Interesting times afoot.

Dennis Potter must be smiling from heaven.

The Murdoch scandal is only just beginning to permeate the USA. We in Britain have watched it unfold, our jaws gaping, and every day when we think, “Oh well, that’s over now,” something else equally jaw-dropping happens. And it’s important to the publishing community.

Why? Because Murdoch is the major shareholder, founder, and head honcho of NewsCorp, News International. He owns the London Times, the Wall Street Journal, scads of other newspapers the world over – and Harper Collins publishers. This scandal is now threatening to bring the whole of his organisation tumbling down. So keep an eye on it. In any case, I suspect America will soon be as mired in it as we are. If you’re in Australia, you already know about Murdoch, because that’s where he started. If you’re in Canada, and you’re feeling smug, don’t. Just check the holdings.

I’ll start at the beginning, as the story unfolded. On the 23rd of June, Levi Bellfield was found guilty of murdering 13-year-old Millie Dowler in 2002. In the UK, while a case is sub judice, the press are only allowed to report on the case and not comment. But after the conviction, it came out that when the police were looking for Millie, they found her phone. They kept it topped up because they hoped she or her kidnapper would get in touch. But the texts filled up. And someone unauthorised had hacked into the phone and removed texts so they could do so. Repeat and think about that. Someone had invaded a grief-stricken family’s privacy and possibly impeded a police investigation. It was traced to a former Private Investigator who, a few years before, had been found guilty of hacking into the phones of several celebrities.

And here’s the first twist. One of the people who helped to expose the PI had been Hugh Grant. That’s right, Hugh Grant, the actor. He’d secretly recorded a conversation he’d had with the PI where he’d confessed to hacking the phones.

The people concerned were journalists working for a Sunday rag, The News of the World. Sex, sin, and sales. Owned by the Murdoch Empire. Nobody had bothered much about the hacking, because it had been celebs who had been the victims. Or so it was thought. Hugh Grant hadn’t seen why celebrities should have their rights infringed, and so he’d decided to do something about it. Go, Hugh.

At the time, the editor of The News of the World had been one Rebekah Wade, now Rebekah Brooks. She had since been promoted to Chief Executive of News International, and she was one of Rupert Murdoch’s inner circle. But she refused to resign, and Murdoch supported her. She claimed she knew nothing about the hacking of Millie Dowler’s phone. Wade had been succeeded as editor of The News of the World by one Andy Coulson. Remember that name. He’ll turn up again.

Then it came out that not only had Millie Dowler’s phone been hacked, but the phones belonging to one of the parents in another notorious and horrible murder case, the phones of the families of people killed in the 7/7 terrorist bombing in London, the phones of parents of soldiers killed in Afghanistan – and more. This was getting worse than nasty, it was getting evil.

Andy Coulson had left his job with News International to work for the then leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron. The David Cameron who is now Britain’s Prime Minister. There is also an ex News International person working for the leader of the Opposition, Ed Milliband. So the corruption spreads. Or, I should say, the possible corruption. But Coulson was arrested as part of the investigation.

By now, terrorists could have walked up to 10 Downing Street, knocked on the door and said, “We’re tired of this shit. Let’s work out a peace plan” and they would have received a passing mention in the news. The BBC, which as far as we know is Murdoch-free, has been going nuts. But with every day that passes, something new turns up.

The second largest shareholder in News International, a Saudi prince who never gives interviews, gave an interview. He told the reporter that he supported Rupert Murdoch and his son James, but he had no time for Rebekah Brooks and she should resign. The next day, she obediently resigned. And then she was arrested. By appointment, no less. We should all have the police make an appointment to arrest us.

And it’s getting worse. Now the operations of The News of the World came under closer scrutiny. In a Parliamentary Committee some time back, Brooks had admitted that occasionally they paid the police for information. Whoa. So the police were involved. And then the most important police officer in the UK, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Sir Paul Stephenson, resigned.

A Senator in the US has called for an enquiry into Murdoch’s activities in the US. And don’t forget, Murdoch’s corporation owns the Fox network, as they own the huge satellite and cable network in Europe, Sky.

Rupert Murdoch was about to take ownership of BSkyB, and he was being allowed to do so. Now he’s been forced to stop doing that.

That’s where it stands of the time of this writing. This is like the pebble dropping in the pool and spreading ripples. We’re in for a tsunami, and it will affect the publishing industry profoundly. Somebody important didn’t want Murdoch to gain control of BSkyB, someone who knew what was going on. You couldn’t make this stuff up. No, really, you couldn’t. You’d get notes from your editor, “This doesn’t seem believable.”

In the meantime, enjoy Hugh Grant on the BBC’s “Question Time,” a program of serious political debate. Go, Hugh.

Dennis Potter was right.

It’s often said that writers are either pantsers (often rendered inaccurately as pansters, probably because it’s easier to pronounce) or plotters. Pantsers as in “write by the seat of your pants.” They make it up as they go along and don’t know where they’re going until they get there.

I think there are writers who do very long plots.

I’m writing this as a writer in the hope that some readers might be interested in the process.

We need to think—a lot. Think about characters, scenes and all the paraphernalia that makes for an intriguing novel. But for a novel that resonates, one that echoes in the hearts of its readers long after they’ve finished, a writer also needs to work out what’s going underneath. The duck or the iceberg of writing, where nine-tenths of it is below the surface. It’s that nine-tenths that decides whether the book, be it Harlequin category, historical romance or kick-ass urban fantasy, will be a game-changing one or not.

Sometimes the superficiality is the story. After all, we all live on the surface for most of the time. Romantic comedy can do that, and still be superb. But the ones that live with us are the ones with depth, something below the surface, maybe an inner sadness that affects one of the characters, one they bravely cover up—most of the time.

But in the true sense of the archetype, a character should stand for something. Something that affects a great number of the readers, something the reader can identify with at a deeper level than the daily routine. When that happens, the character speaks to the reader down through the ages, like Hamlet’s dilemma, something every person who has seen the play remembers and something that in some way reflects on his or her own life.

The plot has to work. Most writers trip up somewhere, but the world has to hold together. In a contemporary romance, the traffic has to go the right way up (or down) Madison Avenue, in a paranormal a dragon who can’t breathe fire can’t suddenly start doing it half way through the book without good reason. Everyone has to act in character, Americans can’t suddenly become French, brown eyes shouldn’t turn blue, unless the owner was wearing contacts, and novels set in the Regency shouldn’t have heroines in crinolines.

The author has to keep all those balls in the air, and at first it’s tricky. A plan is an enormous help, together with whatever tools the author finds necessary. Rewrites can add depth and richness.

A lot of beginning writers are pantsers. They just start, then very often they stall partway through when the story peters out. They learn to write past that eventually.

Me, I’ll take all the tools I can get. But I’m also all about jettisoning them when they’re not working. I don’t think many writers use exactly the same method throughout their careers. I could be wrong, since there are as many different ways of writing as there are writers.

Recently I’ve been stopping half way through writing a book to redo the plot. The characters and the story want to move in a different direction and so I stop. And yet the overall shape of the book remains the same.

So I’m going to try the next book with an outline and let it take me to new places. Wish me luck because this is new to me and I’m a bit scared. And excited!

I’ve been thinking about the sudden surge to self-publishing and vanity publishing and the interest I’ve recently seen in various blogs and other places.

Being a suspicious soul, I started to think about why this should be. Not all improvements come because the time has come and it’s right for them. Sometimes the situation is carefully created.

I don’t for one minute think that the big six publishers intend to give an inch of ground to the new ones coming up, the Ellora’s Cave, Samhain and Loose-Id’s of this world. I’ve been involved in a developing market before, used to specialise in it, and I’ve seen it work itself out. Either a new big company emerges to take the profits, or one of the old boys muscles in and takes it later in the day, after others have pioneered. Or the market fragments, and the niches become the thing.

While every new market has a similar pattern, the details are more complex and the reasons come from several sources. With the new emphasis on self publishing, it might not come from the place you can first see, the vociferous place, the authors who are deciding to take that route.

Yes, the market is more open than it used to be. The big publishers have lost ground to the smaller ones, the market is more diverse. The smaller publisher can respond faster to market forces, demands for ‘more books about fairies,’ or ‘older heroes and heroines,’ or just ‘more sex.’ Even more when it’s digital. But many people still prefer a paper copy and many authors prefer not to put their livelihoods at the whim of a big corporation.

But there’s no demand from the public, the readership, for more self-published books. No big group of readers is seizing on a publisher like Lulu and asking for more books. The vanities aren’t growing market share. So where’s the demand coming from? When was the last time you walked into a bookstore and asked to be shown the self published section?

It’s being created. Sometimes a market responds to consumer need, sometimes the market shows the consumer what it really wants, and sometimes a market has to be built by the people who want it. These aren’t necessarily bad. I mean, who knew we needed Windows until Bill Gates showed us? Then yes, it was just what many of us were looking for, computing without all that tedious programming. I was involved in the early years of the computer. I learned (and forgot) four different programming languages, Cobol, Fortran 77, Basic and Diplomat, a language unique to the company I worked for. It was a complete drag. Then we get Windows, early BBC basic and the Acorn computers and we begin to see. It’s the experts who show us what we can have first.

