Romance...run for your lives!

What is so terrible about romance novels?  What is so terrible about romance in general?

 

I ask because of recent attacks on romance in public forums.  Take Fred Head, for instance.  He is a dem running for Comptroller down Texas way.  His republican opponant once wrote a romance novel.  Susan Combs acheived something back in 1990 that most of us only dream about.  She published a category length novellette/novel for the now defunct Kismet line of books.  Back in 1990, the romantica/erotic romance boom hadn't hit, so her book is a mainstream sensual romance.  According to Mr. Head, that makes her book porno. 

 

He says she is out of touch with the Christian values of Texas.  hmm... I'm a christian.  I write romance.  I've even been known to have sex upon occasion.  Ask my children.  Don't ask my husband... he'll deny it based soley upon my writing schedule.  Still, I don't see Mr. Head's point that Susan can't be christian and write romance novels.  Keep in mind that she isn't writing anymore, anyway.

 

Some argue that her stand on an Abstinence Only sex-ed program while she wrote a *gasp* sex book almost twenty years ago makes her a hypocrit.  Not so... just because she wrote a book a romance novel doesn't mean she advocates high school sex parties, or banging behind the gym. 

 

Enough of that.  Let's move on to offending ads in the subway.

 

The Greater Washington Initiative has decided that Washington DC is far too advanced intellectually for romance novels.  They read Plato while only 'average' people read romance novels.  Well, la-dee-da... The controversy can be read in more detail on SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com .  Mojocastle Press even made it into an article on the issue in the New York Times when the reporter quoted COO and head-editor Stephanie Kelsey's letter to the offending organization.  Way to go, Stef.

 

And finally... What's up with some of the writers over at Nanowrimo?  http://www.nanowrimo.org .  See, someone over that way has decided that they want to take the easy way out of the annual writing challenge this year.  The goal;  write a 50K word novel in one month.  This person's out?  Write a romance novel, because they are so easy.  And if she ends up with something HALF WAY DECENT, she'll even publish it.  As if it were that easy.  Any half-way decent romance will be published right?  Of course, she doesn't have any idea what a romance novel is, or how to write one.   She has explained that her heroine will have three possible love interests, but the real hero won't show up until half-way through the book... huh?  What is this?  The Dating Game or a romance novel? 

 

In an entirely different thread, another writers says she's writing a fluff peice just to entertain a few friends, but since it's fun, she'll continue writing it for nano.  Of course, she finds it silly on the whole and is afraid she is prostituting her artistic gift.   Her words, not mine.

 

While I was composing a reply in which I pointed out that she must not have much of a gift if she's asking for help and support from the very writers she had just referred to as literary whores, SHE pulled the post, leaving out all of her insulting comments.  I checked her profile.  She's only 18 years old, so I pulled my scathing reply as well.  But man... that irks the hell outta me. 

 

What so you all?