Hello Again
You knew what you were signing up for
Ok. Hi. Welcome to the new era of my newsletter, Chaotic Missives. For those of you just joining, welcome to the fray, for those who came over from the very brief Mail Chimp days, I know I owe you a part 2 of Rom-Com thoughts, but I needed to pop on to do an email about upcoming podcasts, and thought that I’d share a few thoughts on the latest tussle on the slowly dying bird app.
But first some podcast business…
The next episode of Romance Ever After will be out this coming Sunday. It’s a fun episode on one of my fave romantic comedies, Only You. This is another episode from the vault, so I’m trying to weed out some of the more dated references. Hopefully you’ll have as much fun listening as we did recording. It should be posted in all the usual places, but also here!
Live Episodes
Starting in the new year I will be opening my schedule up for live episodes on my YouTube channel that will eventually be distributed as audio. If you’ve submitted a guest interest form before and I haven’t reached out to you, I will be over the next month.
Coming Collaborations
If you didn’t know I’m card-carrying Jennifer Crusie fangirl, and one of my fellow fangirls, Sarah Adler (Mrs. Nash’s Ashes, Berkley 5/23/23), and I will be putting our heads together for a little something discussing her books and her craft. Stay tuned for that.
Did you miss this?
I tweeted out that I wanted to do a cover reveal and the darling Chloe Angyal said, “Say less.” Here’s my tweet:
If you’d like me to do your cover real, just hit up the contact form on my site.
And now…
A Bunch of Rambling Thoughts on Definitions, Marketing, and Expectations
I want to talk about the ways in which we think about Romance as readers, writers, and academics.
Definitions
A few years back, I think sometime during the great Christmas Eve Eve RWA implosion, I stumbled into a conversation with Laura Vivanco and was joined by Steve Ammidown about defining Romance. The main consensus that was reached was that from an academic perspective, you shouldn’t try to pin down the definition of Romance because of the fact that it's always evolving, and frankly fair. From a pure study point of view, story and trends are always evolving. Twenty years ago (god I can’t believe I’m typing that) was the rise of e-pubs and some terrible BDSM rep and explicit sex in books in a way people weren’t necessarily finding in traditionally published books. And over the years other trends have come and gone. Marginalized identities have gained better rep (we’re not settling for any rep any more folks), the average length has changed, covers go through phases, and even the handling of pen names. Things change.
So when we’re looking at things from an academic perspective, at the 6000 ft view, with all the hindsight that time and space can give us, yes. We should not rely on definitions.
Marketing
I think, and this is at the crux of pt 2 of “We Need to Talk About Rom-Coms,” because at the end of the day marketing is what gets everyone and their mama into trouble. It’s my biggest gripe with movies calling everything and their mama a fucking Rom-Com. Babes, kissing and a couple of jokes does not make something a Rom-Com, and the same applies to books.
I think a lot of where we get into trouble these days is that marketing doesn’t always line up with readers expectations. We keep saying define and conventions, but truly when we’re actively looking at where the rubber is meeting the road it’s down to how books are marketed. Covers, blurbs, an over-reliance on tropes and ships, and other things that annoy the fuck out of random readers on various platforms is selling the parts that readers might be interested in, but is it selling the experience they’re looking for?
For a really long time, readers looked to the clues in covers and a back cover blurb to give them an idea of what to expect. During the rise of ebooks, it was being able to sort by category, and now with publishers handing over so many marketing responsibilities to the authors themselves, it’s social media, often trends, that authors are following. At some point a few years ago, some readers voiced that they liked the idea of AO3 tagging in order to help them figure out if they want to read the book. Marketing vibes, as the kids say, and some authors get this and do it well, but somewhere along the way that intention got stripped away and so many people seem to take it as here’s a checklist of what’s contained in the book, and since I’ve included some kissing and they’re enemies to lovers and two people end up together, I can call it a Romance™, but that is not enough.
Readers of Romance are typically looking for the experience that they’re signing up for, so when they’re faced with a story that is 75% someone’s job, 15% daddy issues, 5% friends, 2% kissing, and 1% fucking, and they haven’t been prepared for it, they are surprised and angry. For more on this “We Need to Talk About Rom-Coms Pt 2”...whenever that comes.
Expectations
The final part here is expectations. Particularly those of readers and how that ties into marketing and definitions.
In the US we’ve made it clear to readers that they can expect a Happily Ever After or a Happy For Now from a Romance™ and many readers have taken to that mean certain things to them in particular, but the clear thing is whomever the story chooses to center, whose ever story it is, that’s whose Romance we’re telling, who deserves the romantic HEA. That’s the contract between reader and author.
Now as I said, the HEA can mean many things to different people. For some people it’s marriage and babies, for some it’s moving in together, and in the case of one of my favorite Rom-Com movies, it means dancing your new steps with your chosen partner in front of everyone at the Pan Pacifics. Whatever shape your HEA takes, it looks like the central characters’ romantic relationship moving forward together in life. That’s all that it matters. And it is the writer’s job to provide an ending that makes the reader feel that conclusion in a positive way.
However, it is the reader’s job to evaluate the HEA on its own merits and not on what they wished it would be. I deeply adore Kelly Bowen’s A Season for Scandal series. I also am feral for an epilogue that features marriage and babies and grandkids and walking off into the sun because I enjoy that. You know what those Kelly Bowen books don’t have? Epilogues. Hell, they barely have a scene beyond the HEA. Frustrates me to no end, but I don’t ding those books because it doesn’t give me the kind of ending I want. Every ending in each of those books are perfect for the couples in those books (and yeah I do love that we get a glimpse of those characters in future books, but every glimpse is a gift to me as a reader). The stories themselves stand as they are. Their HEAs are satisfying for their stories.
TLDR
Anyways, definitions are for historians, marketing is for contemporary, and as long as the author is upfront about the experience and sticks to the contract, readers should reign in their expectations and just enjoy the ride.
One Last Thing…
Today is World AIDS Day. I don’t talk about this a lot— not because I’m ashamed but because after 20-plus years it still hurts— but I lost someone very dear to me as a child from AIDS. And while death always hurts, it was watching the disease take him away from me, ravaging someone I loved, that lives in my mind daily. I truly hope that we can see a cure in my lifetime. Until then, we have to make treatment equal an accessible for all.
Thanks for reading this far! Until next time.
xoxo,
Allie, the Sociological Brigadoon