But self publishing isn’t reinventing anything. It’s a book, same as other books. It’s for the author and the manufacturer. As a reader, I don’t care where the money’s going or who published a book as long as it’s readable and it looks pretty good. As an author, I put up my hands in horror at that statement, but to deny it would be foolish. I buy a book, I read it. If it’s in my price range, then I might buy it on a whim, the way most books are purchased. If it’s by a favorite author, I might pay a bit more. If it’s an art book, or something that is a beautiful object, I might pay more still (I do have some breathtaking fashion books – my shiny black copy of the book celebrating Yves St Laurent’s 25 years of design is one of my prized possessions, but oh, the price!)

So here’s what I think. I suspect it’s a production initiative. Think about it.

I suspect that there’s a convincing looking report going around, showing how the publisher can use up excess production capacity by farming it out.
I used to work in the print industry (I was a litho buyer) and print machinery is huge, massively expensive, and deteriorates quickly, as well as taking up a lot of physical space. It’s all expensive. So self publishing, for a publisher that owns such equipment and is looking for a way to use the capacity to take up the loss in bulk production, is a good idea.

And the marketing department has been told to sell it.

Most people know that the old system of oversupplying the stores so that every store has a book available, then returning half or more, is coming to an end. Stores are much more efficient in their stock turnover, there are fewer physical copies going to fewer stores, and the digital revolution is making serious inroads into paper books.

But those machines sit there, eating money.

Renting out time on the press looks like a win/win for the manufacturer. Which is why I think the marketing of Dellarte, the Harlequin vanity press, was so inept. They didn’t look hard enough at the front end. Editors, marketers etc could have told them what the reaction would be, and Harlequin employs some of the best, so my guess is that they were brought in on a done deal at the last minute and had to scramble to make the most of it. They want to keep those machines rolling. So sell it to the punter, in this case, to the writer.

Until that machinery is depreciated into oblivion, it has to make a profit for the company that owns it. The alternative is to do some clever financing, but most publishers have done that already. The production end is separated out so that it doesn’t drag the rest of the corporation down with it. But it’s still there and the parent company wants to maximize its profits.

So the editor, geared to selling to the reader, fine-tuned to deliver what the reader wants and the marketer, geared to making the most of what the company does best, is now expected to sell what the company produces. Which is, after all, how many companies started.

The difference for us is that they aren’t selling to the reader, they’re selling to the author. And that is so different it has to be hived off as a separate concern. I can’t see myself buying a book just to support the author, unless it’s a charity book, where all the profits are designated to one charity or another. The author who really knows what she’s doing can be on to a good thing. She must know the bookstores won’t take the books if they’re non returnable, she’s aware that she won’t have a big company behind her easing her way. She’s worked all that into her business plan. But the author who has tried every publisher and received a rejection from them all, who is being sold this option as a viable way of putting her “unusual, different, they-don’t-understand-me” book out there, it seems perfect. Of course it isn’t, it’s a cynical exercise to sell to the most vulnerable out there. Probably.

I would really love it if in the comments we didn’t get some of the self-publishing evangelists. Yes, we get it, it’s the best thing since sliced bread, a new market, a new opportunity, but this isn’t want this article is about. It’s about where the demand is really coming from and who stands to gain the most from it. And it isn’t the author. If you want to write a piece about how self-publishing has changed you and why an author should take that course, write an article and send it to Sybil (sorry, pet!). Or put it on a blog of your own.

The difference between self publishing and vanity publishing is deliberately obscured by many of the people selling it. For the customer, that is the author, it often isn’t clear until that first statement arrives, but basically it’s simple. In self publishing, the author buys a service, but she owns the ISBN, the copyright and 100% of what she can make from the final product, the book. In vanity publishing, the publisher owns the ISBN, can own the copyright too, and the publishing rights, and to take the Delarte example, takes 50%. So which is the best deal, especially since the author has to pay for everything and doesn’t even get the value of the Harlequin name on the dust jacket?

Let me see…

What does it mean for me? Nothing. I have no intention of going into self publishing in the market as it stands right now, though never say never. Things might change enough for me to consider it. But I’ve had my fill of selling, marketing, assessing markets, and doing everything for myself.

I come from a long line of small businesspeople, long enough to know I don’t want to wear myself out early doing things I don’t want to do. I want to write. And for me, the best option is to let someone else do all the other things. I want to concentrate on the thing I do best, which is the writing end. I could do the marketing, but I don’t wanna. Never did enjoy it very much. So I’ll give a proportion of the income up to someone who will. And will work hard to improve my sales and market share. Sure, I’ll help, which is why I can see the value in a cooperative, but I don’t want to do it all myself.

I just want to write. And read.

It’s the time of year and this is short, because I could go on and on, but I don’t need to.

I live in Britain, in a small, unremarkable town. When I go into town to do some shopping I pass a cottage where Oliver Cromwell lodged on his way to one of the Civil War battles. On the other side of the road is another building where Charles I stayed on his way back. They’re a restaurant and a pub now, but they have their blue plaques.

When I visit my mother in Leicester, I pass the church where men on the way to the Battle of Bosworth used the walls to sharpen their swords. I pass a place called Butt Lane, where the archers practised every Sunday, as they were required to do by their overlord. And at this time of year every village, every town, every city has a simple stone monument surrounded by poppy wreaths.

I’m reminded of history, of my ancestors, of the people who helped to make me what I am.

So what can I do in return? The very least I can do is to ensure that when I write a historical novel I don’t traduce their times, the things they believed in or  what they did. The very least is to try to get it right, take all the known facts and the attitudes of the times and take care not to distort them. I won’t do it even in the sacred name of entertainment.

Lynne Connolly

Several bloggers have answered comments on the AAR forums about blogging recently. In doing so, some have noticed a recent snippiness and touchiness in the reading community, from readers and from writers. I was hanging around at Wendy’s blog recently, something I do a lot, and she’s noticed something similar, too. Mrs. Giggles has spotted it. 

I think I have an inkling as to what might be going on, or at least some of it.

Actions and consequences…

I heard a program on the radio this morning, “Whistleblowers” about Paul Moore and how he warned the bank HBOS about its risky strategies and its target-based culture, and how it and banks like it pushed consumers into taking too many risks. It was all about selling, he said and they didn’t look at the long term consequences, and the unbalanced risk it introduced.

Sound familiar? It should.

It’s happening in the book business, and it’s not all down to the recession. Before 2009, signs of strain were already showing. Historically, books have always followed the newspaper model of distribution – copies were distributed to suppliers, bookstores for the main part, and those that didn’t sell were returned. That meant that you could drop into your local bookstore and be confident of finding the book you wanted. It also meant a bucketload of returns. Then Anderson News, one of the biggest distributors went under.

Two things were happening. The supermarkets were buying books in bulk, undercutting traditional retailers and doing their own distribution. And the newspaper industry was failing. It would have made sense to try to do away with the “sale or return” system, but it was too convenient to the companies involved – the accounting and financing of the publishers would have had to be restructured, and that can’t be done quickly, and it was a good thing for the supermarkets, who wouldn’t have surplus stock to sell or dispose of.

Sell or die…

At the publishing houses, there were a number of fine editors who had a lot of control over the books the house took and what was done with them. It gave each house a distinct identity, and its authors were given relative artistic freedom. Now, no decision is made independent of the marketing and finance departments. The question was no longer asked, “Is this book good for us?” but “Can we sell enough copies?”

A carefully balanced portfolio of bestsellers, middle ground authors and risky chances that could take off in a big way or could bomb spectacularly, was abandoned for the best seller model. Big authors, controversial themes, with big money put behind them. Middle ground authors, career authors with reputations but no huge sales were dropped. I’ve met a few, and while being resilient and determined to weather the storm, there’s a core of unhappiness and cynicism that just wasn’t there before. Existing authors are sometimes desperately chasing targets, because if their current book doesn’t sell up to target, they’re dropped. No second chances.

The publishing business has gone from brutal to savage, from relatively civilised to a jungle culture. If you don’t sell, you’re gone. No benefit of the doubt, no “see what your next title does,” no “this will be a slow burner.” Without that attitude, we wouldn’t have had The Lord of the Rings, or The Chronicles of Narnia, or even Dorothy Dunnett’s Lymond Chronicles, all series that became massive sellers, but had relatively slow starts.

Wait, we don’t get them, do we? Not any more. A series has to start with a huge bang and go on to sell and sell, otherwise it’s gone. A writer with a three-book contract will see her books cut off after the second, even the first, leaving the readers hungry for the last ones, and increasingly determined not to buy a series until it’s all out. So sales at first are low, and more get cut. A self fulfilling prophecy.

Big publishers are struggling to stay afloat. If it weren’t for cash reserves and the massive profits they stand to make by selling e-books and not passing on savings to authors or readers, they’d probably go under. Midlist authors are going to the e-publishers, giving up or trying for the big one. Or writing for Harlequin, which is taking serious note of the market and going from strength to strength.

Ahead of the curve…

Harlequin always had the drop on other publishers with its direct mail order service, which didn’t depend on distributors or returns. It had a regular audience and after slipping behind in the late 1990’s, turned its lines around and rejuvenated or dropped them. And Harlequin has an established, successful e-bookstore.

You’d expect me to say e-publishing is where the future is because I write for e-publishers. Well that’s not why I do it. I’ve had chances to write for others, but the offer or the money wasn’t quite right. I promised myself I’d do this to make myself happy, not to go for the big bucks or the huge sales. As it happens, I think I’ve fallen into the right part of the industry. Right for me, right for the future.

No, I don’t think we’ll see the end of the paper book. It’s a transition. But the sale-or-return culture, plus increasing costs in distribution and production, plus increasing pressure from ecologists has all pushed producers of print to think again. It’s been coming for a long time, from the day when Rupert Murdoch pushed the print unions to breaking point and then smashed them, from the day when Anderson’s closed its doors, to when Wal-Mart became indispensable to many people and one-stop shopping became important.

