My Boudoir is None of Your Business

I used to be a journalist. I wrote for several years for an alternative weekly paper in Tampa Florida. Most of my articles were food reviews, which made them opinion pieces. When I wrote those pieces, I went to the restaurant, ate the food, and then formed an opinion upon which to base my article.

That style seems to be out of fashion. Exhibit A: A letter that was sent from a journalist at the Washington Post to local area romance writers (including yours truly, a board member of Washington Romance Writers). It was signed, no joke, “Breathlessly Yours.”

Much mockery is being made of this solicitation on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books site, but then, that is what they do there. When I originally got this email, I didn’t even blink. This was par for the course at newspapers when I worked for them. Every Valentine’s Day, without fail, they’d decide to humor the local romance writers by publicizing some facet of their sex lives, complete with the requisite digs, stereotypes, and insults.

Many years ago, I got my first big break as a journalist, to write a feature story about a romance novelist who set a lot of her books in our home town of Tampa. I found this novelist, pitched the story, and had it accepted. I also got in many arguments with my editor, who, among other things, refused to let me use the term “New York Times Bestselling Author” to refer to certain other local authors who were, in fact, New York Times Bestselling Authors, because he “hadn’t heard of them”; wanted me to ask the author about her favorite sexual positions (in an article where I interviewed her parents, the principle of the Catholic school where she’d once taught English, and her priest!); changed the title of the piece to “My Randy Valentine”; and added all kinds of little “bodice ripping” phrases in here and there to show that our paper didn’t actually countenance “these kinds” of books. The photographer sent to shoot her apparently asked her to pose in a boa with bon bons. She refused.

(It was pretty frustrating. However, I feel triumphant that several of the other editors there then now work for Ellora’s Cave. Countenance that.)

I was a little baby writer at the time, so I agreed to a lot of things that I may have argued against now. (Of course, now I’d just look up the archives of the NYT list.) There was one in particular that makes me grimace every time I see it (which is often, considering that the piece is framed and hanging on my wall — my first byline). My editor was also a music critic, and was unused to the construction used when discussing book imprint releases. One usually writes something to the effect of, “Rites of Spring (Break), due out from Bantam Dell in June,” but in music, something comes out on a given label. Thus, throughout the piece, the author’s books are released on Harlequin Blaze, etc.

All in all though, I think the piece turned out pretty well, and certainly the author in question wasn’t so offended that she never spoke to me again! (Right, Jules?) It also had an adorable graphic — a cartoon of a little Cupid reading a romance novel. My favorite cover.

But because of that experience, I tend to give these young journalists a little leeway when I get the idea that they’re getting the screws applied by their editors. I did an interview not long ago where the writer seemed desperate to get me in a grudge match with Curtis Sittenfeld, and when I didn’t bite, her editor sent her back to me to try again. This was the one that, re: my posing for a few small press romance covers, asked if my “mother had forced me into modeling at a young age.” My mother, dear heart, had nothing to do with it. I was 25, and I had a friend who was a photographer…

And I honestly think the journalist who sent out that bedroom solicitation (though not young or inexperienced) was trying to be funny. But I wonder why romance writers are the Valentine’s Day go-to gals. Why don’t we get interviews of thriller or horror writers every Halloween?

As my friend Susan Kearney (USA Today Bestselling Author, look it up) likes to say, “They always ask me how I ‘research’ the sex scenes. They never ask how I research the murders.”