If you don’t read romance, you can’t and shouldn’t speak of it and you have no value here. I agree with whoever called you trollish to come on here and dis what WE love. Go away.

In future, when you come on a blog to support your friend, the fiction that you are an anonymous passerby will be better sustained if you don’t refer to her by initials she hasn’t shared on the blog.

Sorry, I have no idea who she is, but didn’t someone refer to her as PM? I took it from there, maybe I got it wrong. I’m German and don’t have any unromantic romance writing friends in the US or elsewhere.

Dear kete,

In future, when you come on a blog to support your friend, the fiction that you are an anonymous passerby will be better sustained if you don’t refer to her by initials she hasn’t shared on the blog.

Ladies,

Please, this is going from bizarre to surreal. I don’t know any of you here personally. I don’t know who kete is at all.

The only one I do know is Sherry Thomas, and that’s only as a reader of her work, which I admire very much.

And there have been posts that have been deleted???

Really?

I didn’t know that, either.

~ Phyllis Merriweather

Then you probably don’t belong on this blog. It’s definitely trollish – going on a blog devoted to romance and making such comments is bound to elicit response. I urge DA commenters not to respond to a cheap shot like this one. Not worth the effort and definitely not worth filling my Google Reader with impassioned responses.

Well, I said I came here via googling Kindle articles, otherwise I wouldn’t visit a romance blog. Unfortunately I skimmed the first page entry, found all the hen picking going on and it didn’t leave a favourable impression with me. Are you Jane? Is this your blog? And if not, don’t you think you’re a bit presumptuous telling people who is allowed to come here and who isn’t?

Again, not worth responding to.

Which undoubtedly is the reason why you do respond to my post at length.

You just made me giggle over my morning coffee. You hit every stereotypical Romance Sucks argument that people use. It was cute, thanks.

Glad to be of service. :-) I’m not saying “romance generally sucks” – you people obviously like it. It’s just not my cup of tea and different things suck for different people. I happen to like writing in PM’s style.

Perhaps this blog isn’t the right outlet for her writing

Dear kete,

In future, when you come on a blog to support your friend, the fiction that you are an anonymous passerby will be better sustained if you don’t refer to her by initials she hasn’t shared on the blog.

!

Unless you’re talking about comments that have been deleted, I have no idea where you’re getting this. I see no personal attacks or suggestions that anyone wants you to stop writing.

If you choose to take criticism of your characters and your writing as personal attacks, you are going to find the experience of being a published writer a miserable one at best. Learning to separate feedback, even the most hostile and dismissive feedback, on your work from your own self-esteem is probably the most important skill a writer ever learns.

Hm, well, as I said, I’m not a romance reader and so I’m sorry I don’t consider authors published by outfits like Harlequin, Ellora’s Cave and such as “real writers”. To me it seems all pretty formulaic -the little I know of it – and your advice sounded like you expect her to follow the formula that works for you for what I consider cheap stuff sold at the supermarket right next to the yellow press mags.

Then you probably don’t belong on this blog. It’s definitely trollish – going on a blog devoted to romance and making such comments is bound to elicit response. I urge DA commenters not to respond to a cheap shot like this one. Not worth the effort and definitely not worth filling my Google Reader with impassioned responses.

PM on the other hands seems to write what I consider a “real novel” hopefully to be published with a serious publisher and I’m quite excited to read more of her story when it comes out.

I’m sure she’ll let you know. Fans like you are hard to find. Or maybe perchance you know her? Random House, Penguin, MacMillian et al are also large romance publishers, or maybe you didn’t know that, either?

Perhaps this blog isn’t the right outlet for her writing and to me most comments sounded as if they were coming from what I think of as the typical prissy and self-righteous American housewife.

Again, not worth responding to. I’m wondering if all housewives are American and self-righteous, or all self-righteous people American housewives, or all three? Not in my experience, but YMMV.

If it’s not done to open a story with a sex scene in the romance genre, I’d say great, go for it because it’ll stand out and if it’s not meant to be a romance (hopefully) anyway, so what? PM says she knows what she’s doing and is doing it for a purpose and I believe her.

See my comment above. I cited one of my books (published, not by name since this isn’t my thread) that starts with a sex scene. Certainly not unusual. Comprehension doesn’t appear to be your strongest suit, but I could well be wrong in that. Maybe something else is. Wildly thrown insults, maybe?

Author PM – I thought the piece was fairly well written technically, but it did nothing to establish the character of an interesting person or start the story off, it was just a sleazeball having a blowjob with an anonymous woman. Unless the story starts there, it’s a “sequel” and not a “scene” in Dwight Swain’s terminology. You should start the story at the inciting incident. That’s why I said I would have liked to see more. I would have read this far, and maybe another page or two, but if nothing had occurred by then to hook me in, I’d probably be on to the next book.
I thought Joanna Bourne’s comments were outstanding, and I’d really take notice of them.
I think most of the adverse comments were from and about posters rather than you, so best to pass them by.

Hm, well, as I said, I’m not a romance reader and so I’m sorry I don’t consider authors published by outfits like Harlequin, Ellora’s Cave and such as “real writers”. To me it seems all pretty formulaic -the little I know of it – and your advice sounded like you expect her to follow the formula that works for you for what I consider cheap stuff sold at the supermarket right next to the yellow press mags.

PM on the other hands seems to write what I consider a “real novel” hopefully to be published with a serious publisher and I’m quite excited to read more of her story when it comes out.

Perhaps this blog isn’t the right outlet for her writing and to me most comments sounded as if they were coming from what I think of as the typical prissy and self-righteous American housewife.

If it’s not done to open a story with a sex scene in the romance genre, I’d say great, go for it because it’ll stand out and if it’s not meant to be a romance (hopefully) anyway, so what? PM says she knows what she’s doing and is doing it for a purpose and I believe her.

