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It’s The Book, Stupid!: Twitter Dos and Don’ts

Aug 17

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging | 19 Comments

A guest post by @JanetNorCal

I’ve been thinking a lot about James Carville and his motto when he was helping Bill Clinton get elected (and I know this dates me): “It’s the economy, stupid”. Ultimately an author’s books trump any and all social media.  You may love the author on Twitter, but DNF her books. You may hate the views she shares on her blog, but love her books. The bottom line is: “are her books worth reading?”

Obviously this is the merest scratch of the surface and it’s just my opinion. Many an online friend feels very differently. Without further ado, my thoughts today!

Do:


a) Share your opinions and expertise and let us know a bit of what’s behind the curtain.

b) Talk about the life of an author. I’ve read authors say I’m agonizing over which computer to buy or I’m tracking down the perfect pair of shoes before a book signing.

c) Be equally friendly to everyone, as much as you’re able. Try to exude an air of approachability.

d) Join the conversation whether it’s reality TV or a new movie or whatever is trending (just keep spoilers in mind).

e) Share your life in pictures sometimes: a great sunset, your new pet, super muffins … and make your twitter background personal and give us a glimpse into your world.

f) Have fun with twitter: make me forget you’re marketing.

g) Social media is rough and ready and no one’s grading your spelling and/or grammar. If your words are too slick, mannered or Haiku*esque, they won’t sound authentic.


Don’t:

a) Don’t constantly retweet your author (or blogger) friend’s request to get to 1,000 or 2,500 or whatever followers. So sick of those!

b) Retweeting retweeting starts to feel like spam when it’s all book and author related, again, especially if it’s your friends. If I wanted to follow them on twitter, I would.

c) WIP. Once in a while fine, all the live-long day, nope.

d) Reconsider being really really snarky and potty-mouthed. Occasionally, fine, but a steady diet of that impresses me not.

e) Don’t rip other authors a new one – this is a very subjective comment because who am I to say what anyone should say about their fellows. I can only say that even the appearance of piling on can be rather off-putting

f) When authors wear a number of different hats and share their expertise I wonder if I’m hearing from the former principal or the best seller or the hog farmer – for me it can be heavy-handed.

g) Probably no need to mention this but just in case: do not reveal plot spoilers when you have access to ARCs


If the metaphor of twitter and Facebook as the communal water cooler is a valid one, then perhaps the difference is that everything online is public rather than ephemeral. Even if one deletes a regrettable post, there’s often a record after the fact. The words of Henry Ford, quite possibly apocryphal, keep running through my head: “Never complain, never explain”. If you comment on a review that is unfortunate, if you enter into a very volatile discussion, if you talk about personal matters, you run the risk of having your words misconstrued or getting involved in a morass of back and forth that can be ultimately very unpleasant. Ultimately, it’s all a crap shoot.

Thanks Jessica, for letting me have the floor. Which is now open.

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Blogversary Contest (with stat reveal for the curious or bored)

Aug 3

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing | 45 Comments

I started blogging two years ago today. Back then, this blog was called Racy Romance Reviews, and my header looked like this:

In February, I took a risk by changing the blog name and URL. I forgot to forward the old links, and there was about a week of dead air. Eventually, everybody who wanted to do so found this blog again, and things were going swimmingly, until a hacker attacked. It took about three weeks to get that straightened out. So I would say this second year has been more frustrating in terms of the technology of blogging.

Interestingly, the name change has helped this blog get on the radar of some lit blogs. I think there should be more cross fertilization between genre and literary circles, so I am pleased about that.

I also “came out”, both to readers of this blog and to my friends and colleagues at home. That was a great decision, relieving some stress at being “found out”, and helping me to act on line consistently with how I act in the real world. That is, like a complete asshole. Kidding!

Everything else, though, has been great. Mostly, I do the same things I have always done — some reviews, occasionally snarky ones, some reflections on genre, and some analysis of more scholarly stuff. I added a regular feature, the Monday Morning Stepback, which has been very popular.

The blog has grown steadily in terms of readership, which is very gratifying. But the main thing is that the people whom I enjoy and admire online (whether they have their own blogs, just hang out on twitter, or make great comments on others’ blogs) read this blog.

