So after this discussion about the Washington Post’s desire to see your red hot romantic boudoir, I have a question for those who read our site who are also writers and published authors of romance: What are some of your most ridiculous press questions, and what did you say?
And readers of romance, though we are not as much in the attentive eye of the media, have you ever been asked a stupid or offensive question? How did you answer?
I’m forever fending off the, “But you’re smart- how come you read Those Books?” question. Depending on the asking party, and whether I have to sit with them several times a year at large family gatherings like Seder or Thanksgiving, I most often say, “Because they’re awesome – what do you like to read?” I turn the question back on the asker because (a) as Valerie Plame noted in an interview, there are few things more wonderously conducive to one-sided conversation than saying, ‘REALLY? Tell me more!’ and (b) it’s kind of funny to watch the asker think hard for a title to mention that isn’t remotely open for criticism and is ubiquitously liked and respected.
But the press? If you’re an author being interviewed, you can’t ask the interviewer’s opinions or preferences. So what would you say?
My all-time favorite came from my (former) RWA chapter. I’d just had my 10th (I think) ebook published and was about to have it come out in print. When I told the chapter about this, one of the chapter officers said, “Oh, I’m so glad you’re finally going to be published for real!”
I think the most random/offensive quesion I’ve ever received was when I was about 16, sitting on the ground outside a restaurant. I’d just had a disagreement with my mother, and she’d told me to wait outside while she paid for dinner. There weren’t any seats nearby, and I couldn’t lean on the car because we had a car alarm and my mother still had the car keys. So I sat on the ground – it seemed perfectly logical at the time.
A couple in their fifties or sixties walked past me and after whispering to each other for a minute, the man approached me and asked:
“Are you homeless?”
I was so shocked I couldn’t even respond, I just stared at him. If my mother hadn’t appeared telling me to get in the car I don’t know what I would have said, but I imagine it would have involved the words “fuck” and “you” in various and interesting arrangements.
I also get the “why do you read that trash?” from my mother about my reading habits. It’s only become worse in the last few months since I got my PhD, because now she says “I don’t understand why you rot your brain reading that trash. You have a PhD! Why don’t you read something intellectual and challenging?” I don’t tell her that if I thought there was any way I could do research on romance novels and make it relevant in a school of IT, I would be all over it.
I work in a library and the weirdest question I get asked (and I’ve had this one a few times) is when I answer the phone, and people ask me, “Are you open?” I keep wanting to reply, “No, they pay me to stand here for my health.” or “No, I’m just the answering service.”
But I also had someone ask me, “Do you have books there?” Gee, no, we’re the library completely without books. Yessiree, the latest thing!
Recently, a co-worker of mine was approached by a woman who asked, “Do you have bathrooms in here?” to which she wanted to say, “No, you are just going to have to hold it.”, but instead, she nicely pointed out where the bathrooms were located.
Our library also has huge signs hanging from the ceiling pointing out the information (reference) desk, the circ (circulation) desk, Returns, where the copiers are, etc.
Yet, I have people come up to the circulation desk, wait behind people checking out, only to ask me, “Can I take out books here?” And I usually say (in a humorous tone of voice), “Heavens, no! What do you think we are? A *library* or something?”
We also had large, printed signs on our internet computers telling people they could not download stuff from the internet onto the internet computers. Yet, invariably, someone would come up and say, “This computer isn’t letting me download this file.”
Sometimes, I think that if the message was flashing in lights 20 feet high, people still wouldn’t get it.
Spinster Witch and Gemma-
I’ve got to say, go easy on those of us who don’t understand the intricacies of vegetarianism! My best friend is a vegetarian, and it took me about three months to consistently remember what she wouldn’t eat. I know red-meat vegetarians, fish-eating vegetarians, no-animal vegetarians, and vegans, (and yes I know they have proper names, but I don’t know the proper names.) It gets confusing, and so I constantly had to be reminded what exactly she ate. She finally clarified, “I don’t eat any member of the animal kingdom,” and I got it permanently, I hope.
It’s hard to remember everyone’s eating habits!
That’s all.
And since this is a dumb questions board, I’ve got one. I’m from the suburbs of New York City, and I went to summer camp in California when I was about eleven or twelve. Most of the kids were locals, and when they found out I was from New York, they’d always say, “But you don’t have a New York accent!” I was baffled, because I didn’t know anyone with an accent.