Make a fast splash…

So, back to the point of the article. Writers and readers getting snippy. Of course there’s no one reason. Writers are being pressured to write the big one, the big series, the High Concept book, something that is different but stays the same. Nobody’s telling them to, it’s just the way “the market” is going. Fewer authors, higher sales per unit. Splashy, lots of action, lots of sex.

For some writers, that’s exactly what they want to do. Others don’t, their metier runs to a different kind of book and they’re getting short shrift now. The chase for the next big thing has resulted in markets rising and falling ever faster. Right now it’s urban fantasy, next it’s steampunk, but if you aren’t already in there and working hard, either close to publication or accepted, then forget it, because for the writer, that’s over. The publishers have all the authors they want in that genre and you’re going to have to look for something else, something with a platform, a high concept, a distinct genre.

This is making writers edgy. They’re putting out books faster, and each book is getting a little less theirs, a little more of a product. Less love is going into creating it. Editors are all about buying the next book and spotting the next trend, not nurturing the writers they’ve already bought. It’s not their fault, it’s just the way the market is going.

Readers can only buy what is in the bookstores. If you love paranormal but you hate the market leaders, you’ll look for something else, pick up the next book with a great cover and blurb. Maybe you’ll find something. But rarely a book with great depth, something that speaks to your soul. It’s always been like that, there have always been splashy, dramatic books, and good luck to them. We all need one of those to read from time to time. But readers want more, they want different, and it’s getting harder to find. It’s not the reader’s concern to analyse and decide what they want. Why should they? But if they don’t find what they want, they’ll move on to videos, video games, other genres.

So writers, edgy with the increased pressures and with writing more books are snipping at readers, and readers, dissatisfied but not quite knowing why, are snipping back.

There are always exceptions, always a great book, always an author who ploughs her own furrow, but it’s the general trends, not individual greatness or otherwise that is driving the market. Always the Pareto rule, the 80:20 ratio that goes into the marketing and finance departments. There’s a reason for the saying “the exception proves the rule.”

Plus it’s the change of the season, and that always brings a bit of disturbance. So maybe it’s just the weather.

Disclaimer – I’m British, so I don’t think the FTC rules apply to me, but just in case – the vast majority of the books I review I’ve bought for myself. Because something attracted me to it, and because I wanted to enjoy the experience. So I have a vested interest in any book I read giving me some enjoyment. 

Also, I only review books. Not the author, or her choice of lifestyle, her taste in clothes, or her publisher or anything else. I do not have vendettas against anyone, nor do I have chips on my shoulder about anyone. Nothing here is intended as being personal.

I don’t review books by people I count as friends, or books from publishers that I’m published with. I would love to rave about Linnea Sinclair’s books, or Nicola Cornick’s, or Annie Burrows’, or Judi Fennell’s which I genuinely love, or some of the fantastic authors I’m privileged to share publishers with, but it’s too close to home, so I leave it to other people.

I don’t believe that all writers should stick together. This is prevalent in some circles, together with “if you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.” No, just no. Neither do I consider my publishers some kind of in loco parentis, so we’re a family of any description. Writers should stick together for certain rights, like keeping up royalty and advance payments, but we don’t, we should encourage each other in our writing, but to accept that everything we do and all the books published are brilliant works of art, I’m sorry, I just can’t. I was a reader first, after all. Just.

Writers are people, not some kind of endangered species (I take that back – we are) and we aren’t all members of a club. I was a reader first, and I still am a voracious reader of romantic fiction.

As a writer myself, I know how much one’s own books mean, how close you can get to your characters and the story, but as a reader, I’m buying something that I hope will give me a few hours’ enjoyment. If it doesn’t, I’ll say so, and I’ll also say why. It’s my personal taste, nobody else’s, and should be taken for what that is worth, which in some circles is not much.

Having said all that, I’d rather give the author the benefit of the doubt. After all, I didn’t buy the book to be disappointed, I want to be entertained, I want to fall in love with the hero and to like the heroine, and I want their romance to sweep me away. So when I start a book it’s always with a sense of pleasurable anticipation. Sometimes I’m disappointed and sometimes I love it.

And every reviewer, every reader for that matter longs for the Holy Grail – the perfect book, the one that satisfies completely. I can’t promise that it will satisfy you, because what does it for me might not do it for you, but you never know. One day another Lord of Scoundrels, Flowers From the Storm, or The Lady’s Tutor will arrive, with no more fanfare than all the others in the book bag. And I’ll be there.

That’s why I review.

You might have noticed a slight absence here. Then again, you might not, why should you? But with all this blethering about writers and writing, and the endless push, push, push for a publisher, I thought I’d say something about writing. Specifically why I write, because I can’t speak for anyone else. 

It’s supposed to be fun.

I could stop there, but I won’t. So there. I just started writing the first new historical for over a year. The book I wrote before that was about a merman. The one before that was about an ex-model and her plastic surgeon. And God, it was fun.

I switch things around because I enjoy doing it, but I can do it now because I’ve found my voice. I still don’t know what the hell it is, but apparently I have one and apparently some people like it. Great. But that, gentle reader, isn’t why I write.

I write because it’s fun.

For the money? When I first started writing for publication, eight years ago, it was in the Wild West days of epublishing, when publishers routinely started, published, then exploded in a puff of conjurer’s smoke. We got wary, we got suspicious, we got wise. And I barely cleared $50 a month, if I was lucky. So years passed, I kept writing, (because it was fun) and I started earning more money. Now I’m one of the highest earning epublished authors in the UK. Not sure about anything else.

What does that mean? It means I get to attend one of the best damned parties anywhere once a year (Romantic Times Convention) and I don’t have to dip into my savings to do it. It means I can attend a few other shindigs here at home. It means I can afford a nice computer and peripherals instead of second-hand outdated stuff. That’s about it.

Except that it’s fun.

What else does it mean? That I work 10 hours plus a day on something I find the greatest fun outside bed. That I have found the one thing that I do well. Everything else I’m adequate, or competent, or rubbish at, but writing is something I do well. Or so I’m led to believe. I still don’t quite believe it. That I’ve met people who understand, everyone from an ex navy extrovert to an ex-PI to a stay-at-home Mom to a real honest-to-goodness lady and they all know that staring into space or having a long bath can mean that you’re working.

And they’re all fun.

My life has been blessed recently by the people I’ve met, either in person or online, people I’d never have dreamed I’d be comfortable with, but I am. I’ve travelled on my own, something I’ve discovered that I adore, I’ve been valued for what I do, I’ve read things about me that have thrilled me to the core, made me snort with laughter because they got it so wrong, or just made me plain angry.

But it’s all been fun.

And it all comes down to the writing. The day it stops being fun is the day I stop, and I don’t just mean the first day, because however much you enjoy what you do, there is always the occasional day when you don’t want to do it for one reason or another. It’s when I get up for, oh, I don’t know, a year of days and I don’t want to write, I don’t itch to get my hands on that keyboard. That’s when I’ll stop, but I doubt that will happen.

The publishing industry isn’t always a barrel of laughs. Like every other entertainment industry (and don’t kid yourself, that’s what we’re doing here) it has its share of backbiters, naysayers and Players in the Tim Robbins sense, people who love negotiating the shoals of nastiness that lie in wait to trap any writer.

But it also contains people who love writing, writers, the whole process and one of these makes up for ten of the other kind, because they give us the support and the encouragement we need. It’s because for every one published writer, there are a hundred who will take her place tomorrow, for nothing.

So I might not always write for publication, though I’m riding this roller-coaster with the most enjoyment. However, it’s not essential to the core of what I do. It’s not why I do it. If I lost all my publishing slots tomorrow (God forbid) I’d still write.

So that’s why I do it. It’s fun.

Recently I read on a list that history is all a matter of opinion, not of specific facts, so I thought it was worth revisiting the historical romance, and the knotty topic of accuracy. Does it add to a romance, or take away from it?  [Gwen ed.: read more about the Ducks' views on historical accuracy by following the Accuracy tag here.]

If you take the various Acts of Parliament, the political history in general (it’s all documented, word for word, always has been), plus the economic developments then you have a sound basis for discussion and opinion. But you can’t do it without that framework, and in my mind it’s unalterable. There are certain facts you can’t change, and some that evolved and arrived gradually, but there are some things you can’t alter.Sometimes it’s because they never happened, and there has to be a reason why not, other times it’s anachronisms.

To take things I’ve seen in historical romances, there are some things that just couldn’t have happened.

• A known, famous courtesan marrying a peer of the realm and them being accepted into society with open arms.

Never happened. Couldn’t. Various authors (including me, I have to admit, in A Chance To Dream) have played with the trope, but you have to work really hard for it to become probable.

• Peers of the realm becoming pirates.

It never happened. You have to dig into the wherefores to work out why, but since it never happened, there must have been a reason why not. (Lots of reasons, any of which would work). The most important thing – it never happened.

• Regency gentlemen drinking whisky or whiskey from a decanter on the sideboard.

Whisky (which is Scotland-specific) or whiskey (anywhere else) wasn’t legalised until 1823 and the great technical development, the Coffey still, which made it possible to produce Scotch in bulk, wasn’t invented until 1831. A gentleman could have it distilled for his own use, but it wasn’t a common drink, and didn’t really get popular until the 1840′s. Give the darlings brandy instead.

• A medieval Scottish warrior brandishing his claymore.

