On Books and Booty-Kicking

(cross-posted at IntrigueAuthors.com)
My house is a pit, and I am ignoring it. Not looking. Totally not looking....

So I've been reading Donald Maass's book Writing the Breakout Novel lately. Not because I'm planning to defect from Intrigue and write the Great American Masterpiece. I love Intrigue and plan to write for them until they drag me away kicking and screaming. But I think as writers, we can always get better, and after a friend emphatically recommended Maass's book, I figured couldn't hurt, might help.

As a reader, I found this idea from Maass particularly interesting: He says that what's hot in fiction (and, by extension, romance fiction) often roughly corresponds to the times that we're living in. For example, and I quote:

Judith Krantz ruled the bestseller lists in the 1980s with glitzy fantasies that set female protagonists squarely in positions of wealth and power. Nowadays, women do not feel as empowered. The have-it-all lifestyle has become overwhelming. The gains won by the feminist movement today can seem somewhat hollow.

So who is now on top of the bestseller lists? Mary Higgins Clark. Her portrayal of women as prey (though not, it must be said, as helpless victims) clearly strike women readers as resonant. Clark has caught the mood of our times.

Maass published his book in 2001, but since then, Judith Krantz and similar glitz authors haven't rocketed back to the bestseller lists. Suspense authors and romantic suspense authors are still up there with their heroines-in-jeopardy, along with powerful (and often heartbreakingly sad) fiction from the likes of Jodi Picoult, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Khaled Hosseini. There's a whole mess of self-help and self-improvement books, and heavy memoirs as well. In the romance world, paranormal and erotica rule at the moment.

What does this all mean? In a post-9/11 world, where we in America are fighting two wars and trying not to think too hard about the possibility of another Twin Towers catastrophe, it's interesting that we're reading so much in mainstream fiction and non-fiction that's grounded in a frightening or depressing reality. Maybe we want to be inspired by people overcoming terrible odds or abusive parents or other horrible circumstances to ultimately survive and even triumph.

And while the grimness of some of these books doesn't extend to the romance world, that need for inspiration may also extend to current romance trends. The current popularity of paranormal and erotica definitely speak to our need for escape. But much of that paranormal has a huge helping of danger and suspense added to it, as does the straight-up romantic suspense the Intrigue authors specialize in. So how are women-in-jeopardy books that we all end up writing/reading in some form or another speaking to the mood of our times?

Our heroines definitely do not start out having it all, especially in suspense. In both paranormal and straight suspense, there's a huge set of obstacles to overcome, although thanks to the genre conventions, we're assured of that happy ending that means the obstacle will be overcome. And in the end, women do have it all, and they balance it all beautifully, of course.

I know how these books speak to me. I'm deeply grateful for the gains of the feminist movement (and still gaining!), but I agree with Maass that it's sometimes difficult to have it all. I'm the mother of two preschoolers with a full-time job, AND I'm trying to keep a fiction writing career going. Most days, I feel like my head is going to explode. But I try not to let that happen, because YOU KNOW who would end up cleaning that mess up....

So I keep on, and I keep making changes to my crazy balancing act to maximize time with my daughters and carve out a little writing time, too. In light of what Maass has to say, it's interesting that what I gravitate to again and again are stories with heroines who kick some major booty. The hardship is there, but the heroine in my favorite stories always kicks, punches, shoots, and verbally decimates her way out. Or, as is often the case in my Intrigues, she may not start out being able to do so, but in the end, she's more than a match for whatever gets in her way.

Lately, I've been loving Jeffrey Deaver's latest books, both his Lincoln Rhyme series, and his new Kathryn Dance series. Both feature women in law enforcement--one with an amazing eye for crime scene details that others miss, the other with an almost preternatural ability to read people's microexpressions and gestures so she can tell when they're lying to her. I adored Sarah Addison Allen's Garden Spells, featuring two sisters with what their Southern small town tries to dismiss as peculiar quirks: One can influence people's moods and behavior through her cooking, and the other can cut hair so well, it makes the person look twice as pretty as she had before. And Christi Phillip's The Rossetti Letter pulled me into 17th century and modern-day Venice, where I watched a brilliant literature student piece together a story of 17th century Venetian intrigue that had eluded many scholars before her with her sharp mind and a few well-chosen books.

So what does that say about me? I think it's obvious: Heck, yes, I want to be Superwoman!

What have you read lately that you've loved (every Intrigue ever written aside, of course!)? And what do you think your reading habits say about you?