Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

I think I like these changes.

If you look at the reviews in RT Book Reviews, the editors have a section for paranormals, which they review, and then they add a “spicy” rating, telling the readers how much sex is in the book.

RT also has an erotic section.

I write erotic paranormals. Personally, I would like to see my books reviewed in the same section as the paranormals, but I get reviewed in the erotica section. The books in the erotica section include westerns, contemps, suspence, etc. (But no inspirationals!) I imagine its difficult for readers to sift through the information this way.

For me, whether you want to call my March 07 release MOON SHADOW a paranormal versus an erotic romance, is not so important. It doesn’t change the content of my book. But the reviewers call my books “subgenre.” I think I’d rather be considered mainstream. (We all have sex! Well, I hope we all do…)

I plan on entering MOON SHADOW in the RITAS this year. I’m very glad that it will be judged against other paranormals. IMO, the plot is strong and the book can hold its own there. I’m pretty happy with the suggested changes.

I think the gay/lesbian thing might run into the same problem erotica does. If you do gay/lesbian paranormals, do you judge it against g/l contemps? Maybe the authors should simply specify that the sexes (and species?) of the romantic partners does not have to be m/f.

SWAK,
Lucinda

The historical thing is confusing, otherwise I think it’s just dandy grand. Yay RWA!

I don’t understand why there’s a separate inspirational category.  If they’re not creating an erotic category because it’s all about the romance, then why doesn’t the same hold true for inspirational?

I am really unhappy that they removed the novella category. That (imo) was the one place where everyone could really go head to head—the best of the best from across all genres.

And breaking out historicals into time periods just screams RT Awards to me…which are heartily criticized.

Otherwise, thumbs up on the judging changes. Now the problem will be getting enough judges who are willing to judge “that sex stuff”...which could appear in just about any category now.

Another thumbs up on the judging changes.

The historical proposal is NOT OK. What were they smoking when they wrote that? As the proposal stands the vast majority of the historical romances being published (which are Regency-set) would qualify for BOTH categories. Why would they do that?

I’ll admit this is just a knee-jerk sigh of relief for me, but thank GOD they addressed the word count issue.  And that YA is still in there and they reworked the definition.

I’m sure once this bout of the vapors clears, I’ll go back and reread everything else and find something to get annoyed about, but for the moment, I’m pleased.

Back to the salt mines.

What’s up with the dates on historicals, for heaven’s sake.  Are you seriously trying to tell me that medievals don’t count as historical?  Or Jo Beverley’s Georgian series with is before 1790?  Or, say, Lavyrle Spenser’s “Morning Glory” which is set in WWII?  It’s all still historical, people, even if not in a finely defined number of years.  That’s weird.

And if they’re going to separate out Inspirationals, they should separate out erotica AND gay romance, dammit.

I’d love to see the rationale for two historical categories that overlap dates that way.

Or at least one that makes sense . . . (sheesh, read right over that)

OK, so the historicals aren’t going to be separated out according to length at all? Just according to time-period?

So no ‘long’ or ‘short’ historicals, only

(1) Historical of Any Length Covering All of History up to 1820

and (2) Historical of Any Length Covering History from 1790-1945

This presumably means that Harlequin Historicals, for example, will be competing against Single Title Historicals, even though in the contemporary categories shorter and longer books are separated out because the differing lengths mean more or less subplot and complexity. I can see why the RWA want to get rid of a specific category for Short Regency Romances, but why can’t they have a short historical category and a long historical category? It seems to me that it’s the length rather than the time-period which is really important. And does this mean that any book set after 1945 counts as contemporary?

And if they’re going to separate out Inspirationals, they should separate out erotica AND gay romance, dammit.

I’m not sure. I think it’s nice that they’re not making any distinction between books on the basis of ‘heat’ or the gender of the protagonists. Inspirationals are different. In some ways I’d see this as the equivalent of having a separate category for romantic suspense. In both cases there’s not just the romantic relationship, there’s also a very important other element in the plot, which takes up a considerable portion of the novel. In romantic suspense, it’s the mystery/adventure: in inspirationals, ‘the hero and/or heroine must overcome a spiritual obstacle’ (quoting from Brenda Coulter. It doesn’t specify which religion the inspirational has to belong to, so presumably some of the paranormals could be classified as inspirationals e.g. if part of the plot involves the protagonists needing to find out more about wicca, for example, and becoming seriously committed to it.