Here are some numbers:

Total page views: 297,732

Total number of visitors: 165,353

Number of posts: 404 (about 3.5 a week)

Number of comments: 7029

Most popular post: It will forever be one of my first posts, Top 9 Most Romantic Love Scenes in Romance (13,348 views). A distant second is not a post, but a page, Reviews A-Z, with 3,666 views.

Subscribers:  550

According to Sitemeter, my average daily visitors is 300, with about 500 page views on an average day. Someone told me this number does not include the people who view this blog in a reader. I post about 3-4 times a week, so obviously, I get fewer hits on the days there is no new post.  I tend to get the highest number of visitors and page views on Monday, and then it kind of drifts downward until the weekend. Clearly, I am doing my part to make the work week less productive for a number of people.

People still find this blog by Googling weird things like “iCarly penis” and “penis pepper”, but the most popular search term is now “read react review”, which is a change from last year.

I blog for fun, for amusement, for relaxation, for a better understanding of what I read, and for making connections with other readers. This second year of blogging has provided all of that and more. I’m still having a great time in my little corner of blogland, and hope to keep it up for a third year.

To thank you, I am having my annual blogversary contest. Enter by midnight EST Sunday just by commenting on this post, and I will use random.org to pick a winner, to whom I will send any two books I have reviewed (paper only, and they have to be in print!) which she (or he) chooses. Enter only once. Open worldwide.

We’re all so busy — or at least it seems that way –  and I’m extremely grateful you take time to come over here and read what I’ve written when there are a million other things clamoring for attention.

Thanks again.

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Ethics and Professionalism and Blogging

Jun 19

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging, Ethics | 14 Comments

Can I write a blog post about a conference I didn’t attend? Watch me.

The first Book Blogger Conference, a one day gig, happened a few weeks ago in New York, just after BookExpoAmerica. I want to start by saying how impressive it is to me that some book bloggers would get together and do what they did.

On the agenda, there were two speakers, in addition to a number of panels. One of those was Ron Hogan, who spoke on Ethics and Professionalism in Blogging. I was really interested in his talk, so I watched the video. I offer a summary and commentary below. Let me say for the record that I love the fact that this talk was invited, that the organizers made room on a crowded schedule for ethics, and that Hogan had a number of things to say that are interesting, important, and worth hearing. I offer disagreements and critical remarks below, because that’s how I engage with things that interest me. That’s what philosophers do. It’s not an indication of lack of respect or appreciation: quite the opposite. If the talk sucked, I wouldn’t bother with this post. I have better things to do, and so do you.

Moving on … according to his bio, Hogan

helped create the literary Internet by launching Beatrice.com in 1995. In 2010, after writing about the business side of publishing as a senior editor for GalleyCat for several years, he briefly served as the director of e-marketing strategy for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

I confess that I had never heard of Hogan prior to checking out the BBC agenda. In case any of you are in a similar boat, this piece is a nice introduction to his interests, skills, and achievements.

Anyway, here is a summary of the talk, with commentary. I did my best to be accurate, but I may have gotten something wrong. If I need to be corrected, feel free to do so.

Hogan starts out by distinguishing what professional literary critics do from what the book bloggers in the audience do:

Of course you don’t live up to the standards it sets for itself because you are doing something completely different and there are so many other ways to talk about a book than an analytical review. And many of you are doing that. You show enthusiasm. You do interviews. You contextualize things through biographical reflection. You do personal reflection, getting very specific about what a book means to you, rather than an attempt an objective analysis of it.

[It's probably true that a lot of bloggers don't strive for objectivity, but I think they achieve it, or come as close to it as any pro. Otherwise, how do we explain the common practice of declining to review certain books, i.e. books written by friends or crit partners, or books for which a reviewer has served a beta reader? How do we explain disclaimers within reviews to the effect that "this is not a type of book I normally read", etc.? To my mind, all of those are objectivity-enhancing practices.

It's true, absolutely, that book bloggers are more likely to talk about personal experiences with a book -- the way it felt to read it, especially. But to my mind, this doesn't detract from the potential of objectivity. It's also something pros do, albeit in a less explicit way. When Larry Doyle reviews Elliot Alagash: A Novel by Simon Rich in the NYTRB, calls it "funny" and recounts the "nasty pleasures" it provides, does anyone think he is measuring the novel against an objective (i.e. has-nothing-to-do-with-Larry-Doyle's-subjective-preferences) standard of "humor" and "pleasure"? Or, to take another random example, when the LRB's Nicholas Spice says of Phillip Roth's Everyman, that it is "disagreeable", or that its formal intricacy is "the most interesting thing about it", I have to ask "disagreeable and interesting to whom"?