No claymores until the late 16th century. They weren’t even called that until then. I’ll leave it to the weapons experts to explain why, because it’s not my area.

• A medieval Scottish warrior wearing a skirted kilt in his clan’s tartan.

Skirted kilts weren’t developed until the 18th century. Before then, they had a plaid, sometimes known as the “great kilt.” No clan tartans until the 19th century, although there were geographically-specific patterns and colors from which the tartan was developed. So you’d be able to say “from the Lomond area” but not “You’re a Campbell.” Or something. If you could see the colors, because the plaid was never washed. It served as a blanket, as well as an item of clothing.

If you know anything about history, it’s likely these details will jerk you out of the story. If you don’t, it’s likely the story will be the “generic” type and if the reader has experience with lots of historicals, they’ll notice how flat the story is, and not be able to put her finger on it. If it’s labelled “historical fantasy,” go girl, put a dragon in and I’ll run all the way to the bookstore to buy it!

Writers owe it to their readers, and to the people they are writing about to make it as real as they can – and that includes sound world-building and accurate history. By all means, speculate, discuss, but base it on a knowledge of what happened then, how people thought then, and you’ll have a great story.

Are there any books based in American history that are this far out? Would a writer of contemporaries get away with sending the traffic the wrong way up Madison Avenue, or having all the avenues in New York have two-way traffic? Why should we expect anything less of the historical writer?

It’s an insult to say “it’s only a romance, so it’s okay, I can write what I like and get away with it” or something else I’ve overheard, “They’ll never notice.” So what? The other person a writer should respect is herself and her art.

I’ve only read one Elizabeth Hoyt so far, for instance, and I already know I love her work and I can forgive her the odd slip, if she makes them, but I’m too busy reading to notice. She gets the feel right, the spirit of the age, and she works hard to fit her characters into a recognisable era and voice. I don’t ask for absolute accuracy, only that the author tries. Or calls it something else.

So if the writer respects the genre they right in, the people and the times she is writing about, and her own writing ability, she should think about getting the details right. Please. So I have more historical romances to read. I dearly love a good historical romance, and I haven’t read too many recently.

And when is the new Kinsale coming out? Please make it soon, my copy of Shadow Heart is worn out!

For those of you who know what I write, it won’t be a surprise to know that I like my books sexy. But it’s not essential.

  Recently I read two books that were kisses-only by one author I already know I like, namely, Trish Wylie’s His L.A. Cinderella and Kate Hewitt’s The Sheikh’s Love Child (both recent releases). I’m a huge fan of Trish Wylie who is doing her best to bring the Harlequin lines up to date, trying to disperse the tycoon/mistress image that is dragging the image of the Presents/Modern line back forty years or more. (Btw, Harlequin, I get the books DESPITE the titles, not because of them – more later, on that, maybe).

The Wylie was a delightful read, charming with characters you can like and believe. The heroine abandoned her career as a scriptwriter when the first film she wrote with her partner and lover bombed at the box office. He carried on and found success, she went on to teach and they separated. He brings her back to write a sequel to what turned out to be a sleeper, and they fall in love all over again. I really enjoyed it.

Kate Hewitt is a new writer to me and while the book isn’t without its faults – it’s one of the rugby books, and as a rugby fan, they make me squirm – it worked. I nearly stopped reading at the first chapter, when the whiney hero feels so sorry for himself I wanted to slap him silly, but I did like the heroine when I read her, and as it turned out, the hero did have a reason to be so miserable. This has a secret baby theme, but I went past it, and while there were some inconsistencies, the central characters were strong and well-defined.

But for me, at any rate, there was a big hole in the middle of each book. No sex. No, I’m not shallow, I honestly believe that sex is a very important part of any adult romantic relationship. It needs to work in bed. You can have love without sex, you can have sex without love, but in the kind of relationship described in romance novels, sex is essential. I don’t even need it described in great detail.

It was entirely absent in the Wylie book, and while I could understand why she kept pushing him away, in the end it became a little TSTL and even tiresome. With the Hewitt, there was a consummated relationship, but it was in a kind of “oh well, we got that bit over with” way, although the sexual tension throughout the book was well described. I wanted to know why and how.

For a woman, sex changes everything, one way or the other and it does for many men, too. Good or bad, it’s an important part of the relationship. From getting down and dirty with each other, to the pillow talk, to the necessary intimacies that make a relationship real, I missed it in these books. It was like eating the icing without the cake.

In these books I loved the way the couples rebuilt their relationships, but I wanted more, even if it was just a “reconnecting in that way made all the difference” kind of vague description. Sex is there, it’s the elephant in the room, and when the epublishers finally opened the door and examined that part of it, it opened romance to a new world and a new sensibility. Authors could finally examine in detail that central part of a relationship, what is right about it, and what is wrong.

One of the most important parts of the best books about BDSM describe how one person finds fulfillment through a particular kind of sex, novels by the likes of Joey W. Hill and Doreen Orsini and in so doing, find the person who can help him or her achieve it. It’s about souls connecting as well as bodies, and I think that was what I missed in these two books.

There have been some interesting developments recently in the development of the sub $200 ebook reader.   Manufacturers are looking at cheaper ebooks.  So here’s the latest news… 

First for eInk lovers, Bebook are planning a new, cheaper reader to go with its Cybook. The Cybook is open source, and the mini Bebook will be the same. Greyscale, with a screen one inch smaller than the regular Bebook, but with the capability of reading pdf*, mobi, lit*, epub*, html, txt, prc, fb2 and jpg files. And a retail price of around $190. Wow.

There are two other newbies which would make fantastic ereaders for people like me who prefer a backlight and colour:

First, the cheap Internet tablet (otherwise known as a UMPC), the SmartQ 7. This baby is meant as an Internet browser, but as such it’s underpowered, according to the reviews. It runs on Linux, like some other e-readers. The difference between this and an Internet browser like the Nokia 810 is the size of the screen. It will read html, pdf and the formats supported by fbreader. SD slot so you can load up your books on that instead of going through the computer route, and transfer your library between devices if you want to. And battery life of 8 hours plus. I have to say that after seeing a Youtube video on using it as an ereader, this one’s for me. Price? Around $190. Uncanny.

And then there’s the Crunchpad. Similar to the Q7 and recently announced, it’s getting the geeks excited. Intended as another Internet browser, it looks like another promising ereader candidate. The screen might be bigger than the Q7, but nobody really knows, not yet. And it looks really pretty. They’re just saying that they want it to sell for under $200, but we’ll have to wait to find out.  [Ed.: I like the easel function - handsfree reading.]

And how about Google entering the market? There have been rumors for months, but so far, no definite news.

Lastly, there’s the Plastic Logic device. Another nice-looking eInk reader, this one is supposed to be launched early next year, with a bigger and more resilient screen. As someone who is on her second eBookwise because the first one broke, I like the sound of that.

Listen, people, I read a lot of books. My current readers are the Ipaq 4700 and the eBookwise, which have seen me through many many happy hours of reading. I also use my Vye tablet and my Asus mini netbook. The Vye is a bit heavy and the battery is crap, and since it runs on full Windows, it takes a few minutes to boot up, which can be annoying.

But I’ll test devices, really I will. These new devices have me drooling. How about you?

Tonight is a huge night in football, and when I say football, I mean the game played with the round ball, not the funny-shaped one.  Football is the biggest sport in the world – bar none. Every nation in the world – except the United States – watches it with a passion. In most of those countries it’s the biggest sport. And tonight is the big one. 

Anyway, I’m not here to convert you, just to compare sport and romance. The more I watch football, or top class tennis, or rugby, the more I see similarities between it and romance. I can’t talk about American sports because I’m not familiar enough with them but I’d bet that the same similarities exist.

A football match lasts for 90 minutes, plus injury time, and in certain circumstances, extra time and maybe a penalty shoot-out. The pitch has a goal at each end. The team that scores the most goals wins. There are 11 men (or women!) in a team, and those 22 people plus the on-field referee are the only ones allowed on the pitch during a game.

This structure allows for drama to take place. No two matches are the same, and the result is never a foregone conclusion, but it will be a happy ending for someone. There is ebb and flow, attack and retreat, and individual dramas ensue when one player takes on another or tempers get too high and someone gets sent off. Each team manager has a station, a dugout, where he stands and rants and raves at the players, just to add to the drama. The manager is an older man, sometimes an ex player, sometimes, like Sir Alex Ferguson, a man who was an indifferent player but a superlative manager.

You can become totally engrossed in the game, and all over the world, people do.

The fortunes of football have ebbed and flowed over the years, from a dangerous thug-ridden game to a family sport that is supreme worldwide. The money that goes into it is breathtaking.

And right at the top is Manchester United. After a hard season of ups and downs (retaining the Premiership title, losing the FA Cup in the quarter finals, winning the Carling Cup), they are on the brink of achieving something no other team have done – retaining the Champions’ League Cup. Sometimes known as “Europe,” this is the crème de la crème, where you have to be at the top in order to even participate. Manchester United are playing Barcelona in Rome. Difficult to top that, really.

Each player is a star, from the good-looking prima donna Ronaldo, to the potato-looking but stunningly powerful Rooney. And tonight is their night.

How romantic is that? So I’ll settle down in front of the TV tonight (can’t go, but this is the next best thing) for 90 minutes of drama and excitement. [Ed.: The UEFA Champions League Final is tonight - I think it's like the European Super Bowl for Soccer.]

Go United!

