Category: Publishing

In Recovery With Romance Novels

I wrote a very personal piece for Publishers Weekly about how much romance novels have helped me in my journey to recovery. You can read it here or scroll below. 

***TRIGGER warning for discussions of #metoo and PTSD***

——

I’m not here to explain what happened. I have no sordid details to offer, accusations to voice, or higher powers to blame. The only thing you need to know is I’m a #MeToo, and I want to talk about what happens after—and what an excellent place the romance genre is to recover from sexual assault.

Assault obliterates people’s needs; it robs them of choice. To pick up a novel is an act of consent; to open the pages of a book is an act of consent; engaging in reading is an act of consent. The romance genre offers three guarantees vital to my trauma recovery: heroines with agency, a happily ever after, and sex positivity.

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No two people survive trauma the same way. Story helped me. My psychiatric state, post-trauma, was at best erratic dysfunction, at worst suicidal ideation. The hypervigilance combined with the flashbacks left me with a brain I no longer recognized. I despaired of ever regaining my own mind, and fiction kept my flashbacks at bay better than any other escape.

There was only so much my husband, the doctors, the trauma programs, the psychiatric drugs, and the talk therapy could do. In the end, I had to reclaim my brain and my body for myself.

I wanted to read, but my attention span was shot, which made literary novels seem like grasping at swarming fireflies. Other genres had violence, grief, or unpredictable endings that were like quicksand to my emotional fragility. My everyday goal was to convince myself I still wanted to be alive. Reading tragedy or fearing it would occur on the next page wasn’t an option.

Enter happily-ever-afters and the pricelessness of predictability they can provide an unstable mind. I can read most romance novels without fear of a woman being assaulted, graphic violence killing off one of my favorite characters, or my mind wandering to suicidal ideation during musings on mortality. No matter how many obstacles the lovers meet in a romance, I know with the surety of the Earth’s orbit around the sun, it will end happily. Love will always win.

Enter heroines with agency. In romances that feature a female protagonist, her needs are placed at the forefront; whether her desires include a successful career or a rape fantasy, she will always get what she wants. Every time.

Page after page, romance novels say to the reader, “You are in control. You decide. You deserve what you want.” With my everyday hypervigilance degrading my needs and telling me that going after what I wanted would put my life in danger, to read romance heroines doing just that and thriving reinforced all the wisdom my therapist could supply.

Therein lies the reclaiming of the mind, but romance also helps in repossession of the body. Romance novels have become my safe space.

Most modern romances portray sex positivity with a hard-line emphasis on consent. Every book reiterates the same few keynotes: sex is not bad, sex does not have to be violent, sex can be exactly what I want and need it to be. Reinforcing those ideas through reading is an act of therapy. (Also, the reminder that not all men are violent, self-obsessed criminals helps.)

It was a natural step to go from reading them to writing them and to making friends with other romance writers and readers. What I found in these lovers of the genre was a sensitive community; many had experienced some form of personal trauma and were sympathetic to the treacherous ground I was walking each day.

Not every romance lover has a story of assault, and not every romance features a heroine. Not every person recovering from assault reads romance, and romance novels alone will not cure PTSD. But for me, they are an essential piece, and I’m not alone.

My story’s ending isn’t quite a happily ever after. I can pick up other genres now on occasion, but I’m coming to accept, five years after my assault, that my recovery is going to be lifelong. In the meantime, the romance community is here to stay, and the happy endings are limitless. I can read and write them for as long as I need the safety to go after what I want on the page—even when I’m unable to in life.

11 Things the NY Times COULD Write About Romance

I sent an email to the NY Times Book Review. Following Robert Gottlieb’s wildly inaccurate and offensive article last week, “A Roundup of the Season’s Romance Novels” , Radhika Jones’s rebuttal “Who Gets To Write About Romance?” still completely missed the point yesterday. So I responded to her question: “What are the stories in the field of romance that you think are most significant?”
Here are mine! (I may have gotten a little carried away. The Times has so much room for improvement! *side-eye* Even still, I by no means had space to cover all of the offensive slights in either article. Please excuse the things I had to leave out.)
 —

Dear New Times Book Review,

I appreciate that you have a desire to cover romance. It is a nice change. Though, it is long overdue and the lack of coverage on the genre is itself discouraging. To have the article misrepresent the genre, whether written by a romance enthusiast or a critic, is damaging to the awareness the romance industry is attempting to bring to the validity of its genre.
The following are possible topics which would show respect for the marginalized genre that is so often derided, mocked and overlooked in our culture and by the literary world at large.