Doyle and Spice compare the subjects of their reviews with other books in the author's oeuvre, and with similar books published before or since. So maybe it's their knowledge of their subject that sets them apart? Um, no. In my websurfing, good genre fiction bloggers do the exact same thing ("This Nora Roberts is a bit steamier than her usual"; "I think we have seen this hero before in an earlier Julia Quinn novel; "With this book, J. R. Ward has moved from romance into urban fantasy" etc.). There are differences, but I think they are mainly stylistic, and of degree rather than kind. I also think they have more to do with the self-image and goals of the reviewer than content of the reviews.

Hogan began his talk by saying that the "war between the bloggers and professional reviewers is over, and that the bloggers won." But I wonder how it's a "win" if they are not even playing the same game?]

Hogan then defines what “professional” means for this group:

“Professional” for most of you is not about drawing a paycheck or commission or freelance sort of thing. That’s not what professionalism is to you. It is about living up to a certain standard of excellence or a certain standard of performance.

[I appreciate, from personal experience, how hard it is to talk to a diverse group of people. There is no way anyone could address all of the different interests of the audience in one talk. But I just want to point out -- and I am not saying that Hogan, of all people, doesn't know this --  that many book bloggers are, or hope to be, professionals in the sense of earning money and making a living: some are aspiring authors, editors, publishers, or marketers, and some are aspiring to -- and do -- earn a living directly from their blogs.  So, I think it's worth noting that many of these "amateur" bloggers have complex and intricate relations with commercial interests -- which serve their own economic interests --  from taking ARCs to serving as stops on publicity tours to joining with bookstores to ad revenue, Amazon vine, you name it. Finally, even those who book blog "for fun" are often contributing in some way to their family's finances, even if it's just saving money on purchased books. No, not a profession, but not somehow outside our economic system either. If you can hear the grinding of a feminist axe, you have good ears. I'm a little sensitive about this because economic history is littered with descriptions of the public sphere that describe anything women do as non-public, non-commercial, non-political, etc.]

Hogan then adapts Seth Godin’s techniques for making yourself indispensable to your employer. Godin, also a new name to me, and again from his bio, is the “author of the most popular marketing blog in the world”, and “of the bestselling marketing books of the last decade”.

[I confess I was skeptical right away. How do we get from professionalism to marketing? Hogan has just told us that book bloggers aren't interested in professionalism in the usual (paycheck earning) sense, but rather in the sense of a standard of excellence. So it feels like a bit of a nonsequitur to hand the talk over to a guy known for helping people sell things, especially themselves.]

Hogan relies mainly on Godin’s book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? (Review here). He says,

I am going to jump off from the specific qualities that he talks about and tinker a bit with the qualities that he raises … and we’ll talk about them in our kind of environment.

So, here are the 7 qualities for making yourself indispensable to your employer or — in the case at hand — your blogging audience:

1. Providing a unique interface between members of the organization — what is it that binds you and your readers? What is the passion that you share? The book and authors that you love, and the ways that you love them. Each of you must identify that quality for yourself, for your blog, and for your audience in your own unique way.

2. Delivering a unique creativity — what makes your blog stand out?

3. Managing a situation or organization of deep complexity — there are so many books published, no one can cover it all. “What are you zoomed in on and bringing to people’s attention?”

4. Leading customers — “Where are you pointing your readers? …  You have a mission or point, whatever that is. What is it? What will result from the conversation you are starting?”

5. Inspiring staff — you are inspiring readers simply by being out there. What are you inspiring them to do? It is an ongoing movement. Where is it headed?

6. Possessing Deep Domain Knowledge — Do you know the territory? — You are an expert of some kind, even if it is only in the field of “books I love.”

7. Possessing a unique talent — What perspective do you bring? What do you have to say about those books that will draw people back to your site day after day?

So those are sort of the professional standards, and professionalism meaning standard of performance, the kinds of things that you might want to try to live up to as you are sitting there at the keyboard. Not necessarily in a very conscious way, but simply as things that would inform your actions on a very organic level.

