So I was recently featured with two other local romance writers in an article written for my local newspaper, herein to be known as The Article That Shall Not Be Named or Linked To. All in all, it's not a BAD article, though there's definitely a sort of nudge-nudge-wink-wink-I-Certainly-Don't-Read-This-Stuff quality to it. I'm sure the local braintrust at the Newspaper That Shall Not Be Named or Linked To is too busy making their collective way through the Modern Library's Top 100 Works of Great Literature and developing a comprehensive plan for world peace this summer to read something for pure entertainment.
But I did want to publicly clear up a misquote in the piece about my having started writing romance "because there's a formula," as the thought of that quote sitting Out There, unanswered, is making my hair curl. And in this humidity, making my hair curl any more than it already does is just sick and wrong.
So anyway, here's the truth, which I told to said local braintrust in painstaking and carefully emphatic detail: I started THINKING about writing romance because I MISTAKENLY THOUGHT there was a "formula" that would make it easy, and I could use it as a stepping stone to writing a "real book." I know--how obnoxious. But I was quite young and I hadn't actually read a romance novel, so I was operating on the fumes of other people's stereotyped perceptions. So, my plan to rule the publishing world firmly in my head, I actually went and picked up a romance--Anyone But You, by Jennifer Crusie--and I discovered that it was a smart book; a very fun book; a book that didn't offend my feminist sensibilities in the least, but affirmed them; and a book I loved so much, I still have it on my shelf. And that's when I became a genuine fan of the genre.
That Crusie book was a great learning experience, because (and yes, I'm going to start trotting out my literature background--bear with me, I do have a point) I was just a couple years out of Boston College, where I'd gotten an M.A. in literature. At BC, I'd selected my courses so the majority of them were about women writers, and my papers were often about the "dilemma of women as artists," or, in plain, un-pedantic English, the critical response to women writers and how it impacted both their work and their careers. Needless to say, women writing about women's lives have very rarely been literary darlings, especially during their careers. Otherwise, George Sand, George Eliot, and Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell may not have found it necessary to adopt male pseudonyms--without which they may not have work that survives in print to this day.
I am NOT comparing my work to that of the Georges or the Brontes. But what I realized was that by giving in to the kneejerk, uninformed urge to look down my nose at romance, I was part of the same machine that had suppressed women's writing since women started writing. Why COULDN'T a romance novel be a good read? Why couldn't it be just as entertaining and fun and loved as a romantic film like When Harry Met Sally or Strictly Ballroom? Why was it socially acceptable to enjoy a romantic subplot in a mystery or general fiction book? Or a romance disguised as a general or women's fiction book? Or, my favorite, a "love story" (i.e. romance) with a craptacular ending written by a man?
Not everyone has to like romance--we all have different taste. I don't like tragic family sagas or cyberpunk. But slamming it just to make yourself look more well-read and intelligent? Ridiculous.
Also, there is NO FORMULA TO ROMANCE, other than the general conventions that bind any genre. For us, the story needs to focus on the growth of a relationship between two people, and we need to deliver a happy ending. End of story. End of formula.
Mystery has a formula, in that sense. Sci-fi does, too. Male "love story" writers have a formula, too--manly man of impeccable honesty meets woman, swoons, falls in love, says sappy things, and is pulled irrevocably apart from his One True Love by tragedy, often cancer.
I told all this to the author of The Article That Shall Not Be Named or Linked To, hoping that in supportive female solidarity, she would write a clever, unapologetic article about our clever, unapologetic genre.
Ah, well, at least we were upgraded from authors of "bodice rippers" to "pulp romance."
For a more respectful and accurate interview (although I was feeling a little snarkier than usual when I answered the questions), see my friend Rich Dansky's website. Rich writes the stories for Red Storm Entertainment video games, including the Tom Clancy tie-ins, and he's an accomplished horror novelist.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
What Cracked Me Up Today
(Hi, Jen. No, I'm not dead. I'm just in deadline prugatory between work and books, and Something Had to Give, namely this blog. I'll be back blogging soon, I promise--even though I've been a bit of a blog slug all year.)
