Reader Encounters: Accidentally Hilarious

WTF street signJenny D. wrote me this email a few months ago, and I asked if I could share her story with you because it made me laugh so hard. Sometimes the way in which people who aren't familiar with the romance genre approach it can be unintentionally hilarious. 

I had a hilarious/infuriating romance novel-related interaction today, and needed to share it with someone who would appreciate it. =)

So my eight-and-a-half months pregnant self is waddling through the bookshelves at Goodwill and when I'm browsing the romance section, an older gentleman (mid-sixties, maybe?) stops me. The conversation goes something like this:

“Do you read a lot of romance?”

“Well, yes.”

“Could you recommend some of your favorite authors?”

(Note: At this point, my inner librarian-self is doing an enthusiastic happy dance at the thought of doing a Reader's Advisory interview in Goodwill. It should be noted that my inner librarian-self is not eight-and-a-half months pregnant and so can actually still do a happy dance.)

“Are you interested in reading contemporary romance or historical?”

“Oh, I don't really want to *read* romance. I just want to write one.”

(Note: At this point, I'm working really hard not to raise the Right Eyebrow of Doom. I manage to keep a straight face and say something vaguely encouraging like “Oh” to get more information.)

“Yeah, this Danielle Steel person is REALLY popular and has written lots of books. It can't be very hard. I'm going to figure out the formula and write some myself. If she can do it, so can I.”

(Note: At this point I'm trying to keep the Glare of Death that has been passed down from woman to woman in my family off my face and am struggling to find a reply of any kind, so I go back to the original question.)

“Well… one contemporary author I enjoy is Jennifer Crusie. She started out writing straight romance and then moved more toward romantic suspense, so she's a good example of some variation within the romance genre. And then of course there's Nora Roberts. She's been very popular for a long time and has written in multiple sub-genres.”

“I don't want to read more than two romance novels.” (Here he waves the Danielle Steel book at me.) “And there's only three Danielle Steel books here, and TWO SHELVES of Nora Roberts. Clearly, people don't like or her want to keep her books, so I don't want to read her. But I'll look for this Crusie person. Thanks.”

“Uh-huh…”

And then I walked away fast before I could let him know what I thought his chances of writing a bestselling romance novel without actually reading romance or wanting anything to do with much of the genre… So yes, at once hilarious and infuriating. I'm still shaking my head…

BWAAAHAHAHAHA. 

Snort. 

Have you ever had a funny encounter with a reader who thought they knew all about romance? Share share! 

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Random Musings

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  1. Suzy says:

    When I was a teenager, I had sent to Harlequin for a catalog or some other thing to be mailed to me. When it arrived, my mother gave it to me and was very curious about the contents. I told her it was just a catalog or similar information. She thought I had written a HQ and they had rejected it. It was sweet and funny because #1: she thought I was good enough as a 16 year old to write a book and #2 because she thought that they were stupid enough to reject a book written by her daughter!! (what is even funnier is when she recently saw that I had gotten a book package in the mail from Random House. I had to explain that it was a book I was expecting from the Librarything Early Reviewer program. (did she really think I had written another book?))

    On a different note, my aunt (80+ years old) is downsizing her books and called to ask me how she could sell her complete collection of Betty Neels books. (vintage and reprints). I get a lot of books via paperbackswap and other places, so of course I know exactly where she could sell her books. I had to gently explain that, while there might be someone somewhere who might want her books, I could easily duplicate her collection without much of a problem.  I’ll probably end up buying her books from her and then finding homes for them via the friends of the library booksale.

    (and87: and I have 87 more books to re-read)

  2. SlythDiva says:

    I had a colleague who loves romance novels and when we’d hit that afternoon lull at work (waiting for and greeting parents picking up kids from the afterschool program), we’d chat about our current reads, and give suggestions. Sometimes if it got really slow, the Nooks and Nook apps would come out and we could steal a few pages from our respective books.

    One day as we were discussing, a fellow teacher came up and asked what we were talking about. We answered that we were discussing our current romance novels. She looked at us with this sage expression and almost a conspirator’s wink and said something to the effect of that romance novels make up for not having a boyfriend. Sadly, there’s not way to tell someone who’s just made an insinuation like that that you’ve happily dated and are in love with the same man for the past five years without coming off as a total self-righteous bitch, so she got to walk off like she was so wise and saw right through us…

  3. Gise says:

    Suzy – I would LOVE your Aunt’s collection of Betty Books!!

  4. Jo O says:

    I used to work as a legal assistant and my colleagues and I worked in a large open plan office with the senior and principal solicitors having offices along the sides. Most of us read at lunchtimes and very few of us read the same genre. A new trainee solicitor had developed the habit of asking what someone was reading as an excuse to start a conversation. He was disparaging about my colleague’s science fiction and told him that if he had been a woman he would be reading romance as it was a similar level of mindless crap! The principal solicitor wandered out of her office with her lunch and Mills and Boon and asked the trainee which particular romance he had read which was so poor because she could give him some recommendations. This memory still makes me smile.