 

1) Feminist Ideas in Romance Novels

That’s not an oxymoron. Those of us who know, love and respect the genre see it for what it is: feminist ideas written for forward thinking women.
Continue reading 11 Things the NY Times COULD Write About Romance

Romance In The Age Of Trigger Warnings: Do Readers Need To Be Warned?

(This article was originally published on Heroes & Heartbreakers.)

The presence of Trigger Warnings has been fast growing. We see them more and more. Sometimes clear, sometimes vague, but always—in my opinion—helpful.

I wish there were more of them.

But not everyone feels the way I do. Some complain they’re annoying, and they’re spoilers. It’s true. They do let the reader know what to expect. But for those of us who need trigger warnings, it sometimes makes it possible for us to read at all.

Many gravitate toward romance because it’s a safe space. We know the happily-ever-after will come. That love will triumph over evil. That no matter how bad it gets, it will all be okay. They provide a security no other genre can give us. In our real world, where HEA is not guaranteed in any part of our lives, romance novels are nothing short of priceless.  Continue reading Romance In The Age Of Trigger Warnings: Do Readers Need To Be Warned?

When Your Book Doesn’t Sell

(First posted on DIY MFA.)  I’ve been planning to write this post for over a year. Except I really thought it would be the “When Your Book DOES Sell” version. But yeah… that didn’t happen. The book my agent signed me for didn’t sell. I found out five months ago. It’s taken me that long to be ready to write this.

I knew it was coming. The book was on submission for a year. My agent told me it would be happening soon, and I wanted it to be done. A whole year of checking my email obsessively, hoping an editor would want it—it drives a person insane.

I thought I was prepared for it to be done, but I wasn’t. The email from my agent with “Closeout” in the subject line—it messed with me. It didn’t matter that in the time I was on submission I’d written and sold another book. Having my first book not sell… The self-doubt was crippling. I’m still getting over it.

It’s like an old relationship that breaks your heart. Even after you meet someone new, someone better, it doesn’t make that break up hurt any less. But I’m not alone. This happens to every writer. (Don’t tell me the exceptions. I’m not talking about outliers here.) Plenty of writers have one, two, even three or more books that don’t sell, and they just keep writing.

And I wanted to be one of those people, the kind who keeps on writing and never gives up. So here are some things I did after the closeout that worked cuz… Three months later, I got a new deal. The three book kind J

So when a book doesn’t sell, try to…

Use it As Fuel

It hurts when your work doesn’t sell. It’s a horrible feeling. The gut reaction of “everyone hates my writing” is overwhelming. But take the wound and turn it into fuel. Turn it into motivation to make your next book better than the first. Turn it into, “What do I write this time?”

Learn From It

Listen to what others have been telling you. Don’t give in to the blinders of “no one will ever buy my books.” Somewhere in the feedback you got were positive things and suggestions of things to work on. Sort through it. Listen to the good advice from others and hear what things they want to read from you next.

Keep Working

Some of the most common symptoms are: 1.An unshakeable depression, stress and anxiety, as well as avoid. 2.Overwhelming hopelessness levitra on line deeprootsmag.org combined with gloomy feelings. 3.Extreme guilt, feelings involving vulnerability, with out perception associated with home worth. 4.Loss of energy, a new slowing down associated with metabolism, along with activity ranges. Tadalafil has no effect in the absence of stimulation. purchase viagra from canada Hence it is incredibly popular treatment program that helps people in recovering from a great variety of disorders that can potentially become obstacles for success. http://deeprootsmag.org/2013/03/13/gone-home/ cialis price Therefore, you cost of tadalafil are advised to control stress through intake of herbal pills and bathing daily with cold water. Whether the advice and feedback work or not, keep writing. Keep writing. Keep writing. Keep writing. There is no better medicine. Though getting back to writing can be a tricky mine field. A book not selling makes you doubt even your strengths. Trying to figure out why it didn’t sell, which things to change, which things to keep about your writing—it’s exhausting to do on your own. That’s why you need to…

Talk to Your Writing Friends

This is crucial. Getting support, being reminded about your strengths is infinitely important when mired in the self-doubt of shelving a work. Lean on your friends. Let them be your cheerleaders. They’ll need you to do the same when they’re buried in the lows of this roller coaster publishing business.

Believe in Your Work

Don’t give up on yourself. Focus on your stories and what you want to write, rather than your fears. I won’t even name them here. They are the fears-that-shall-not-be-named, because they’re not worth your time. They just get in your way. Focus not the past disappointments but on the doing.

