I recently attended a marketing class at San Francisco State University. The teacher asked us to talk about our interests. She started with me. I quickly debated with myself on whether I should divulge my secret passion of romance writing.
Why are we afraid to admit we like romance novels? It isn’t as though we go to adult book stores to pick up our reading material!
I decided I didn’t care what other people thought and said I was writing a romance novel, which apparently came out sounding like I said “I eat dirt”. I could almost hear the collective brains thinking, “She’s one of those fluffly-slippered-bon-bon-eating saps. Why do they let people like that enroll in college? Poor dear. ”
The girl next to me said, “Nothing personal, but I would NEVER read one of THOSE books.” Apparently Gone With the Wind and Pride and Prejudice aren’t in her library. Poor dear.
One of the young men said he only read technical books. As God is my witness, I have technical books in my library too! So there. Microsoft Vista for Dummies is sitting right beside me as I type this. It’s a really big book too (When you migrate to Vista…you will also need a big book). So is Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos (a funny, poignant book that is cleverly written and a great read). The two seem to be getting along quite well together.
Every genre has badly written books. Does romance have more, or is it just the subject matter that makes so many people smirk at the category? Romance novels have a huge market. Are we an underground society of readers?
I worry about people who don’t read about romance. That’s probably the reason for so many divorces.
Were it not for love and romance, life would be dull. You can’t fill your soul with technical manuals. And maybe if they wrote technical manuals with a touch of romance, they’d get a wider readership and probably more of us would understand the complex notion they were trying to get us to learn! I can just see the job description for the technical writers: Must have experience with quick verbal banter that creates an air of sexual tension between the computer and the reader. I bet that would narrow the field of potential applicants!
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