To be fair, though, they were kids, too, not legit interviewers who are supposed to not be lunkheads.
Let’s see: Geographically (I’m from Alabama) I get a lot of similar questions to those poor souls from Kentucky. Yes, we wear shoes. Yes, we have indoor plumbing and electricity. Sadly, I am related to myself (about 5-6 generations back). The best one, though …
“Are people in Alabama nice?”
“Ummmm … sure.”
“Wanna show me how nice they are?” (complete with leer)
“I’m from New Jersey. F*ck off.” *yes, I lied. Bite me.
As regards to my career:
“Can you do my taxes/balance my checkbook/etc.?”
**I teach college math. I am not an accountant. Have never taken an accounting class in any way shape or form.
My favorite with respect to my reading habits occurs when someone (who doesn’t know me very well) comes into my home and looks at the enormous wall-sized bookshelf. Categorized by genre and author, two books deep.
“I’ll bet I can tell which books are yours and which are your husband’s”.
…Oh, do tell.
After a few moments of our guest pointing out the sections which are ‘mine’ (romance, Mary Higgins Clark, etc.) and which are ‘his’ (sci-fi, espionage, military, etc.), my husband cheerfully informs them that ALL of the books are mine. And then points to the small stack of Star Trek/Star Wars novellas … those are his.
So Nyah.
Of course, second place goes to the student who felt the need to comment on my choice of reading material during the final (LKH, I must admit, so he may have had a point) and compared it to the Robert Jordan he was reading … Book 1. It was terribly rude of me, but I’m afraid I rather spoiled the next few books for him. Oops.
I love this! I live in Portland, Oregon. A relatively big city, mind you. However, you would not believe how many people from other states (usually east of the Mississippi) think we’re a bunch of hicks. I’ve been asked if we all wear denim & plaid. When I explain that we are RIGHT NEXT TO CALIFORNIA & THAT SEATTLE IS TO THE NORTH, they usually shut up.
I’m also tall 6’1” and a BBW. I don’t get much comments on my weight, but I do get comments on my height ALL the time. It’s either “Do you play basketball?” or “You must have legs that go on forever!”
As for the romance thing, I had this elderly lady sit down next to me on the bus once. I was reading a Nora Roberts book and she made this disparaging noise. And this is what she said.
“I don’t know about you youngsters & that romance trash you read. I’m amazed any of you have brains at all.” With that, she whipped out a Danielle Steele book and it took everything in me not to bust a gut laughing. La Nora trash? LOL! I think that was the pot calling the kettle black.
And I write romances. I had a question once about how much “research” I did when it came to writing the love scenes. Completely deadpan I said “I’m a virgin. It’s all in the imagination.” (true, by the by) Shut them up right quick. LOL!
“Is it true that Asian women are uniquely skilled in the bedroom?â€
Marjorie, you should have answered, “I don’t know. I’ve never slept with one. Have you?”
Nora, with all your skills and money, why are you wasting your time writing books and saving ferrets? Get out there and catch Osama bin Laden! It’s what you’ve been training for all your life, obviously.
Talking to a teenager about Judaism, I mentioned that Jews don’t eat pork. Her response:
“Really?”
“…Yes.”
“But…what do they eat for Thanksgiving?”
“Uh…turkey?” *trying not to laugh*
“Oh.” *long pause* “But…what do they eat for Christmas?”
I couldn’t answer for laughing, someone else had to explain that Jews don’t usually celebrate Christmas.
Defending on my home state here:
When I moved to North Carolina from California (at the height of Beverly Hills 90210 popularity no less), I got the biggest variety of moron questions ever conceived including things like “Do you guys all drive corvettes?” “How come you don’t have an accent?” (because we don’t all talk like 80s valley girls?), “You know that California is going to have an earthquake and fall into the ocean?”, “Doesn’t San Francisco have a lot of gay people?” “Do you surf a lot?”
So it’s not just the southerners taking the bad rap.
My favorite lately wins for frequency and gender-typing:
“So, what do you do?”
“I’m attending medical school in the Caribbean.”
“Oh! You’re going to be a nurse!”
