’t as nasty as cigarettes, though.

Whew!  As a writer of historicals I feel like I dodged a bullet on this one! 

Lessee....two of my heroes smoked, one didn’t. I did made a point of saying Rand Washburn, the hero of Smuggler’s Bride, was one of the few Crackers, male or female, who didn’t chew tobacco.[g]

I am curious as to whether one can trace the use of cigarettes in romance fiction among protagonists alongside the increasing negative publicity surrounding smoking.

God, I wish I’d thought of this for my master’s thesis in public health.  I could have spent my graduate school career reading romance novels instead of whatever crap I did (who can remember?)

Former smoker here.

Started in high school and continued through college and well into corporate America.

There was one incident in college, a disgusting, drunken fraternity hook-up where the guy kissed me, pulled away immediately, looked at me liked I’d lost the last good piece of my mind, went into his bathroom to retrieve a tube of toothpaste, and offered me a schmear of it on his forefinger.  I sucked it off of his finger and we resumed our activity, but the encounter always stayed with me.  Not enough to stop smoking, but still…

Later, whilst working at a fab job that paid a living wage, I was induced to finally quit.  What did it for me was not the health rhetoric, which while true didn’t move me the way fear of carbohydrates did.  It was the fact that I smelled.  My hair stunk and my index and middle fingers had a strange, yellow-ish stain.  I was convinced my teeth were turning unnatural colors and I couldn’t shake the image of that fraternity boy feeding me toothpaste so he could properly molest me.

I have no recollection of reading about characters who smoke, but I know that if I encountered one, I’d wonder how in the world kisses could be described as hungry and delicious when I know they taste like the ashes of yesterday’s barbeque.

Thus far, I haven’t written any character who smoke, but I’ve written only historicals up to this point and haven’t included any tobacco use.  I am planning on writing a contemporary where the hero, a Brit in the US, starts out as a smoker, since it is more prevalent overseas.  Over the course of the book, he will attempt to quit smoking as part of his character arc.  I’m also working on a futuristic (yeah, I know, can’t confine me to one genre of romance...) and have been thinking about what kind of addictive behavior people might engage in in lieu of smoking.

My grandmother died from pancreatic cancer, a direct result of her lifelong smoking habit.  I think I was one of the only kids who actually paid attention in health class, so smoking never appealed to me, and, in the case of my grandma, got to see its effects up close and personal.  I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life, actually.

For the most part, I find it repellent, but I, too, have a tiny, tiny weakness for a certain variety of man smoking.  There was also some guy that I dated in college who hand-rolled his own Drum tobacco cigarettes, so occasionally I catch a little whiff of smoke on an attractive guy and my girly bits flutter to life. 

I don’t think I would ever write a character who smoked because it seems like an endorsement of dangerous behavior, and not the good kind of dangerous behavior.  Someone earlier mentioned that it’s difficult to envision the HEA when we know either the hero or the heroine (usually the hero) is headed towards a battle with cancer. 

I was thinking that perhaps one of the reasons why we almost never see heroines smoking is because of the old social stigma attached to women smoking--i.e., it was only for “fast” girls.  Putting something between your lips!  And enjoying it!  And that stigma carries on when we see a woman in a novel who isn’t the heroine smoking, it becomes a quick indicator of nefarious character, like the woman who engages in casual sex without desiring commitment.  Punishment usually follows.

Smoking characters doesn’t bother me. I don’t see it as an “endorsement” if it’s true to the character, their personality and background. I would hate to read a book full of flawless saints with no bad habits.

Of course, I am an ex-smoker so I might be biased.

I am also an ex-smoker and I do not judge people or characters in books by their use or non-use of tobacco.  After all, I am the same person I was when I smoked, I just smell better and wheeze less.

Since smoking characters are rare these days I do generally stop and wonder if the author wants me to make something of it.  I just can’t.  I grew up around smokers and I have known a lot of smokers who were good people and a lot of non-smokers who were assholes, and vice-versa.

