Laura K. Curtis's Blog, page 20

Beta Heroes in Romantic Suspense

I love romantic suspense. It’s my favorite romance subgenre. Police procedural, innocent character in jeopardy, or paramilitary, from the completely closed door to the extremely sensual, I gobble it all up. But recently I’ve been thinking about the heroes and whether there’s room, in literature, for the beta hero among all the hard-eyed, heavily-muscled alphas of romantic suspense.

I worry about this because the hero of the manuscript I am currently editing (LOST, out in May 2014) has a number of beta qualities. He’s not at all certain he can do the job he’s setting out to do. I think his insecurities make him a more interesting hero, but I am not sure he will be deemed an appropriate suspense hero.

Such heroes exist on television, but I see them very, very rarely in books. One of my favorite television beta heroes is Dr. Spencer Reid on Criminal Minds. Reid is a true geek. Twice that I can remember during the show he had romantic entanglements and in both instances he retained his essential beta qualities despite being the romantic lead. He’s a thinker and a bit of a klutz, and even when his girlfriends are in danger that doesn’t change. Once, when he’s investigating a starlet’s stalker, it all turns out fine, once it does not.

Romantic suspense is chock-a-block with FBI heroes, however, and all are alphas—nary a Dr. Reid or even an Agent Hochner among them. Where are the data analysts? The ones who spend most of their time tracking cybercrime…without guns? (Because, yeah, there are plenty of computer geek heroes, too, but they all pack weapons and spend their off hours working out with weights rather than playing with video games.)

Rick Castle is another great television beta hero. (Although, okay, Castle is as much rom-com as romantic suspense.) Beckett leads, Castle follows. He’s not weak by any means, and he contributes to every investigation, but she carries the gun and she clears the room. He is protective, but she’s the protector.

In this respect, probably the most interesting crime show on TV was Numb3rs, which featured an alpha brother and a beta brother, both of whom solved crimes, both of whom had romantic relationships. The alpha brother, FBI Agent Don Eppes, had a string of failed relationships and his romances were episodic. But he wasn’t really the show’s star anyway. The whole show revolved around his math genius brother, Charlie. Charlie’s crime-solving, Charlie’s ongoing romance, Charlie’s HEA.

So the crime-solving beta isn’t unheard of, he just doesn’t appear in romance novels that I’ve seen. Strong women, stronger men seems to be the formula. Sometimes, heroes are broken, but beneath the cracks and scars they are still alphas. Unlike the beta heroes of contemporary or historical romance, every romantic suspense hero goes through life sure of his place in the world. Of course, your SEAL heroes have to be alpha—they’d never make it through training otherwise—but what about the others? Is it necessary for the genre that they be alpha? Does “beta” translate too easily to “weak” when it comes to plots that involve physical as well as emotional danger?

Have you read any books with beta crime-solving heroes? I’d love to hear about them!

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Lady Jane’s Salon NYC – Labor Day Edition

One of the nice things about living a reasonable train-ride away from NYC is the variety of events and organizations available. While my RWA chapter meets in CT, my Sisters in Crime and MWA chapters both meet in the city. And I am close enough to get downtown for things like the MWA readings or Lady Jane’s Salon on occasion.

Last night I got down to the city for Lady Jane’s where I heard readings from one category romance, one erotic romance, one historical romance, and one YA romance. Major variety!

Tiffany Reisz

Barbara Wallace

Katherine Ashe

Lindsay Ribar

 

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Whistle While You Work: My Playlist

I like to write to music. My personal preference is a little strange: I like to have music playing in the foreground and some kind of noise, like the ballgame on TV, in the background. I am pretty sure this comes from years of having to concentrate at the kitchen table while my siblings chattered on. When it’s too quiet, I can’t focus. When it’s too noisy I can’t concentrate. Yes, I am a delicate flower.

