Bitchery reader Amanda sent us a link to the following Q&A, Burning Questions on BookPage, where a bookstore owner wrote in searching for an update on one of her favorite authors, Barbara Bickmore. Ms. Bickmore has had a hard time finding an American publisher for her books, according to her own reply, and then offers the following piece of information:
I do make a very nice living from Europe, and it does make me a little sad that America isn’t interested anymore. I don’t write romances, where there is nothing more than the man and woman getting together and then being torn apart and the rest of the book is about their getting back together. My books are too complex for romance readers.
*crickets*
Wow. Just… wow. So many reactions I’m almost paralyzed.
Candy is going to crap a brick sideways, is my first thought.
Second, wow.
Third, can we discuss how ever almighty tired I am of the assumption that romance readers are stupid, mouth-breathing morons who like their romance dull and flaccid, instead of spattered, smothered, covered, and chunked with, oh, good writing and clever insights to characters and history and culture? I know that I am not dumb (hence the name of the site) and while I’m somewhat used to people looking down on my choice of reading material for the happy ending, which as we discussed is somehow the hallmark of lower-classed reading, I’m rather shocked at being dismissed by this person I’ve never heard of for being too stupid and dense to absorb a complex story.
More shock comes from the idea that a writer would put down other readers for reading – in an age with so much other distraction for the buying public, from video games to television “events,” most writers I’ve spoken with indicate a thankful attitude that people still read books and want more books to read, period, no matter whose books they are reading. So to alienate
a large bookbuying group, one that likes its stories on paper, not on screen, thank you, is a dumbass thing to do.
What pisses me off more than anything about Ms. Bickmore’s attitude, aside from the fact that she’s talking out of her ass, is that no matter what kind of fiction she’s writing, chances are there’s a formula. More than likely, she owes some part of the structure of her craft to prior books and patterns. Mystery: there’s a formula. Romance: check. Fiction in general? – well, books do usually end without some satisfactory resolution of one or more plotlines. So to assume that one is more complex than another is more than a heaping spoonful of utter crap. How does she define complex? Is she rewriting James Joyce over there? Or does she introduce sixty-three characters in four pages and expect me to keep track of them all? Or maybe there’s a lot of, I don’t know, trees or something. My feeble mind struggles to figure out what’s so complex that the average romance reader wouldn’t be able to clear the mental hurdle.
And the connection between the American market, romance readers, and the relative stupidity thereof – now that’s some breathtaking evidence of research right there. If she’s thinking that all Americans read romance, she’s sadly misinformed about the American bookbuying public, which might be the real reason her books don’t sell.
Either that, or, should this excerpt be an indication of a self-important, ill-informed writing style in general, perhaps it’s merely a question of quality.
Oh, that’s infuriating! I wonder if Miss High and Mighty Artiste would be interested in the RWA statistic that shows that 42% of romance readers have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Wait … I bet she’d argue that all those women were in college to get their MRS degrees. Silly girls!
Bitter, much? “I am not unhappy.” Did they ask your state of mind or whether you were still writing?
Sarah, I couldn’t focus on the majority of your rant after the quote because the top of my head blew off. Sorry.
I have never heard of Barbara Bickmore, and I guarantee you I will never, ever buy one of her books. In fact, if she has a pen name, somebody better post it so I can be sure never to buy any of the nom de plume books either! Oh, wait. I shouldn’t know what a nom de plume is because I’m apparently a brainless idiot who enjoys romance novels.
That quote probably also stems from one of the basic assumptions many Europeans have: Americans are stupid.
When I was a student in Germany we had to take a couple of classes with all the other international students (90% were EU, 8% US, 2% Asian). I can’t remember what the topic was, but the instructor (essentially what we would consider a TA or Asst Prof) tossed off the line “Americans have no culture.” No one disagreed—I was too shocked to even come up with German words for the rest of the class. But that really was the pervasive attitude of all of the students—French, German, Spanish, British (especially the Brits—they seem to really hold us in disdain).