Before I start this – please remember I’m talking generalisations, about the zeitgeist. There are always exceptions to the rule, always exceptional people and situations, but citing their examples doesn’t make it the norm. Authors generally work with the fringes, with the exceptions, so there’s a real danger that they can become regarded as the reality. 

The problem with historical novels is hindsight. There are so many expectations about the historical novel, and they’re based on relatively modern schools of thought. Much like a Regency gentleman in a novel calling another Regency gentleman “paranoid.” It sounds normal to us, but that’s because we’re the other side of the great psychoanalysis revolution.

I write historicals set in the mid eighteenth century, and even the word “class” wouldn’t have come naturally to the average Georgian. The term “working class” was meaningless. Everyone did some kind of work, didn’t they? Aristocrats worked hard to maintain their estates and build their reputations and that of the country. The farmer worked hard to enrich the land and enrich himself in the process. Oh yes, there were slackers in every part of society, but on the whole most people knew their place and worked to make the best of it.

And in those days, ‘knowing your place’ didn’t carry any sense of superiority or inferiority, it meant what it said. You knew where you belonged but that didn’t stop you aspiring to improve your situation, mainly by making more money. There were no legal barriers preventing you from going as high as you wanted and had the ability for. The British were always proud of that. In theory a beggar could become a duke, and over time, some did, although it might take centuries. However, the family of an upstart Cit went from adventurer to Prime Minister to Earl in the breathtaking space of two generations, so it could be done, and of course, in Charles II’s time, several women went from the streets to becoming duchesses. The Pitts, older and younger, were hugely wealthy and hugely powerful, but until the older Pitt was given the title of earl as his reward for being Prime Minister, they remained commoners. Nell Gwynne, actress and prostitute became the mother of two dukes. The ancestry of many of Britain’s most influential families had their roots in the gutter. And may were proud of that, too.

So many modern writers have assumed that the duke didn’t have anything to do except enjoy the wealth and title, and the title often seems as important as the holdings that went with it. There were very few dukes in Georgian Britain, and they weren’t always as powerful or wealthy as some earls, or even misters. Dukes would also have no time to be a spy, and wouldn’t have considered it if they were. The person who rehabilitated the spy and made it seem glamorous was Ian Fleming. Before that, the spy was considered not a gentleman because he had to lie and cheat to obtain his goal. Even in the army, the spying was played down and not made much of, although at times it was important to the country.

The first person to use class analysis in any way was the social reformer William Cobbett, born in 1763, whose description of the country in “Rural Rides,” published in the 1820’s, including the phrase “the middling sort” – the first reference to the middle classes, who by the 1820’s were more of a cohesive whole and the rising influence in the land. The gulf between richest and poorest was growing into a yawning chasm.

The concept of class and the attached connotations of “better” and “worse” didn’t really emerge until the Victorian era, when hypocrisy and moral condemnation came in with the rise of the bourgeoisie. Social reformers like Friedrich Engels, Mrs. Gaskell and the Manchester group began to question accepted norms, as a result of seeing the suffering of the poor in the newly industrialised cities. Engels corresponded with Karl Marx, and he undertook a formal model of British society as he knew it – and we’re now well into Victorian times.

Basically, Marx developed the notions of class that we have today from a series of disparate notions that were floating about at the time. So applying the idea to a pre-Marxian time isn’t exactly accurate. And I’m speaking here about Marx as a social historian, not Marx as a social reformer. In British schools and universities, his historian aspect is a compulsory course of study. In the States, because of the Cold War, mention of Marx brings up visions of communism and extremism. Modern Marxist historians like John Berger have added to the body of knowledge about history, and while Marx is banned, Berger is often a set text.

In the Georgian era, if the average British person hated anyone, it was the foreigner. They weren’t trusted, were seen as wrong-headed, and the Brit always considered himself superior to the people across the 20 odd miles of the English Channel (or La Manche, depending on which side of it you were). In France, unlike Britain, there were clear legal barriers why a peasant could never become a duke and an intimate of the King. The Brits were always proud of that fluidity in their society.

And let’s be clear – the English did not hate the Scots, or vice versa. Scottish noblemen mostly saw themselves as part of the nobility (their accents, habits and way of life were identical). When the Clearances came to a head in the early nineteenth century, most of the Acts of Parliament were initiated by Scots noblemen and opposed by English ones as inhuman and cruel.

The Jacobite rebellion was led by a man who was as much Italian and French as he was Scots, and as soon as the 1745 failed he went back to Italy and never returned. He didn’t answer any petitions from the people he’d helped to ruin, and turned into an alcoholic wife-beater. The Scots were abandoned. But there were a lot of Englishmen ruined, too. The Jacobite rebellion drew in the strongly Catholic county of Lancashire, and other Catholic strongholds, and many Scots refused to take part, as they were Protestants and had no desire to bring back the Papists. It was observed that Scotland could have been a great nation, if its people weren’t so busy fighting each other. Clan against clan, the despair of every monarch, whether lowland Scot or Englishman (or even German) who tried to rule them.

In the Georgian era, Britain’s relationship with Ireland was relatively smooth. Only relatively, though, and I don’t even want to begin on the headache that is the Irish Question, as Gladstone put it. Being married to a second generation Irishman, I kind of straddle both worlds, and even thinking about it hurts.

It’s amazing how much of our own baggage we bring into what we write without even noticing, and the American concept of equality and democracy all factors into it. To a European, the differences jar and are obvious, but since most of the readers are Americans they don’t notice. And why should they? It’s not a matter of schooling, it’s a matter of understanding, and as I learned when I started to write contemporaries, it’s damned hard to ‘get it’ if you’re not brought up to it.

Since I started writing contemporary romances, albeit paranormals, and writing American heroes and heroines, I’ve become even more aware of the differences in attitude and approach. The big difference is that I have American editors who never hesitate in putting me right (thank goodness!). But American writers of historicals tend to have American editors, so not only inaccuracies of fact get through, but attitude and assumptions. Then I discovered that Americans have classes, and they are so complex that I can’t get my stupid British head around them.

When I wrote Chemistry of Evil, I wanted to make my hero, Evan Howell, New York old money. Although born in the class of rich WASP easterners, he went to jail, and several sources assured me that would make him unacceptable, although he might have been accepted by West Coast old money, as they were a completely different set of people. Argh! I got so confused by the arcane never-written-always-understood rules that I gave up and made Evan a different kind of person altogether. I studied a bit more and I’ve tried again, in the upcoming Red Heat. Please let me know if I got it wrong. I had never realised that American society is as full as classes, albeit of a different kind, than the British, and it wasn’t all based on money. If Evan was as rich as Croesus, I was assured that he wouldn’t have been acceptable to the upper echelons of New York old money.

Ten years ago Laura Kinsale, Mary Jo Putney and even Jo Beverley, who is after all British by birth, were completely new names to me. Thanks to a wonderful lady I will refer to as The Duchess, since she’s a bit shy of putting herself out there, I was introduced to the wonders of the American authored historical romance. I wallowed in Liz Carlyle, the ladies above and many others, and since she didn’t send any guidance in her ‘care packages,’ boxes of books I opened like it was Christmas, I discovered for myself which I loved and which I didn’t. There are authors lauded for their accuracy that I just can’t read because the assumptions are so wrong. They get the historical details right, but not the way society worked. Maids as best friends, dukes as spies, ladies posing as servants, well born virgins falling into bed with the nearest man with no mention or consideration of marriage, people disappearing from society for months on end with nobody wondering about them: none of these work well for me. Below stairs was as stratified, if not more, than above.

But in the interests of accuracy, I have to say that of course some people considered themselves superior to others. It could be brain-power, it could be wealth. It could be family and in Britain, family networks often superseded anything else. It could be “birth,” but that’s where one of the misunderstandings

arise, and it’s a subtle and tricky difference to understand. You were as good as your social network, and that depended on family influence to a great extent. In the county, the gentry were a tight-knit network of nepotism and influence, blending with other officials, like the vicars and bishops, and the lawyers. They weren’t, however, a homogenous class and they didn’t view themselves as such. The prosperous shopkeeper, the farmer and the country vicar might have similar interests. The aristocracy were similarly linked, and then there were the wealthy Cits, a very underplayed section of society in the modern romance novel. (Would you read a book about a Cit, one of the wealthy London merchants and bankers? I’ve long wanted to write one).

And where do I get this from? The historian’s friend, primary data. The letters, books, parish records, journals, newspapers, diaries, novels, poetry, account books and legal records written at the time. Pope’s “Rape of the Lock,” the collections of the letters of society gossips Horace Walpole and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, novels like Fielding’s Tom Jones and Richardson’s Pamela, the scandalous Newgate Calendar, periodicals like The Spectator and The Lady’s Monthly Museum, accounts of the proceedings of Parliament, parish records and court rolls. And many of these have been put online, so that makes it even better. Sometimes I stop long enough to write something. And because this is primary data, I have to form an opinion on them in order to write a cohesive book.

As they say, your mileage may vary. But this is mine.

Every year RT is a little different for me. My first year was a process of exploration when I found what worked for me and what didn’t. My second was my first as an Ellora’s Cave author, and that made a big difference. I was also befriended by Kathryn and Ken, and it was sheer delight to get to know them better. 

My third year, this one, was different again, with more off-campus meetings for me, anyway, but also the resort made a difference. It was a beautiful place to have a convention, and the signings attracted tourists as well as regular readers and attendees. There were fewer attendees this year, but the number still topped 1,000.

For me, a Brit who has to cross the pond to attend, it remains the best value for money and the most fun. But I have publishers I’m happy with and a great agent, so if you were looking for that, it’s possible that Nationals might be a better choice.