So today while I was reading the news online, I saw a brief article about the Australian spotted jellyfish, which has recently been migrating far north and is invading the Gulf of Mexico, where it is threatening to utterly disrupt the already fragile ecosystem by gorging its little jelly self on fish eggs and shrimp larvae. Curious as to how undulating hordes of Australian spotted jellyfish got this far north--and wondering whether global warming was to blame--I read on, and discovered that it's been traveling long distances not by blobbing pleasantly along across thousands of miles in that signature, soothing jellyfish way, but by slurping itself to the side of ships and hitching a ride to Mexican waters.
Now an article that talks about invasive species, ecosystem disruption, and the decimation of entire industries--in this case, Gulf fishing and shrimping--would hardly be amusing to most people, and I daresay, it wasn't to me. But then I started reading the commentary that AOL so thoughtfully allows readers the space to provide. Generally, I avoid AOL news commentary, because much of it is either batcrap crazy or grossly intolerant, racist, homophobic, and all kinds of offensive.
But underneath today's jellyfish invasion story was this little gem:
Oh No! The Jellyfish are comming[sic]! REPENT SINNERS, REPENT! Your [sic] gonna be at the beach, fornicating (or whatever you sinners do) and you'r [sic] gonna look up, and BAM! everyones [sic] gone! RAAAAAPPPPPTUUUUREEEEE!
Yes, it's childish and ignorant, but it made me laugh, so there.
So today while I was reading the news online, I saw a brief article about the Australian spotted jellyfish, which has recently been migrating far north and is invading the Gulf of Mexico, where it is threatening to utterly disrupt the already fragile ecosystem by gorging its little jelly self on fish eggs and shrimp larvae. Curious as to how undulating hordes of Australian spotted jellyfish got this far north--and wondering whether global warming was to blame--I read on, and discovered that it's been traveling long distances not by blobbing pleasantly along across thousands of miles in that signature, soothing jellyfish way, but by slurping itself to the side of ships and hitching a ride to Mexican waters.
Now an article that talks about invasive species, ecosystem disruption, and the decimation of entire industries--in this case, Gulf fishing and shrimping--would hardly be amusing to most people, and I daresay, it wasn't to me. But then I started reading the commentary that AOL so thoughtfully allows readers the space to provide. Generally, I avoid AOL news commentary, because much of it is either batcrap crazy or grossly intolerant, racist, homophobic, and all kinds of offensive.
But underneath today's jellyfish invasion story was this little gem:
Oh No! The Jellyfish are comming[sic]! REPENT SINNERS, REPENT! Your [sic] gonna be at the beach, fornicating (or whatever you sinners do) and you'r [sic] gonna look up, and BAM! everyones [sic] gone! RAAAAAPPPPPTUUUUREEEEE!
Yes, it's childish and ignorant, but it made me laugh, so there.
Friday, July 20, 2007
MySpace Musings
So I've had my new, improved MySpace page for about a month now, and I just thought I'd share what I've learned so far....
Things I like about MySpace:
1) I can now say I'm friends with Meg Cabot, George Takei, Alice in Chains, and the Police without lying.
2) Fun little web gadgets, like the one I found that shows all of my book covers twirling about in a happy little circle.
3) Reconnecting with people who probably think I've fallen off the planet, like my old college buddy Scott, or fabulous Intrigue author Dana Marton, whom I've been meaning to email forever.
4) Sparkly graphics. Pretty colors. Ooooooooh.
5) Filling out the profile information. Despite the fact that I always make myself sound like a crashing bore in profiles or surveys, I luuuuuuurve filling them out. I can't even resist those warranty cards that come with small electronics (though yes, I know better than to mail them!)
Things I hate about MySpace:
1) People who friend me just so they can electronically pelt me with bulletins about their e-book. People! I hate e-books--and I mean the format, not the content. I stare at a computer screen all day and for much of the night when I have a book due. The last thing I want to do is curl up in bed with my laptop and read on it, too. For one thing, it's hot, which sucks when it's approaching 100 degrees outside. And not so cuddly. And I can't stuff it in my purse and take it with me to the dentist or the waiting room at the DMV when I need to renew my license. Yeah, I know, I can get an e-reader, but I'm cheap. And I like paper. (Although book publishers really ought to get their green thing on and start printing more books on recycled paper, or at least paper from sustainably managed forests. Because the rainforest is shrinking, global warming is serious, and we all need to do our part. That is all.)
