Crowning A Warrior King by Diana Castilleja-- GET IT!

I just picked up a hot new release, and you should, too. Crowning A Warrior King by Diana Castilleja is releasing today. DO NOT MISS IT! Diana is an up-and-coming author you will want to add to your auto-buy list. Get her ebooks now, you'll be paying a lot more for her titles when they are jamming the best-sellers list!

Read a Wind-Sewn and Wonderful Romance

Why is it that as the recent Cassie Edwards debacle has spun out into the universe for judgment, the romance genre is taking all the hits rather than one craptastic moron? And why must the whole predictible spasm of response be so one-note and cliché? And why-- WHY??-- must romance, when it is criticized, always be relegated to "dumb fluff" or "cheesy bodice ripping." It's always a tone of dismissiveness because these readers are dumb, undersexed, and it's not real literature.

If it's between two pages and made up of words it's literature. Get over it. Hustler magazine is literature. Blogs by teenage nerds are literature. Cassie Edwards books are literature. They're all just really bad literature.

I just can't help but wonder why pulp fiction in other genres gets slammed as bad or sensational, but its readers are considered readers with bad taste, not stupid bimbos who know no better. Playboy is read for the articles, right? But men who like Penthouse or Playboy aren't stupid. They're horny. Craptastic suspense novels are considered mainstream, perhaps pedestrian, but not dumb or silly. Men of these genres are "master of" horror, or suspense, or crime drama. Tom Clancy isn't considered dumb for recycling themes. People who read Fantasy or Sci Fi are nerds, and probably have Dr. Who on Blueray, but they're just weird, not stupid.

No, romance takes the hit because it's fun to use outdated phrases like "bodice ripper" and "trashy novel." But behind that isolation as bimbo-pulp is, I think, a residual sexist sludge. Bodice rippers went the way of the Dodo when women gave themselves permission to have and enjoy sex without being forced. When it became ok for us to have, expect, even demand orgasms without feeling we were bad girls for wanting them, it was no longer necessary to pound the pirate's chest with weakly mewled "no, Rafe no's" or "don't, stop" becoming "don't stop" between pages 47 and 48. We're allowed to want it, like it, and be cool with that.

I suspect the reason is that many snide critics of romance are uptight, don't like women very much, and resent the hell out of the evolution of the romance novel on some deep, Freudian sub-basement level. You know, where the stuff about their mum in her nightie is hidden. Down there. Dismissing all romance of today as inconsequential, silly, stupid, and full of bad sex is really a knee-jerk reaction to strong women who write, read, and are what and whom they want.

Which is why writers and readers of great romance should (and seem to be) offended and distressed to see us all colored with the same brush in response to the Edwards kerfuffle. There are writers who deserve so much better: pioneers like Jane Austen and Gorgette Heyer; great contemporary voices like Julia Quinn, Nora Roberts, Eloisa James, great new voices like Elizabeth Vaughan, Jenna Black, Nalini Singh; those a few of us are watching carefully as they creep into the mainstream from e-publishing, like Diana Castilleja, Amanda Brice, Heather Fowler, and so very many others. These are the smart, funny, gifted, lyrical, glorious voices, names and faces of romance. Nary a bodice-ripping dingbat in the bunch. And frankly the names I've listed are only those who leap to mind. My shelves and hard-drive groan with the weight of good romances. THESE are the authors of true romance, great romance, the stuff that sprouted from the hillsides where Jane Austen's wildflower seeds took root. Wind-sewn and wonderful, they deserve respect and a readership unashamed to enjoy great love stories by great writers. And when people lump these dazzling writers with the likes of Cassie Edwards they do literature-- YES, LITERATURE-- a grave disservice.

Please do keep this in mind as this latest nastiness spins itself out. Smell the flowers and leave the weeds alone.

A Day of Storms, Crackles, Snaps, and Pops

Mayday, Mayday! We have a situation. Romance Divas is DOWN, repeat, Romance Divas is DOWN!

Thing is, it's a crappy assed day here in New England. The six inches of snow predicted for my area has manifested as 4 inches of goo. Slush. Flavor and dye free slurpee. Mush.

Which is fine, that's what the weather does around here. It's January. But the big guy worries, you know. And last night Ahmed spoke thusly:

"You're very crackly."

"Your mother buys you ugly ties," I said rather wittily (okay, rather lamely).

"You need to promise me you'll STAY IN tomorrow."

"How do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Speak in caps."

"You need to stay in."

"I am not going to promise you," I said, knowing how promises tend to become crow bars with which to beat me about the head, "that I will not go out. I may need to go out. But unless I actually need to go out, I will, in fact, stay in."

"You're very crackly."

"And snappy and poppy, too. All part of my charm."

"$*unintelligible kurdish grumblings involving donkeys, but other than that it's anybody's guess*$"

So I really did intend to stay home today. Honest. But here's the thing...

Romance Divas is DOWN!

