Holding Out For A Hero

Ah, the revision saga continues, and as I'm dealing with the lack of sparks between V and the romantic interest, it is now easy to see why I have milked the passion right out of this relationship. Yes, at one point in time, I envisioned the romantic interest as a Christ-type figure. Not the Man, himself, but enough like him to make V go, "Huh?" At one time this sounded like a good idea, although in what universe I thought that, I really don't know. You'd think the perfect man would make a perfect hero, right? Wrong! All it makes is a boring hero.

Heroes are very difficult animals for romance readers. They must be strong and sexy, but they have to have flaws as well. Oh, it can't be something icky like for instance, bad breath, or pedophilia, no, it must a tragic flaw, which means it's got to be a doozie, but it can't stop the reader from falling in love with him. In the 80s, the heroes were basically assholes. Heroines were raped, treated like doormats, mistrusted and in general, had a sucky time of it. In the end, the hero was redeemed by love and the heroine forgave him.

Eventually, romance readers pondered this disparity and the 80s heroes were tossed out quicker than you could say, "Sly Stallone." And thus came the 90s. A time when Dr. Phil and Dr. Laura Schlessinger were heating up the airwaves. Is it any wonder we wanted heroes that we could break through their psyche and heal them? Over the past ten years, flaws have been done to death. We've had: betrayed by love, doesn't believe in love, has no heart (that's the metaphorical heart, not the real one, although it does have a nice paranormal ring to it), and the ever-popular "I'm not worthy." I think perhaps that the reason the paranormal genre is doing well, is that the paranormal aspect is giving the hero his flaw, since we've run out of all other flaws to give these poor guys.
Eventually we'll run out of otherworldly flaws to give our men and I suppose we'll have to think of something else. What that is, I have no idea…

A commentary from 1999, which supports (sorta) my hypothesis:

Article on the lack of happy heroes in TV

Okay, so I don't know if anyone has noticed the comments section that I've added (it's new), but I'd like to invite some discussion here. Does anybody agree with me? Put on the crystal ball and predict what's next (always a fun game)? What's your favorite kind of hero?

The Nothing Special Report

Revisions are STILL ongoing, but the end is in sight. I wish I was a writer who could just barrel through and get them done (and sometimes I can), but for these I'd have to mull over possibilities in order to craft the perfect solution, which is probably really not the perfect solution, but fiction is my way of life. I stand by my words.

In book news, we have collected a veritable, sexsortment of articles, starting with the New York Times, which has been, shall we say, rather racy lately?
Sexy books at the forefront of sales Oh, yeah. Somebody stop the presses. Sex sells. This trend has been getting a lot of press lately, and I'm thinking of all those impressionable, writing minds out there that are just lapping it up, thinking, okay, I just need to intern in the porn industry and THEN my story will be fantastic. The Devil Wore Prada becomes the Devil Went Down On Georgia..... Okay, slap me. Sorry.

Using books to check him out I liked this article and noticed that women consider a man reading Harry Potter or science-fiction a turn-off. I would wager a guess that it's mainly a turn-off if he's costumed in his Invisibility Cloak or brandishing his spanking-new light saber.

John Kerry as a romance hero??? In this era of hot political activism and torrid accusations run amuck, I politely refrain from comment.

I love this one, "Meanwhile, the so-called "literary" writers -- spewed out in ever-increasing numbers by creative writing programs and often touting MFAs that have no currency without an added dollop of talent -- are hep to the fact that there's more supply than demand for the character-driven novel."

In Our Last Episode

In the last installment, the mad romance writer was nervously waiting to see how the dreaded revision process would go. I'm in the middle of them right now and it's always interesting to hear what other people take away from your work. In this case,my editor. I know what I have in my head, and most times what is up there is what gets down on the paper, but sometimes a reader will read things in my stuff that I didn't even know was there. And I'm thinking, "Wow. I am SO smart." I don't know if I'm really that smart and subconsiously was working some angle, or if the reader is smarter than I am and sees an opportunity for something that I missed. Either way it's fascinating for me to see how people interpret my characters and stories.