I think Kathryn Falk and Ken Rubin are the key to the success of Romantic Times. The atmosphere is that of a party, with Kathryn and Ken as the hosts. The relaxed ambience facilitates meetings and makes the parties really fun. On the whole you don’t find the cliques that exist in other conventions and conferences, and everyone welcomes you. Believe it or not I really don’t like going into crowds on my own, but here I don’t mind so much and sometimes seek it out because that way you meet new people (that coming from me!)

There are some very useful panels, but a lot depends on the audience. They are less formal than classes at some other places, and sometimes you can get the best out of the panels by asking questions. Participation is strongly encouraged. Unlike last year, no panels stood out for me, but I did attend some useful ones, when I could fit them in.

The resort was a fantastic venue. I had stayed the week before at a budget hotel, the Quality Inn, which, although not as pretty as the Wyndham, did have better facilities (a fridge and microwave in every room and a better bathroom). If I had to choose again, I would have stayed on at the Quality, as it was only over the road, and I had a room to myself. At the Wyndham, I shared with the awesome Ann Jacobs, and we had a good time, but I paid more to share a room at the Wyndham than I did for a room to myself at the Quality. Yes, I’m a cheapskate, but I did think that in Florida, a fridge in the room would be kind of important, and all we had were ice machines at the end of the corridor. Maybe I was grumpy because I couldn’t get a decent cup of tea (no kettle), and I am so investing in a travel kettle for next year. Two weeks without a proper cup of tea was agony!

So what did I learn? That Ellora’s Cave is a very strong brand – I had people stop by my table at the signing to get my book because it was an EC book. I could have got upset, but I was delighted that I had the sense to hook up to a house with such a strong name. That I have something to share now, some information that might be useful to others. That the American market is so very different to the UK one, despite efforts to get closer. That there are people like me in the world, who count staring into space as working. That I have fans (who knew? It still staggers me). That it’s important to keep up with current trends, but not to write to them if your voice doesn’t lend itself to them. Forge your own path, have the courage to do it. That I may never write for HMB. That I take a terrible photograph.

And I looked at the rates for the hotels in Columbus next year. Gulp. So I need your advice. I usually arrive a few days beforehand, and explore the area, but I don’t drive. Is it worth making that week in Philadelphia or New York, where my plane will connect, or does Columbus have some good places to visit?

So to the last full day of the Convention. Looking back, I think this was one of the best ones I’ve been to, although this is only my third. The hotel was a good choice, although a bit spread out, campus style, the convention center was magnificent, and the events went smoothly. I spent most of this convention talking, networking and meeting people.

I was immensely flattered to find how many people sought me out to say hello, and that culminated in my most successful booksigning yet. I had three books to sign, and they went very well. I sold out of one title, Sunfire. So thanks for that, everyone who came and bought one or just came to say hello.

I was exhausted afterward, but in a nice way, so after a break to recuperate, I went along to the Mr. Romance contest. Better than last year, smoother and very well presented. I could have done with a tad more bare male chest, but the models this year were charming and there was none of the insanity that marred last year’s event (you think I was kidding? Look it up). Unfortunately my choice, Jimi Gaskin, didn’t win, but the winner was a worthy Charles Paz, who has been smiling all week and will probably smile a lot more before he’s done. He gets a trip to New York to pose for the cover of a Dorchester novel, so it will be fun to spot Charles posing down when the book comes out!

So, Mr. Romance – here they are!

Today I succumbed. I slept. They say you can sleep when you’re dead, but today I could have slept standing up. I did two panels today and I was very nervous, but they went really well. The first was on alternative mythologies and the second on online promotion. Public speaking is not my thing, really not, and I was surprised to discover that went for another panel member, Joey W. Hill. She is charming, and smart, but she doesn’t do many speeches and presentations. We agreed that you do what works best for you, that you are honest with your reader and you go with what you feel most comfortable with.

It was the Vampire Ball tonight. A great success. Heather Graham was a gracious hostess and a good time was had by all.

I was at a reception earlier on with Angela James and Jane Litte was in the corner of the room, twittering. A really strange experience.

After a very poor night’s sleep I pretty much sleepwalked a lot of this morning but at the end of it I realised I’d picked up some interesting things. Mainly concerning me and my career, something I’m sure you’re fascinated with, but I’ll do you a favour and spare you the details. 

This RT is a lot about the feel, the atmosphere. After last year’s financial disasters, people started RT a bit cautious, but the attendance, although down on last year, is good, and I have to say that I prefer it. You can actually get to talk to people. And the volume of the music in the ballroom isn’t so deafening that you can’t have a conversation, which is a definite improvement on last year.

I was worried that the heat would get too much, but no, that’s fine too. The hotel is rather stretched out, and the rooms are – adequate, but the conference centre is huge. You can get lost in it, very easily.

So tonight was the Fairy Ball. Some very fetching fairies and the Mr. Romance candidates were there in force, too. You want pictures?

So the first full day of the conference is underway! I attended the Samhain spotlight this morning, which featured one of my books in all its glory (Yorkshire) and then the private Ellora’s Cave brunch, which went well. We had a talk about foreign rights and what it means for us (exposure and money!) and an update on company matters. Raelene was resplendent in red and black, her hat a distinctive little number which will definitely get her noticed. 

I’m trying to take pictures, and when I get a good one, I’ll put it up.

Okay I lied. Picture here for you!

This evening we went to the Ellora’s Cave Rumble In the Jungle party. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get a kick out of seeing my name and books on the screen. I was escorted across the stage by a luscious man with gorgeous skin, and I wore my Indian silk outfit, so I didn’t look too dusty.

I think everyone had a good time, and the gossip here so far is strangely benign. Believe me, if I learned anything interesting, I’d let you know!

So this afternoon I registered and found my room. It’s fine, but it would have been nice to have a fridge. 

Today blew my mind and it had nothing to do with Romantic Times. Earlier in my stay I met the wonderful John Zweifel, who did the White House in Miniature, which goes around all the Presidential libraries and other exhibits. John is the nicest man imaginable and because of our shared interest in miniatures, I was able to introduce him to Ken Rubin, the husband of Kathryn Falk, who owns Romantic Times. John showed us some of his collection, and it blew me away. Miniatures of fairs, circuses, he has some wonderful collectibles that would otherwise have been destroyed, like the first fairground carousel horse in the country. He and his sons run an events business, and they do a lot for Disney among other things, as well as sets. All this gave me several ideas for new stories. I am always amazed by the hospitality and kindness of Americans when I come over to visit.

Back to Romantic Times. The hotel was bustling this afternoon, busy with convention goers arriving and registering. I love the hum and the excitement at the beginning of these events. It’s better than Christmas. Off to the Ellora’s Cave private party tonight!

The Romantic Times Convention starts today with the pre-convention classes for aspiring writers, and the trips out for early arrivals. And you can really tell. During last week, the Wyndham was really quiet, but now it’s starting to hum. I’m staying in a hotel across the road, and I arrived early, to shake off the jetlag and to see a bit of Orlando. 

So yesterday, I went to Universal with my friend Cait Miller, who writes for Ellora’s Cave, Jenny, an aspiring author, and her brother Jimmy Gaskin, one of the Mr. Romance entrants. We had a cracking time, and yes, the Simpsons ride is everything they say it is. Amazing. Anyway, Jimmy has my vote. A genuinely nice guy, lots of fun and I think his face and incredible bod would be great on all-American covers, and the military ones. He’s already featured on several covers, and hopefully Mr. Romance will give him more. He’s not just a (very) pretty face, though. His day job is Something In Oil, very impressive, so it’s my guess that he’d make a good romance hero in his own right!

Last night I met Linnea Sinclair and Stacey Klemstein for dinner. As always, meeting them was a delight. Linnea and I have known each other from way back, and she is only getting what she deserves with her current success. But three martinis later, things got a little fuzzier, so I’ll draw a discreet veil over the rest of the evening.

As for putting the RT convention in Orlando – I think it was a great idea. If the convention occurs on or near places of interest, I think it will draw more attendees. I came early to see the sights and to meet my miniaturist friends (Ron’s Miniature Scene is world famous and the White House in Miniature is a fantastic model everyone should see). It is set up for large conventions and it’s not all Disney here. It certainly won’t be in the week ahead!

Disclaimer- I write for what are generally considered the “top three” epublishers – Ellora’s Cave, Loose-Id and Samhain Publishing. Having said that, on with the motley!

This is a quick whizz around the current state of the ebook world and is a personal view, so don’t take it as a definitive statement, or a comprehensive analysis.

This is read an ebook week. What it means to me is “read a book in e-format” week, but that doesn’t really sound snappy enough, does it? I don’t read or write ebooks, I read and write books. It’s up to my publishers how to put the book out, but if I hadn’t been interested in reading books in that format, I wouldn’t have submitted my work to publishers who put it out in ebook first. I care about ebooks, I love them and for a variety of reasons it’s my format of choice, but I have nothing against print books, or against people who prefer to read in that format. I just love that we now get the chance to choose.

In the past, many writers would send their work to epublishers because it was easier to get accepted. They saw it as an entrance to the world of publishing, good practice for the big time. Times have changed, so rapidly that some people haven’t caught up yet. Writers no longer leave epublishing to enter print publishing. They do both, and once their agents become aware of their epublishing earnings, they encourage the strategy. Some writers have even left the print publishing world (by which I mean the big seven – Penguin and its subsidiaries, Harper Collins, Harlequin, St Martins, Simon and Schuster, Kensington and Dorchester), because they are earning more in eformat. And writers submitting to the big epublishing companies can now expect a wait similar to the one they can expect in New York, London or Toronto. Submissions have increased hugely and so standards are as high as you can expect anywhere.