I have just finished my latest manuscript (LOST, due out May 2014), and I thought I would share the most-played songs from writing it. (Links are from iTunes)

Angel & Delilah by Eliza Gilkyson
Blue on Black by Kenny Wayne Shepherd
Blue Spanish Sky by Chris Isaak
Bordertown by The Walkabouts
Darkness by Leonard Cohen
Feel It Now by The Black Rebel Motorcycle Gang
Jedediah by Eliza Gilkyson
Like a Soldier by Johnny Cash
Loneliness by The Demolition String Band
Lover by Maureen Davis
Mad World by Michael Andrews & Gary Jules
Short Change Hero by The Heavy
Till I Reach You by The Walkabouts
If It Be Your Will by Leonard Cohen
Someone I Used to Know by Patty Loveless
Twisted by Eliza Gilkyson

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Supporting Fellow Authors: Or Why a Book is not a Refrigerator

How often do you need a new one?

At the Romance Writers of Australia conference the other day, Julia Quinn made a statement that quickly spread all over the writing communities on Twitter: You’ll never hurt your career by helping another author. It brings me back to something I have been meaning to examine more closely pretty much ever since I wrote my post on the things authors are charged too much for. In that post, I said that I wasn’t competing with other authors, and I want to expand on that idea.

Here’s the thing: a book is not a refrigerator. You cannot translate your experience selling refrigerators into book marketing.

A person who buys a refrigerator and finds it does a good job doesn’t immediately go out and go out and buy another refrigerator, and then another, and another. A book is more like a vacation. It’s an experience, and when people have enjoyable experiences they want to repeat them.

For example, I have a friend who likes cruises. Now, a cruise is my idea of hell, but she really enjoys them. She begins planning her next cruise the minute she gets home from the one she’s one. That’s exactly how I am about books. Let’s say I read a book by Karen Rose. I like it, so the first thing I do is immediately look for another book by the same author. But maybe I’ve read all her books (I have, as a point of fact). So then I look for something that will provide a similar experience. Maybe Lisa Jackson or Laura Griffin.  Or maybe I pick up a Dee Davis book, which has a more paramilitary slant to it, and decide I want more of that. Next up might be one of Tara Janzen’s or Roxanne St. Claire’s.

And, if I like Roxanne St. Claire’s romantic suspense novels (I do), I might try her contemporary romances. And if I like those (I do), I might look for more in a similar vein to them, only by different authors.

This is because I am your favorite customer, the serious reader. I read two or three books a week. I always have a huge number of books on my TBR list, but they don’t all suit a particular mood. If I am reading, say, zombies, and I want another zombie story, I don’t go on to the cozy mystery sitting on my TBR, I buy another zombie book.

So you see where I am going with this, right? People for whom reading is truly pleasurable tend to read more and more until their consumption of books reaches max speed. You couldn’t possibly be the only author they read, so you’re not competing with other authors for that spot. In fact, boosting other authors you think your readers might enjoy helps you. If you have to justify helping other authors, remind yourself of that.

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TICAs (Tropes I Cannot Abide) #1: Alphaholes with Sympathetic Pasts

I blame Twilight. Closely followed by its fan fic, 50 Shades. But lately, it seems that everywhere I look I see romance novels populated by stalkers and abusers, general alpha-holes, who wouldn’t make it past my front door. These are guys who won’t take “no” for an answer, even—or especially—when they profess to love the speaker. Many of them are billionaires, for some reason. Or bikers. In fact, so many of them that I am willing to add both Billionaires and Bikers to my list of TICAs, at least for the moment.

It was easier with Twilight. At least there you weren’t dealing with a human. I mean, I think we can all agree that a human male who sneaks into a girl’s bedroom and watches her sleep needs intense therapy at the very least, right? If not jail time? Maybe social mores among vampires are different.

But what about Mr. Grey? Ana tells him “I don’t want to see you” and he repeatedly shows up. That’s called stalking. It’s against the law. And the other crap he does to her (and no, I am not talking about the sex, I am talking about separating her from family and friends, controlling her life, etc.) are textbook abuser behaviors. And yet, supposedly, all of this is ok because of his traumatic past.

Or take Kristen Ashley’s Motorcycle Man, which begins post-coitus with the hero telling the heroine, his new office manager and one night stand, to leave her number when she leaves. Then their first actual interaction basically begins with him speaking these words to her:

“I do not work with bitches who have had my dick in their mouths.”

And then he goes on to dissect their sexual encounter.