It takes time to recover from a book not selling. My doubt hasn’t gone away. I took big risks in the book that didn’t sell, and I wonder if I’ll ever be brave enough to take those again.

But somewhere in there, something good happened.

I looked up the dates of my emails and files. The week before my “closeout” email, my agent sent me a list of prompts from my soon-to-be publisher’s request list. The week after the closeout, I started on one of them.

It worked. Four months later—three book deal.

You can do it, too.

Meeting my editor Carrie Bradshaw style…or almost.

I get my deal with SMP Swerve and not only am I screaming but apparently–my editor wants to meet me. And get this she works in the Flatiron building in Manhattan. Legit, legit, wow. See me swoon. I’m a train ride away from the city. I rarely go anymore, but I love going and have always had these fantasies of, “See me go to NYC to visit my fancy editor. Mm.” My agent’s like, “Alla Carrie Bradshaw?” I’m like, “Y-yeah!”

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Except…it was a little more like this…

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It’s raining the morning of, so knowing I’d be doing a lot of walking, I do the unthinkable and wear…boots. And not like rain boots, leather zip up boots. And of course, it doesn’t rain a drop all day, and I’m the only person in all of Manhattan not wearing sandals and I’m cursed with hot sweaty feet all day.

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Then I’m wicked early, like over an hour because I was afraid of the trains running late. And I stand at the subway map like a tourist cuz I have no idea where to go. And…this is the kicker…the table the restaurant puts me at was so far in the back, my editor didn’t even see me when she arrived. We were both in the restaurant for twenty minutes before I got up and realized she was at another table. Right.

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BUT! Good news is, from there everything with my meeting Alexandra Sehulster went swimming. We love romance writers and are enamored with the community as much as we are with the books. We are equally in love with dark, stalking, sexy anti-heroes who walk the delicious line between evil and redeemable. She’s going to send me book titles for her favorite anti-hero stories (!), and I just might convince her to get on Twitter (she couldn’t even remember her handle 🙁

She asked very shyly if I’d written anymore of the book. I very shyly said yes, if slowly. There was hardly any business about the meeting which was lovely. We talked about how we came to our careers and chit chatted in the way girls do on a get-to-know-you.

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All in all a great success. I even got to meet up with the wonderful Alexis Daria and dream up some fabulous plans we have brewing with Kim Bell and Chelsea Polk for #RWChat.

Ok, now I have to quit stalling with Sexy and the City GIFs and actually get back to writing that book my editor is expecting.

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Publishing My First Book, Part 2

I talked before about the first stages of editing, from pre-round edits, to cover copy, to round one content edits. We attacked details with gusto, but moving into copy With all these benefits, Lawax capsules are considered as one of the best natural methods to overcome erectile dysfunction including online prescription cialis, penis pumps, psychological therapy or just persistence. Dealing with depression is one pfizer viagra pharmacy of the most important factors that make VigRx Plus the top male enhancement pill which consists of herbal ingredients working to increase the blood circulation to the male reproductive organ. Dosage should be proper as it is very cute-n-tiny.com cheap no prescription viagra essential for a proper erection. Red wine: Anybody looking for an excuse to have a good sexual life but they find it hard to rise to the occasion since they lack the chance to enjoy online security since the site is very secure and shall not expose your online credit details. cute-n-tiny.com viagra for women australia edits and final line edits, the details went microscopic. Clarity of  prose, sensitivity of subject matter, echo words, punctuation—we looked at every sentence as through a magnifying glass.  More.

Publishing My First Book, Part 1

After I signed my book contract, I thought I’d have a few weeks to let things sink in before editing began. I Generally, stress could be a major reason for this, apart from medical condition, is psychological problems such as stress, worry etc. generic viagra soft that more and more couples are now struggling to have a fulfilling sexual relationship. So, all the burden of cost has to bear if buy cheap viagra deeprootsmag.org they want to experience the benefits of prostate stimulation through the perineum, or the area between the testes and anus. Even Bill Gates, the founder of giant Microsoft Corp., had no escape from the BSOD error during the beta release of Windows 98 at Computer Dealer’s Exhibition (COMDEX) in tadalafil for sale cheap Las Vegas in April, 1998. These indications will leave a person feeling regularly generic soft viagra uncomfortable whether they are at home, at work or with friends. mistakenly thought I’d have a month or more to do nothing but pound out the first draft of book two… Nope. More

Diary of a Book Deal

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