And even if I did, what difference does it make? I don’t wear support hose or have pearls wrapped around my neck either—although I do own a perfectly nice strand. I’m not a wrinkled up old prune living on dreams or in the past and I don’t need KY!
There. I said it.
Age is a number. That’s all. Does it matter to a reader how old the author is or what they look like? To that I say a resounding HELL NO. If readers wanted a visual, they’d go watch Angelina Jolie kick some butt or Jason Statham rocket off to the moon in a car, explode a package, and safely return to earth not a muscle out of place.
So you’re wondering…What’s got Tess on her soapbox? Why is she so pissed off? (Easily done.) Well, it’s like this. I’ve been so incredibly busy volunteering at school for all of the end of year stuff and dealing with my boy and eighth grade prom—shopping for tux, manicure, haircut, etc etc etc. that I’d gotten behind on my blog reading. I spotted a post about bloggers who love to make fun of, hate, the romance genre. At first I told myself NOT to click on the links and get all upset but I did it anyway. So here I am. Pissed Off City!
The first post I accessed was all about this reporter/blogger, whoever the hell she was/is, and how she’d attended the Romance Novelists’ Association meeting in Britain and found herself surrounded by blue-haired ladies wearing support hose. By the end of her post she was saying how much she liked all of the women. But hell that was too late for me. She’d basically insulted every romance writer on the planet by saying we were too old to know anything about love and sex. My friend, who is a geriatric nurse, really needs to talk to that gal about what she sees going on at the old folks home!
Well, I had to go and click on more posts and discovered that some psychiatrists are saying that reading romance novels gives women a distorted view of relationships. You know…if I were a man, I’d take great exception to that statement. She’s saying that men are pretty much pigs, jerks, and assholes and can never measure up to the romance hero. And what do I say? I say that women aren’t stupid! We know daily life—work, paying the bills, raising kids, worrying over how to fix the leaky roof—has a way of putting a damper on romance. We KNOW that the men we love are not perfect and don’t expect them to be. I’ve always been secretly in love with Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan character. Tom Clancy does NOT write romance. John Grisham doesn’t write romance. There are a lot of books I read which are NOT romance. And I love the characters just the same. But that doesn’t mean I expect the same heroic deeds from Mr. Regular Dude walking down the street, now does it? Hell NO!
I think I’m smart enough to know the difference between fantasy and reality. Hell, someone should crawl inside my mind sometime and take a gander of just what my fantasies are! Hmmm…Well…maybe not.
The blogger claims that researchers are saying that reading romance is just as addictive for women as pornography is for men. That just as men need a visual and become excited—engaged over pornography—whenever they can’t get their fix they become depressed and that romance books do the same thing to women.
It’s also being said that the reason Amazon chose to launch its new publishing venture in the romance arena was because women buy romance at the drop of a hat. That it is a cheap, mindless endeavor of some sort for us. Well, sounds like Amazon made a good business decision to me. And if those bloggers only knew how persnickety we women are about our romance books.
Basically, we’re now being called addicts by researchers. And what a sweet ‘n’ sexy addiction it is!
This week’s book trailer is from Delaney Diamond for her book Fight For Love published by Amira Press. Delaney created this video herself! Great job. Fantastic imagery and music.
