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

2. Aside from the pressure of addressing decisions made by a previous board, what are your goals for the RWA? What key areas do you feel need to be addressed?

We need to get a handle on the innovations in technology, both for our own uses within the organization (such as the new software mentioned below) and so that we can understand the changes taking place within the industry. We have a new five-year strategic plan which addresses the need for us to be cognizant not only of what’s happening now, but of what looms on the horizon.  It also acknowledges that we need better communication with our membership, more education in the form of contract reviews and analyses to help them in their career choices, and perhaps even a for-profit subsidiary to provide them with services we can’t provide under our current tax status.  And *please* take note that we are only studying the feasibility and advisability of the latter right now.  It may not work out, but again, as an organization we must always be thinking ahead of the curve.

As writers, we’re living in a period of tremendous change in terms of technology, both in publication and distribution.  At the same time we seem to be facing an ever-shrinking market for print material of all kinds.  Society is rapidly evolving in terms of leisure pastimes.  The movie industry is facing some of the same problems we face.  Frankly, it’s going to be challenging to continue the great success romance has traditionally enjoyed, but we’re dedicated to doing the best we can to see that happens.

3. Based on reader and author comments, some people are concerned that there’s a communication disconnect between the Board and the rank-and-file members. Do you think there’s a communication issue? If yes, what do you think can be done to address these issues? Would an interactive website that allows members to track issues and proposals be an option?

I think we absolutely must communicate better, and that’s one of our primary goals for next year.  We need to use Chaplink, our chapter presidents’ loop, to get information to members quickly through their chapter leaders.  We need to use that loop to solicit ideas, as well.  The presidents have their ears to the ground, to use a cliché, and they often know what members are concerned about before we do.  Communication should always run both ways, and often, as in any organization, people don’t write the board until we’ve upset them.  In addition to that, the board definitely needs to do a better job of explaining the reasoning behind decisions and of letting members see, at the very least, the most compelling information we consider when we make them.

The idea of an interactive website might be possible with the new software the organization has just purchased.  That will be up and running in January, I believe, after all members of the staff have been trained in its use.  The software can track committees and their charges and even allow committee chairs to upload their own reports.  The office is excitedly trying to figure out all the ways in which the software can make information gathering, storage and dispersal easier and more useful to the organization.  I’m very hopeful about its possibilities.

4. Romance genre question: In your opinion, is there room at the table for erotic romance? Gay/lesbian romance?

In my opinion, it’s a very big table.  Our market share is the envy of every other genre, and I think that’s *because* of our diversity.  Within romance, we literally have something for everyone’s tastes.  Besides, as the board said in our statement at conference:  The organization doesn’t define the genre; the genre defines the organization.  And the genre is vibrant and growing and evolving.

Romance Writers of America is the largest writers’ group in the world because we have always been inclusive.  Personally, I would not want us to be any other way.  I know that most of my fellow board members feel the same way.  When someone joins RWA, we ask them to acknowledge that they are pursuing a career in romance writing.  That doesn’t mean that they aren’t free to write in other genres as well.  As an organization, we must be concerned with serving the needs of our core membership—those who *are* actively pursuing a career in romance--but we certainly aren’t out to deny to any of our members the incredible array of services that attract so many writers to this group.

5. Recently, some members (including Jenny Crusie) have expressed concern about the public image of the RWA, and some readers of ours have described the inner workings using terms such as “the ladies having tea, the cat-fighting, the country club snobbery.” Others are concerned about the potential decline in credibility after the recent Board’s decisions to address cover art and the definition of romance. Do you agree that the public image is tarnished, and, if so, how would you go about addressing this?

I would hate to think that our image has been tarnished.  I think most of these issues were within the membership, but I admit that when there are multiple internal issues, the controversy does begin to spill out into the industry and possibly into the public domain.  The internet has some effect on that with the popularity of blogging.  Authors talk about their concerns in their blogs and readers, editors, and publishers pick up on them.  The days of keeping the organization’s business known only to the organization’s membership are over.  But then that’s true for any organization.

