Tuesday, February 28, 2006

Time to get my rant on

There's been quite a bit of smack talked about the romance industry in the past couple of days. Fanboys and girls are calling it "Novel writing by numbers," USA Today referred to it in a bit more complimentary light, but said that wooing was no longer necessary. I don't necessarily agree with that; romantic courtship nowadays usually involves sex. Women are reading what they do, not what their mothers or grandmothers did.

The fanboys and girls took the romance bashing onto another blog, and I don't know whether to giggle or fume. Yes, there are some craptacular romances out there, but there's also a great deal of well-written, engaging material. And I don't think it's just romance, I think all the genres get bashed. I just read a book on the Sci-Fi/Fantasy biz and it was quite apologetic over dialogue and characterization, and how difficult it is in the midst of all that world-building. Isn't that a reason why the genre's challenging to write, as opposed to an excuse to bash and consider it less of a medium?

Bah, I'm going to go read the new fic bit Savannah's posted on her blog, that ought to cheer me up at least!

Friday, February 24, 2006

Ahh, my poor, neglected blog

I don't update this thing nearly as much as I ought to, a matter which I've pondered a bit. It's not the community of bloggers, as everyone I've met has been very nice. In fact, I must say that the 'net community of writers I've encountered have been absolutely delightful, professional people.

No, I think my neglect is visually oriented. Sounds strange, doesn't it? I think as a webmistress I don't care much for my blog layout, or any of the blog templates. And it seems to me that you need to know a lot of straight code to modify it to make it pretty, which irks me. Yes, I want to be lazy when I blog; if I wanted to do straight-up code, I'd update Aphrodite's Apples. LiveJournal, by comparison, is very visually-oriented; it features user pictures galore, and layouts that are easily modified by even lay users of HTML. Compare my LiveJournal to my blog and you'll see what I mean about modification.

Speaking of layouts, I suspect I will begin to experiment with Aphrodite's layout in the near future; the index page is looking a tad too busy to suit my liking.

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Bodice Rippers in the 21st Century?

I was having a discussion on historical romances with a good friend of mine (yes, another writer!), and said friend is very particular about the style of romance that she enjoys.

I think most people would call it "Bodice Ripper." Ahh, the good old bodice ripper. The man comes on so strong that the woman can't help herself, and it absolves her of any bad girl qualities. I'm being overdramatic here, but I'm also talking about old school bodice rippers; most have been toned down, as today's woman doesn't consider enjoying sex to be solely a bad girl activity. ;-)

So my friend, I'll call her K, says that today's historicals have heroines that are too plucky, too modern. It's not historically plausible to see a woman stand up to her hero, even if he needs it. Actually, I don't know if that's really accurate, as I have come across some interesting research while reading up for the historical portion of Immortal Reveries; I found a law that stated that a man may only hit his wife in self-defense! Granted, that was in the 17th century American colonies, but it's still an interesting social commentary.

So, it's Guilty Pleasures time, and I must admit that I enjoy a good bodice ripper; in fact I was tickled to see in February's RT mag that Bertrice Small is going to self-publish Adora, which was the first romance novel I ever read and loved. My previous experience had been with Harlequins, which is what my mom loves, but then, she loves contempo, and contempo's not my cuppa. I think I'm going to order it and see how it reads to my now-adult eyes, as I think it definitely qualifies as an old school bodice ripper. I'd like to compare it to Virginia Henley's Seduced, which I read as an adult and adore. Seduced involves a heroine disguising herself as a man, and when her guardian comes and sees her, thinks he needs to toughen the lad up!

I have to admit that I love historicals with plucky heroines. Speaking of Seduced, Jo Beverley does a great gender-bending turn with My Lady Notorious, another novel I doubt my dear K would much enjoy, but I certainly did, immensely. Again, the heroine disguises herself as a man in order to protect what she holds dear, and I think it's a fun way to work around the constrictions women had to deal with in the past. Of course, the ultimate gender-bending heroine is certainly Virginia Woolf's Orlando, but that's a whole post in and of itself.

So the question remains, is the bodice ripper dead, or merely mutated?