Can anybody point me at information about how books are entered for the RITAs?  Inquiring minds that might just happen to be writing Elizabethan historical faerie fantasy espionage novels with girl cooties/Strong Romantic Elements all over them want to know, but the RWA website isn’t telling me what I want to know.

I mean, after seeing the RITAs get slagged here, I’m a bit dubious, but depending on the process, I might give it a shot just for the hell of it.

I’m very glad to see that Erotica will now be judged within each book’s genre instead of lumped together. That’s a good move. And I guess I can see why Inspirational is it’s own category.

In a perfect world, same sex Romances should fall right into those new category guidelines, but I think that won’t be happening any time soon. However, I agree that a separate Gay/Lesbian category would open up a whole can of segregation worms.

Now those overlapping historical guidelines? My reaction upon reading them was *blink blink* and that hasn’t changed.

Okay, so I’m incapable of reading properly.  Sorry about the misread on dates. It’s still strange to me that there’s that overlap, though.

Can anybody point me at information about how books are entered for the RITAs?

It works like pretty much every other contest out there. You fill out the form, mail it off with the $, and then send the books. It’s that simple. I think the contest usually opens for submissions in Oct or Nov.

I really hate saying for every category “focus primarily on the hero/heroine relationship”.  I can imagine the judges now—“Well, they wind up together at the end, but there’s WAY too much other stuff.”

Furthermore, this is a back-door way of saying for each novel “Hets only, no three-ways”

In the WTFSTUPIDITY??? section:  So, I can enter my Directoire novel in *both* Best To 1820 *and* Best From 1790????

It was easier understanding Duck Sex.

I really hate saying for every category “focus primarily on the hero/heroine relationship”.  [...] this is a back-door way of saying for each novel “Hets only, no three-ways”

There’s variation in this, though. From what Sarah’s copied of the guidelines for YA, there’s no mention there of hero/heroine, only ‘the love story is an important element of the novel’. Similarly in the Best Historical Romance to 1820 and Best Historical Romance from 1790-1945 categories, the suggested new guidelines read ‘The love story is the main focus of the novel’. Romantic Suspenses are defined as having ‘a suspense plot [which] is blended with a love story, which is the main focus of the novel’, and Paranormal has ‘the love story is the main focus of the novel’. The Romantic Elements has ‘The romance, while not the primary focus of the story, must be an integral and dynamic part of the plot or subplot’ and Best First Book has ‘the love story is the main focus of the novel’.

It seems that it’s only in the 3 Contemporary categories and the Inspirational category that there’s that mention of ‘the hero/heroine relationship’. If all the descriptions were the same, and all read simply ‘the love story’ then that wouldn’t specify gender or the number of participants in ‘the love story’. Certainly it’s a bit odd that there’s this variation between the categories.

In the WTFSTUPIDITY??? section:  So, I can enter my Directoire novel in *both* Best To 1820 *and* Best From 1790????

You’d better believe that the historical writers are plotting and planning a response to this nonsense.

The worst part will be determining where your 1790-1820 book or MS will best fit!

The rationale was “We hoped to allow for the change in popularity of one time period over another by providing overlapping years.” I sussed that to mean if they included Regency-era books in a category, say 1800-1945, that category would be flooded with entries because of the popularity of Regency-based novels. They wanted to split up Regency-based entries by making people pick a category, hoping entries would fall roughly into even piles.

I think it sucks. While I love that they’re finally acknowledging historicals set in the 20th century, the division is entirely arbitrary. A category-length historical—based primarily on the relationship between the H/H, few subplots, no other POVs—will read much differently than a more complex, lengthier single title. My critique circle mostly writes and reads category historicals, and some readers had serious issues about my use of other POVs and longer build-up. HQN constantly tells folks that there is a difference between single title and category books, but this disavows OBVIOUS distinctions.

The contemps are split into three categories, requiring the author to endure varying levels of plot diagnostic gymnastics to determine her category, but the situation is different for historicals? Apparently the only thing that distinguishes one historical from another is its setting, nothing to do with plotting or complexity. Urgh.