2) That giant sucking sound I hear in my head when I've spent more than an hour fussing with my page layout. (Sparkly graphics. Pretty colors. Oooooh.)
3) That Alana Davis won't friend me back. I LOVE YOU, ALANA DAVIS! WHY WON'T YOU BE MY FRIEND! WHY? WHY, GOD, WHY?*
4) Spam comments. Spam sucks.
5) Friend envy. It totally is not a measure of one's worth as a human being if one does not have 600 friends on MySpace. Although maybe if my books stayed on the shelves longer....
* I'm totally kidding about the Alana Davis thing. I was a tad miffed that she apparently has judged my devotion as a fan by my book cover and apparently found me lacking, ergo my MySpace friend request to her has been pending for about three weeks now. But you know, bridge, over it. I'm still cool enough for Andy, Stewart, and Sting, as well as Alice in Chains, so IN YOUR FACE, Alana Davis.
Things I like about MySpace:
1) I can now say I'm friends with Meg Cabot, George Takei, Alice in Chains, and the Police without lying.
2) Fun little web gadgets, like the one I found that shows all of my book covers twirling about in a happy little circle.
3) Reconnecting with people who probably think I've fallen off the planet, like my old college buddy Scott, or fabulous Intrigue author Dana Marton, whom I've been meaning to email forever.
4) Sparkly graphics. Pretty colors. Ooooooooh.
5) Filling out the profile information. Despite the fact that I always make myself sound like a crashing bore in profiles or surveys, I luuuuuuurve filling them out. I can't even resist those warranty cards that come with small electronics (though yes, I know better than to mail them!)
Things I hate about MySpace:
1) People who friend me just so they can electronically pelt me with bulletins about their e-book. People! I hate e-books--and I mean the format, not the content. I stare at a computer screen all day and for much of the night when I have a book due. The last thing I want to do is curl up in bed with my laptop and read on it, too. For one thing, it's hot, which sucks when it's approaching 100 degrees outside. And not so cuddly. And I can't stuff it in my purse and take it with me to the dentist or the waiting room at the DMV when I need to renew my license. Yeah, I know, I can get an e-reader, but I'm cheap. And I like paper. (Although book publishers really ought to get their green thing on and start printing more books on recycled paper, or at least paper from sustainably managed forests. Because the rainforest is shrinking, global warming is serious, and we all need to do our part. That is all.)
2) That giant sucking sound I hear in my head when I've spent more than an hour fussing with my page layout. (Sparkly graphics. Pretty colors. Oooooh.)
3) That Alana Davis won't friend me back. I LOVE YOU, ALANA DAVIS! WHY WON'T YOU BE MY FRIEND! WHY? WHY, GOD, WHY?*
4) Spam comments. Spam sucks.
5) Friend envy. It totally is not a measure of one's worth as a human being if one does not have 600 friends on MySpace. Although maybe if my books stayed on the shelves longer....
* I'm totally kidding about the Alana Davis thing. I was a tad miffed that she apparently has judged my devotion as a fan by my book cover and apparently found me lacking, ergo my MySpace friend request to her has been pending for about three weeks now. But you know, bridge, over it. I'm still cool enough for Andy, Stewart, and Sting, as well as Alice in Chains, so IN YOUR FACE, Alana Davis.
Friday, July 13, 2007
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Confessions of a Self-Promotion Genius
So today, I finally decided to get hip to the masses and make my MySpace page functional and not quite so ugly. It's been about a year since I created the thing, and other than the effort it took to create a short, squat-looking WeeMee cartoon figure of myself to post there, I have put zero effort into it. ("Symptom of someone with adult ADD: starts multiple projects and never finishes them....") I mean, I always figured that MySpace might as well call itself MyTimeSucker, because to me, that's all it appeared to do. It gave me lots of little info blocks to fill in about myself, allowed me the opportunity to pick a song that represented the essence of moi, and tempted me to waste copious amounts of time scouring the Web for virtual friends so I wouldn't look like a sadsack loser, having only Tom in my friends box.
