Xandra Gregory

Valentine’s Day being what it is, it’s not surprising that Romancelandia rolls out the pink and red carpet for it. This year, having sick kids and a sick Mr. Xandra led me to be around for participation at least part of the day in the festivities.

Now…I do try to participate in some things here and there. I’ve been known to get into web-based discussions or email loop chats about one thing or another. But I am not by nature a very peppy person, and if there’s one thing they give you when you get that “OMG I sold a book, now WTF do I do?” it’s the feeling that you absolutely, positively need to become Pollyanna in public. Okay, there really is no “they” and there’s no hit squad that will hunt you down for wearing the crankypants every so often, but if you do happen to be around the Romancelandia side of the internets, there are some pretty memorable examples of what happens when Authors Behave Badly that will convince you that if you can’t say something nice, keep your mouth shut and your fingers off the keyboard. And if you can say something nice, better to leave the keyboard anyway, just in case it wasn’t nice enough. To be honest, it’s not that far off the mark. Being kind and polite to people keeps things civilized, and heaven knows the internets are full enough of populated troll-pastures.

But I also have to be honest in saying that I have a pretty low fill-requirement for the tried-and-tested fare found on many Romancelandia menus. Not that I don’t appreciate the hunks, and the squeeing, and the dirty jokes (because I do–I’ll take a Double-entendre shot of Freudian slip with my coffee every chance I get), but I find myself gravitating towards parts of Romancelandia where the washboard abs and kinky humor are served with a hearty helping of more serious discussion.

Now don’t get me wrong–I love giggling over over-the-top erotica as much as I love writing it (and giggling when I’m doing it), but I refuse to believe that we’re all reading and writing romance, erotica, and erotic romance in a literary vacuum. I know I’m not just writing to titillate. I’m putting some heart and soul and gray matter into it, too, and I’d bet good money that readers are putting a nice hunk of their own gray matter into thinking about what the authors are writing about. And I’m sure we can discuss that while remaining civilized, and without losing our enthusiasm for the genre.

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This entry was posted by Xandra on Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 7:05 pm and is filed under An Author's Life, Deep Thoughts, Xandra. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.