Heard that one about seventy billion times. Since most people are well-intentioned, I have managed to not say: “Yeah! I was gonna be a doctor, but then remembered I have ovaries! Silly me!”
I couldn’t stay away from this thread, which is hillarious.
I live in Kansas, so I feel for the bitches in Oklahoma. Only nobody has ever asked me about shoes or indoor plumbing. They ask me if we get tornadoes, and invariably someone brings up Dorothy.
For the record, yes, we get tornadoes. No, none have taken me to Oz. This still makes me sad, even though I’m a grown adult.
As to my reading, the only time I’ve ever been criticized for my reading tastes was by a friend who again stated that I was smart and should find books that were challenges. Of course, she reads murder mysteries, so she has no room to talk. But I think I’ve managed to shut her up after helping her with the morning crossword a time or two because I’ve known some word thanks to a romance novel.
That all being said, I did lie to my professor once last semester about what I was reading—the blindness means nobody else can understand what I’m reading. He shared my commute home on the bus and asked me and I sort of blushed and told him it was a murder mystery. (It was a J. D. Robb, incidentally.) I wish I’d thought to come back with something like, “Gay porn!” Because it was the end of the semester and it wasn’t like I was likely to run into him again. But at the time I don’t think I was necessarily ashamed I was reading a romance. I just was slightly embarrassed because I had it in my head that my professor would expect me to be doing class readings or something.
Aw man, this is my favorite Japan story:
So I’m an English teacher here, and I get a million and one rude questions that people think they can get away with because I’m foreign. The mayor even asked my breast size (I responded quite rudely, myself). The best, though, was when I was making rice cakes at a kindergarten.
The entire class was seated around the room facing me as I pounded a big, long, wooden hammer into rice in a stone bowl, while a reporter was taking pictures. Then the reporter says to me, in mixed Japanese and English, “When your boyfriend visits soon, he will be the hammer, and you will be the bowl.”
I had had enough of these kind of comments, from the mayor, from my principal, from my coworkers, and so I turned around and slugged him.
At a kindergarten. Surrounded by small children. I punched a reporter. I was too pissed to be sorry at the time, but later I was starting to feel kind of irresponsible, and then one of the teachers took me aside and said “I know that man. He has nothing but thoughts like that in his mind. He needed a punch.”
Made my day.
Holy crap! Elizabeth, can I shake your hand, ‘cause that is the best thing I’ve heard all day!
Oh by the by, I get the hair comments too. I used to have hair past my hips (my mom’s is to her knees) and all the time, people would tell me I should donate it.
“Oh sure,” I’d say, “That sounds great. How about you spend ten years growing yours, and then we can donate it together?”
Now, of course, my hair is about 1.5 inches long, and I get people telling me girls should have long hair.
I usually respond with “And I think men should attractive, but I didn’t complain about you,” or “yeah, because I’m interested in dating assholes like you enough to grow it back out” or the even less polite, “It’s not my fault you’re too stupid to know boys don’t have tits. I shouldn’t have to put up a fucking flag to let you know which I am.”
I’m… uh… People don’t take me out in public much. I’m not very nice.
*shakes Brianna’s hand*
Do you know, my little sister’s name is Briana.
When I went from long hair to very short hair, all the women where I worked loved it because short hair does look so much better on me. All the male co-workers and male customers commented long and loud as if I’d cut off a boob or something. “Your hair! What did you do to your hair?!” I started just giving some variation of: “Oh, I know! I woke up this morning and IT WAS JUST GONE!”
Yeah, but you’re funny.
I was talking to my Sister about this post and she had a good one.
She’s a Midwife. And when people ask her what she does she tells them I’m a midwife…
This one woman said: Oh no I meant what do you do for a living.
She replyed, real slow and with small words. I’m. A. Midwife. People. Pay. Me. To. Help. Deliver. Their. Babies.
Still trying to wrap my mind around how this woman thought delivering babies was a hobby.
Miri – I had a midwife at both my deliveries, and each and every time most of the relatives who asked about my delivery said, “And when does the doctor come?”
The could not fathom that, unless there was need for one, there would not have to be a doctor present.
When I left SC to go to college in MA, someone asked me if we had cable down there. I replied that we’d just gotten it but that the pigs tearing up the wires in the yard.