  5. Rei Hab says:

    Lara Amber,

    I completely agree; I think the HEA concept has actually become kind of a problem. To add to your points (which I am in accord with): I get escapist fantasy, but I often feel there’s a sort of scripted nature to a lot of category romance endings that means the endings are often very…same-y. It sort of gives off the impression that there is, broadly speaking, only one happy ending that people might dream about or aspire to. You move in, you get married, you probably have children, and if you don’t then you can’t be happy and your romance is not a real romance. Just once I’d like to see a romance where the happy couple settle into a long-distance relationship which they are happy with because it means they’re together but don’t have to compromise anyone’s independence, or decide against having children even though they both can because it isn’t what they want out of life or love, or keep separate bedrooms because they don’t like sharing a bed even with their One True Love. All of these things can be romantic, but I feel like they’re excluded from Romance.

    Back on-topic, I have a friend who likes to refer to romance novels as “granny porn”. I love her very dearly, and someday I will have to kill her.

  6. EmilyAnn says:

    Since there have been lots of references to the “what happens after” I must recommend Making It Last by Ruthie Knox, great real-life follow-up with a lot of the elements of life. The couple’s story originally appears in “How to Misbehave”. Kristen Ashley’s book “Sweet Dreams” also features a couple that in follow-up books have no kids together. They’re a bit older, but it seems like a concioud choice. Eve and Roarke from J.D. Robb’s In Death also have no kids and married for 3-4 years after the series started. Those are just mine but even Happily Ever After’s don’t all look the same. An example of long distance wad Anne Calhoun’s Uncommon Pleasure. The second story he’s in the military and she has family obligations, so they had geographic limitations. I feel that recently with self-publishing and just a plethora of new ideas HEA really has developed into something different sometimes.

  7. Ginny Sherer says:

    @38, Good for you, Valerie!  I think it’s really funny that some of the most prolific and popular authors currently hitting VERY high one the best seller lists started out writing Harlequin/Mills Boone/Silhouette books. 

    I don’t believe many people would refer to Nora Roberts, Jayne Anne Krentz, Janet Dailey (I think the plagiarism allegations were BS. Yeah, the passages were similar but, seriously?) and Iris Johansen as “just romance writers” anymore.

  8. Lostshadows says:

    @47

    anet Dailey (I think the plagiarism allegations were BS.

    According to Wikipedia*, she admitted to plagiarizing,  so probably not BS.

    *With a citation.

  9. DonnaMarie says:

    One more story, and not one where I wanted to stab someone in the eye, just one that still gives me a smile. I had a brilliant friend in high school -the rocket scientist sort, not the shiny kind- who would rib me for my reading material, but would also insist on having me read them aloud. Never derogatory or mean, just the good fun of having someone with good oral (ahem) interp skills read the purple prose wtf wonder of Kathleen Woodiwiss’ “Shana” in the humanties resource center during our break period.  Maybe it’s why I can have a sense of humor about my addiction.  The memory still makes me laugh, and it’s still my favorite Woodiwiss book.

  10. Kim says:

    RE the HEAs: I’m an academic (working on my PhD diss), and I like the HEA—I read romance novels to escape the stuff I work on. But I definitely agree with the children thing. Most of the books I read are regency historicals, so it’s kind of a given that they’re going to have a few kids sooner or later, but does every epilogue have to involve childbirth and babies? Can we just chill out on babies? It gets a little ridiculous when it’s a trilogy or series, and the epilogues are like, “And now there’s TEN BABIES from four different couples, so let’s just run through their names and ages again in case you forgot…”
    Especially with the contemporaries. Isn’t it okay to wait 3, 5, or 10 years after getting married to want a family? Or to adopt? Or to never want kids at all? Do I have to know exactly what hair and eye colors the kids have, which parent each kid takes after, whose grandparents they were each named after, what kindergarten they attend, how much hot sex the happy couple is still constantly having, and on and on…?
    Not that I’m picky. 😉

  11. Rei says:

    Kim: I suppose what bothers me personally about the way most HEAs are written is that yeah, to an extent I read to escape as well, but my daily life is already full of expectations as to how my relationships are going to end up, which for personal reasons is something I’m probably made more aware of than a lot of people. So the archetypal fantasy romantic escape is…actually something I’d sometimes prefer to avoid. I mean, I’m all for marriage and babies and happily ever after; I’d just like it if “happily ever after” could mean something other than “and then they lived in a big house and never ever spent another night apart” sometimes.

  12. SAO says:

    @Julie B:

    I did read one first chapter by someone who wanted to write a romance because she was sure she could write something so much better than the stuff out there (which was of so low quality that she disdained to open a cover or read a blurb).

