Hilton Als hates Nathan Lane. And right now you’re probably saying “Who?” To clarify, Hilton Als is one of the theatre critics for The New Yorker. Nathan Lane is the actor, probably best known for playing Max in The Producers and Albert in the movie version of The Birdcage. Lane has also appeared in lots […]
The Kay Manning plagiarism scandal from a few weeks ago (Dear Author describes the debacle here) has revived memories of perhaps the most notorious plagiarism scandal in the romance writing world: the Janet Dailey/Nora Roberts face-off in 1997. For those who need a recap, Roberts sued Dailey for plagiarism after a reader pointed out that […]
Recently Nick Mamatas wrote a nice blog post about advice experienced writers should stop giving inexperienced writers, and the first thing on the list was “Never Give Up.” Mamatas pointed out that some people definitely should give up, and before telling them to waste more time on a fruitless enterprise, writers should perhaps consider the […]
Welcome to Debra Parmley, who’s saving me a lot of time and imagination by interviewing herself. Thanks a lot, Debra! How does it feel when you write? It feels different each time I come to the blank page. In this way, it reminds me of yoga, or dance, for our bodies and spirits can be […]
Romance is written in third person. That’s not an absolute rule, but it’s close enough. Occasionally, an author will be successful with a first person romance—Kristan Higgins has a few, for example—and chick lit is notoriously first person. But what we might call “traditional” romance never ventures far from third personhood. Of course, romance isn’t […]
Like a lot of Web users, I wasn’t all that thrilled by the two solutions to Internet piracy proposed by Congress: SOPA and PIPA. Both would have led to unwarranted shutdowns of innocent sites and both assumed a degree of oversight among site owners (including me) that just doesn’t exist on the Web. But did […]
So I’m reading a recently reissued Jayne Anne Krentz from 1985, The Waiting Game. It has a typical Krentz hero—a solitary alpha, brooding, craggy, withdrawn, who immediately falls hard for the heroine. He recognizes right away that they’re Meant For Each Other and knows he needs to do something to claim her as his. Granted […]
A couple of weeks ago, I did some ruminating on the Secret Baby plot and why it sort of freaks me out. I think one of the reasons that this particular plot is so popular with some romance readers is that it works on the “You’ll be sorry” principle. And the “You’ll be sorry” principle […]
When we Nine Naughty Novelists wrote our first serial parody, The Zillionaire Vampire Cowboy’s Secret Werewolf Babies, we knew we wanted to include the classic “secret baby” plot twist. In fact, we wanted to up the ante by making those secret babies twins (the mother was a werewolf, so multiple births weren’t exactly unheard of). […]
So the hero in my current WIP is from Louisiana. I can hear his voice in my head when I write his dialogue, which is always handy (the voice is sort of based on some Louisianans I’ve known, although the character isn’t). But when it comes to writing that dialogue out, I have some problems. […]
