It’s Not All About the Sex…

That’s the beginning of my guest blog for Sapphire Blue Publishing.  Of course, sex is a factor, but my stories would be as empty as a bottle without a genie without emotion.

You’re wondering what kind of emotions a genie has.  (Humor me.)  Very similar to those of a human…only more magical.  You can explore how they differ and are the same in The Genie’s Curse… the story of Ashura-Goreem, a genie who loves the human princess Miraphet.  Prejudice would keep them apart.  But it’s their emotion and what they do with it that will bring them together.

Check out my take on emotion and how important it is for writers to convey…

You Can Judge a Book by its Cover

Revised cover of THE THIRD WISH

Following is an exercise in contrasts.  The first cover for The Third Wish (seen below) was captivating and intriguing.  And dark.  The design staff noticed the difficulty with darkness when it came time to post marketing copies of the cover on different sites.  I, of course, noticed it immediately because you couldn’t see my name.   The version to the left is the revised version.  Much better, eh?

By the way, artist Natalie Winters designed this book cover and did a fabulous job.  I was awestruck when I first saw it because Natalie so perfectly captured what I imagined Bridget Devine looked like. 

It also got me thinking about what makes for an effective (read ‘catchy’) book cover.  Romance is a tough genre, because it’s all been done before.  Muscled torsos; radiant eyes; fleshy bosoms; ripped bodices; and skimpy clothing (which frequently reminds me of what my father would say: “You look like you’re wearing your little sister’s clothes.  Couldn’t you get anything that fits?!).

Now it’s a matter of creating a cover with flair.  What I liked about this cover was the closeup of a seemingly thoughtful, albeit very attractive, face. But not so beautiful as to be unbelievable.  Bridget actually looks like my sister Bridget (but don’t tell her that; she’ll cross herself twice and whisper a Hail Mary that I should even draw such a comparison).  Romance is for everyone.  Not just duchesses and unbelievably cut genies.  And I think it’s a good thing when covers convey that in some manner.  Yes,  my genie (Ashura-Goreem) is cut.  He eats well; whaddya want… figs and fresh fish–a Saharan diet.  But the girl for him is the girl next door.  And, I think, the more that cover art makes our romantic heroes believeable, the better.  

Original cover for THE THIRD WISH

And skimpy comment from Dad aside, there is certainly a place for the allure of the wardrobe.  It’s something everyone can access.  Accessorize.  A good example is the cover for Fantasy Quest by Tina Gerow at the Sapphire Blue Publishing site.  This is a great cover because you don’t even see what the heroine looks like, but you get an image with motion of romance, desire, and possibility.  With a scarf from T.J Maxx and a chunky necklace that is certainly lurking in the back of my jewelry box, I, too, can be as alluring.  It’s the hope anyway.  Meanwhile, I’m going to read the book to get some dialogue cues for free.

What do you think makes a great romance novel cover?

How Hot is Hot?

How Hot is Hot in Romance fiction?

As the summer winds down, an issue that seems to keep erupting for me in weather and reading choices is How hot is hot? First of all, the overall romance market is hot. The area of romance fiction generated $1.375 billion in U.S. sales in 2007, a five percent increase over 2006, making it the biggest fiction publishing category for that year, according to Business of Consumer Book Publishing. A recent article in The New York Times reported that Harlequin Enterprises had fourth-quarter earnings in 2008 that were up 32 percent over the same period a year ago. That’s hot!

However, I specifically refer to the level of heat I’ll find between the pages. The romance market is awash in names, titles, and scantily clad or just sweetly glowing covers. It’s hard—eh, difficult—to tell just how far the story arc is going to extend. Of course, the reader can writhe around at the various online romance sites (bit more difficult to do in an actual bookstore) to try to determine the romantic intentions of a prospective booklist. But that takes research. Readers would rather be reading. And they don’t want to waste money on a title that, ultimately, disappoints or shocks by its content. I’d like to see an industry-wide standard by which romance books reveal their moist inner core right there on the cover.
Heat meters certainly are nothing new. But I find them too generalized. For instance, you know you’ll get romance from Avon Books, but, as noted above, that’s a huge range. Avon also has Avon Red for erotic fiction. That’s a division of two. Not good enough. Harlequin has a bit better articulated system with various imprints, such as Blaze, Silhouette, and Harlequin Presents. Harlequin Blaze describes itself as: Stories have a contemporary feel and emphasize the physical relationship between the couple. Stories run from flirtatious to dark and sensual, and the line pushes boundaries in terms of characterization, plot, and explicitness. Okay, “pushes boundaries” is a good description, but the whole thing is too wordy and a reader would only discover this information after going to the Harlequin site. Harlequin Silhouette describes itself as passion, drama, sensual, scandalous. Yup, that covers a lot of ground and flesh. Harlequin Presents: passionate, seduction and passion guaranteed. Hmm. How is that different?
I really like the 5-flame system by which All Romance eBooks defines the content of the titles they carry at their online store, which, incidentally, is also the system that my publisher, Sapphire Blue Publishing, abides by.