I know some author's write very clean drafts, and about half of the time that's me. But I'm a slogging into the mist sort of writer, so usually I don't know what I'm going to do until the story is done, which leads to a lot of loose ends, etc. Anyway, I'm not a purist that believes that my work cannot be improved on. I'm firmly in the camp that anything can be made better. The trick is to know when the law of diminishing returns kicks in and it's time to stop.

And by the way, there's a new issue of Koffee Klatch online. This time, me and Julie Kenner read The Bad Beginnings.
Check it out

Ch-ch-ch-changes.....

There are those in the world that thrive on changes. I am not one of them. I hate change, I abhor it. I like to have my plans and the follow them accordingly. As a writer, you might think that since writing is a solitary career, you have complete control of your destiny. Bwahahahahahahahahaha….

See, Harlequin is doing a reorg. That five-letter word that wreaks havoc in the heart and minds of men (and women, it's an equal opportunity havoc). All the authors are waiting with bated (baited?) breath to see how the whole thing shakes out. Word to advice to new Harlequin authors – know your senior editor, know the assistant editor, know every editor that might possibly ever touch your line or any other line you might write for. Am I going to lose my editor? Odds are slim, but now buying decisions, scheduling decisions, etc will probably be in the hands of someone new. Realistically, everything will probably be fine, but I can conjure up Really Bad Things in my head.

And then, because it's Friday the 13th, and I'm feeling very Friday the 13thish, I got my revisions for Diva's Guide. They're not awful, not even really scary, but this will be the first time that I truly work with my editor at Pocket (Lauren McKenna, she's very cool) to do serious things. I'll report back in next week when the revisions are done (knock on wood), and make fun of myself for being nervous, but today, on Friday the 13th….

AAAAAGgggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg!

P.S. Hot hunky guy below:

The Post Vacation Report

Back home in New York! Yay! And supposed to be back to work. In our last episode, The Mad Romance Writer was considering writing for Desire. After further ponderous moments full of angst and confusion, I reneged on my own decision and decided I'm going to move to Blaze (that's the current plan, and in case you haven't learned this about me by now, it's subject to change at any moment). I had a long (actually, it wasn't really that long, but in my head it seemed like I'd been sweating it forever) talk with my editor and she was so great about it that I realized I'd been paranoiding myself. According to my spell-check, paranoiding is not a word, but I think it should be, so I'll use it. I told her, "I think I want to write for Blaze." And she said, "OK." And that was the entire conversation. We writers thrive on conflict, even within our own brains. It really gets scary sometimes.

The RWA conference was a blast. And it's interesting to see how times have changed. About three years ago, if you said the word "paranormal" editors would have held up the sign of the cross and said, "Back!" Now then, every single publisher spotlight had the editors begging for paranormals. Hot, hunky, heroes, preferably those that are dead or some sort of animal. Even Pocket (my house), one of the more mainstream houses, was asking for a "sexy werewolf." Wow. I say, "Wow." Which just goes to show what happens when heroes who are either dead or possessed hit the New York Times list. I'm thinking about rewriting The Omen as a romance with Damien as the hero. Okay, maybe not.

And a cool war story (not a writing war story, but an actual war war story). We were leaving the DFW airport to fly out to Cozumel and there was a large troop of soldiers who were being shipped to Germany flying out of the next gate. I had large degrees of guilt as I was flying off to a tropical paradise and these wonderful guys were flying off to a desert hell. Anyway, as we walked to our gate, there was an older man dressed in a Sunday suit, standing there to see them off. I saw the ears and heard the voice, and realized, that yes, the man was Ross Perot. If I had been able to say anything to him without choking up, I would have, but I chickened out. There was no press around, or big crowds, just Ross dressed in a suit, shaking hands and smiling to the soldiers.

Sometimes I really love this country.