Whew, that was a close one! I almost left the house for my weekly therapy appointment without scheduling some links. Have I mentioned yet that I’m moving apartments and my brain is essentially mush? Because I am and it is.
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New to erotica? Want to dip a toe in? Thien-Kim Lam has some great suggestions for getting into the sub-genre. And, even if you’re an erotica fan, you may want to add a few of these titles to your TBR pile.
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A fellow romance reader needs our help! Bonnie is working on a paper about Nora Roberts for a fantasy conference, and has set up a brief, unscientific survey. She’d welcome anyone’s input!
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Please, gaze upon the beauty of wild Icelandic horses. Seriously, these horses are straight out of fantasy novel.
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On behalf of Beverly Jenkins (Queen Bev!), RWA and Avon have announced a grant for underrepresented authors:
The publishing team at Avon Books believes that Beverly’s vision is the future of the Romance genre, and as such, announces they will sponsor a diverse voice entrant in the RITA® and/or Golden Heart® Competitions to attend upcoming RWA conferences. The sponsorship will include registration fee, travel and lodging (up to $2,500). The recipient will also receive a one-on-one meeting with a member of the Avon Books editorial team, plus an invitation to several exclusive Avon events during the annual conference. The imprint has made an initial commitment to support this sponsorship for five years, from 2019 through 2023.
This is fabulous!
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And if you need a laugh, I present to you sex ed questions from elementary school students. Be sure to check out the entire Twitter thread!
https://twitter.com/kimyoogyeom/status/1016764977754005505
Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!
I have mixed feelings about the following video. On the one hand, I’m glad that a subject we’ve been discussing in Romancelandia for years—abduction as romance—is now getting more mainstream attention. But in the other hand, the video’s male narrator gives me “mansplaining” vibes. However, on the third hand (yes, I have three hands), perhaps the people who really need to internalize the idea that abducting a woman does NOT lead her to falling in love with you might not pay much attention to a video narrated by a woman:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t8xL7w1POZ0
Somehow this new kpop interest of mine has led me down a rabbit hole this past week of watching Taemin dance. I haven’t really gotten into Shinee yet, but his solo practices and bits on variety.
https://youtu.be/6MtTdDF16lQ
It’s funny to rethink moments from a show like RM, who love idols, and now have a bit more knowledge of them.
Also, there is a podcast I discovered a couple years ago that has been around for decades. It’s Desert Island Discs. I had listened to it fairly regularly for awhile. It’s an interesting mix if guest and the current host is a good interviewer. Also love her voice. Anyway, it fell off my rotation for a bit but I was thinking about it recently and am happy with the thought of returning to it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qnmr/episodes/player?page=1
I thought this was a cute and VERY brief intro, though I can’t speak to its accuracy on all points don’t @ me please:
https://youtu.be/L0l5yEY_IlY
The series is working through various book genres. It buys into the “this is an embarrassing thing” attitude a bit, and the “readers literally want what’s in the books” attitude, which I think is more YMMV than that…
BUT it also goes into “YAY a genre by, for and about women that makes metric boatloads of money! And cares about what women want!”
I appreciated the rather central shout-out to LGBT romance. Wasn’t expecting that. Their piece on science fiction was pretty inclusive, though, so maybe I should’ve expected it!
So that was cute.
I just found out that Stacey Abrams, who is running for governor of Georgia (and if she wins will be the first African American woman to hold that office) is also a published romance author. She has several books published under the pen name Selena Montgomery, one of them popped up on a sale post at Dear Author this week. How cool is that! I really hope she wins this election and I’m going to buy some of her books!
My brother and SIL adopted two Icelandic horses. I was surprised to learn they are significantly shorter than most horses, about 13-14 hands, which we would think of as ponies. They are definitely beautiful.
Really glad to hear about the grants for underrepresented authors.
Storybrewers Roleplaying has made their Jane Austen tabletop role-playing game Good Society available for preorder: https://storybrewersroleplaying.com/good-society/
The book and the game cards will be available in hardback and in PDF, and if you order now you get a PDF of the Quickstart rules for free. You can also preorder two expanded rulesets: Pride, Prejudice, and Practical Magics; and Sense, Sensibility, and Swordsmanship.
@Failed Indie – I think the most jarring note in the PBS (“It’s Lit!”) romance genre video for me was “There is a still-pervasive attitude that women aren’t really allowed to want sex, and therefore narratives of forced seduction make wanting sex socially acceptable.” Applied to an ’80s or ’90s romance novel, I would nod sagely at that and agree that’s what the narrative was facilitating 30 years ago. But I really, REALLY thought we were beyond that in the twentyteens. I honestly thought I was the most retro romance reader around, still enjoying relatively chaste heroines and alpha heroes and abduction as romance (more on that in a mo), but if denying women’s sexual agency is really still a pervasive attitude FOR ROMANCE READERS…I feel as blindsided as FiveThirtyEight was by the 2016 election results.
@DiscoDollyDeb – thanks for the link to Pop Culture Detective’s deconstruction of abduction as romance. I went from “yes, that is exactly why I refused to watch Passengers” to “No! Don’t take the romance in The Terminator away from me!” (Also, OMG eighties hair.) At first, I soothed myself with the idea that the shift was about nostalgia and maturing perspectives (I’m no longer the kid I was when I watched Terminator…omg, eighties hair), but then I remembered that I really enjoyed Camille Monk’s Spotless, which I read just last summer, so…yeah. #notaswokeasIwanttobe