Oh, the only consession the board made to the possibility that judges may not wanna read all the sex-type thangs is the inclusion of a return envelope. It’s like a barf bag. If the material makes you wanna barf (too much sex, an accidental gay, a multi-racial relationship that makes ya go ick), you can send it back and refuse to judge it. No, that’s not gonna cause ANY headaches for the coordinators.

Pony up people! Get a backbone! You might enjoy it!

Before people go jumping all over the board for the historical thing, please know they consulted A LOT of historical authors…and these are only recommendations, not the final rules.  The board (of which I am NOT a member) wants to hear from historical authors…all authors, really, who are members of RWA.  If you have a better suggestion, send it in.

Word count just wasn’t a good way to delineate, IMO.  Excluding Harlequin Historicals, are there any truly “short” historicals anymore?  Any truly long?  The days of the 150K epic historical are long gone.  Seems to me one historical category is enough…though I understand why that makes things unweildy.

I think the board has done a great job on their first try.  Yes, it needs tweaking, but that’s what the comment period is for.

So if they’re not explicitly excluding same sex—Alex and I have written something that could be classified as an erotic m/m inspirational romance. (And no, not by cheating and using a non-Christian religion. We wrote a futuristic that simply extrapolated from the Anglican Communion’s current angsting over gay marriage.)

I just dying to see m/m, pagan fit into inspirational. Yes, Jules I am. *L*

Shayne, going by a comment on my post in my LJ about this, you may get your wish. I, on the other hand, would have to write another explicitly Christian m/m so that I’ve got something that’s not disqualified by virtue of publication date.

Oh, do both Jules. Actually, I’m considering dragging Mychael into a *gasp* plot bunny. That damn AK-47 I used on them the last time has apparently NOT worked. Hrmmm.

Which shall it be? Christian, pagan, christian, pagan. A christian and a pagan. By george, I think I got it.

Um, wow.  While I’m happy to see that my single title paranormals would now fit in the Paranormal, Single Title, *and* Inspirational catas (Wicca as a religion), I don’t know how in the heck I’m going to enter my latest with my eye on the prize (and let’s be honest, that’s what you enter the RITAs for).

As the coordinator for the National Readers’ Choice Awards for the last two years, word count was something we were going to address in 2007, so at least we weren’t totally goofy in starting to question that.  Sigh.

Must have more wine and cigars to mull this over.

NO more regencies?? I am sooo sad. truly sad.

Even as a writer of M/M I am not sure it needs a category here.  After all inter-racial etc are also themes that happen to just be a tad less topical right now and if the PTB at RWA really don’t embrace these issues rubbing their noses in it won’t help.  But a bit less “romantic novels which focus almost exclusively on the *hero/heroine* relationship” would help maintain the illusion of inclusivity.

Actually it might be fun to pick a category and enter as many gay, lesbian, trangender, inter-racial, inter-generational, bisexual and just plain kinky book into it as possible.

They separated chain mail from doublets but they still lump galaxies far far away with fantasy worlds and paranormal.
Fuck.
And no room for same sex love?
Fuck again, I exclaim.
On the other hand, I’m happy with the “from sweet to woo-damn hot” love-o-meter.
You can’t win them all.

This is crap.

Why not remove “traditional” from the Regency category and leave it there? Then nobody has to compete against the Regencies except other regencies.

And saying all the books could be very hot is a cop-out. Erotic romances deserve their own categories. The point is that there are judges who will not grade an erorom well. Telling them hot sex is allowed isn’t going to make them mark it any higher.

And haven’t we always said erorom isn’t just regular romance with lots of sex thrown in? So why is it being treated as such in the RITA?

Why does inspie get its own category, then? Isn’t it just romance with lots of religion thrown in? Oh, the religion is supposed to have at least something to do with the plot? Yeah. Same with erorom. So quit pretending erorom isn’t really here to stay, and give us our own categories.

Actually, that thing bothered me so much I actually *did* send an e-mail to RWA. Here’s my suggestion:

Split paranormal from the sff. It should have its own category.

Replace “Science fiction/fantasy/time-travel” with “Speculative Fiction Romance” (this way, it includes even horror, which is lacking right now). SFWA has already had a big discussion a few years back about Speculative Fiction including everyone. I liked it then and I like it now. Plus, if SFWA can’t be looked at for definition and categories, who the hell can?! RWA should go with it.