After that gobsmacking quote I thought I’d check out a couple of her titles on Amazon.com. To be fair most of her reviews (the few there are, and it is Amazon…)are good, but the Publishers Weekly review for “Homecoming” pretty much tells me that she’s talking out of her ass. Too complex indeed. The line quoted sounds like something from the winning entry in a purple prose contest.
*As far as I can find, she does not have a nom de plume.
After that gobsmacking quote I thought I’d check out a couple of her titles on Amazon.com. To be fair most of her reviews (the few there are, and it is Amazon…)are good, but the Publishers Weekly review for “Homecoming” pretty much tells me that she’s talking out of her ass. Too complex indeed. The line quoted sounds like something from the winning entry in a purple prose contest.
*As far as I can find, she does not have a nom de plume.
Personally I think she answered her own question on why she can’t find an American publisher. And she thinks I’m stupid.
Sorry for the double post. I dont’ knwo what happened, or how to get rid of it.
I agree, Ceilidh. That quote is a groaner!
http://www.roweweb.com/bickmore/about.html
Who the hell is Barbara Bickmore?
“I sent off a 40 page outline and the first 8 chapters of my novel, EAST OF THE SUN, and the agent sold it to the first publisher she tried… My books have been translated into 16 languages and published in 22 countries.”
She sounds like a loud-mouthed braggart. Seems to me that she’s trying to convince herself that even though nobody reads her books—because we American romance readers are too stupid—she is still the best writer evah!
OMG! Wake up and smell the lavender, bitch.
I just had to follow the link—why can I not resist the linkage? The whole “bio†stinks of “Artisteâ€. And somehow the voice I hear in my head as I read it is Kitten (the brilliant Cillan Murphy) in Breakfast on Pluto: “And you know little one, never once did the brilliant literary professor think that she, a humble writer who slaved away at a homely kitchen table, would be published. No my darling. But an agent just snapped us up and took us away to a magic landâ€
Gahhhhhhhhhhh (Not sure how to indicate gagging)
Sounds like she’s writing those sweeping saga type stories, more like Judith Krantz from the 80s than modern romance. Some people like them. I can’t be bothered. I want ONE romance, not two or three.
Feklar – what makes you think she’s European? I can’t see her nationality anywhere, but the books seem to have American protagonists.
[Have to say, I don’t recall ever seeing the name, so I have doubts as to whether she’s very popular in the UK]
I’m sorry, I don’t usually post this much (I lurk and stuff), but this woman has got me riled up.
From a review of her book, Homecoming:
“Overwrought characters (including one who grins and feels “himself growing erect and hard. Very hard” as he contemplates killing a woman) and contrived plotting undermine this tale. Bickmore’s soap-operatic prose (“Adam, together we’re going to have a marvelous time, be important and powerful and have each other to talk everything over with. And we’re going to continue having the greatest sex in the world,” says Sydney to her second husband on their wedding night) doesn’t help either.”
Sounds like sour grapes to me. She can’t sell her books in the world’s biggest market, so she puts down said market as too stupid to understand her.
Not worth getting torqued up over.
Still…bee-yotch!
Tonda, I whimper at the mere thought of Cillian Murphy. I’ll have to check out that film you mentioned.
>>”…too complex for romance readers.”<<
I’m just…words fail me.
But I feel better after reading bam’s excerpt. Much better.
Hmmm.
Bickmore rhymes with “dick more.” Coincidence?
She currently lives in Mexico, in a small Indian town as she calls it. I’m thinking she actually is American. Which makes it worse.
And it’s a close rhyme to “think more,” which perhaps she ought to have done prior to offering such a statement.
I don no whut shee meens. I is jest as smrt as uropeeins. I’s mad enuf to open a can a whupass on the beech.
… and by the way? My books sell in Europe, despite the fact that I’m a culture-less, moronic romance reader. Pbttttth, neener neener, nanny nanny boo boo, you can’t catch me….
You know who else is big in Europe?
The David Hasselhoff.
*moment of homage*
Yet the joy, and sometimes ecstasy, is that something comes, a book is created, and I get these marvelous feelings of pride and even astonishment that I wrote what I wrote. And that somebodies pay to read it all.
