Meg Benjamin's Blog, page 21

Personally Speaking

Romance is written in third person. That's not an absolute rule, but it's close enough. Occasionally, an author will be successful with a first person romance—Kristan Higgins has a few, for example—and chick lit is notoriously first person. But what we might call "traditional" romance never ventures far from third personhood.

Of course, romance isn't the only genre that's associated with using a particular POV. For instance, cozy mysteries are almost always written in first person. Donna Andrews and Susan Conant stay very securely in the heads of their narrators, but unlike the first person narrators of some lit fic (Henry James leaps to mind), you never wonder if these women are reliable or not. The reader takes it as a given that Meg Langslow and Holly Winter know what they're talking about. In fact, in the case of Langslow, you frequently have the feeling that she's the only reliable person in the entire loony universe of Andrews' fiction.

And that brings me back to the central question of third person and romance. Why do we use third person rather than first? I'd argue it has to do with the fundamental purpose of romance fiction—the description of relationships. First person narrators may bring you great insight into themselves. You know what emotions Meg and Holly are experiencing  and you sympathize. And it isn't as if these first person narrators give themselves special breaks—both are very honest about being less than admirable. At the same time, you don't really have much sense of what's going on inside their significant others. Meg and Holly both pass on what their husbands do, but you don't really understand much about how their husbands think and feel.

In fact, the husbands/lovers in these books are largely flat figures. All we know about them is what Meg and Holly know, and they frequently don't seem to know much. Romance and relationships frequently don't figure greatly in cozy mysteries. The heroines are far more interested in solving the whodunit (or in Meg's case, solving whatever crisis the eccentric Langslow clan has developed this time).

But romance novels are all about relationships. And you can't really do much with the description of a relationship unless you know what's happening to both of the people who are involved. Think about it—when you're first attracted to someone, you desperately want to know if they're attracted back. And if they are, who's attracted more? With first person, you get the desperation on one side of the relationship, but you don't have any more knowledge about The Other than you would in real life. With romance, on the other hand, the third person lets you know who's attracted to whom and how much.

And that's really what romance is all about. You get both sides of the story, hers and his. You no longer have to guess at what's going on in his head—you know. Does that make romance less realistic? I'd argue it doesn't. It just gives you a privileged position in terms of how the characters think. And given how rarely we have this kind of privilege in reality, that may well be one of the reasons so many readers love romance.

Six Sentence Sunday – Venus In Blue Jeans

Okay, this excerpt comes from my first Konigsburg book, Venus In Blue Jeans. The hero (Cal) and the heroine (Docia) are getting ready to make love for the first time–so it's their first view of each other naked. Here we go!

Cool fingers wrapped around his shaft, measuring him, sliding lightly down the length of him.

"You're very big." Her voice sounded husky.

Cal swallowed, nodding. Even if he tried to speak, he figured his voice wouldn't be more than a croak, and he wasn't sure he could speak at all as long as her hand stayed where it was currently.

And then she grinned, eyes sparkling. "Fortunately, so am I."

Six Sentence Sunday – From Wedding Bell Blues

Janie could feel the smooth plane of his body pressing against her breasts; an ache had started low in her body that had nothing to do with exhaustion and everything to do with Pete Toleffson. She closed her eyes and let her cheek rest against his chest for a moment, feeling warm skin and smelling faint hints of sweat and aftershave, letting herself relax against the hard muscles of his chest and thighs.

One muscle was very hard indeed.

What the hell was she doing? Pete Toleffson stared down at her, his eyes obscured in the dim light. "Something wrong, Ms. Dupree?" he murmured.

 

So You Stopped SOPA. Now Can You Stop Piracy?

Like a lot of Web users, I wasn't all that thrilled by the two solutions to Internet piracy proposed by Congress: SOPA and PIPA. Both would have led to unwarranted shutdowns of innocent sites and both assumed a degree of oversight among site owners (including me) that just doesn't exist on the Web.