That’s my two cents. Or is it four since it’s my second post on this?

Speaking as a Harlequin Historical author, I would like to point out very gently that HH are single titles in a series wrapper. It is how they are marketed.
In the marketplace, Harlequin Historicals main competition is from other historical novels. And I do think the very best of Harlequin Historicals can measure up to the competition. Maybe that is arrogant of me, but it is what I truly believe.
HH is used in part to allow authors to develop their readership without worrying as much about net sales. One advantage is that they can take risks on time periods such as Roman and Amanda McCabe’s upcoming Venetians.

Personally I have no problem with the overlapping divisions in the historicals. It will be up to the author to decide, but authors have had to make those decisions before. And at least time period is something that can be easily checked. Length, particularly when using computer count,  is less easy to check.

I am also pleased that the judging is being clarified, and judges are to be told that they are judging against a standard, rather than against their packet of books.

I am also pleased that there is an inspirational catagory because it does mean that people who wish to can opt out of reading those sorts of books. Just as they can opt out of paranormal or historical.

FWIW

Michelle Styles

Mostly, I’m glad I’m not on the board and have no responsibility for figuring this stuff out and trying to make it fair for all involved. I’m not sure it’s possible to please everyone.

I don’t really get the date thing in the historical categories, but see it as more logical than word count.

As for Harlequin Historicals competing with single title historicals, category novels routinely compete against single titles in the Romantic Suspense, Paranormal and First Book arenas.

And I think the board’s trying to open things up for erotic novels (Same sex is likely to take awhile longer) with the revised judging guidelines. In any case, there was an erotic romance in my box this year. It wasn’t a winner for me, but that had to do with a very weak plot, sketchy characterization and the writing itself rather than the sex.

It looks like an improvement to me; there were just too many categories for too few books before, and this looks much more inclusive.  Will be interesting to see sweet traditionals competing against erotica in the same categories, though.

However, I’m still waiting to hear if they’ve lifted the proviso about books being entered in their first year of publication but also being sent in a publisher-produced print copy.  Might not look important but it excluded a helluva lot of small-press e-authors (yes, including me) who found a large gap between first publication and print copies being produced.

But like the Murphy’s, I’m not bitter.

Much.

As for Harlequin Historicals competing with single title historicals, category novels routinely compete against single titles in the Romantic Suspense, Paranormal and First Book arenas.

So is the RWA just making word-count and the number of sub-plots an issue when it comes to contemporaries because that helps divide up the books into more manageable piles? If it’s just about dividing the groups up to get them to a manageable size, that would explain why the historicals are being split into 2 halves along a blurry date line, but it seems inconsistent. Either wordcount matters (in which case the historicals and other categories need to be sorted accordingly) or it doesn’t (in which case the RWA should perhaps think up some other way of splitting up the contemporaries).

And haven’t we always said erorom isn’t just regular romance with lots of sex thrown in? So why is it being treated as such in the RITA?

If the sex in erotic romance is as much of a focus as the adventure/mystery in romantic suspense, or the faith issues in inspirational romances, or the world-building in fantasy and science fiction, then it would make more sense for it to be judged in its own separate category.

And what about historicals? Is the element of historical world-building the equivalent of world-building in fantasy? I suppose it must be, because otherwise, there wouldn’t be much difference between a historical and a contemporary. It’s sort of tricky, though, because you can get ‘light’/‘wallpaper’ historicals and I suspect you can get the equivalent ‘wallpaperishness’ in the other sub-genres too (e.g. paranormals where the vampire or other mythology isn’t really developed). But I doubt dividing up the historicals into ‘wallpaper’ and non-wallpaper’ historicals would be a popular move ;-)

I get the impression that the RWA is having to deal with a mixture of theoretical issues (e.g. what makes one sub-genre distinct from another), craft issues (wordcount and how that affects plot complexity and number of sub-plots), commercial distinctions (how particular books are marketed), moral values and practical issues (e.g. trying to divide things up so that some categories don’t get such a huge volume of submissions that the competition gets unbalanced/unmanageable). No wonder it’s tricky for them.

