Thanks to Bitchery reader Lizzie, who forwarded me the following link to a BBC contest: guess the male romance author based on a short excerpt of writing. Yes, one of the six examples is “a rare outing from a male romance author.”
Snort. Because most male authors writing a scene between a male and female protagonist pair who experience sexual and emotional attraction aren’t writing any element of “romance.” That’s a sex scene. Or a unbelievably odd and woodenly dialogued encounter between Dirk Pitt and some chick.
I totally guessed it was extract six, but alas, I was wrong.
W00t! I totally got it right!
It was the author’s hunkalicious picture there in the piece that whispered it in my ear. 🙂
And the most laughable sex scene ever I found in a book written by two guys (I won’t name names, because other than the hilarious attempts at erotica, they are pretty great), after which the female said to the mail “I don’t know whether to kiss you or stab you.” *snerk* After *that* scene, I’d go with stab. 😉
Why don’t guys write more romance? I read one once that curled my toes, and I totally wanted the author by the time I was done. Sigh….
Ye gods, I’m addled today.
“…I ever found WAS IN a book written…”
And that’s MALE, not mail.
I was so wrong. I guessed 3. I guess more men should write romance!
SWAK,
Lucinda
I guessed wrong, too. I generally get annoyed by men writing romance because it’s often characterized as mainstream fiction (i.e. Bridges of Madison County or the movie Legends of the Fall). Then it is wept over as fabulous! Yet, so many good romance writers get overlooked because they are “romance” and therefore not to be taken seriously.
That said, when I read Memoirs of a Geisha, I had to keep checking to make sure that it was a man who’d written it.
I found it relatively easy to guess, given that the text of the excerpt refers to a “girlfriend,” and in this world, it’s more likely that a book protagonist with a (current or former) girlfriend is male than a lesbian (though of course the latter was a possibility). Perhaps assuming a male protagonist was written by a male author isn’t always fair, but in a “guess which one” poll it seemed a good thing to base one’s guess on.
(Sorry if I spoiled it for someone who read the comments before the link!)
I’m a bigot, a sexist piggette, but I make a point of NOT reading romance written by guys. Must have been a bad experience or two in my youth when it seemed that every ‘romance’ written by a guy killed of the heroine at the end and had her acting so ‘unfemale’ that I was shaking my head.
I’ll reconsider, but it’s like pretty ingrained these days. Yes, it’s a bias, it’s bad….it’s me.
My first guess was number five, given that it was told from the man’s point of view. But then I second guessed myself and thought that it couldn’t be that obvious. Should’ve gone with my first guess.
Like Erin, I did the second-guess thing, on the theory that #5 was “too obvious.”
Did anyone else think extract #4 was just plain…BAD? I read that and thought, “Oh, god, I hope he didn’t write that thing!” It sounded exactly like “Joan Wilder”‘s melodramatic voiceover narration at the beginning of Romancing the Stone.
Najida, how do you know you don’t read romance novels written by men? There are several who write under female pseudonyms.
I was totally wrong too. Oh well.
Got it right. It was the last sentence that I thought definitely male.
In terms of men who write books that published for women I always loved Peter O’Donnell’s books as Madeleine Brent. His female characters were always bright and brave without being feisty, spunky or any of those other objectionable traits.
In terms of living authors I think R. Garcia y Robertson does good female characters. I like his War of the Roses time travel books—Knight Errant, Lady Robyn and White Rose so far. I noticed one person on Amazon complaining bitterly that she/he had bought the book because of the hero and then he disappears for long periods of time so for that reason and some others it’s not to the taste of all romance readers. Still a good series.
Golly! I got it right—- (see, there’s a reason I don’t read them!)
I guessed right, but that’s cause #4 reads exactly like so much of the “lad lit” from England that I’ve read.
awww… I like Dirk Pitt adventures.
Ha! My boy loves Dirk Pitt, and I read a book, and I was like, ‘Seriously? All these women are not going to fall at his feet and get in cat fights with each other, a person can’t kill dozen of generic bad guys without any self-reflection, and the SUPRISE ENDING is the dumbest thing I have ever read in the history of the WORLD.’
I guessed it was #5, too, but not because it was from the hero’s POV. There’s enough female authors that write strictly in the male POV (C. Adams and Cathy Clamp come to mind) that it doesn’t make much sense to me.
But the detail of his voice cracking seemed like something many women wouldn’t pay attention to; most women tend to describe stuttering, or the voice breaking off, etc. Certainly it’s not a “rule,” but it was the only thing that struck me as a bit unusual out of all the excerpts.
I don’t have a problem with guys writing romance as long as they realise romance does not equal porn or tragedy. Usually, if it’s published as genre romance, it’s neither; it’s bookstores who decide to shelve literary “love stories” by authors like Nicholas Sparks under romance that, I think, cause a lot of the negative press towards male romance writers.
I totally missed it, but that’s because I would have sworn #1 was Mil Millington. Silly me.
I got it right, I think because it was the hero’s pov in first person. All of the hero’s pov in generic romance are in third person, so it felt a bit like another genre (lad lit, maybe?) Also, the language felt a bit “masculine” with the one-word sentences.