Right. Because that’s the kind of “hero” we’re all looking for nowadays. I mentioned to a friend of mine that right there Ashley lost me and she said “oh, but he’s the hero, you know there’s a reason he’s acting that way and that we’ll find out what it is.”

Well, but here’s the thing. I don’t care why he’s acting that way. I don’t care how horrible his childhood was. I don’t care if only the love of a good woman can save him. I’ve known men like that and if they reach his age and still act that way, they’re done. That’s who they are. My suspension of disbelief will stretch only so far, and that’s about a mile past the marker.

Now, that’s not to say I don’t love a good Alpha hero. Even a bossy, slightly overbearing hero. Probably my very favorite of this type at the moment is Cara McKenna’s Kelly Robak from After Hours. The guy has plenty of baggage and he likes to have his way. But he’s not an asshole. And he’s up front about everything. He’s a grown up. He’s learned to deal with his own issues and to explain. He pushes some of the heroine’s boundaries, and she gets in his face, and that’s okay. Although I did at one or two points find myself going “well, that’s the wrong way to handle something, Bud,” I never thought “wow, you’re a complete shit.” And there’s a big difference.

There are lots of ridiculous tropes I love. The Marriage of Convenience, for example, which, since I don’t really read historicals, is hard to find. (Now that same sex marriage is legal in many states, I know an editor looking for same-sex marriage of convenience stories…if you have one, holler!) A good contemporary MoC story will grab me every time. Just like a good Best Friend’s Little Sister story. And I know there are plenty of people who hate both.

So what are your TICAs?

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Romance and Fantasy vs. Reality

Image by @smartbiches Sarah.

Here we are again, in a familiar place for readers and writers of romance—with someone denigrating both romance fiction and its readership. This time, it’s Kelly Bohan, an intern at the Missouri Review, who decided for some unknown reason to critique a genre she admits to knowing nothing about.

In fact, she is very proud of the fact that she disdains romance. She found Roberts’s language horrific but Nabokov’s beautiful. I won’t pick apart the passages she chooses—you can do that yourself—but I will say that it’s immensely clear to me that she’s not just not a reader of romance, she’s not a reader of popular fiction of any kind, and that’s hardly something of which to be proud. Especially when she’s interning at a magazine, so one assumes she has hopes of writing herself someday.

How do I know she doesn’t read popular fiction? Well, she doesn’t read thrillers—they’re absolutely chock-full of over-the-top description. Is it about sex? Not always, but certainly there’s plenty of sex in James Rollins or Barry Eisler, none of which is particularly elegantly written (sorry, guys) but instead is written to suit the stories. And then there’s Lee Child, who was nominated for a Bad Sex award for this passage from The Affair.

There’s a particular class of Sci-Fi is called “Space Opera.” Obviously, she doesn’t read that. Nor does she read High Fantasy—the descriptions of the settings alone would be far too florid. I love sword and sorcery stories, but that’s probably because they are romances in the traditional sense—stories of adventure that end happily. Or modern lit fic, since that, too, is frequently ridiculous in its descriptions of sex (heck, test out any of the Bad Sex award shortlist excerpts.)

But I digress. It happens when I get upset. What I really wanted to talk about was the conversation spawned by this article, along with something I thought about while I was at RWA.

I don’t have any particular love for awards ceremonies—I don’t watch the Oscars or Emmys or any of those things—and I’ve never thought about winning an award myself. But watching the Ritas, I thought I would like to win for one reason and one reason only: so I could tell the world how fabulous my husband is. Really, that’s the only acceptable venue for such a declaration.

And the thing is, our marriage isn’t perfect. I’m not giving away any secrets by saying that. But despite being a long-time romance reader, I never expected either my husband or our relationship to be without flaws. I don’t want a billionaire with a perfect body and a dark past that he can get over only with me. I do want, as Tessa says, fidelity, respect, and orgasms. And, to be brutally honest, I expect the first two from anyone I let into my life, if you define fidelity as “strict observance of promises,” as the dictionary does. The promise my husband made was that there would be no one else. Others may make different promises in their relationships.

Even in romances, relationships take many forms and the promises made vary from couple to couple—or trio to trio or quartet to…well, you get the idea. What’s important to a romance is that those promises are kept.