But did you notice? Every time somebody made a statement about how bad SOPA and PIPA were, they included a statement to the effect that everybody knows piracy is bad too. Okay, if everybody knows this, why haven't any of the big Web players tried to take realistic steps to stop it? Here's the thing, guys: those of us in the creative community backed you in this fight, now how about backing us in our fight to keep people from stealing our creations?

It's not like the identity and location of the pirate sites are a closely guarded secret. I can find a half dozen by doing a search on just about any book title. And I do that search on Google. Gee, guys, if I can identify the pirates just from my search results, why can't you? And if you can find them, why can't you delist them?

I've heard all the pro piracy arguments. There's the "artists are all rich bastards sucking up money from the poor consumer" argument, for example. To which I can only reply, not this artist, baby. Sure Disney and Warner Brothers are concerned about piracy of their movies, but for every big studio, there are thousands of individual authors and musicians who are also seeing their creations stolen.

Then there's the "books and movies and music are all too expensive" argument. But most of the books I see pirated from Samhain cost less than five dollars. Moreover, the Nine Naughty Novelists parody The Zillionaire Vampire Cowboy's Secret Werewolf Babies sells for ninety-nine cents on Amazon. It also shows up on pirate sites. People steal stuff no matter how little it costs.

And then there's my favorite argument: "information wants to be free." Yeah, I remember when Stewart Brand first said that back in the seventies, and I'm pretty sure he wasn't referring to my books. There's a wealth of information on the Web that's out there just because people want to share it. That's one of the wonderful things about the Web. But there's also creative work on the Web that's there for sale. And there's a difference between these two commodities. If people stole artwork from Etsy or designer clothes from eBay, they'd be prosecuted. Why is it any different when they steal a novel from me? Does the fact that my work is digital make it less valuable or less real than a pair of earrings?

I guess I'm just looking for a little justice here. If Google and Wikipedia and all the other big sites can form a consortium to head off government intervention, why can't they set up some kind of task force to deal with piracy themselves? It usually takes me three to four months to produce a finished book. Then I have to get it published one way or another. How is it even slightly fair that all that work can then be downloaded for free by some jerk?

Here's the point: you stopped SOPA. Good for you. Now do something about the problem that SOPA was trying, ineptly, to address.

 

Six Sentence Sunday – Venus In Blue Jeans

Cal Toleffson saw the love of his life for the first time at 5:47 p.m. in the Dew Drop Inn, downtown Konigsburg, Texas.

He wasn't exactly dressed for the event.

He'd spent the forty-five minutes preceding Happy Hour tending to a sick goat. "Tending to" was the polite way of describing it. The goat was large, sturdy and attractive from a goat's point of view. From a human's point of view, even a vet like Cal, it smelled like, well, a goat—and so did he, after about ten minutes in the goat's company.

Lay Off Stephanie

Okay, I just read my first review of One For the Money, the first movie version of one of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels. Granted this particular review is more concerned with dragging Katherine Heigl over the coals than actually talking about the movie, but here's the thing: The reviewer has obviously not read the book and even more obviously has no idea who Stephanie Plum is.

This is another example of what I think of as the romance-novels-don't-exist phenomenon. Evanovich's Plum novels have been bestsellers for years. Most of us in the romance community (and probably in the cozy mystery community as well) know them. I've read most of them, although I began to lose my enthusiasm for them when it became obvious that Evanovich wasn't going to resolve the Stephanie/Morelli/Ranger triangle anytime soon (plus the characterization of Lula skates close enough to racist to make me uncomfortable). Evanovich may not be anywhere close to Nora in terms of sales, but she's definitely up there.

Which makes it all the more annoying that this reviewer not only has never heard of the books but has no interest in them. The "terrible" dialogue he quotes sounds very much like Evanovich to me, and it also doesn't sound all that awful. That's the way Stephanie and Joe talk to each other, and I'd venture to guess it's popular with Evanovich's legions of fans. Stephanie and Joe's interactions are typical examples of the banter you find in a lot of comic romances. I don't contest the reviewer's right to dislike it. But his tone of amused contempt bugs me.

