Thursday, September 22, 2005
The Many Flavors of Romance

In the midst of trying to pull together my thoughts of what to do with my local RWA website, I started to try to determine what type of "look" to create for the site. I think about 3 or 4 years ago I would have gone for something with script and flowers and such but these days I wonder that this is too limiting.

Our local RWA chapter has folks writing everything from chick lit to erotica to historicals to contemporary to young adult and even more. It would seem a disservice to use some sort of scheme or look that would be exclusionary to any of these sub-genres of romance.

I guess that leaves things in the line of literary but not too stuffy, lol.

But it did lead me to think of the fact that people who do not read romance seem to have a very narrow view of just what "romance" encompasses. There's two major misconceptions among just people I know:
  • It's fluffy stories with no plot and no substance and only interesting if you have the brain of a gnat
  • It's porn

Their perceptions of romance authors appears just as narrow. When I've told several of them that I'm working hard toward my goal of becoming a romance/erotic romance author, they have looked at me like I just sprouted two heads and DDD boobs or something!

I suppose the most hilarious thing to me is that I know that I am exactly the same person as I was before they knew about this goal but they just cannot seem to recognize that! I'm still a female software engineer. I'm still a mom and wife. I'm still a technical author. I STILL HAVE A BRAIN!

If anything, this goal has been challenging me in a few ways I've not been challenged in a long time.

I'm very tempted to get a button made "I write romances AND I have a brain!".... Maybe I'll do that as a shirt when I get my first fiction sale....

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