[Grinning with wicked glee into my mocha]
Elizabeth – I *loved* that, thanks for sharing it! I love the smell of Karma in the morning,…
But, these nosy peeps, srsly,… argh.
Isn’t it wonderful that total strangers – who’ve yet to get their own shit together – are so at ease in instructing others how to present themselves?
Third part expectations make me crazy.
I live in New Mexico & it’s amazing how many people don’t know it’s a state. Typical questions: “Do you need a passport?” “Does everyone speak English?” When the Olympics were in Atlanta, people were told from here that they had to go through the international office to get tickets to the games. *sigh* When I point out that NM is the state between Texas & Arizona I get a lot of blank stares.
Several years ago I went to NYC to attend the wedding of my cousin who is something high up in financials and worldbank. It was quite the posh New York Society event. At the rehearsal dinner (at the Union Club) I sat with several MIT graduates. Obviously quite intelligent, they discussed some obtuse engineering problem at length (too much length). Then they politely turned and asked me where I was from. I said, “I live in Missouri.”
To a one they got really quizzical expressions on their faces. One finally said, face clearing, “Oh! That’s the state by Ohio, right?”
Um, sure. Yeah. Right by Ohio, except 600 miles or so leftwards, with Indiana, Illinois, and the Mississippi river between them.
I’ve got family Santa Fe—friends used to ask if I needed any vaccinations to travel there. There was a regular feature in the New Mexico magazine titled, “One of Our Fifty is Missing”—
re: the Olympics in Atlanta—I was living in Atlanta during all of that. Out-of-towners thought they were clever to refer to it as the ‘bubbu-lympics’.
Now I’m in Stumptown, dealing with the poorly informed from elsewhere who believe it’s *always* raining here.
OMG, I don’t know how I forgot this question, I still get it even though I’m nearly 34.
I’m a girl and ‘Randi’ is not a shortened version of anything. It’s my name. So, periodically, I get, “Isn’t that a boy’s name?”
My reply: Do I look like a boy? (I don’t).
Randi – my sister’s name is Ryan, she gets it all the time too. Her middle name is Leigh so when it’s spoken it confuses the hell outta people.
I’m originally from South Africa, so I used to get all the incredibly stupid questions: Did you live in grass huts/wear grass skirts? Were there lions/giraffe/zebra/tigers/kangaroos walking down your streets? I esp. like the tiger and kangaroo part of that questions. Uh, Africa. Not India. Not Australia. And I love calling myself (now that I’m finally a citizen) an African-American!
Angelina,
Ha! My middle name is Lynn…Give your sister a “what’s up” from me.
-Randi Lynn
Jen and CC, I sympathize! I was in NYC back in 1969 on my way to Europe for a study tour. When folks discovered I was from Oklahoma, I was asked if we still had Indian attacks. I’m Chickasaw and Cherokee. I blinked, shook my head and answered quite seriously, “Not since *we* burned down the fort.” I was 16. I just couldn’t help myself.
As for stupid people and the Murrah – I was the first forensic photographer on the scene that morning. The following summer, I was asked to present a class at the International Association of Fire Chiefs, held in Louisville that year. (KY peeps, I’m a Centre College grad so I feel your pain, too!) Some attendees were amazed that we had tall buildings, fire hydrants and running water.
Oh, and Nora? I sooooo want to sit down over coffee with you, dudette! We have so much in common! I actually have worked cattle, bred and trained horses, rodeoed, acted, worked in a stock brokerage house, been an ARFF (airport rescue firefighter), crime analyst and crime scene technical investigator. Oh…and a wife and mother and romance writer (Why yes! I do write REAL books, why do you ask?). We can compare notes! I have a few minutes between 2:00 and 4:00 a.m. on March 15, 2009? Are you free?
When working at the JC Penny catalog desk in the early 90s my best friend and I often put up with rude people about our age, late teens, early 20s but we both have baby faces. She actually had one customer ask if she could speak to someone older to help her with her problem. My friend said of course and found me, who happens to be 8 months older, to handle the customer. The lady was astonished enough that she did not complain again and we finished her transaction up shortly and correctly.
I’ve also answered my own door to the house my husband and I own and had a complete stranger ask if my mother or father were home and could they come to the door. I was 25 at the time. Sigh. I really don’t look that young. Really. I guess its a compliment but it sure is annoying.
