Dispatch From PLA 2010: What's Love Got To Do With It?

Editors Note: The 13th Annual Public Library Association Conference took place this week at the Portland Convention Center, and this is the second (read the first here, the second here) in a series of dispatches from Reading Local contributor Teresa Bergen on her experiences at PLA 2010.

Romance writing doesn’t get much respect. But a crowd of librarians cheered for the panel of romance genre writers who led a lively and hilarious discussion of their careers.

I don’t know much about romance writing. But I greatly admire writers who work hard, produce, and stick to deadlines. Romance writers are prolific. They remind me of the news writers of the fiction world. They’re assigned a book, they turn it around. None of this languishing, waiting for the muse, taking ten years to finish a single novel.

Luckily, a librarian and romance fan from Michigan sat beside me, took out her knitting needles, and shared a little knowledge. She knew who everybody was. She told me the moderator, John Charles, is a rare male romance novel reviewer. He writes for the Chicago Tribune. “He’s very respectful,” whispered the knitting librarian.

The four writers were: Elizabeth Boyle of Seattle, who stole the show with her big personality and entertaining stories; Niki Burnham of Massachusetts, a lawyer-turned adult and young adult writer; Christina Dodd of Bellingham, seasoned in every romance sub-genre and a true voice of experience with 42 books published; and relative newcomer Elisabeth Naughton of Keizer, Oregon, who writes romantic suspense and paranormal.

The authors agreed they like the happy endings that romance novels deliver. Dodd added, “Watching a man and woman struggle to get together is endlessly entertaining.”

Naughton appreciates the opportunity to write about things she doesn’t get to do in life, like rappelling into a cave to find hidden treasure. “I like to get to experience that in the safety of my own home,” she said.

Boyle, mother of an autistic child, said that at the end of a hard day of kids and lots of laundry, she enjoys reading romances. She thinks they’re good for her love life. “I look at my husband and I don’t see a forty-seven year old engineer,” she said. “I see a duke.”

When questioned about the next big thing in romance, Boyle said, “I’m sure everyone here would agree that if we knew what that is, we wouldn’t tell a soul.”

Dodd said that she expected the paranormal craze to be over eight years ago, but it’s still going on. Burnham said, “I want to see Westerns come back, but apparently I’m in the minority.”

A reader asked if heroines would get older as the population ages. Boyle said that a few years back she proposed a story about a forty-two year old heroine with a forty-six year old leading man. Everyone said it was too old. But once her editors turned forty, Boyle said, suddenly forty-two wasn’t that old after all. She said there’s a split in the audience. A new generation of romance readers is in their twenties, while the other big group is over forty. “The twenty year olds don’t want to read about their moms having sex,” she said. “But the core audience doesn’t want to see eighteen year olds, because that’s their daughters.”

The panelists seemed put off when an audience member asked if romance is porn for women. When people say that, Dodd said, “I write down my IQ and I write down my income, and I ask them if they want to compare.”

A question about cover art also stirred up the panelists. “Don’t go there,” Boyle grimaced. “It’s a bad subject right now.” Then she said she will be posting a book cover on her website for her book coming out in October. Readers can download it to cover the printed cover. “Flock of Seagulls hair,” she said. “On a Regency.”

But Dodd had the best book cover gone awry story. Her book Castles in the Air had a print run of 65,000. Someone walked up to her at a Romance Writers of America conference and said, “Do you realize that your heroine’s got three arms?” Sure enough. She became known as the author with the three-armed heroine. She claims it moved her from a mid-list author to the top.

To make their talk even better, all four authors brought piles of books, which they signed and gave away free to participants after their panel. Ah. A happy ending.

Image credit Photoshop Disasters.