So, rebel that I am, I avoided my MySpace, figuring I didn't need another timesucker in my life--especially one that might not be worth the suckage.
Time and again, though, my writer friends have since informed me that MySpace works better than a blog when it comes to connecting with readers. They claim MySpace is fun! And yes, they say, it's a timesucker, but it gives you an unprecedented ability to market your books around the world in an instant. Which is a good thing, seeing as book pimping really isn't a strong suit of mine, but, coincidentally, wasting copious amounts of time on the Internet is.
Which brings me once again to the fact that today, after over 12 months of steadfastly ignoring my MySpace page, I got this random, nagging impulse to take a look at it. At which point I discovered that that dorky WeeMee cartoon was still there, and I decided I hated it so much, it had to go. So I started tinkering.
Then, I discovered that the Alana Davis song I chose long ago for my page (aptly titled "Crazy") had been "removed by the artist," so I was compelled to visit her page to find a current selection.
And that's when I decided that I wanted Alana Davis to be my friend. :::cue giant sucking sound here:::
I generally like to think that I would not completely lose my head if I ever met a celebrity. I've had minor brushes with fame, and, for the most part, I've played it cool. I got pulled onto the stage once when watching a standup act by former SNLer and current Weeds star Kevin Nealon in Boston--and I did not lose it. My childhood idol and the original Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner came into the offices of a magazine for which I used to work, and I was cool as a proverbial cucumber (primarily because I only saw the back of her head and didn't know it was her until she LEFT, thankyouverymuchformercoworkers). George Lopez and Constance Marie seemed to zero in on and greet my brother Tom and me (the lone Latinos!) when we were on a Hollywood studio tour and our group stopped to watch them rehearse for a moment--and again, I was oh, so chill.
(OK, so maybe I waved a little too enthusiastically. And there may have been some jumping up and down. But only a little.)
(And then there was the time I seriously fangirled over author Karen Rose, but she doesn't outwardly cringe whenever I run into her, so maybe I didn't look as psycho to her as I did to myself when I replayed events in my head.)
But Alana Davis? If I ever met Alana Davis, I'd probably blither and sob like a hyperkinetic 14-year-old Sanjaya fan. This is how much I love her music.
So then, after I'd asked Alana Davis to be my friend, I realized that my page looked idiotic, that cartoon WeeMee thing HAD to go, everything in my profile made me sound like a crashing bore, and .... I had zero friends. ZERO. Other than Needy and Possibly Sociopathic Tom, who appears to have taken the time to become everyone's friend.
Hence, the MySpace makeover ... just in case Alana Davis happens to come calling. Of course she will not--and she will probably reject my overture of virtual friendship because my main photo is my current pimpalicious book cover, seeing as I can't take a decent picture to save my life--but hey, a fangirl can dream.
If you are on MySpace and would like to be my virtual friend and help me not look like an idiot to Alana Davis's MySpace lackey, my new and WeeMee-less page can be found here.
And if you have an interesting brush with fame to talk about, that's what the comment button is for!
So, rebel that I am, I avoided my MySpace, figuring I didn't need another timesucker in my life--especially one that might not be worth the suckage.
Time and again, though, my writer friends have since informed me that MySpace works better than a blog when it comes to connecting with readers. They claim MySpace is fun! And yes, they say, it's a timesucker, but it gives you an unprecedented ability to market your books around the world in an instant. Which is a good thing, seeing as book pimping really isn't a strong suit of mine, but, coincidentally, wasting copious amounts of time on the Internet is.
Which brings me once again to the fact that today, after over 12 months of steadfastly ignoring my MySpace page, I got this random, nagging impulse to take a look at it. At which point I discovered that that dorky WeeMee cartoon was still there, and I decided I hated it so much, it had to go. So I started tinkering.
Then, I discovered that the Alana Davis song I chose long ago for my page (aptly titled "Crazy") had been "removed by the artist," so I was compelled to visit her page to find a current selection.