By coincidence, a friend just sent me this as an e-mail (he is not the “I” of the story):
As the saying goes…“Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer”………
Yesterday I was at Wal-Mart, buying a large bag of Purina dog chow for Athena the Wonder Dog, and was about to check out.
A woman behind me asked if I had a dog. What did she think I had…..an elephant? So since I’m retired, with little to do, on impulse, I told her that no, I didn’t have a dog, and that I was starting the Purina Diet again. Although I probably shouldn’t, because I’d ended up in the hospital last
time, but that I’d lost 50 pounds before I awakened in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IVs in both arms.
I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Purina nuggets and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry and that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again. (I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story.)
Horrified, she asked if I ended up in intensive care because the dog food
poisoned me. I told her no; I stepped off a curb to sniff an Irish Setter’s ass and a car hit us both.
I thought the guy behind her was going to have a heart attack, he was laughing so hard!
Wal-Mart won’t let me shop there anymore.
SB Sarah, we share a mutual eye roll. When I went to get the pictures of my daughter developed the person behind the counter said, “Boy, they sure you let take the baby home early.” When I said I’d had her at home with a midwife her jaw dropped. “They let you do that?”
What *they*, the pregnancy police?
As for stupid questions…I’ve heard a half dozen duzies while at interviews with my author clients.
“How much money do you make?” Answer: “I’ll tell you if you tell me how much you make. You go first.”
“How do you research your sex scenes?”
Answer: “The same way I research my murder scenes.”
“I don’t read *those* kind of books.”
Answer: (gratis of Debbie Macomber) “What, no pictures?”
“Those books are just all sex, aren’t they?”
Answer: “Don’t you like sex?”
“When are you going to write a real book?”
Answer: “I’m sorry, when are you going to become a real reporter?”
And my favorite…
“Why do you write *those* books?”
Answer: “Because without it bookstores all over the nation would be forced to close since romance outsells everything else. You don’t want me to be responsible for closing bookstores, do you?”
those of you that have mentioned looking young for your age~I feel your pain.
I was CARDED ON MY HONEYMOON at one of the hotels we checked into. Apparently my 24 year old groom looked his age and I looked about 16 (I was 22). *rolls eyes*
About a year later I was substitute teaching in a 6th grade classroom and another teacher came in and said “where’s the teacher?” I was standing right in front of her!
My husband is Kurdish, handsome, and very reserved. We actually had to have a hospital administrator intervene and fire a counselor who absolutely REFUSED to believe he was not Muslim (he was raised Yezidi but practices nothing formally any longer) and was not beating me. She also changed his ethnicity to Arab throughout the meeting we had with her.
Why did she make this assumption? I have a terminal illness (long term). I had extensive bruising on my arms and a broken rib. When I had the rib X-rayed the technician didn’t know my medical history and was concerned because Ahmed lingered around a lot. Bless the tech—she was concerned, and rightly so.
The counselor was told I had a medical situation, even had my own doctor visit and explain the bruises from treatments and blood draws, etc.
She persisted to the point of abuse insisting I was being beaten by my Muslim Arab husband. No matter how many times she was told he was neither, that there were doctors in her own hospital who knew where the bruises came from, she kept at it.
Finally lost her job. Come to find out she also had numerous complaints against her for other things. Still… I get a lot of looks and we hear a lot of ridiculous gossip.
I wish I had some funny anectode to add, but honestly… still festering over that.
And in a wonderful case of kismet, my security word is:
respect24
24/7/365, babies!
Chrissy, That’s awful. Your poor hubby!! I bruise easily (blood clotting disorder) but my hubby has never been accused of beating me. I can’t imagine having to hear people talking and know it’s not true.
I’m glad that administrator was fired! She deserved it.
I get the whole “but you read those books, right? How can you read them?”
me: because I have very specific tastes.