I have some of my own now.

If you think the negativity I’ve been subjected to here is going to stop me from continuing my writing and believing in my work, you’ll be sorely disappointed. I’ve spent the last four years down in my little room writing these four books, and with very little personal encouragement and support in my life. This is nothing compared to that.

Some of you have come on here and judged me personally. You don’t even know me! Yet, somehow you just know I didn’t care what you thought, and when I said I did, one of you wrote and said you didn’t believe me.

I hope that vitriol (pertaining to the personal, not about the work) that’s been aimed at me somehow makes you feel better inside. Surprisingly, I guess I’m to the point now that I truly understand what my goal is. It isn’t about me. It’s all about the stories, so while I don’t like some of what’s happened here, it hasn’t affected me as much as it might have a couple years ago. I suppose that’s progress, too.

I don’t know where some of you got the idea that I wasn’t interested in and wasn’t listening to your critiques and suggestions. Dismissing you? I took my time and thought about what you all said. There have been a lot of posts here for my excerpt and a lot to digest. It’s not in my nature to immediately lash back, reply off the cuff, and spew out premature comebacks.

But the truth is – and I don’t care if you believe me or not – I’ve re-written a major chunk of the excerpt and I really do like it much better now. A lot of what you guys said made sense, so I listened to it. It’s also sparked some new ideas on the rest of the first chapter, which really was the last one out of all four books I wasn’t happy with, anyway.

So, thank you. I mean it.

Believe me or not.

And Jane: Thanks for choosing this first page to put on here. You’ve been great.

Mmm, yes, pay no attention to all the published authors giving valuable advice. What do they know, anyway? Also, pay no attention to the opinion of all these romance readers, they’re not the target audience for her *romance* anyway.

Have you completely missed the point of First Page Saturdays? To get opinions and critique and advice? But yes, by all means, it’s best the author ignore all that. Why, you’d think her first page was posted *publicly* with the sole purpose to invite comment on it. Jeesh, the nerve of these people, right?

I agree this particular story is likely not a true “romance” and it may or may not redeem itself farther into the read. I read the excerpt again and it gave me flashbacks to Jackie Collins’ popular novels in the 1980’s, except Collins had a better grasp on technical writing.

On the one hand, I don’t blame this week’s First Page Author for dismissing criticism offered by romance readers. I do question FPA’s motives in placing the excerpt with DA since criticism from romance readers doesn’t interest her.

I agree with Anion’s assessment of the excerpt. Not only is it unromantic; the technical writing needs work. The “non-romance factor” doesn’t bother me — unless this is marketed and sold as a romance — but the substandard writing does bother me. A responsible author owes himself/herself, publishers, editors, and the reading public the best product s/he can create.

*shrugs* That said, the market’s full of poorly written books that do well. Who’s to say this one won’t?

My critique wasn’t given from a romance writer’s perspective; just from a writer’s perspective.

So go on and don’t get distracted by the above critiques, written by people who probably aren’t in your target group anyway.

Mmm, yes, pay no attention to all the published authors giving valuable advice. What do they know, anyway? Also, pay no attention to the opinion of all these romance readers, they’re not the target audience for her *romance* anyway.

Have you completely missed the point of First Page Saturdays? To get opinions and critique and advice? But yes, by all means, it’s best the author ignore all that. Why, you’d think her first page was posted *publicly* with the sole purpose to invite comment on it. Jeesh, the nerve of these people, right?

Dear author, what I get from most replies to your first page offering is, “Don’t do it this way (your way), because it’s always done that way (our way).” To which I – definitely not a romance reader, but a voracious reader nonetheless, who mostly comes here for general news on eBooks – say: absolutely do it your way! Go with your instinct. Don’t write another exchangeable romance novel, read today, forgotten tomorrow. I’m not a romance reader, as I said, and I don’t care much about explicit sex. But I won’t let a bit of romance or sex stop me reading an otherwise enjoyable story and what you tell us about Teddy sounds intriguing and like just such a charismatic character I love to read about. So go on and don’t get distracted by the above critiques, written by people who probably aren’t in your target group anyway.

Like I said, keep going and good luck!

But this is why they print more than one book every year; different people have different tastes.

Your punctuation and capitalization choices are, I guess, idiosyncratic. You might want to think about adopting more standard choices, because idiosyncratic choices in those arenas are often indistinguishable from errors.

This scene is not a love scene. It’s a sex scene. That’s why I wrote it fast with no more sensory output than was absolutely necessary and no regard to anyone else but the selfish satisfaction of the one in charge. You weren’t supposed to be shocked, but you were supposed to sit up straighter and go, “What the f -?”

There might be a difference in cultural expectations here. You could see a mainstream story starting like this in the UK, sometimes with a character so unlikeable you don’t know if the author can redeem him and part of the enjoyment of the story is to see if she can do it.
But these stories aren’t romances.

I should say that I am British and I write romances for the American market. Some of them are erotic romances, and this excerpt wouldn’t cut it as erotic. Not enough graphic language, too “romantic” in tone.

I have started a book with a sex scene before, but under different circumstances. The readers would already know the male character from a previous book, and a few paragraphs in, the hero gets a phone call that is the incentive to action. It’s where the story starts. The women he is having sex with in that first scene also have a part in that story, and in the next one. It was as much a character scene as anything else.

Faceless women who appear and reappear are lazy, unless they’re there for a reason, and this doesn’t seem strong enough. You haven’t characterised Teddy enough, you’ve just shown a pretty generic blow-job scene. Have them doing it on a bus, or maybe he’s in a line of men she’s blowing, or something. But before the end of the first page, get the story going.