~So is the RWA just making word-count and the number of sub-plots an issue when it comes to contemporaries because that helps divide up the books into more manageable piles?~

I think the contemps are divided up because there are still boatloads of category lines, and entries. There is only HH (I think) in category historical. But you have all the Harlequin and Silhouette contemp lines.

I do agree the dates are blurry. I don’t understand how they were determined, or why really.

Which is why, again, I’m glad I don’t have to figure this stuff out.

“Ideally, Gay/Lesbian romance SHOULDN’T be an independent category, and shouldn’t have to be in the first place.”

Well at this stage of the game it might focus people on it as simply a category till they “get it” and drop the separation.

After the whole RT thing it would be nice that the RWA use moments like this to focus on defining inclusion.

LOL! Oh who am I kidding.

I’d like an explanation for the overlapping historicals.  I find that confusing.

Otherwise most of this looks like an improvement.

Dumping the Novella??? Umm, why? Anthologies are rather hot right now, especially the mixes of romance and fantasy writers. Plenty of people get a taste a writer that way, as well as it often being used to start off a series in its own right. I just don’t get dumping them.

Glad to see the YA stuff.

The time period thing..whatevah.

No Erotica, but keeping Inspirational (with hot sex..umm, say wha-?)..this makes sense, how?

If Paranormal were split up, as its been suggested many places that it should be, there are a few scifi werewolf/vamp/psy books, what about those books?

Are same sex romance books and authors acceptable to RWA or not? I’m kind of getting mixed messages on that one.

Or is it case of welcome in the door, but if you nominate a book in our awards, our ladies probably won’t want to read your icky stuff?

I’m confused. Does RWA accept gay and lesbian books and authors or not?

Or is it a case of welcome in the door, but if you nominate of your books for our awards, our ladies probably won’t want to read your icky stuff?

Um… ignore one of those, I thought the first didn’t post. Sorry.

You know that somewhere out there is a list of Inspirational readers and writers who are having a major debate and WTHey? reaction to the definition for their category.

I wonder if the bits with the specific term “hero/heroine relationship” were written by one person, and the bits that don’t get that specific were written by someone else. (I also wouldn’t necessarily take it as an exclusion of Teh Gay so much as someone just making a heteronormative assumption because they were in a hurry. Now that y’all have brought the situation to light, it will be interesting to see if the final version allows for gay relationships in all categories…or is worded so as to exclude them in all categories.)

The problem with making specific sub-categories is that you prevent those categories from ever becoming center. Some years the Best Picture should really be some foreign film, or a documentary, but because there are categories for foreign film and documentary, those will never win the BP Oscar.

A more hopeful parallel is in the Best Actor/Actress categories. It was a long series of jumps from Hattie McDaniel to Sidney Poitier to Louis Gossett Jr. , but not too many years from Gossett to Denzel to Cuba Gooding, and it is now unremarkable for an African-American to be nominated for and/or win an Oscar. The question with regard to the RITAs is how long will it take before a romance that doesn’t have a white, hetero couple wins, and how long before such a winner would not be considered unusual.

“Either wordcount matters (in which case the historicals and other categories need to be sorted accordingly) or it doesn’t”

I agree with this. Having looked at the changes my biggest question involves trying to distinguish “short” contemp from “long” contemp by “subplot” and characters.

I thought one of the problems with this year’s RITAs was novels of the same line in two different categories. H/S structurs category lines to be similar.
Blazes should be with Blazes, Desires with Desires. Any non category book - take your pick. But at least with H/S you can say Presents, Desire, Amercian -go here. SRS, Blazes Supers go there.

Because we’re trying to do our best to ompare apples to apples right? If an Intrigue wants to compete in the Rom Suspense - I’m all for it. Other than that the lines need to be clarified as short or long. If not I think this will only open the door for more “gamesman ship”. If you end up with any lines being entered into either category - then there is no point in having a short or long. It should all just be “category” romance.

Steph

“I thought one of the problems with this year’s RITAs was novels of the same line in two different categories. H/S structurs category lines to be similar.  Blazes should be with Blazes, Desires with Desires.”

I don’t think RITAS should be bound by the structure used by category publishers.  I want the judges thinking “Was this the best Romantic Suspense I read last year?” instead of “Was this the best Harlequin-Blaze-like book I read last year?”  If Harlequin winds up (for example) publishing a kickass suspense and a kickass historical in Blaze, they should be judged by the type of book, not by Harlequin’s marketing category.  Otherwise, the RITA has to be constantly rewritten to match the current category lines.