I will add my embarassing college smoking story.  When I was a sophmore in college, the guy that I was completely and totally crushing on came up to me at a party and said, “I just think you should know that you are one of the most beautiful girls I have ever seen and if you didn’t smoke you would be totally hot.” :long: The worst part is that he was a really nice guy and he sounded sad when he said it.  He really did feel like he needed to explain to me why he was not acting on the mega-watt chemistry that we had going on. *sigh* What could have been…

Interesting topic. I don’t care one way or the other about characters smoking. I just remember Ian from Judith McNaught’s Almost Heaven, smoking and being seductive. There is something sexy about it--from afar. In a fantasy kinda way because in real life, I wouldn’t care for it.

I graduated in 1992.

Definately a Pittsburgh thing.  My husband (a CMU employee too) and my mom both smoke and I don’t think they will ever quit.

I hate smoking.  Very few TV/Movie characters smoke either.  It is odd watch old movies where everyone is walking around with cigarettes dangling from their fingers.  I find it almost distracting because we are so used to not seeing them smoke unless it is a vital part of the script.

Hey girls, it nice to know there are so many of youns Pittsburghers out there.

One of my favourite literary characters, Harriet Vane (Lord Peter Wimsy mysteries by Dorothy Sayers), smokes incidentally throughout her books and so do most of her contemporaries. This was the 1930s, so that’s reasonable and it doesn’t bother me much, but it’s interesting that in Muder Must Advertise the hero comes up with a foolproof advertising campaign for a cigarette brand and asks the manager of the team what happens when the market is saturated and everyone dies of lung cancer. The manager replies “We’re a long way from that yet...and we have to get more women into smoking” (I’m paraphrasing). That’s in 1936, and they’re aware there’s a health risk. I must admit that when I see people smoking I am sad and think, they must taste dreadful and will destroy their skin and voice, quite apart from any other health risks, so it’s a total turnoff for me. That was the only unromantic aspect of Romeo + Juliet for me, that Leonardo DiCaprio was always lighting up.

In Brisbane, Australia, where I am, health regulations now mean that the places you can smoke are pretty much limited to the middle of the road (you can’t be within 4 metres of a doorway etc, no public spaces, transport, corridors, etc) and very very few cafes and restaurants even have smoking sections anymore. It’s considered pretty rude to light up inside anyone’s house, and usually in a social situation people ask if anyone minds before they start. So if I was setting a book here, the characters couldn’t smoke anywhere really where they might go about their business, you might have a section about the rebel crowd who smoke outside but most of the action I would think would have to take place in a smoke-free zone. This would be very limiting if you wanted your character casually smoking. If you wanted them smoking you would have to make a real issue of it and it seems a lot of trouble to go to.

Sorry for the long post, everyone! I just looked back at it!

it only bothers me if they do it all the time. i have put down several historicals because the hero pinches snuff on every page. ew! in real life, i once broke up with a friend because he started smoking, and i lose respect for anyone my age who starts despite years of health classes and such. eedjits.

And a really cool book i just read, though not a romance, has a very interesting view on how to deal with smokers in the workplace: it’s called Company, by Max Barry. awesome book, really, for a number of reasons.

To me, my distaste for reading about smoking comes from my general distaste for smoking, and not necessarily because I think people who smoke are bad people. I just don’t care for the habit. I was married to a smoker at one time, and looking back on it, all I can think about was the bad breath and the smelly clothes and the cigarette burns on my furniture. Not sexy for me. So I would just rather not read about it.

It’s kind of the same way I’d feel if I was reading about a romantic hero, and then having him start farting all the time. Then having the heroine think about how “aromatic” his farts are, and how sexy he is when he farts. To me, that would seem extremely unrealistic because I can’t imagine thinking any fart is aromatic (in a good way) and/or sexy.

Sure, it’s something we all do, none of us are bad people for doing it, but it’s not something I’d like to read about in a romantic novel. Ok, it’s not something I want to read about in general, but mostly in a romantic novel.

Having kissed a smoker once, it isn’t romantic.  My husband’s ex is a smoker and he lived with her for 12 years but now his eyes swell up when around smoke.  Bob’s ex is also one of my best friends now (long story) and she has often said that if she knew she could smoke the rest of her life and die in her sleep she would never give it up.  Her aunt was a chain smoker and died at 96 - she’s looking to emulate this.