Somehow I have a feeling that if this movie had been based on, say, a long-running series of thrillers by James Patterson or Michael Connelly, the reviewer would have acknowledged the books in the review. But Evanovich's books don't even get a nod.

I'm sorry to see that the studio didn't show this movie to critics. That's usually a sign that a movie is a stinker. It's always seemed to me that Stephanie Plum was tailor-made for movies, or maybe even a television series (hey, it worked for Charlaine Harris). Now it looks like this may be the first and last Stephanie Plum movie.

But the fact that the movie may be lousy doesn't release the reviewer from the responsibility to know that it grows out of a wildly popular series of novels. Yeah, it's a comic mystery with a heavy romantic subplot. Deal with it.

The Paula Problem

A while ago I wrote a blog post defending Paula Deen against attacks made by Anthony Bourdain on her cooking and her attitude toward food. It seemed to me then and now that these attacks had more than a slight whiff of sexism and elitism since Bourdain had a real problem with female Food Network stars who hadn't attended culinary school. Now Paula Deen has revealed she has Type 2 Diabetes and has known about her diagnosis for over three years. And I'm suddenly wondering how I feel about Paula these days.

I should make it clear going into this discussion that I realize diet does not cause diabetes. According to Paul Campos's helpful review of the literature, diabetes is a genetic disease. If diabetics are frequently overweight, that's an indication of the nature of diabetes rather than proof that fat people inevitably become diabetic. So implying that Deen caused her own diabetes by advocating unsafe food is simply untrue. On the other hand, it's undoubtedly true that diabetics need to follow a careful diet in order to maintain their health. Thus it's somewhat more accurate to say that the foods Paula Deen particularly likes are not necessarily the foods that diabetics should be eating on a regular basis.

But it isn't so much Deen's diet that bothers me in this whole imbroglio. It's the fact that she kept her diagnosis secret for over three years while she continued to promote food that wasn't necessarily the kind of food she and her fellow diabetics should be eating. When asked why she delayed making her story public, Deen said that she wanted to "bring something to the table" when she finally let everybody know about her illness. Which is all well and good, but what she's apparently bringing to the table is a deal with drug manufacturer Novo Nordisk. That makes her decision sound rather like an attempt to find some kind of revenue stream before telling the world about her health problems.

I don't begrudge celebrity chefs their product placement. If Rachael Ray wants to sell me a garbage bowl or Ina Garten a cake mix, that's okay with me. I'm a big girl, and I make my own decisions about what I use in the kitchen. But there's something vaguely…sleazy about Paula Deen hawking diabetes medicine. It's as if she knew her health problems would be big news and found a way to capitalize on them.

So I wish Paula luck. I hope she can deal with her health problems and go on enjoying her life in Savannah. And I sure as hell don't feel like signing on with Anthony Bourdain, who still strikes me as a snobbish jerk. But I really wish I didn't get the feeling that Paula was trying to monetize diabetes. Because that really would be something to snarl about.

The Stalker Hero

So I'm reading a recently reissued Jayne Anne Krentz from 1985, The Waiting Game. It has a typical Krentz hero—a solitary alpha, brooding, craggy, withdrawn, who immediately falls hard for the heroine. He recognizes right away that they're Meant For Each Other and knows he needs to do something to claim her as his. Granted he's been primed to believe this by the heroine's equally alpha uncle, but he falls hard and never lets go.

Now normally I'd see this as a sort of standard eighties trope—the hero who knows that the heroine is The One and goes about claiming her. But it so happened that I picked up The Waiting Game just after I'd finished the new Norah Roberts, The Next Always, which features a villain who's stalking the heroine. This particular villain is certain that the heroine is The One, and he spends a part of the book trying to claim her. The hero ends up pummeling him into a pulp.

Which leads to a basic question for romance writers: How much is too much? When does a devoted hero turn into a nut job?

