Just want to thank you, Lleeo, for that. You made me laugh at your description of my Rick being grumpy and old. LOL. I’m glad you enjoyed his story. I’ll have to find more grumpy heros to write about ;-).

You’re welcome, Gennita. :D And thank you for writing such a great character and book. It’s so cool that I actually get the opportunity to talk to some of my favourite authors on this site! ^_^ And sorry that I called Rick old, I think it was just that at the beginning, he seemed like such a serious and stuffy bureaucrat that he seemed older. And he was serious and grumpy for good reason! ;) I also adored Nikki. She and Rick just connected on such a deep level. I loved it!

It’s one of my favourite romance books. ^_~

Why does everyone hate chick-lit so much?

TSTL heroines who cannot manage their professional or private lives (but, of course, their ineptitude is so cute and endearing that the heroes fall in love with them anyway), the inexplicable and materialistic obsession with brand names (sometimes to the point where they’ll forgo paying their mortgage in order to be trendy), the lack of backbone so they usually allow family or friends to run their lives, and so many other annoying things…

I will not buy anything with a cute baby on the cover. The “oh, by the way, this is your son/daughter” plot device has been done to death–can we please schedule the funeral sometime soon?

Ditto tycoons. Yeah, these are escape literature, but come ON. I read one of these series books once and I thought the tycoon was boring.

I will read SEP–she’s an auto-buy though she misses pure perfection once in a while, I can forgive. Lisa Wingate because her heroines do fall into mis-steps but are not stupid. I loved Eileen Wilks before she went into this paranormal phase. Linda Windsor for rom/com cannot be beaten. Allie Pleiter ditto. If you’re not familiar with these last couple authors, go get yourself a title & see if you don’t think they surpass many another for quality.

NOW can I have some chocolate?

it won’t crack real money for authors, publishers etc till 2012 the new reading devices will help sales but not authors.

A little off-topic…I can’t speak for other authors, but depending on who the e-pubbed author writes for, ebooks can be pretty profitable for the author. I was only pubbed in ebooks when I quit my nursing job in 2004 to write full-time.

I’ve branched out since then and I don’t write as many ebooks as I used to, but I still see decent money from them.

I agree that ebooks are still in their infancy and it’s going to take more time for them to get more established, but there’s definitely decent money to be made in the ebook industry.

Lleeo at #26 said:

Oh, and if Gennita Low is reading this, you made me fall in love with a grumpy, old, bureaucratic workaholic and I expected myself to hate him. It was your second book and I am blanking on the name of the book but his name was Rick Harden, I believe.

Please write about more grumpy old bureaucratic men, Gennita. They take on so much appeal when you write them. :D

Just want to thank you, Lleeo, for that. You made me laugh at your description of my Rick being grumpy and old. LOL. I’m glad you enjoyed his story. I’ll have to find more grumpy heros to write about ;-).

Oooo, you really opened up a can of worms there, Ms. Thing. ;-) Many of us have men whom we regularly jump and we still like romance just as much. I think I jump more, actually.

Re: chicklit – I think romance readers tend to seem to badmouth it because there’s a fair bit of confusion with “our” genre, and we get a little testy when the two get muddled together by people who don’t know. I like chicklit okay, but really would rather read romance and don’t like getting one when I’m expecting the other.

I think that there is money to be made in niches for ebook authors. We’ve seen it within the romance industry. Ellora’s Cave, for example, reported 6.5 million in sales in 2006. I’ve heard that the average EC author makes 5 figures, even if it is in the low five figures. So it can be done, but I think that until ebook readers are easily adopted and the DRM issue is fixed, the mainstream publishing won’t make huge inroads into ebook profits.

“My least favorite thing about the contemporary drama is the need for the Big Misunderstanding. And how often it feels completely stupid and you can see the plot device coming from miles away.”

One of my favorite things Crusie does is when she’ll set something up like its going to be a Big Mis and then the other person is totally OK with it. Like Strange Bedpersons where Nick settles things with Tess’ landlord and basically spends the whole day fixing things for her. I was totally expecting the typical Romance hissy about him “handling” her or whatever and instead she kissed and thanked him like most sane women would when a man goes out of his way to help her. That was my first Crusie, and I think that was really the moment I fell hard for her.

I think contemp authors need to be more like Crusie. She breaks rules and is not afraid to write outside the common tropes. I don’t think she has a single virgin, non-orgasm heroine in the bunch. Maybe to revive this subgenre publishers need to be more willing to let writers write outside the common borders- especially since all the people who would be reading contemps (like all of us here) aren’t because we’re so sick of the cliched elements being beaten to death.

Oh, and, Sonoma Lass is right. I never would have discovered Crusie were it not for this site and SBTB. Yay for these sites! :D

Why does everyone hate chick-lit so much?

Well, Lori, for me Chick Lit has a lot of the stuff I hate. The heroine bungling around messing up for comic effect (Alisa Kwitney is a big offender in this regard to me). I also hate it when I think I’m reading a romance novel and then find its actually more chick lit. For me, when I’m reading that sort of book its about the romance, NOT the heroine’s journey. Just my 2 cents.

First I am a writer, I get published (and paid) and I’ve often thought of breaking out of my genre and attempting a romance. Inevitably I buy a swathe of current romance novels attempt to read them and then put them down and go back to writing the genre that I’m used to.

I’ve thought a lot about what makes a romance good or bad and what puts me off the most is just the insane lack of IQ attributed to most of the heroines in the selection I’ve picked up. I don’t think it’s possible to live life as hard and as fast as most women do these days and then pick up a book where a woman pines for a guy because he has money or a title or big ! It makes no sense, it’s hard to suspend disbelief.

Secondly, modern women aren’t cosseted like they used to be. We drink, swear, wear what we want and fall into bed with who we want – when we want to these days. Things that society used to find salacious and taboo is the stuff of your garden variety music video.

Third, I have a man who I regularly jump and so rather than take out any frustration with a romance I’m more apt to pick up a non-fiction title at bed time…

As for erotica, I wish it paid more… I wouldn’t write it under my regular pen name which means I’d be starting from scratch, I agree with Jane when she says it’s an entirely different beast – it certainly is.

Further, erotic romance is not considered to be the same as contemporary romance in mainstream publishing. It is often, if not always, published under a different line and many times marketed differently.

Thank you. :)

I consider erotic contemps part of contemps, and also as evidence that the contemp subgenre is continually evolving.