    There was the standard evil other woman, who used too much hairspray and made catty remarks out of the blue.  The heroine was married, but couldn’t get a divorce because they’d have to sell their house for less than it was worth,  so she had to wait until the market improved to get the divorce. They inherited the house, so there was no underwater mortgage. By the end of C1, the hero hadn’t appeared.  She hadn’t made him up yet.

    I pointed out a few of the expectations of romance readers, like dialogue, which the book was completely lacking in,  but this writer had posted her novel on a blogsite and everyone else in the community (none of whom would be caught dead reading romance and said so)  raved about how much better her oeuvre was than their unfounded preconceptions, so she decided that dialogue was optional and she was on track to hit the ball out of the ballpark. 

    What did the novel in was the need to come up with a hero, which she never quite managed to do and even she figured out that a romance novel needs someone for the MC to have a romance with.

  13. AmandaG says:

    @Lara Amber:
    I can think of two series that I’ve read that include ups and downs for couples that have even had their own books in subsequent books of the series: Suzanne Brockmann’s Trouleshooter series and JR Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood.  The next book in the BDB series will be about the characters in the initial book of the series as they are having some issues.  And stuff.  Or something.  It’s also been years since they were married and don’t have kids.

  14. Christine says:

    I once had a similar conversation with a guy who owns a print shop. But he was actually kind of adorable and actively looking for recommendations of what to read (he was willing to admit that he would need to read a few samples to get a sense of how the genre works). I also recommended Jennifer Crusie. He told me how he and a friend wanted to make some easy money writing a romance novel, but they also wanted it to be sci-fi with aliens and something else—maybe time travel? And definitely hot women in leather toting guns. I suggested that it might be hard to market something like that and he reluctantly seemed to accept that they might need to tone it down a little…

  15. Desiree Holt says:

    OMG! The encounter in Goodwill story is just too hysterical. I nearly fell out of my desk chair laughing. I want someone to show my how to do the eyebrow of doom for e veryone like him.

  16. Lara says:

    My high-school English teacher and I got off on the wrong foot—I was surreptitiously reading a fantasy novel under my desk one week into the school year, and she confiscated it—but later she stopped to talk to me about that author, and we became book-friends. She had a shelf of borrowable paperbacks in her classroom…one of which was a spine-split, coverless copy of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander. Naturally, one day I picked it up and started reading during class. She started toward me, and I held up the book so she could see it. She laughed, shook her head, and said “I suppose I asked for this. Let me know what you think!”

    I credit her with getting me started on Gabaldon, Bujold, Eddings, and a handful of other authors both fantasy and romance. Also, nothing I learned in Health/Sex Ed held a candle to what Jamie and Claire taught me. *grins*

  17. Kim says:

    @Rei :
    oh, agreed. I would love to see more variety! The hyperbolic “forever love” endings all exploding with glitter are so cookie-cutter. Would definitely appreciate more that aren’t, “well, we’ve known each other for a couple of weeks, I guess we’re going to LOVE EACH OTHER FOREVER and we should probably get married immediately” etc. Just being happy for now would be enough for me. Maybe I should just skip the last 2 pages and any epilogues, haha.

  18. Ginny Sherer says:

    @55 Desiree, my son recognizes the eyebrow of doom at 100 paces.

  19. rebeccaj says:

    I can’t blame the guy. Clearly he doesn’t want to muck up his writing brain by READING too much. Proving that while reading may be fundamental, it’s bad for you.

  20. Inez Kelley says:

    I’ve dealt with the “they are so predictable” comments a lot, and normally responded with “Name one murder mystery where the crime are never solved.” That usually just made the questioner walk away.

    I was prepared to answer the same way when a male coworker started asking which was my favorite ‘sexy’ read, complete with a wink. I asked why, did he need a learner’s manual. I got the shock of the day when he replied, yeah. He thought maybe a sexy scene or two could help he and his partner out since they were sort of in a rut.

    Knowing he was gay, I gave him several book titles in the m/m scope and he went crazy excited. He had no idea that there were ‘real books about gay love not just shagging’. Apparently he was only familiar with seedy porn-mag reads. To this day, he still emails me and asks about certain authors and titles. He knows they are mostly written by straight women but according to him, who cares. The stories appeal to the romantic in him and he likes to joke that the tales have 2 dicks, so he’s happy.

  21. Mina says:

    Actually I read a few here and there but I though the Rush book was hilarious also helpful with a few ideas but not my favorite read.

    while at B&N my friend and I were searching for a few books to read cause I love paper when I saw the Rush book on the best sellers rack. I made her read a paragraph and her face turned red and she quickly threw the book back onto the shelf and told me I had a horrible taste in literature if I read books like this. She was soo embarrassed that she avoided me until we stepped back outside.

  22. Mina says:

    @inez
    Oh really? My guys give me the you’ve gotta be kidding me if you want me to read that sap look which is that same doom brow. They’ll watch it but they say they don’t get anything from reading it.

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