I will also not be giving away any secrets if I say that in the ten years of our marriage, my husband has had to deal with a lot more “in sickness” than “in health.” Unlike a woman I know whose husband left her after she was diagnosed with cancer, mine has never flinched from the doctors or hospitals. He doesn’t talk much, just does what needs doing.

That’s what I wanted when I got married—not a chisel-jawed billionaire or the leader of a motorcycle club or an ageless vampire. I frequently hear men say that romance novels give women unrealistic—and unreasonable—expectations. But that’s only because men are looking at the surface, the toys owned by the heroes, while women are looking beneath the perfect six-pack abs.

I feel intensely sorry for all those people who think that fidelity, respect, and orgasms are too much to expect all together in one relationship. (And to those women sacrificing the first two for the third, get the heck OUT. The third you can provide for yourself.)

The only requirement for a modern romance is that it features a protagonist who ends up in a committed relationship and that the story focuses in detail on the development of that relationship. Everything else is up for grabs. There can be murders, world destruction, werewolves, demons, tragedies, triumphs, explicit sex, implicit sex, no sex at all, divorce, massive family dysfunction…there are romances to suit every taste. And there are covers from the most abstract to the most explicit.

Decide what you want in a book and find it. Decide what you want in a relationship and go get it. Fidelity and respect (and orgasms) are not out of anyone’s reach.

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New Site!

You may have noticed that a couple of things are missing from my blog…the “About” and “Bibliography” are gone.  That’s because they’ve moved to my brand new site at LauraKCurtis.com. Check it out! I think it looks grand!

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My RWA 2013 in Pictures

I’ll no doubt have more to say about RWA in coming weeks when my brain has settled somewhat, but first, a brief glimpse at my experience.

I arrived on Wednesday, got checked in, and met up with friends for dinner. After that, we went out to the Smart Bitches reader party, where we all wore mustaches. This took place in the back half of a music hall/restaurant/bar, and let me tell you, we got some highly intrigued looks from the “regular” patrons. My friends and I wore the plain black mustaches, but Kari Young (who I don’t know, but obviously should) brought one that matched her hair!

On Thursday, my agent’s agency had a luncheon at Mary Mac’s Tea Room. Naturally, it included fried green tomatoes. (I must say, being gluten free is not easy when traveling in the south.)

I mean, just look at those delicious fried green tomatoes! I wanted to eat them sooooo badly.

 

Then, right after the luncheon, I ran off to the indie signing to grab a book from the fabulous @briaquinlan for my niece. Here she is signing them. (I asked her to write the dedication to my niece and she was positively wicked in what she said. You would never guess to look at her–doesn’t she look sweet and innocent?–what an evil imagination she really has.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Friday, I had my own signing! It was fun, even if we at the InterMix table didn’t have physical books. InterMix has a sampler available with sample chapters from their 2013 titles and we had download cards for that (if you’re interested in the sampler, it’s free at all digital outlets). I also signed chocolate bars.

 

Friday night Penguin had a cocktail party for its authors, editors, etc, which was great fun because I got to meet people whose work I’ve been reading for ages.

 

Saturday, I finally had time to go to some panels. They were fascinating and so useful! Usually I manage to get to a lot of panels at national, but this year I was just ridiculously busy! I took some pictures at the panels, too, but then I lost my phone, so…

 

Before the awards ceremony for the Ritas and Golden Hearts, I went to dinner with old friends @IsobelCarr (the other half of my Twitter brain) and @SarahFrantz, and new friend Kris Hohls, of LoveLetter Magazine in Germany. We went to a fantastic restaurant called Abattoir. If you like meat, I highly, highly recommend it next time you’re in Atlanta. We were definitely the problem table because Isobel is allergic to eggplant, Kris is vegetarian, I am gluten-sensitive, and Sarah is extremely allergic to milk products. But the restaurant managed to feed us all admirably.

 

We made it back to the hotel just in time for the awards ceremony. And, of course, the Samhain after party, where they had excellent dancing music and delicious desserts. But I had to go to bed. I was exhausted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The View From Here

Before I leave for RWA tomorrow, a couple of pictures of summer in my garden!

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It’s Here! The Cover for Twisted! Wheee!

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