“Cat fighting” and “ladies having tea” seem contradictions in terms to me.  I don’t believe most of us in RWA engage in those or in snobbery either.  In all honesty, most of us are too busy trying to keep abreast of changes in our industry and in making a living.

As far as addressing the image of romance, tarnished or not, I think we continue to do what we’ve done for the last ten years.  We publicize our market share, our diversity, and the incredible successes of our members.  We’ve just renewed the academic grant program for another year, and I think that will eventually pay big dividends in the area of image outside the community.  We’ve made huge strides in the last few years in letting people know the positives of romance.  We just have to continue to work as hard as we have been to spread that message.

6. Why do you think romance art departments think we want to read books with covers featuring men whose breasts are bigger than ours?

LOL.  I think you’d better direct that question to the art departments.  (Hey, something RWA can’t be blamed for! )

7. Most important question: what are you reading right now? Who are your favorite “auto-buy*” authors and what genres are your favorites?  (*An auto-buy author is someone whose books you buy automatically with no inspection of the plot. You already know it’s going to be good.)

Right now, I’m mostly reading e-mails

I really wish I had more time to read more.  Before I began writing, I read probably 5-20 books a week, depending on whether it was summer (when I wasn’t teaching) or during the school term.  Now, being on the Board of Directors, trying to write, meeting family obligations—well, you all know that drill.  Also, after sitting at the computer all day, manipulating my own words and characters and plot, I find that I don’t grab a book to relax into as readily as I once did.  It’s harder to get into someone else’s story after being so immersed in mine.

That said, my all-time favorite author is Dorothy Dunnett, who wrote historical fiction and contemporary British mysteries.  The six books that make up her Lymond Chronicles and King Hereafter are my comfort reads.  I’ve probably read each a dozen times.

In romance, I read very widely.  Of course, I have favorite authors and favorite themes and friends who are auto-buys.  If I start to name them, however, I’m bound to leave someone out.  I know you don’t want me to cause hard feelings.

I also read straight mysteries—people like James Lee Burke, Elizabeth George, and James Patterson.  I like Gene Wolfe in Science Fiction, although I’m not perfectly sure that’s the right genre for what he does.  I read horror by people like Koontz and King.  Sometimes I just get on a reading kick because of a movie I see or an article I read.  For example, I read the Hornblower series by Forester because of the A&E movies with Ioan Gruffud.  So…I’m actually a pretty equal opportunity reader, but romance is always my first love.

Hot Sauce is a love story that focuses on insecurities, specifically those based in class difference, constructed around a fantasy fairy-tale-esque plot structure. A working class boy from midwest moves to the big city, learns from a master chef, becomes a celebrity restauranteur in his own right, and ends up dating the man of his dreams, a rich, gorgeous, well-connected clothing designer from one of the best families in Boston.

Can you smell the insecurities?

Brad is one half of a gay power couple in Boston, unaccustomed to the attention and unable to find equilibrium when in public wih Troy, his debonair and socially-gifted boyfriend. Troy is, through both the narrator’s account and through his demonstrated actions, off his head about Brad, and yet Brad is unsure of his standing in Troy’s life, as if any minute Troy’s tenderness and caring will turn cold and he’ll be discarded.

Complicating matters is Aria Shakespeare, an upper-crust Bostonian who Troy once knew by a different name, prior to Aria acquiring an entirely different sort of crust - the scuzzy, deceitful kind.

As a total aside, I love adopted names like this. I know a few people who rename themselves in truly over-the-top dramatic fashion.I want to ask, do you think anyone will take that tweety name seriously? Or is it all drama? I once knew a drag queen who dubbed herself “Cicada.” You’re an annoying insect? Sure, why not? I have no room to talk, though - I am the Duchess of Cuntington.

Aria tries by any means necessary, including following them to foreign countries, to interfere with Brad and Troy’s happiness, and he cashes in on the most obvious solution to his goal of breaking them up: he targets Brad’s insecurity, and inserts himself neatly as a much better alternative for Troy’s attentions, using Troy, Caroline - Troy’s social harriden of a mother, and anyone else he can find to get what he wants: Troy. Or, more specifically, the attention he’d receive from being with Troy. He wants a piece of Troy’s glamour.