Now, I can live without RD. I can live without Starbucks, since I have a lovely Duetto espresso maker right on my counter. I can manage without the cheerful faces at the drive-through. I can manage without my pink screen and red lips and Diva comfort.

I CAN'T DO WITHOUT BOTH. Deal breaker. I'm going to Starbucks. Snap, crackle, pop...

Cassie Edwards' Last Hope Fades

The Cassie Edwards situtation has finally reached a pinnacle to which my tired brain can no longer aspire in its flights of outrage. At last, she has won my pity. The Smart Bitches have finally found both a fiction and protected source. If that weren't enough, it's a Pulitzer prize winning novel, Laughing Boy by Oliver La Farge, still in print with Houghton Mifflin. Eeegods, folks.

I can't help but wonder if perhaps Edwards never thought it would go this far without somebody catching it. Or if, perhaps, she figured she'd pull the cutie once, then got a little relaxed when it passed, and maybe succumbed to deadline fever. But at this point she can no longer hide behind doing research and being unaware she had to cite it. I can think of no circumstances under which anyone, particularly a writer by trade, copies large numbers of passages nearly verbatim from a Pulitzer winning novel and has no knowledge of this being wrong.

It's too sad to be funny or even pleasant in a justice-is-served way anymore. Yes, even I can't feel much beyond a numb sense of sorrow.

The Cassie Edwards Conundrum

The Cassie Edwards fan base is in a tizzy, most recently name-calling at Smart Bitches Trashy Books. I, personally, think it quite telling that one of them started throwing the word "witch" around as a slur. Racism... really? Who would ever believe that a person who loves novels with SAVAGE titles, featuring red men and white women, would be a bigot? Shocking. Say it ain't so.

Bizarrely, one little Cassiephile in a particular snit was directing her spit and vitriol at Nora Roberts. Why? Well, La Nora was apparently jealous of Edwards, which explained her eloquent and carefully serious comment to the media (first noted, I believe, in the AP release). I believe I am not mistaken in recalling that Ms. Roberts was contacted, not the other way around.

But nobody is surprised. Because a writer of books so blatantly racist can't have a shiny, educated, thoughtful readership. And frankly, one of the reasons MANY people have always despised Cassie Edwards is her absolute odor of inferiority. Her books are bad. They suck. They glorify American Indians, just for instance, as savages who are titillating because they are savages.

She isn't the only bad writer I hate. I dislike any writer who harms any genre by shooting for the lowest bar. I hate writers who write rape fantasies. I hate women who write Alpha males as if they must be abusive stalkers in order to be strong, compelling men. I hate insipid, dimwitted morons who write historical novels with contemporary dialogue and social mores.

I hate stupid people who bring everyone else down. That's who I hate. It's kind of an equal opportunity hatred.

But I particularly hate this nonsense with Edwards, her Cassiephiles, and the dumb people who trashed her "outers" for telling the truth. Why? How often has any writer of romance had to defend her/his profession? Bodice rippers... poorly written drivel... dirty sex strung together with awkward or barely-existing plot... the same story with new names... unhealthy for women... exploitive of minorities and the poor...

Just when we were crawling, bloody by still breathing, out of the cesspit of our admittedly wobbly legacy, Cassie gets caught. Five steps forward, four steps back. Back to the red-faced stubbornness at cocktail parties. "We are not," we will be saying for the next ten years, "ALL like Cassie Edwards."

No, we are not. But now we have to convince everyone who doesn't know much about romance. If Edwards' fans, and the wimpy little Pollyannas of the world, want to respond with outrage to our outrage, and make ignorant statements about witch-hunts, they can start with me. My broom and pointy hat are waiting. So is my answering rage.

Bring it on.

Plagiarism Rears Its Ugly Head... AGAIN

Plagiarism has become a plague upon fiction. I very often write about current instances, scandals, exposures, and whatnot. Other outrage-minded folk may be fascinated by the current discussion at Smart Bitches Trashy Books, a favorite site of mine. While the discussion is decidedly snarky and unforgiving, it is an important one. And SBTB were, to be fair, the first to report on a very serious matter.

Cassie Edwards, author of 100 romances and counting, has some answers to provide readers. Quick Google searching showed massive numbers of large passages virtually copied and pasted, nearly verbatim, into her novels. I have never been a reader of Ms. Edwards. As someone of Irish and Cherokee heritage I avoid any novels that roll around in bad stereotypes like a pig wallows in slop. It's my personal opinion that all publishers of Indian themed books with SAVAGE in the title, and all publishers of Irish themed books including the phrase "top o' the mornin'" should be punished. Painfully. Frequently, until they STOP.

So no, I have not read a Cassie Edwards book. I have now, however, read lots and lots of passages of her books that were somebody else's passages first. While Edwards is to blame, and should be forced to find a new career (after sending a check to anyone dumb enough to buy one of her bad books to begin with), her publishers are far from blameless. Let's face it, if a bunch of snarky bitches can Google stuff that absolutely SCREAMS "I don't belong here," somebody reading through the first draft can, too.