And that's when I decided that I wanted Alana Davis to be my friend. :::cue giant sucking sound here:::
I generally like to think that I would not completely lose my head if I ever met a celebrity. I've had minor brushes with fame, and, for the most part, I've played it cool. I got pulled onto the stage once when watching a standup act by former SNLer and current Weeds star Kevin Nealon in Boston--and I did not lose it. My childhood idol and the original Bionic Woman Lindsay Wagner came into the offices of a magazine for which I used to work, and I was cool as a proverbial cucumber (primarily because I only saw the back of her head and didn't know it was her until she LEFT, thankyouverymuchformercoworkers). George Lopez and Constance Marie seemed to zero in on and greet my brother Tom and me (the lone Latinos!) when we were on a Hollywood studio tour and our group stopped to watch them rehearse for a moment--and again, I was oh, so chill.
(OK, so maybe I waved a little too enthusiastically. And there may have been some jumping up and down. But only a little.)
(And then there was the time I seriously fangirled over author Karen Rose, but she doesn't outwardly cringe whenever I run into her, so maybe I didn't look as psycho to her as I did to myself when I replayed events in my head.)
But Alana Davis? If I ever met Alana Davis, I'd probably blither and sob like a hyperkinetic 14-year-old Sanjaya fan. This is how much I love her music.
So then, after I'd asked Alana Davis to be my friend, I realized that my page looked idiotic, that cartoon WeeMee thing HAD to go, everything in my profile made me sound like a crashing bore, and .... I had zero friends. ZERO. Other than Needy and Possibly Sociopathic Tom, who appears to have taken the time to become everyone's friend.
Hence, the MySpace makeover ... just in case Alana Davis happens to come calling. Of course she will not--and she will probably reject my overture of virtual friendship because my main photo is my current pimpalicious book cover, seeing as I can't take a decent picture to save my life--but hey, a fangirl can dream.
If you are on MySpace and would like to be my virtual friend and help me not look like an idiot to Alana Davis's MySpace lackey, my new and WeeMee-less page can be found here.
And if you have an interesting brush with fame to talk about, that's what the comment button is for!
Saturday, June 23, 2007
Random Worry #1
As I've confessed here before, ever since I've had my two girls, I've been consumed with worry. At first, I figured it was magnified by your run-of-the-mill post-partum hormones, which make every emotion sharper, every worry more intense and lasting. But now I've discovered that motherhood just naturally magnifies every worry, and it Never. Goes. Away.
I worry about renegade drivers on cell phones. I worry about jack-knifing semis (this happens a lot in my city) and collapsing bridges (this doesn't). I worry about strange diseases. I worry about the lasting repercussions of poor school systems and the poor teachers that can rear their ugly attitudes and abusive behavior among the great ones. I worry about school bullies. And school shootings. Terrorists. Fundamentalist extremists of any kind, including domestic ones. America's image abroad. Racism. Sexism. The state of Social Security. Alzheimer's. Processed foods. Pesticides. Spiders. (Totally spiders.) The scorpions that live in my attic and sometimes come down to visit and hide in the toys. Sharks going vertical and zooming up to chomp my legs off when I'm scuba diving and the dive master makes us all float on the surface until everyone is off the boat. (Love scuba diving--hate floating on the surface doing my best Hi-I'm-a-wounded-seal! impression. Especially in my wet suit with the yellow stripe--a.k.a. "yum-yum yellow" since it's a color sharks find attractive. Who knew?) Strange family members who could get custody if we all explode. Religion. The meaning of life. Doing something that matters. Having a midlife crisis if I'm not.
And in the middle of all of that, I seem to have time to worry about some really bizarre, random stuff, too. Today's random worry came in the form of a CNN report about the danger of digging in the sand. Now the mere sight of Maggie and her little plastic shovel at the beach makes my hair curl. (Or frizz like I'm 1970s Donna Summer, thankyouverymuchFloridahumidity.)
Apparently, Harvard just released a report about how the odds of your dying from being swallowed up by a sand hole are greater than those of you being on the wrong end of a shark attack. ("Hi, I'm a wounded--urph")
The problem is so prevalent, a study of person-eating sand holes was conducted by Harvard University and reported in the New England Freaking Journal of Medicine.