“but they’re so stupid…”
me: not mine.
oh and then the same girl, she’s my friend who lives in California, she will inevitably be doing something for her Creative Writing class and ask me “how do you write your sex scenes? I don’t know if I can…”
which always makes me wonder if she’s ever even imagined having sex with someone much less had it. She does generally come off as a great big prude, but she then will turn around and do something even more perverted than I would generally do. I told her that it doesn’t take a lot to do a sex scene in a story, really. I mean, a good bit of common sense will go a long way with that, I would think.
friend: but I don’t read those books….
me: ……. just…
look, just look at my work and then think about what your characters would do in a similar situation. =w=;;
Look, I’m as perverted as the next person, but it’s also my policy to imagine how characters react to having sex to figure out how to play them in role playing games I do with my other friends. It’s an easy way to come up with a base personality to work from for me and gets some interesting results sometimes. XD But, really! I’ve never in my life seen someone so lacking that they come to ME just because I happen to write sex scenes in my fanfiction.
spamfoiler: faith99 not quite 100% there
Yeah, when I had long hair, this one woman at work would start playing with it if I stood anywhere near her. (Um, inappropriate much?) It got to the point where I would avoid standing near her, and she would actually cross the room in order to mess with my hair. Half the time I’m convinced she forgot the hair was attached to an actual person. It was like I was a walking Barbie doll, or something. Man was that annoying.
I’ve been called tiny (I’m 5’ 4”), anorexic (no) and once I was called “sir” (I had shoulder length hair and was wearing chandelier earrings at the time), but by far the most shocking thing ever said to me came from one of my best friends. One of my brothers had been quite ill for some time and had just been hospitallized after having finally been diagnosed with AIDS. This was some time ago, and the present medication “cocktails” were just being tested. Of course, being quite upset, I forgot I was talking to a recent, and fervent, convert to one of the more fundamentalist Christian sects. First, she asked if he were gay. (Why, were you afraid you might sleep with him by mistake?) Then she said, “I just don’t like those people. I just wish none of those people existed at all.” To which I replied, “Don’t worry, none of them are wasting their time waiting for your approval. And if you’re lucky, my brother won’t be around much longer to make you uncomfortable.” Some of our mutual friends have since come out—a number of them, oddly enough, while sitting on her living room couch, which she and her husband now refer to as the “coming out couch”—and she has mellowed considerably. But it did take me a few years to quit being pissed off at her about that truly idiotic remark.
Dentist gave me facial bruises while removing wisdom teeth, poor hubby got some really nasty looks he totally didn’t deserve.
Snarkhunter…feel no guilt, it’s your hair wear it any way you want. Besides, I recently saw a news clip discussing the donation of hair. The restrictions are such that very little of what’s donated is actually accepted. Many women grow for months/years and think they are donating, when actually it is later thrown in the trash or sold elsewhere for non-charity uses.
Also, the people I’ve known who actually needed a wig (chemo)..1) had to purchase their own, and 2) found them uncomfortably hot.
Gemma…I’ve known several people who refuse trips to France due to rudeness.
It’s my understanding that the reason the hair on Western women is unsuitable for wigs is that it’s usually been processed—colored or permed. The preferred hair is Asian, as it’s usually in its natural state and it’s strong. (Of course, I read this decades ago, so it may very well not be true, especially since Asian women now have interest in and access to Western beauty products.)
I believe a number of wigsellers have a donation program for women who have lost hair through chemo; I know Paula Young does.
I used to wear wigs a lot because I inherited the female-pattern baldness gene (damn you, Granny!) and am thinning on top. I wore my hair long so I could pile it up to disguise the fact, or wore a wig. It wasn’t comfortable—I was hard to fit, as I have a large head (all those brains have to fit in)—and in an Arizona summer it was rather like wearing a squirrel on one’s head. Now I have it cut short and tease it for body.
big69 Shouldn’t this be for a cover-snark post?
“It’s my understanding that the reason the hair on Western women is unsuitable for wigs is that it’s usually been processed—colored or permed. That must be why they encourage kids to do this. My friends daughter just donated. She has the most gorgeous THICK hair. It will make a beautiful wig and it hasn’t been processed at all.
I have to own up to being a person who asked a stupid question. When I was getting my Master’s in English, a classmate was discussing how he had dropped out of library school to come over to this program. My reaction: “you need a degree to do that?”
Now what do I do for a living? Yep, I’m a librarian. Go figure.
Question: “What kind of research do you do for your sex scenes?”
My Answer: “I use homeless people as crash test dummies. That way no one misses them if things don’t pan out.”