Booksellers, librarians, Ritas and Susan Elizabeth Phillips

My writers group had its annual Booksellers and Librarians Appreciation Dinner recently. I've been meaning to mention it for a while, along with a few other nuggets of information, but I've been having trouble framing my thoughts.

So, I'm just going to throw framing out the window and see what happens.

"A Booksellers and Librarians Appreciation Dinner?" you might ask. "What is that?"

Well, my writers group, which is a chapter of Romance Writers of America, invites any local booksellers and librarians who are interested to a party so that the local authors can mingle with them and get to know them better. It's basic networking 101.

Booksellers and librarians are the people on the front lines who have the power to bring in new readers. They can talk up a book. They can impact a book's placement on the shelf and in the store. They can set up signing events. Basically, booksellers and librarians are an author's friend. And the better they understand the romance genre, and the better they know the local authors, the more opportunities they have to increase sales and circulation.

"But, Haley, you're not published," you so politely point out. "Why were you there? What are booksellers and librarians going to do for *you*?"

Thanks for rubbing it in.

*My* goal at the dinner was just to be social. Talk to my friends, mingle, and work toward future name recognition. Because someday, I will have a book coming out, and I want that bookseller or librarian to say, "I recognize that author's name. I'll have to make sure I stock that title."

That's the theory. I'm not sure how well I executed it. We writers tend to be introverts.

Now for a clumsy segue to my next topic, which is to congratulate Susan Gibberman, a librarian at the Schaumburg Township District Library (who is also a member of my writers group), who was named this year's RWA Librarian of the Year. It's a national award that will be presented at the Romance Writers of America annual conference in San Francisco in July. Susan was featured in the Schaumburg Review recently with a nice article about her achievement titled Romancing the librarian.

Which leads me to my next topic, which is to congratulate Jennifer Greene and Simone Elkeles, authors in my writers group who are both nominated for Rita Awards this year. The Rita is the romance industry's highest award of distinction. If you're interested in checking out what books romance authors consider the best of the best this year, check out the list of Rita finalists. It's a great launching point for exploring the romance genre.

Which leads me to my final topic, which is Susan Elizabeth Phillips, who is one of my favorite romance authors and a previous recipient of the Rita award. I spoke with her at my chapter's Booksellers and Librarians Appreciation Dinner, mentioned above, and told her that I've been noticing that my website is getting hits lately from people Googling her and looking for her newest release. She said to tell you curious fans that Natural Born Charmer was just released in paperback (it was previously released in hardback) and that her next new book is scheduled to be released in February.

OK, that's all I've got. I guess that ended with more structure than I thought.

A Steamy Romance Novel

My DH's rogue, Ghidoraah, found this as a world drop on World of Warcraft and sent this in-game to Lasaire, my hunter.

Lasaire found it humorous, but was disappointed in the ending.

Being a romance novel and all, I had to share it.

Who knew tea could be so hot? (Writing Love Scenes)

Writers group topic last night? Writing Love Scenes (aka The First Kiss and How to Ramp up Sexual Tension)

Remember this is a romance writers group, so we're all strongly indoctrinated in traditional romance novel love scenes with its coded language. Many of us have made forays into erotica, but many are not interested.

Favorite quote? Said by Theresa Stevens, managing editor of Red Sage Publishing, who is also a member of my Windy City Romance Writers group.

Context: She's just finished reading an example of an erotica love scene and the discussion is about the explicit level of the language.

"Red Sage is in the tamer end of erotica," she said.

There's murmurs of disbelief in the crowd. How could the language get much more explicit?

It's not the language, she clarifies, it's the situation: "You have one man, one woman, they're both human."

My eyes meet Jules' eyes across the room. We're both thinking of the same Morgan Hawke novel. We laugh. (I love that Morgan Hawke novel, BTW.)

Most educational part of the session? Allie Pleiter reading from her inspirational romances.

Allie explained that when writing these inspirational romances (marketed to a Christian audience), the most explicit she can get is a kiss, and basically the characters have no bodies from the neck down. So that kiss scene has to be saved for the moment of greatest impact to the story.

And since she can't work with any sort of sex scene, she has to find other ways to communicate the emotional connection between the characters that is often such an integral part of a sex scene.

All I have to say is, check out her book The Perfect Blend, because the scene where the hero serves the heroine tea is hot, and, really, all he's doing is serving her tea in a public restaurant.

The limitations that Allie has to deal with in her genre remind me of the limitations that moviemakers had to work with in the 1930s-1960s with the Hays code. Which, ironically, was a time when many of the best romantic movies were made.

Things I knew that were reinforced about writing love scenes?

**A successful love scene, no matter the level of explicitness, is all about the emotions. There has to be something at stake emotionally between the characters, and that love scene had better somehow change them and their relationship. Personally, I find that if any of these elements are missing in a scene, it becomes voyeuristic and boring and I start skimming.

**The concept of "reader foreplay", which is how Theresa Stevens described it. I've always know the concept as building "sexual tension". Basically, it's that the attraction is building between your characters long before anything sexual actually happens.

"There are fantasy elements involved that get you cooking long before the kiss," Teresa said.

**In romance novels, the course of the story often unfolds so that emotional intimacy leads to physical intimacy.

In erotic romance, it's usually the other way around. Sexual, physical intimacy leads to emotional intimacy.