Apparently, if you dig a hole at least 2 feet deep in the sand, then follow the natural and undeniable impulse to GET IN said hole and jump around (Jump around! Jump around! Jump up, jump up, and get down!)--or fall in it, if it's not taller than you are--the sand walls can collapse, swallowing you faster than the Mighty Sarlaac ate Boba Fett in Return of the Jedi. (No excellent tentacles or nasty gurgling noises, though.)
And here's the kicker, writes Harvard's Dr. Bradley Maron, the study's lead author, in the NEFJM: "Typically, victims became completely submerged in the sand when the walls of the hole unexpectedly collapsed, leaving virtually no evidence of the hole or location of the victim."
(Emphasis mine!!!!)
!!!!
Easily solved, you say: Don't dig holes in the sand. Well, consider poor Matthew Gauruder, bless him, who was innocently playing football in the sand during his high school after-prom party. This breaks my heart--poor Matthew went for a pass, fell into an 8 ft. hole SOME OTHER LOSER dug, and died when it collapsed on him.
I can't bring myself to crack any more jokes after that sad story. Suffice it to say, I'm worrying. Death to all plastic shovels.
I worry about renegade drivers on cell phones. I worry about jack-knifing semis (this happens a lot in my city) and collapsing bridges (this doesn't). I worry about strange diseases. I worry about the lasting repercussions of poor school systems and the poor teachers that can rear their ugly attitudes and abusive behavior among the great ones. I worry about school bullies. And school shootings. Terrorists. Fundamentalist extremists of any kind, including domestic ones. America's image abroad. Racism. Sexism. The state of Social Security. Alzheimer's. Processed foods. Pesticides. Spiders. (Totally spiders.) The scorpions that live in my attic and sometimes come down to visit and hide in the toys. Sharks going vertical and zooming up to chomp my legs off when I'm scuba diving and the dive master makes us all float on the surface until everyone is off the boat. (Love scuba diving--hate floating on the surface doing my best Hi-I'm-a-wounded-seal! impression. Especially in my wet suit with the yellow stripe--a.k.a. "yum-yum yellow" since it's a color sharks find attractive. Who knew?) Strange family members who could get custody if we all explode. Religion. The meaning of life. Doing something that matters. Having a midlife crisis if I'm not.
And in the middle of all of that, I seem to have time to worry about some really bizarre, random stuff, too. Today's random worry came in the form of a CNN report about the danger of digging in the sand. Now the mere sight of Maggie and her little plastic shovel at the beach makes my hair curl. (Or frizz like I'm 1970s Donna Summer, thankyouverymuchFloridahumidity.)
Apparently, Harvard just released a report about how the odds of your dying from being swallowed up by a sand hole are greater than those of you being on the wrong end of a shark attack. ("Hi, I'm a wounded--urph")
The problem is so prevalent, a study of person-eating sand holes was conducted by Harvard University and reported in the New England Freaking Journal of Medicine.
Apparently, if you dig a hole at least 2 feet deep in the sand, then follow the natural and undeniable impulse to GET IN said hole and jump around (Jump around! Jump around! Jump up, jump up, and get down!)--or fall in it, if it's not taller than you are--the sand walls can collapse, swallowing you faster than the Mighty Sarlaac ate Boba Fett in Return of the Jedi. (No excellent tentacles or nasty gurgling noises, though.)
And here's the kicker, writes Harvard's Dr. Bradley Maron, the study's lead author, in the NEFJM: "Typically, victims became completely submerged in the sand when the walls of the hole unexpectedly collapsed, leaving virtually no evidence of the hole or location of the victim."
(Emphasis mine!!!!)
!!!!
Easily solved, you say: Don't dig holes in the sand. Well, consider poor Matthew Gauruder, bless him, who was innocently playing football in the sand during his high school after-prom party. This breaks my heart--poor Matthew went for a pass, fell into an 8 ft. hole SOME OTHER LOSER dug, and died when it collapsed on him.
I can't bring myself to crack any more jokes after that sad story. Suffice it to say, I'm worrying. Death to all plastic shovels.
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About Me
- Tracy Montoya
- Tracy Montoya writes romantic suspense for Harlequin Intrigue.