Thing is smokers do smell and sometimes it’s a very sour almost vomit smell but I would never tell my friend that.

So for me, I tend to forget that the hero or heroine smokes unless it is mentioned time and time again - hey, it’s like morning breath, it’s real but it’s not mentioned in romance and sometimes it’s a real effort to get my brain to just go with it ;)

CindyS

I remember being really surprised when the hero in Born in Shame kept on lighting up! It really surprised me for a novel written quite recently to do so!

I think you guys said it best, there’s nothing sexy or romantic about the numerous diseases that smoking can help cause.  As a non-smoker, I do notice and it does bother me if someone lights up (I too was shocked at first when reading an old NR book before realizing it was from the 80s).  But, since they’re fictional I tend to get over it.

I did, however, give the hero in one of my own novels a smoking habit, but he overcomes it through the course of the book, mainly due to a pregnant friend.  I can’t help but see smoking as a flaw--when you work in a daycare and see the amount of respiratory problems young children have due to parents that smoke, it’s hard to view it otherwise.

As for villians smoking, it is somewhat of a cliche, so I try to avoid it if possible in my own writing and might roll my eyes a little when reading it, but I think it sneaks in there because nothing says bad guy like a sneer and a cigarette.  Even if it’s overused, it’s a good visual image of “bad.”

hey, it’s like morning breath, it’s real but it’s not mentioned in romance and sometimes it’s a real effort to get my brain to just go with it

*snicker* I have huge problem with this. Every time a hero wakes a woman with a big ol’ romantic tongue kiss, I find myself cringing. Uh-uh. Let’s do it from behind, darlin’, for both our sakes.

Sidenote: I feel like I’m the only person who’s seen Thank You For Smoking. Tell me I’m wrong.

Emily, you’re wrong!  Funniest movie I’ve seen in a long time.

As for vampires, what’s the point of being immortal if you can’t get away with doing dangerous things?  Hell, blood-breath can’t be much worse than tobacco-breath.

Sigh...quit several years ago and still fantasize about it.  The thing was, it felt so cool, but I once saw myself in a bar mirror with a cigarette in my mouth, and I looked like such an idiot.  Lauren Bacall I’m not.

Back on topic, when characters in a book smoke or do drugs or drink or whatever, my reaction all depends on the context.  If someone smokes pot and goes for a drive: Bad.  If someone smokes pot and listens to Pink Floyd: Good.  And I’m not a hippie type; I’m just acquainted with the facts, having been a research assistant for a prof who specializes in drug policy.

Whether or not a smoking character carries an automatic subtext might depend on where you market your book.  Someone mentioned Bridget Jones as one of the few recent MCs who smokes - she is European.  During trips to Italy, Spain, and Germany, we as naive, smoke-sheltered Canadians kept being astonished at the utter lack of anything resembling a non-smoking section in cafes, restaurants, or almost any enclosed space.  Even some parts of museums allowed it.  You’d think they would want to protect the art treasures from damage, even if patron health wasn’t a top priority.

Ya know, I was thinking about the whole bad breath thing. In never smoked (thank Gawd!) but I dated a guy who did and it was kinda icky.
I recently read Winter Fire by Elizabeth Lowell and I remember in the first scene that the hero smelled like he had just eaten an apple. It was very appealing to me.
Still, Humphrey Bogart with that cigarette, whew, really does it for me. Don’t know why.

Letitia, I have had Winter Fire on keeper shelf forever and it was that opening line that hooked me immediately.  It is one of the lines I will never forget.  It is funny how sometimes the little things just seem to stand out.

Add me to the list of people who were thinking about this just the other day.  I read Crimson Rogue by Liv Maverick the other day (last book of the Crimson City series and damn I hate to see that one end, waah!) and the heroine smokes.  Not a lot, not often, in fact it’s just barely mentioned, but she’s a reformed drug addict who’s just escaped after several years of torture by a demon, so I can cut her some slack.