If you buy your ebooks from All Romance, you know immediately what you’ve got coming. Can’t romance publishers have a consensus that such a system benefits the reader and may motivate them to buy more titles more quickly?

The flame system is taken. However, any series of icons could work. A 1-to-5 rating system seems to be sufficient, with 3 being the middle of the road and including your run-of-the mill nudity and thrusting. All Romance does a good job of describing the range of heat levels. Perhaps an icon structure that would use familiar symbols to convey those heat levels. For example, level 1 could be a rose (sweet, for love); 2 could be a trailing ribbon (untied from a package or unwound from a bodice); 3 could be a bared breast (just kidding, but you get the idea); 4 could be a phallus of some sort (maybe an Egyptian obelisk, rounded tip please); and 5 could be a studded dog collar.

Just throwing ideas out there: Would love to hear yours. The thrust of this essay basically is—as in life and love—we humans desire to know what we’re in for. Well, it’s not feasible in reality. But in the romance publishing industry, it certainly is. Readers want to know what they’re going to get, and publishers should give it to them.

Living with a Fatal Flaw

Gilgamesh put the epic in Epic

We want our heroes to be heroic.  We want them to have skills and abilities beyond your typical protagonist.  Since The Epic of Gilgamesh was first told more than 5,000 years ago (the first historic romance in history), readers have looked to a main character’s strength or insight, virtue or tenacity to place them above the average.  To be nearly perfect…but not totally perfect.  In which case, we as the readers would have to dismiss that character as totally unbelievable.

Whether human or alien, djinni or elemental, the protagonist must have nobility of heroic enterprise served up with a soupçon of vulnerability.  The fatal flaw is the quintessential element for bringing the protagonist to life.  In The Epic of Gilgamesh, our hero Gilgamesh could not reconcile his abilities and strength and all the power he commanded with the death of his companion Enkidu.  Gilgamesh exhibits the vanity of the hero’s quest and the folly of the pursuit of immortality.  His fatal flaw.

Gilgamesh: A 5,000-year-old suspense tale

As described by Aristotle, the fatal flaw is most assuredly fatal.  The protagonist must possess goodness, superiority, a tragic flaw, and a realization of both his flaw and that his tragic demise is inevitable.  Well, in this day and age, that sort of fatalist angst isn’t going to sell a lot of books.  Yes, we want our heroes to be sympathetic in some manner, but we don’t want them to die.  We want them to struggle and to triumph over the antagonist and themselves. And we want to read the next book in the series…

When your characters are super-normal or supernatural to begin with—such as aliens who hail from distant solar systems or creatures of flame and air who travel parallel dimensions, or humans who possess uncanny, superhuman skills—the task of inserting that fatal flaw can be more difficult.  However, it also can be more fun.  As long as the worldbuilding foundation that the author creates can support it, your hero can do and say anything he or she wants.  You want your reader to be on the edge of his or her seat, waiting for the behavior of the hero to be his undoing.  In this manner, too, our hero encounters the depths of despair (loss of love, misunderstood communication, pride leading to separation, etc.) and must struggle all the more to redeem him/herself.

The fatal flaw is an internal trigger that threatens the hero.  Also exciting and equally fun to write is the external trigger or an Achilles Heel.  Think Superman and Kyptonite.  When we talk about the supernatural hero, magical skills and idiosyncracies must be established early on and closely followed.  Established superstitions can be a great place to start when trying to identify a cogent Achilles Heel.  I happen to write fiction about the djinn.  It is well established in djinn lore that they are repelled by iron or by the hairs of a black-and-white cat that are burned in a bowl to smudge a room with scent.  When the author places such items as these in conspicuous settings, the suspense is heightened.

Threaten mortality, but don't kill 'em.

Again, however, the worldbuilding is essential is these cases to support the delivery of these items in a scene.  The author must establish the validity of that piece of iron being beneath the feather-down mattress of our hero djinni who is about lay upon it.  And the author also needs to build in a believable exit route.  Ultimately, we want our hero to stumble far from the Kryptonite, regain his vigor and live to be a part of another tale—perhaps damaged, definitely changed and, most assuredly, alive.  Think about your favorite hero…is he or she still alive when you finish reading?

Aristotle may not mind killing off his heroes.  But the smart, modern author keeps them alive to live another scene – fatal flaws and all.