[Contrary to my initial skepticism, I liked the adaptation Godin's qualities to blogging, and Hogan's questions were thought provoking for me, especially #5. On the other hand, I'm not seeing the connection between these 7 qualities and "professionalism". Godin's idea was to provide ways for employees to make themselves  indispensable so they don't lose their jobs. When I think of a "standard of excellence" for book bloggers, I think of different things. Qualities like honesty, diplomacy, sanguinity, and reliability, for example, and specific comprehension, communication, writing, and technological skills. But maybe that's just me.]

Hogan moves from here to the next segment of his talk:

So the ethical part of the conversation is that just as you shouldn’t accept somebody else’s standard of professionalism willy nilly, you shouldn’t necessarily allow book critics or professional journalists to impose their standard of ethics on you because their standard of ethics is not necessarily applicable to what you do. It’s applicable to what they do, and it’s created specifically to respond to their circumstances … but it’s not your set of circumstances and, you know, frankly, why would you need to declare a code of ethics?

Hogan says that bloggers don’t need a code of ethics because either you are trustworthy or you aren’t and no code of ethics will change that reality. You shouldn’t have to say that you are trustworthy — you should just be trustworthy. Citing Godin, Hogan notes that codes of ethics evolved when commerce developed to the point that business associates did not necessarily know each other, and they needed a standardized sign of trustworthiness. Hogan says that we don’t need a code of ethics to trust bloggers we love because we have let them into our hearts already.

[I agree with Hogan here, in principle (heh) as I will explain below, but I have no idea what he meant when he said that last line. I think there are lots of good reasons to develop a code of ethics that go unexplored here. It's more about the effect of the process on the self-understanding of the people to whom the code applies, than about getting readers/customers/clients to trust you. The bigger problem, to my mind, with developing a code of ethics for book bloggers is that it is such a diverse group, with different aims and audiences, that it would be hard to come up with anything not unhelpfully general and superficial.]

Hogan then moves on to define what “ethics” means to him:

Ethics to me are not about the principles that you lay out but about the questions that you are asking from the starting point.

[I like this very much.]

Noting that principles have exceptions, Hogan suggests moral particularism, where it’s

not about the codified principles but rules of thumb by talking about the situation and seeing where people are coming from from a variety of different perspectives and sort of laying out some guidelines but not hard and fast ‘you must do this or you are an unethical person’ sort of rules.’

[Here Hogan is wading into philosophical ethics, with not very satisfying results, to me at least. It's a long way from "principles have exceptions" to "moral particularism" (most principlists recognize the need for context sensitivity and for exceptions), and a long way from "moral particularism" to "we don't need principles" (most particularists think we do), but the bigger problem is that I don't think this detour did any work for him in the talk. That is, the debate between particularism and its opponents is really a metaethical debate about the structure of moral judgment, and isn't really helpful in discerning which moral judgments are right or which ones have a better claim on us. My own rule of thumb is to avoid direct discussion of arguments in ethical theory whenever possible when giving ethics talks, unless there is absolutely no other way to make my point.]

Hogan proceeds to demonstrate this ethical approach by discussing two issues:

1. Do you talk about how you got your books, i.e., the FTC thing.

We get a summary of the issue. Hogan says that disclosure is not something we have to do, but we can choose to do it for any number of personal reasons. Not doing it is a personal choice. So again “it’s not a hard and fast rule one way or the other. It’s this is right for me, this is right for you.”

[I detected no ethics in this discussion whatsoever. In fact, the implicit claim is more or less that disclosure is a matter of personal preference, not a matter of ethics. By definition, an ethical matter is one for which you have to provide public reasons of some form more compelling than "this is what I want to do". It is fine with me if someone doesn't think disclosure is an ethical issue -- that's a legitimate position to take. But let's be clear on what we are doing.]

2. Do you ask people to write for your blog for free?  Hogan makes a reference to the keynote speaker, who said she didn’t like blog tours. His next example is the Huffington Post, which doesn’t pay its writers, yet makes loads of money off of their content.  Hogan notes that this presents a potentially exploitative situation. But

I don’t have an answer for you that would fit every set of circumstances. And I don’t think anybody does. It’s an ethical decision that each of us has to make of our own accord. … You have to look within your heart and ask yourself, ‘is this what I want to accomplish in terms of all those kinds of qualities I talked about before of your professionalism?’ The choices that you make ethically, are they steering you toward the standards that you set for yourself as a blogger and as a writer and as a communicator. And are you doing that in a way that is helpful to everybody rather than harmful to anybody?