Sales are also underestimated by industry sources. The ebook specialists like Ellora’s Cave don’t yet share their data with a company like Nielsen Bookscan, so only ebook sales by the major print publishers are reported. Sales are nowhere near that of print, but they are increasing steadily, and with the advent of the ebook reader, are set to continue to grow.

Of course there are the smaller companies, from the niche specialists who provide quality books, but fewer and concentrate on certain sectors of the market, to the fly-by-night setups and the setups by authors who think that setting up their own company is the way to get published. Some of the biggest publishers in the market started that way, but that was then. This is now. That kind of company exists whatever format you look at. I’d rather concentrate on the top end of the market, where most sales are made, the success stories of the epublishing world.

What caused this change was the erotic romance. Not erotica, not mainstream or sweet romance, but the erotic romance specifically. It still outsells all other genres, but increasingly other genres are making headway, too, and erotic romance is evolving to cope with the expanding market. The thinly disguised erotic with no plot is fading, in favour of the longer story with fully realised characters and more intricate plots. Don’t get me wrong, if you want it, you can usually find it in epublishing, but the major publishers have made subtle alterations to their lines to appeal to the wider audience. It still outsells all other genres, but with romance the biggest selling genre in any fiction market, the only difference is the erotic content. The romance reader is voracious and restless, and it is moving into the ebook market with a will.

Without doubt the entrance of Sony and Amazon into the ereader forum has made a difference. The marketing efforts put into both readers have not just given the public a new gadget, but have drawn attention to the ebook market, and sales are up. It helps that ebooks can be read on multi purpose devices like the iphone or a pda, so you don’t have to go to the expense of an ereader. I read on my Ipaq, and on my ebookwise, because I need that backlight, and so far only the expensive Sony 700 series offers that. Plus, I get color on the Ipaq. The ebook reader wars are in their infancy, and we have yet to see the big entrants, Sony being the exception, going for the pre-empt. I can’t discuss the Kindle much, because it’s not available outside the US, but I can say that sales of my books available in Kindle are increasing nicely, though nowhere near the sales from the publishers’ own websites.

What I want is a big ipaq, something I can carry around with me, but which has the 6 inch screen, plus backlight, touchscreen and the other programs like notes and calendar. Whoever does that, and comes in at a reasonable price has my custom. And with Barnes and Noble’s acquisition of Fictionwise for $15 million, who can tell what the future for readers is? I understand that sale includes the Ebookwise, venerable but still holding up well against competition. Maybe B and N are planning to revamp it? (A smaller, replaceable battery would be nice, if you’re reading this, and sales outside the US!)

But it’s the books themselves that interest me. I’m seeing increasing numbers of New York and London published authors moving into ebooks, not just with their original publishers, but with ebook specialists. Books they want to write but don’t fit into their current portfolio, or new ventures under different names. Of course, the extra percentage of cover price paid by the epubs doesn’t hurt! Every major publisher now has its ebook list.

The one thing that concerns me is royalty. Producing an ebook is more expensive than most people assume, but still, it can be produced for the price of a mass market paperback. It would be naïve to think that any publisher would put out a book in hardback and still charge mass market paperback price, but conversely, the epublishers put out the ebook first, at a price usually under or around $7.99 and then the trade paperback which usually costs more, for people who prefer print. But the epublishers give the authors a significantly higher royalty rate, typically between 30% and 50% of cover price.

When I buy a book, I like the idea that the author is getting more for it, since 90% of the content belongs to the author, and I want to see that continue. (Of course I do!) The higher rate compensates for the lower unit sales and the low or non existent advances most e-authors get, but it also means the author is more invested in sales, since no sales equals no income. It makes more of a partnership between publisher and author.

So when you see “read an ebook,” give it a try. Look for your favourite author and see if any of her books are in eformat, or go to one of the epublishers and find something that looks interesting from someone brand new. As we say in Blighty, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it!

Over the past few weeks, one topic has engaged the writer message boards and forums. But, although I’ve read it as an author, it occurred to me that the reader hasn’t really said anything yet. So I thought I’d see what readers think about the current RWA ruckus. Yes, I’m a writer, but I’m a disinterested party, as I’m not a member of the RWA, and I don’t enter either the RITA or the Golden Heart. I want to look at this as a reader, an avid consumer of the product that the RWA members produce, if you will. So I don’t care about the rules and regs, or about the plight of the authors, not in this column, just in what I see as a reader. 

Yesterday, Jasmine Jade, which owns the Ellora’s Cave, Cerridwen, Lotus Circle and Exotika imprints, announced it would not be going to the RWA’s big conference, usually known as Nationals. It is no longer a recognized, or acknowledged, or whatever they’re calling it publisher, so it would have to pay for everything, and it’s simply not worth its while. So anyone wanted to pitch to them, or to learn more about them, or visit with their authors at the booksigning will be disappointed.

Alongside this is a row about the RITA and the Golden Heart, the RWA’s two awards for published and unpublished writers respectively. E-published writers cannot enter either contest. The Golden Heart is for unpublished writers only, so they can’t enter that. But in order to enter the RITA, the book has to fulfill a number of criteria, one or more of which excludes e-published writers. Whether the intention was to do that or not, it’s impossible for an outsider to say, but that’s the effect. It’s all very complicated, and please, please, no more discussion of the actual rules and regulations. That’s none of our business, all of us who don’t belong to the RWA. What I’m concerned with is the effect.

In the past, I sometimes bought books because they were RITA winners. The award guaranteed a certain amount of quality, so it was safer to invest in a previously unknown or unexplored author. Readers would buy the whole of the list, winners and runners-up, to find the best of the best. That’s what the RITA seemed to represent.

These days, I don’t do autobuy anymore. Instead, there are authors I look for, and assess when I read more about the book. And these days there are as many e-published authors as there are mass-market paperback New York authors on my list. True, I live in the UK, so my ability to browse bookstores full of romance paperbacks is limited to my yearly visits to the States, but I have Amazon.

I’ve moved over to e-books as my format of choice. Only if the book isn’t available in e-book do I get the paperback. So I’ve discovered some new authors that I love. Joey W. Hill, especially her Natural Law books are musts for me, and Linda Winfree’s books are side by side with Suzanne Brockmann and Linda Howard. I eagerly look forward to new releases from all four.

But if the RITAs are limited to the books from the big print publishers, then that halves my interest in the awards. I know there are books out there that equate with anything New York puts out, because I’ve read them. I love discovering new authors, whatever the format their books come out in. I don’t check the RWA list of approved publishers before I buy a book. I look at the cover art, read the blurb and an excerpt and maybe, if there’s an award like the RITA attached to it, I’ll pay a bit more interest in it, and maybe take a chance on a previously unknown author.

The attitude of the people awarding the RITAs seems similarly strange to the publishers. All publishers are all increasingly putting books out in e-format, so it is fast becoming just another way you can buy books. I know there are serious ramifications for authors and contracts, but I’m trying to ignore that here, and look at it from the point of view of the consumer.

So, as a reader, would I attend RWA Nationals, or visit the big booksigning there? I’d be disappointed because some of my favorite authors won’t be there, and it’s so expensive to attend, so probably not. Would I buy a book based on the fact that it had been awarded a RITA? No, not any more. I can’t trust it anymore, because it excludes the books of some writers that I love.

The RWA is busy sidelining itself. It’s a shame, but it makes my choice of which conference to attend that much easier.

by Lynne Connolly

Last week my editors got busy. I can’t say I’m sorry, because it’s one step nearer publication, but still, editing isn’t my most favorite job of all.

I got:

The Chemistry of Evil from Loose-Id, second edit

Yorkshire from Samhain, second edit

Devonshire from Samhain, first edit

Seductive Secrets from Samhain, print galley

Red Alert from Ellora’s Cave, first edit

Thunderfire from Ellora’s Cave, second edit.

Devonshire from Samhain, blurb to edit

And the biggest problem, for me at least, is the blurb. I readily admit I suck at blurbs, but I know the blurb is vitally important to selling a book. One book I loved was released with a blurb I wrote and it really sucked, though I didn’t notice at the time. It sold much lower than I expected, and with the gloomy cover art, it didn’t do well at all, until later, when word must have got around that yes, it was a romance, and it did have a happy ending. But the blurb was so depressing I can’t blame the readers for staying away.

However, the publisher concerned was on the ball, and they really helped me to pep the thing up. I still suck at blurb. I want to tell the reader what the story is about, and that really isn’t what a blurb is for. It’s to give the setting, the conflict and the hero and heroine. I either go way over the top, with things like “a dramatic story of love and revenge” which tells you absolutely zilch, or pedantic, as in “when the previous two earls died, it seemed she would never find the third…” (yawn). But I still want to be involved, because sometimes spoilers can creep in. Blurb writers tend to do the blurb on a summary or synopsis provided by the author, because they just can’t read every book they do a blurb for, so the author, IMO, should always have input. Unfortunately, they don’t always get it. So I should count myself lucky that I do get the input. Shouldn’t I?

And the other edits – the first edit is my big one. I re-read the whole manuscript. With re-releases coming up, I’m finding just how much my writing style has changed since I first wrote them, and I’ve had the dilemma – do I do the bare minimum, or do I do a drastic rewrite, taking my current style in?