My only frustration with the book was with the imbalance between the narrator’s account of Troy, and the narrator’s account of Brad’s insecurity regarding Troy’s feelings for him. The narration makes it clear in repeated demonstrations that Troy is over the moon for Brad. He wouldn’t greet anyone else in a room full of political contacts until he spoke to Brad first, he would always look for Brad in a room full of people, and he constantly surprised Brad with trips and luxurious outings, and seemed to be a conscientious, giving lover. So as the reader I had no doubts that, despite the interference of the jealous Shakespeare Aria, Troy adored Brad.

But the narrator also cataloged the ways in which Brad felt slighted by Troy, aside from the attentive devotion Troy demonstrated wordlessly. Troy does not use words to describe his feelings; he does much better with the gesture or the gift than he does with the verbal account of his ardor. He is smooth and sophisticated at all turns, except when describing his feelings verbally. Brad, however, desperately wants to hear Troy say The Words, and Troy manages to avoid these verbal exchanges.

Insecurity gets the best of all of us, however, so it’s entirely realistic to watch Brad bank his happiness on whether Troy will tell him the words he longs to hear. Brad certainly has the right to ask for a clear demonstration of how Troy feels about him, without having the moment tainted by the possibility that Troy is really using their good looks and excellent professional partnership for profit and corporate gain, or without leaving Brad any room to question if it’s he himself that Troy loves, or the public image and the sex. Troy is used to being half of several different locally powerful “golden couples,” including a lucrative and somewhat caring partership with his mother, but Brad does not have the healthy ego to accept himself as on par with Troy’s relative celebrity.

Sooner or later you have to choose to believe in the person you love or believe in the snot-nosed coke headed freakshow who is telling you with some funky evidence that the person who you think loves you does not. So do you believe the person who is kind to you or the one who consistently treats you like shit? At what point does one’s own insecurities have to stop and take a look at their silly selves and say, “Wait a minute. I’ve been given no reason to doubt this person except by the word of someone who has never been trustworthy.”

I wish that moment had come a lot sooner than it did for Brad, as he could have saved himself some serious drama. Of course, if Troy had been able to open up and be more honest about his goals and intentions with Brad, perhaps they would have been able to commnunicate better, instead of letting some deceitful freakshow and a mother-in-law come between them. The narrator’s account of Troy, and of Brad’s perception of Troy, were off just enough to make me wonder how Brad could be so blind.

However, the story is as much about Brad’s growth in trusting his partner, and Troy’s growth in his ability to take personal risks in areas in which he’s not entirely comfortable, so in the end, Brad’s growth from insecurity to trust equals Troy’s growth from security to taking personal risks to ensure that security. And their happily ever after, and the just-desserts for Aria, are quite satifying.

Now, for the dishy part.

Y’all. SERIOUSLY. Gay sex. I learned so much about gay sex I can’t even tell you. I mean, in mainstream media one sees depictions of hetero sex all over the place, in various positions and locations. Even ABC, the Ass Broadcasting Network, had in-the-toilet-stall-sex on NYPD Blue, which about made me laugh because, well, EW. Hetero sex, it is everywhere.

But gay sex? Sex between two men? That’s a taboo area that isn’t often depicted, so really, did I have much of a clue what goes on between two dudes? Honestly, no. I didn’t. I have watched porn and seen sexually explicit still images, but descriptions of gay sex? Not really something I’ve encountered so much. Is there equal division between who is on top and who’s on bottom? What are the positional variations? And isn’t there, well, santorum?

I had no clue. But now, I am becoming an educated reader of the gay romance and the accompanying sex scenes. And it’s not like the sex was gratuitous or crass, either. It was genuine and passionate, and pass me that newspaper, ma’am, I need to fan myself. I never thought that gay sex would be hot, but man alive, thems is some hot live men.

So between the hot man action and the genuine, emotional interaction, this is a damn fine romance. Stay tuned for an upcoming review after I read their earlier publication, Spare Parts.