[While I see the HuffPo point, I actually had a hard time understanding what the ethical issue is here with book bloggers. Anyway, we get a glimmer of a substantive ethical approach in the last line, a sort of consequentialism (i.e. take the action has the best consequences for everybody affected, however "best (goodest)" is defined. Here, best seems to mean "helpfulness".) But just a glimmer. You know what would have been great here? To move beyond "context counts" to talking about one specific case and working through it. I can understand choosing not to tell other people what they should and should not do, but then how about talking about, as he said earlier, the ethical realm in which he is truly expert --  Beatrice.com?  I would have loved to hear what his standards are for his blog/s, and how his standards dictate a certain response to the disclosure issue, and how that has worked out for him and for those affected by it. Because I can think of a lot of ways to meet the "professional" standards of 1-7 that are pretty darn unethical. So being more specific here could have shown how 1-7 can work as ethical standards, or at least how those professional standards might intersect with ethical concerns to generate a satisfying resolution in a particular case.]

I gather that Hogan, like any good speaker, left a lot of time for Q&A, and I would have loved to hear if some of his points were fleshed out during the less formal part of the presentation. As this talk shows, professionalism, marketing, ethics, community, and reviewing intersect in complex and new ways for book bloggers, and I’m glad knowledgeable people in the book blogosphere are taking the time and creating the space to reflect on these issues.

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RRR Questionnaire Extraordinaire: Rosario of Rosario’s Reading Journal

Jun 8

Posted by Jessica in RRR Questionnaire Extraordinaire | 22 Comments

Rosario’s blog is Rosario’s Reading Journal

Tagline: “Book reviews from a Uruguayan reader”

About: “Reviews, reviews and more reviews.”

Rosario’s was one of the first blogs I found when I entered Romanceland, and I came to admire her to-the-point reviewing style, and the depth and breadth of her knowledge of the genre.  I mentioned Rosario in my very first post back on August 3, 2008:

I’d like to remember what I’ve read and how those books struck me when I read them. The model for the “review and record” aspect of this blog is Rosario, whose blog is one of my inspirations.

I have also long admired her singleness of purpose and incredible organization. Rosario’s Reading Journal is a terrific example of doing one thing and doing it very well. Her first post is dated August 26, 2002. She wrote:

My first post! I’ll be back as soon as I figure out what I’m doing.

Well, she did come back, and she has been coming back for nearly 8 years, to the tune of over 1500 reviews.

I was so pleased when Rosario managed to find time in her busy schedule to answer a slew of questions. I found her reflections fascinating. I hope you do, too.

0. When did you start reading romances?

I started reading romance novels in my early teens, but I had unknowingly been looking for them since I can remember. Even when really young and with books that weren’t romances, I was always drawn to whatever little romance there was in them. Mi grandpa had the entire collection of Emilio Salgari’s adventure novels (80+ of them!), and I remember digging into those when I was about 7 or 8. There was a bit of everything there, but the ones I’d reread again and again were books with good romances in them, like Captain Storm, which starred a Venetian countess who dressed up as a knight to fight in the war and fell in love with an Ottoman warrior, the Lion of Damascus. I haven’t read it in ages, so I don’t know how good it might have been, but back then, I loved it to pieces.

I then went on to Victoria Holt and all the rest of her pseudonyms and, finally in my early teens, discovered Harlequins and a couple of Janet Dailey novels my mom had in her shelves. That was a revelation: books where the romance was the whole point of the story, and I didn’t have to dig through piles of stuff that didn’t really interest me just to find a few nuggets? Brilliant. Soon after that, I found Kathleen Woodiwiss’ Shanna (in my school library, of all places) and started looking for other historical romances in bookshops.

This was Uruguay in the early 90s, though, so it was all a bit hit or miss. The couple of bookstores that ordered books in English didn’t order specific books, it was just by the box, and they got whatever their supplier had a surplus of. It wasn’t until the internet came along that I started being able to find out about specific titles. I made my first order from Amazon in 1998 (and paid about twice as much for shipping to Uruguay as I did for the actual books, ouch!) and never looked back.