I’m also curious about the “hero/heroine” thing up there.  Will be interesting to see what comes of this, because I’m not a member of RWA currently.

If the material makes you wanna barf (too much sex, an accidental gay, a multi-racial relationship that makes ya go ick), you can send it back and refuse to judge it. Oh gosh, I have one of those coming out! (Forbidden Shores, Oct. 07) and I think it would also qualify as an erotic inspirational since the hero quotes Psalm 102 (and spends a lot of time on his knees).

But aside from incidental pimping, I think, apart from the historical dumbness, the recommendations are certainly better than what we’ve had. I’m disappointed, though, that the recommendations did not openly acknowledge the existence of erotic romance and for some reason the term “extremely hot” makes me snort tea through my nose. What is bizarre, though, is that Harlequin’s stranglehold on the whole short/long contemp categories may well now be challenged by Black Lace and others—and that’s strange bedfellows indeed.

Janet

“I don’t think RITAS should be bound by the structure used by category publishers.  I want the judges thinking “Was this the best Romantic Suspense I read last year?” instead of “Was this the best Harlequin-Blaze-like book I read last year?””

I don’t have a problem with that either if category chooses to run in either the paranormal, or suspense categories.
My question is - and not to pick on Blaze or any one line is - if we end up with Blazes in both the “short” and “long” categories - that seems strange to me. How is a line that is structured to be similar in style - considered both Long and Short? I get what happened this year with the word count issue - but going forward I thought these changes would address this. Instead I think it’s only going to make it worse.

We’re leaving it up to the author to decide - how complex she/he thinks it is - and I don’t think it’s necessary.

A simple line drawn between the category lines indicating you guys are short - you guys are long would make things simpler.

The point of having two categories is so that books can be “grouped” as fairly as possible so that we’re comparing like books to one another.

If short and long turn into a mishmash of Blazes SRS Intrigue SSE (all those lines that can possibly straddle the fence) then what’s the point of a short vs. long?

Steph

My question is - and not to pick on Blaze or any one line is - if we end up with Blazes in both the “short” and “long” categories - that seems strange to me.

What happens is authors enter based on heir manuscript / computer word count, and not the designations of the lines as set out by Harlequin.  Blaze is currently 60K - 65K, but in the past I think the guidelines stated 70K.  That meant some authors would have computer word counts of say 71K and some 69K, which put some in short and some in long.

Sensuous Inspirational—just had to comment here.  Remember my book that you reviewed ages back—White Tigress?  It IS a faith based journey of a TANTRIC.  I struggled and struggled with what category to enter it into.  Honestly, it was SUPPOSED to go into inspirational, but I just couldn’t believe that anyone judging that category would roll with the SEX AS A WAY TO HEAVEN concept.  I know others who have considered entering Wicken-faith based books into inspirational.  So…under these new guidelines, would I now enter my newest Tigress books in inspirational?  They do say the books can be very hot.  But still…I just can’t see someone who signs up to judge inspirational as flowing with tantrism as a viable faith.

So…do you think I’m misjudging the judges?

Jade, I don’t think you’re misjudging the judges at all.  For the foreseeable future,  regardless of the contest category definition, people who gravitate to inspie will still be thinking “Christian.” 

Deciding which category to enter involves gaming the system a bit.  I entered Strong Romantic Elements based on the category definition (mine’s a fantasy first and a romance second).  I had to balance the risk of getting an SRE judge who doesn’t like paranormals vs. the risk of a Paranormal Romance judge who wants the romance as the main plot.

It’s largely a crapshoot, and all we can do is try to find a friendly croupier.  (OK, maybe that metaphor got a bit stretched.)

“What happens is authors enter based on heir manuscript / computer word count, and not the designations of the lines as set out by Harlequin.”

I understand that that’s what happened this year when H/S changed from the “estimated” count to actual computer count. That’s why I think doing away with the word count language works fine.

Because you can’t tell me that based on the intent of separating the categories so that as much as possible books are being judged fairly against one another - that a 1000 words makes the difference between a story being ‘long’ verses ‘short’.