That being said, I don’t find smoking sexy.  At ALL.  Sherrilyn Kenyon’s character Zarek smoked--again with the immortal vampire so it can’t hurt him thing--and it was a turn-off to me.  Same with other vampires.  The immortal-smoker thing is becoming a cliche now too.

And LMAO on the morning breath!  Glad to know I’m not the only one who has trouble buying that.  Ick.  My ex’s morning breath could stop a raging elephant in its tracks.  No possible way any libido could survive it.

>Still, Humphrey Bogart with that cigarette, whew, really does it for me. Don’t know why.

I’m revolted by him and Clark Gable, both.  I look at them, and I can TELL they’re chain smokers, and I can’t help but think how they must smell… Erg.

One of my grandfather’s died of lung cancer in the early 1970s or late 1960s.  My grandmother (other side) smoked when I was little, but I asked her to stop when I was three because I wanted her to live to see my children.  She just looked at me and didn’t say much of anything, but she finished that pack and never bought another one.  And she saw my first son and enjoyed being a great-grandmother for two years befor she passed away.

Smoking doesn’t bother me in books though I hate the smell in real life. Scented cigarettes are just barely tolerable, but I grew up with a pipe (ok) and cigar (bleccch) smoking grandpa.

If anything, one behvior that raises my reader flag is contemporary heroines seeking unprotected sex. She’s usually trying to silence the bioclock and chooses a “safe” target that’s too caught up protect them, but still.

I do think it makes characters more real. We all have our psychological issues and neurosis and we all deal with them differently. Some people smoke while others do drugs, drink, eat too much, starve themselves, etc.

I’m all for a character smoking. I want to know who a character is, icky habits and all. Let’s look at Johnny Depp. In my opinion you would have to be dead if you’re a woman who doesn’t want to sleep with that man. He smokes like a fiend. I’ve written three characters who smoke. Oh, and my god, cigars smell so much worse.

About a year ago, I tried out the huqqah my sister brought back from Vegas--one of those grand affairs made of decorative glass with 5 hoses, etc.  The shop where she bought it also sold her a tobacco mix that included dried orange peel.  I’m not a smoker and think cigarette smoke is nas-tay.  However, I love the smell of pipe tobacco.  The huqqah tobacco was very much like it, especially with the orange peel in it.  Since then I’ve worked on a fantasy romance novel in which my hero partakes nightly from a huqqah as part of his evening ritual to relax. 

That being said, I don’t like heroes who smoke cigarettes.  To me there’s a difference--one I can’t adequately explain--but there.

Interesting topic!

As smoking becomes the practice of fewer and fewer people, we’ll see fewer representations in contemporary fiction.

Whether or not a character lighting up jars a reader may be a matter of generation and locality. When I was a child, every adult I knew was a smoker; it was just part of the culture. I grew up watching smokers on television and in the movies. I’m over fifty and was raised in the upper South - someone younger or who lived somewhere else wouldn’t have had that exposure.

I guess I was imprinted; the sight of a man deftly handling a cigarette can be a big turn-on for me. It calls attention to his hands and the way he uses them. A cigarette drooping from the mouth while he talks, though - that’s a turn-off. It’s all about the style…

I don’t look at a cigarette-smoking hero and think ‘Ewww, he’s lacking in character’.  I think “Ewwww, kissing him must be like licking an ashtray.”

Linda Howard used that analogy in one of her Silhouette books back in the late 80’s or early 90’s (Duncan’s Bride?) and it really stuck in my head.  Plus I find the smell of cigarette smoking stinky, not sexy.  So reading about how the heroine finds the scent of tobacco so ‘alluring’ or ‘arousing’ pulls me out of the story with a quick “ick!”

YMMV.

I love a genre that can entertain me with such great lines as the following:

“The immortal-smoker thing is becoming a cliche now too.”

Thanks Amy E!

Not so much into the paranormals… but reading that sentence made me think of Buffy Season 2, when Angel goes bad and feeds off a smoker. Come on. You all remember that, don’t you?

Maybe I’m alone in nerdy FanLand.