Ahh, I think the word ‘somebodies’ is just too complex for me. I have to admire the ecstatic, marvelous way she used that word. Snort.
Why is it, when I read the entire response to the question on the link, that I hear her speaking in a rather plumy, posh, fakey-fake shit British accent like the one Madonna affects? “Oh, I rather do think Americans are so insufferably boorish because they can’t read 1,455 pages of my deathless purple prose!”
I actually think my grandmother used to read those sort of novels. She’s probably spinning in her grave, too, because Granny’s the one who taught me to appreciate the fine turn of phrase *cough, cough* in bodice rippers…. :cheese:
Judging from the Amazon descriptions, she writes sagas: you know, the kind of books that follow a woman’s life from youth to old age with all her marriages, family troubles, career struggles, etc. (No formula there.)
They were huge in the 80s and early 90s, but here’s a tip for Bickmore: people don’t read that kind of thing much anymore. Even Barbara Taylor Bradford, the queen of the sagas, isn’t as big as she was.
Now, I have a lot of sympathy for writers who write what they love and find the market disappearing from underneath them. But perhaps she could consider stretching herself and writing in a new genre, instead of complaining about the fact that her genre is currently out of style.
Couldn’t help myself from following more links . . . Sarah F is right, it appears that she writes “sweeping family sagas” which have simply gone out of style. Right now first person or deep POV are the style preferred by publishers (and presumably readers). These two styles predominate in all the genre fiction I see out there (mystery, sci-fi and romance), as well as in “literary fictionâ€. You don’t tend to find these styles of POV in family sagas where lots of characters share the POV.
Failure to grow with a genre leads to not being published.
As for Cillian Murphy: Makes me feel like a dirty old woman, and I like it. Rrrrow! Though my friends and I couldn’t get over how well he does femme. Breakfast on Pluto also gives you Liam Neeson as a priest, and Brendan Gleason as a Womble!
I agree with you, an author who writes what s/he loves has all my sympathy. But if you read her page, she says she had to forget all her literary knowledge in order to write to be published. She says she researched the formula at the library and tried to recreate it. I may be wrong since I’m just a stupid American, but that isn’t tugging my heartstrings.
Amy said, “But if you read her page, she says she had to forget all her literary knowledge in order to write to be published. She says she researched the formula at the library and tried to recreate it.”
Yeah, just gotta love that combo of sneering at her readers while patting herself on the back for her l33t literary knowledge. For everything that happens, she’s got a ready-made explanation to preserve her ego.
One of the best essays I’ve read which (in my opinion) puts to rest the idea that genre fiction is for fools was written by Elizabeth Lowell and is on her website. That essay knocked me on my ass for about a week.
The Romance genre is not INHERENTLY low brow but, let’s be honest, there are a LOT of seriously gay books published under the Romance banner. For example, if I read a book where one of the characters makes a joke about chocolate being a substitute for sex, or about all the good men being gay – I start foaming at the mouth.
Ms. Reese – link please?! I am hampered by a firewall in finding it myself.
BEYOND A PROMISE is a book filled with lies, secrets, incest, affairs, lost loves and broken hearts.
Okay. Barbara won’t do violence but it’s okay for the relatives in her books to do each other? I’m glad I’m too stupid to comprehend the merits of family members getting it on.
I just read her auto-bio (thanks for the link), and here’s my take:
“too complex” = too wordy
Also popular in Europe
Ooh, David Hasselhoff, the compulsive chest-hair exhibitor!
Here’s the link for the Elizabeth Lowell essay (I think). It’s amazing! Almost enough to get me to start reading her again! 🙂
Yeah. Well, it helps if I add the link, doesn’t it:
http://www.elizabethlowell.com/popfiction.html
Sorry.
Perhaps this ought to be the new tagline for SBTB: This site is too complex for Barbara Bickmore.
You know who else is big in Europe?
The David Hasselhoff.
SB Sarah, you crack my shit up, for realz.