However, my problem with using the “complexity” argument is going to be the author who says - well I wrote SRS - but didn’t have a subplot - so I’m short. But my word count is 66,000 so maybe I’m long? It’s too arbitrary.

If we define which lines go into which categories - then we know at least that all books in the line are competing against one another - UNLESS the author chooses to compete agianst ST books in the specifc paranormal/suspense lines.

If we leave it as it is now - there will be more cross entry not less. And if that’s the case - and all the lines may or may not fit into either category - then I don’t think there is a point to having two.

Stephanie

Oh, I’m not arguing one way or the other, just explaining how books from one series line could end up in two different categories.

If we define which lines go into which categories - then we know at least that all books in the line are competing against one another

Remember, tho, that not all books entered are category romances from HQ/Silh.  There are books from Avalon, for example, or other small presses that are RWA recognized and put out print books in time to meet the deadlines, etc. Some of those run around 50K words or so, and will be single title releases, but will only fit in the short contemporary category.

Thanks for the informative post! I wonder about the YA category changes. I was hoping to see them address the exception to verse novels. Perhaps I missed it, becaues I think there used to be a stated exception—although exception aside, the 25,000 word count being raised to 40,000 may cut them out nevertheless.

Isn’t that *special!*  Those clever ladies—they found a way to weed out all those nasty erotic books and the eviyal same-sex ones at the same time… while appearing to be inclusive.  Let everybody enter the regular categories, and then eliminate anything that they don’t like.  Like the RT review policy—‘our readers’ don’t want that, ‘our judges’ won’t read it, “someone” complained that it was icky… I don’t think putting erotic romance in with the fade-to-black is doing erotica any favors.

And “Inspirational”—Code for “Fundamentalist Protestant…”  Feh. I’d love to see them inundated with Wiccan, Tantric, Buddhist, Native American—or even “with my body I thee worship” but odds are it would be a waste of the contestant’s entry fee.

Are writers really going to buy into this?

Anyone care to start a pool on how many erotic books even make it to the finalist level?  Some, I’m sure—it would look funny otherwise—but how about the winners’ circle?  How many same-sex books will be washed out by the ‘hero-heroine’ clause?  Not that I have any books to enter (or would enter them if I did) but if they take out the boy-girl cause in the final wording I’ll be astonished.

I’ll bet the phrasing in the YA categories is simply irrelevant—can you see the ‘inspirational’ faction allowing a teenage gay romance within spitting distance?  Horrors.  Better to see gay teenagers committing suicide at several times the average rate than give them something to dream on.

I suppose it’s the old ‘the game may be rigged, but it’s the only game in town.’  I’m glad I have no temptation to even walk into the casino.

Since those of us on the RITA/GH committee have been given the green light to talk about the work we did, I will say right now that although the decision wasn’t unanimous, the vast majority of us on that committee did vote to establish a new ER category for both the GH and RITA.

i don’t get to spend as much time here as i’d like—here being both SBTB and the romance world in general—so this is an issue that may not fit best here, but what the heck, this is an old post so no one will see my comments, right? when i submitted my first (whee!) novel to an agent, they said that (besides the um, bad first novel writing stuff) gay best friends were overdone in romance land, and i’d have to rewrite him and his love interest to get it published. now i’m curious if i should have marketed it as gay/lesbian, even though the primary love interest is mainstream/heterosexual? *are* there a surfeit of gay/lesbian best friends in contemporary books that i missed while i was locked in my garret writing? i plan on starting novel #2.5 once adored but demanding toddler starts nursery school this fall. my goal is to write a publishable (heck, a movie rights sellable) romance. but i don’t want to cut off 10% of the reading public. any readers (still reading this overlong post) want to reassure me to stick to my guns and write about all sorts of love? or not?

Someone saw your comment—me!  It used to be one of the “definitions” of chick lit was that the heroine had a gay best friend.  Shows how hip your heroine is.  Now that Chick-Lit is a dying/dead genre, that convention has gone away and is actually very cliche.  And as for making it a gay/lesbian novel, not if the main couple is heterosexual.

I know it sucks, but lots of us have bad to okay books under our beds.  Go on to the next book as soon as nursery school starts.  you may be able to resurrect this book later, but for now…go on.  Write something new.  That’s my advice for what it’s worth.