Well, in conjunction with my editor, we’ve decided on the rewrites. If the reader wants the old versions, they can still be had, so I’d rather provide a newer version. For all those fans of Yorkshire and The Chemistry of Evil out there, and I know you’re there (don’t stop writing to me!) the re-releases are coming soon, and they are new and improved. Hotter, with added sexy goodness, but also with a less reflective style, and a tad snappier. I’ve altered the ending of Chemistry just a little bit, too, something I wanted to do for a while, and Yorkshire has lost its “hello.”

“Hello”? Well, Yorkshire is a historical, set in 1751. “Hello,” in the sense of a greeting wasn’t invented until the telephone, when it was deliberately adopted, a kind of early branding. Before that, it was “Halloo” or “Hullo,” and mainly heard bellowed across the hunting field when someone saw the poor widdle fox. So in Yorkshire, first book ever published, first page, first historical error (sigh). My hero says “hello” to the heroine. It’s gone now in the revisions, but I did wonder before I rewrote it. Did I set a record?

by Lynne Connolly

Since Syb has done her bit, I thought I’d add my mite.

Main reason—expense. I live in the UK, so I can only afford one US conference a year. So I go to RT. Lots of reasons for that—more below.

I’m not a member of the RWA. I belong to the RNA (the UK Romantic Novelists’ Association). I was a member of the RWA, but I didn’t get enough out of it. Only because I live abroad. If I lived in the US, hell yeah, I’d be a member. Even though the RWA has snubbed me twice, and my fellow authors. It’s not personal. But first, ebooks aren’t good enough for them. If you write ebooks, you don’t count. You can, by earning $1000 join PRO, and I do that with most of my releases, but before that stipulation, it used to be by publisher. Secondly, they don’t like writers of erotic romance. My paranormals are of the erotic variety. I’d still be a member, though.

I get a great deal from the RNA, the local chapters and the national conference (which was earlier this month and was totally awesome). Unlike the RWA, you only have to be published by a royalty or advance paying publisher, and to contribute nothing towards publication to join. And there’s the totally awesome New Writers scheme, where unpublished members can present a full manuscript to the RNA and get it critiqued. If the RNA thinks it’s good enough, they’ll even submit it to a suitable publisher for you.

Anyway, back to the RWA. My main reason for visiting the USA is to promote my books, and catch up with friends. I wish it could be different, I wish I earned Rowling-money so I could visit when I wanted, but I can’t. And Romantic Times is far better at the reader-meets-author thing. It really is. They have two big signings during the conference and many readers come to party with the authors and publishers and booksellers. That conference has done a lot to further my career. I’ve met people who have helped me, and I’ve been able to meet people face to face. Although I’m not the greatest socialiser in the world (most writers aren’t) I do need to get away from the laptop from time to time.

The RWA conference looks like a blast, and I have a friend who’s popped over to give it a whirl. Others have visited, and one day I’ll go. Just to see what it’s like. And oh, San Francisco! I’ve never been, and I’d love to go. And at Nationals, Mary Jo Putney might not have stopped me in the lift because she recognised me. Oh wow, I squeed all the way to my room. Sorry, I was so ultra-cool when I met her, but I still squeed later.

syb note: I will enter comments here into the ‘betcha contest‘ too

Several people have commented that one of the villains of my latest historical novel, Seductive Secrets, is gay. (Since that is known almost from the beginning, I wouldn’t consider that a spoiler). The heroine, Isobel, has been abused by her late husband, Harry, and associates sex with pain and discomfort. I thought very carefully before making Harry gay because I knew I’d get the response that has come from some quarters.

I don’t want to defend the book, or comment on other aspects of it, just this issue. Neither should this be seen as a defense of the book. It doesn’t need it. You either like it, or you don’t. If you don’t, I’ll just have to try harder next time, and if you do, thank you. So on to the point of this piece.

Can you make your villains gay? In the recent past, no. Gays, especially gay men, have been persecuted, ridiculed and even executed for their sexual orientation. I write historical romances set in the mid eighteenth century and at that time ‘sodomy’ was illegal and punishable by the death penalty. It was enacted, too. Very often, the offence was used as an excuse to punish a different crime, fencing stolen property, for instance, or even spying, but it was still enacted. Homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom until the 1960’s, although by then you couldn’t be hanged for it, only disgraced and ruined. Oh goody. There’s progress for you.

So when gays were finally accepted into society, there was, and still is, a tendency to go the other way, and imply that gays could do no wrong. Put that way, it’s obviously nonsense, but the inclination is to give them the benefit of the doubt, to try to depict gays in positive ways. They’ve had it too hard for too long. Acts against them are seen as bigoted and unfair. Which they are, if they’re being persecuted for their sexuality.

But I still believe that nobody, gay, straight or bi, deserves to be classified according to their sexual orientation. Being gay doesn’t make you good, or evil, or any of those things. It just makes you gay. And yes, I’ve known a lot of gay people in my life, and not all of them have been admirable or even pleasant. Most have. Sometimes the circumstances in which they’ve been forced to live have pushed them into behaving in less than perfect ways. Sometimes, they’ve just been unpleasant people. Usually, they’ve just been – people.

Everyone is responsible for his or her actions, and having created sympathetic gay characters in the past, I thought it was time to have a gay villain. No, that’s not quite right. Harry came to me gay, he worked as a gay character, so I decided to go with it. He’s not a nice man. He realizes Isobel is a complete innocent, the fault of her mother, and uses that against her, tells her that painful, humiliating sex is the norm, or rather, doesn’t tell her otherwise. But Harry is not a villain because he is gay, to do that would truly be to enter the world of bigotry and prejudice. He’s weak, and he would have been weak if he was straight. He’s also dishonest and a coward. He never fully accepted what he was, and he forced his guilt on to someone else. Isobel. She is seventeen when she marries him, knows little about sex, and Harry used that, and blamed her for his failures. Harry never faced what he was, and used his sexuality as an excuse.

Giving gays equality means to see them as people, good and bad and in between, and not to define them by the gender they happen to prefer to have sex with.

So what do you think, readers?

Well some of it, anyway.

I’m an adult and I write novels for adults. And I love writing them, so I’m not about to stop. I write for Ellora’s Cave, Samhain Publishing and Loose-Id Publishing, and I love it. The best job I’ve ever had.

I write books with sex in them because I believe that’s what an adult relationship contains, and I want to show it all. But I always remember where I am and who I’m talking to, so you won’t find anything more than PG13 here. Sorry, but if you want that, there’s some on my website, (with appropriate warnings).

I’ll wait while you nip over there and then nip back. 

I hope to give you the news on the e-publishing scene, but what you won’t see is gossip and innuendo. Gutter press R(not)Us. But I can only say what I see, and any juicy tidbits I can confirm for you.

I’ve been in e-publishing since the year 2000 (why do we call it that, when every other year doesn’t have that pompous “the year” before it?) I’ve seen companies come and go. Mostly go, but that’s the norm in a new market. I was involved in a new market before, (disposable diapers, there, wasn’t that sexy?) and so far the e-book market has followed the pattern of emerging markets. First there are a bunch of companies, most of whom fall by the wayside as barriers to entry go up and the market expands. Then larger companies move in (I think we’re here at the moment) and the smaller companies that are left find themselves comfortable niches to fill, something many larger companies have also attempted with some success. Growth is huge at first, but since it’s on a small base, that’s not surprising. It continues to grow, and then flattens off in a nice, long plateau.

Okay, how does that work? Well when I started out, I wrote a book for a company called RFI West (I can feel fellow authors’ shudders from here!) Not good, but out of it came some industry professionals who rose above the morass and are still with us. Then I went to NBI (more shudders) where I worked with the likes of Linnea Sinclair, Rowena Cherry and Ann Aguirre. Fun days, until the owner did a runner (as we say in Blighty) and left us holding – not a lot. We hadn’t been paid for nearly a year. From there I went to Triskelion. I know, I had all the luck, didn’t I? However, this was when the rumor machine went into overdrive. Some of the things I read at the time of Triskelion’s closure were completely invented stories that people just swallowed, because it was mor fun than the truth.

Which was that they ran out of money. They went into mass market print, underestimated the returns and ended up with two warehouses full of books they didn’t know what to do with. Unlike the larger, well established companies, they didn’t have the reserves to cope with it, and thus, bankruptcy. Oh yes, there were management problems, centering on the owner of Triskelion, whose – idiosyncratic – management style had something to be desired. But had the money been there, they would have been worked out.

After that, I decided on safety. If a publisher says it works like one happy family, I back off, fast. I have one of those thank you, and one is more than enough for me. I want a happy professional relationship where both sides keep their promises. With the publishers I have now, so far, so good. So very good, actually. An adult relationship.

Being an adult carries responsibilities. One of them is telling the truth, something I always try to do. And behaving like an adult which is something I do – mostly. When I lose my temper, I step back and wait, and the urge to lash out goes away. I’ve done a bit of that recently, and I feel better for it. Mostly.

I can honestly say that I love the publishers I’m with, and I love the way I’m treated by them. That might change, I hope it doesn’t, but I don’t ever discount it these days.

After all, here sits the woman who was happy with NBI and Triskelion, and said so, and the one who very nearly signed with RFI West.

Never say never.

Oh yes, and the picture? Me with some of my favorite things. My laptop, my doll’s house and a chocolate cake. I thought of putting one of those author pictures up, the ones I paid to have taken. I hate to have my picture taken, so there’s not much out there, but this one, although not flattering, is at least honest. And the minion presenting the cake? My husband, who hates to have his picture taken even more than I do.