A lot of romance heroes fall fast and hard for their heroines. In fact, few romances feature a hero who doesn't find the heroine attractive at all (unless, of course, she's soon to undergo a radical makeover). I think this trope stems from a fairly straightforward principle: unrequited love is no fun. We want the hero to want the heroine. But we also want the hero to understand limits. There's something a little creepy about a lot of eighties romance heroes. In their alpha haze, they're frequently convinced that they know what's best for the heroine. That they'll take care of her despite her own silly desires for him to do something else. Sometimes these plots show that the heroine really doesn't need to be hovered over in the way that the hero wants to hover, but frequently it turns out that Daddy Knows Best. The hero demonstrates to the heroine that it's best if she just relaxes and lets him take care of everything.

Not to put too fine a point on it, that's close to stalker behavior. And it's a little hard to justify in contemporary romance.

In contrast, heroes in historicals can actually get by with a version of this. After all, historical heroes exist in cultures in which men are supposed to be protective of women, as long as they're of the right class and type (let's get real here). But these days even historical heroes have to back off a little. Kasey Michaels' terrific Midsummer Night's Sin features a hero who's trying to break up white slaver ring. The heroine has a very personal interest in said ring since they've kidnapped her cousin. The hero tries to keep her out of the pursuit, but when she insists, he doesn't lock her up. Much against his own desires, he takes her with him and allows her to play a part in the rescue.

I guess the point is this: we've come a fair distance since the eighties. The idea of the fixated hero is no longer quite as attractive as it once was. And as authors, we're still trying to find the right balance between protective and psycho.

You'll Be Sorry

A couple of weeks ago, I did some ruminating on the Secret Baby plot and why it sort of freaks me out. I think one of the reasons that this particular plot is so popular with some romance readers is that it works on the "You'll be sorry" principle. And the "You'll be sorry" principle is a driving force in a lot of romances.

We all know what the "You'll be sorry" principle is, of course. It's the impulse you have when somebody does something that hurts you or someone you love, and you find yourself hoping that sometime in the future they'll suffer for having done it. Simplicity in itself. Of course, this rarely happens, or anyway it rarely happens in the way you hoped it would. Because the corollary of the "You'll be sorry" principle is the "And I'll know how you've suffered" codicil. It's not enough that the offending person should suffer some comeuppance for having done you wrong—you want to know that they've suffered too. In fact, ideally, these people should not only suffer, they should also come to you and express remorse. Or if not that, you should at least be fully aware of their suffering so that you can, well, revel in it.

So some secret baby stories, like Elizabeth Lowell's This Time Love, work by bringing the wandering impregnator back to suffer for having treated the heroine's love so casually. See? the heroine seems to say. I've raised this perfect little girl without you after going through hell. And now you're on the outside looking in. Nyah, nyah, nyah. Well, okay, I added that last bit, but it fits. The hero then suffers quite openly for the heroine's enjoyment.

Some authors even pull off the ultimate "You'll Be Sorry" fantasy—the "you'll-miss-me-when-I'm-dead" variation. Take Julia Quinn's The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever, for example. The heroine, the aforementioned Miranda Cheever, spends a great deal of time trying to please her husband, the book's hero. He, however, has been badly hurt by his previous wife's infidelity and shows little or no interest in his exemplary spouse. Until she's dying, that is. Miranda comes down with some conveniently almost fatal illness, and her husband realizes, only as she's about to slip this mortal coil, that she's absolutely perfect for him. His misery over his former behavior is, of course, abject. And Miranda gets to recover in time to revel in it.

What this all boils down to is pretty straightforward, I think. Most of us feel unappreciated at least some of the time, and those feelings of neglect can be painful. In the "You'll be sorry" plot, we get to watch somebody else get validated. The people who have treated them badly get suitably ass-kicked. And the hero/heroine gets to gloat. That none of this is particularly sterling behavior doesn't really matter. We're talking fantasy here, folks, and we in the romance business know all about wish fulfillment. Nyah, nyah, nyah!

And the Winnah Is…

Congrats to Emily Tardy for winning the copy of Don't Forget Me. Happy holidays, everybody!