1. What motivated you to start your blog?

The most prosaic of reasons: I needed to practice my English. I attended a bilingual school in Uruguay, but by 2002 I’d been out of regular English classes for 6 years. Because I wasn’t practicing my written English, writing even a simple, two-paragraph email was a chore and took me an hour. Obviously, the only way to fix that was to start regularly writing in that language again, but I knew that unless I found a reason to actually want to do so, I’d give up after the first few times. I needed to write about something I was passionate about and I needed to have a purpose, and a romance review blog was the best I could come up with.

2. How has it changed over the years?

Not much, really. There have been cosmetic changes, like adding images, and doing a single post for each book (for the first months I’d post about a book as I went along in my reading, so I’d have several posts about a single title), but not much else. Although, well, I want to think that the quality of my reviews has increased as I’ve got more practice!

3. Most review blogs do other things besides reviews, but you have stayed true to your review mission. Have you ever felt tempted to write another kind of post? Why or why not?

At the beginning I did try to post a few different things… personal news, opinion pieces, comments about industry developments, links to interesting articles, memes, that sort of thing. I soon realised I just didn’t feel comfortable doing it. I felt like I couldn’t hit on the right tone. I’d come back to something I’d written and think “what a pretentious git” :-D  What I’ve never been too interested in doing is promo. While I don’t mind a little of it in industry blogs or websites, it’s not what I’m looking for in personal blogs, so I won’t put it in mine. I’ve learnt to stick to what I like (and hopefully, do well!).

4. How have your reading tastes changed over the years, if at all?

I’m pickier about quality now (some of the books I gave As to in 2002… oy!), but what I’m looking for in a book hasn’t actually changed all that much. Of course, when I first started reading romance there was still a lot of bodice-ripping going on and way too many alpha-asshole “heroes” and feisty hair-tossing, foot-stamping child-like heroines, but even though I read those books, I always hated those elements, and wished I could get my romance without having to put up with them. I just didn’t have the choice at the time, and I’m very happy I do now.

5. Do you think the romance genre has changed? What are some of the most significant changes in your eyes?

I know lots of readers feel that the genre has become homogeneous over the years, with fewer and fewer settings and authors constantly jumping on whatever the new big trend is, but I think it’s more complicated than that. In terms of who the protagonists can be, in my opinion, there’s much more variety. It’s most obvious with heroines, and I do love that. These days female characters can be strong, they can go toe to toe with the hero and actually win (without then being punished for it, either), they can be sexually experienced, they can make mistakes and be flawed, and they’re still allowed to be heroines. As for the heroes, although the over-the-top alpha is still as popular as ever, I feel different conceptions of masculinity have become acceptable in romance novels now.

6. How do you foresee the romance genre changing in the next decade?

I think romance novels do reflect contemporary sensibilities, only they run a few years behind what’s happening in the real world. So I would expect heroines in contemps to continue to become more like real contemporary women (too many today read 30 years older than they’re supposed to be) and HEAs to reflect more of the variety that I see all around me (couples choosing not to have children, the man being the one to stay home with the kids, etc.).

Also, it seems to me the YA and romance genres have began to mix quite a bit, with many romance readers also going for YA in a big way, and many YA books containing really lovely romances. So maybe in the next few years, as YA readers grow up, they’ll start seeking out romance novels. Hopefully that will lead to more of what I described above and even to a narrowing of that gap, but it might also lead to more fights about the definition of romance, as YA readers seem to be more flexible about their HEAs.

And of course, it probably doesn’t even need to be said that there will be new big trends and it will seem every author is jumping on them (which trends? Ah, if only I had that crystal ball! I can only hope the next one is steampunk romance, which seems to be taking off a bit lately).

7. How has your life changed from 2002 to 2010? Are your life changes reflected in your reading choices, or in the way you blog?

My life now is nothing like it was in 2002. Romance novels are probably one of the very few constants, actually! Back then I lived in Uruguay, with my parents and had a job which, while a good learning opportunity, wasn’t really going anywhere. I now live in England, in my own house, and have a proper career I love.

I’d never thought of it, but this (especially moving to England) really has impacted on my reading choices. When I was in Uruguay I was reading almost exclusively romance, with a smattering of mystery. That was mainly because AAR was the only place I could get recommendations I trusted enough to actually go through the trouble and considerable expense of getting the books all the way to Uruguay. Not to mention, mass markets are a lot cheaper and lighter than anything else (ergo, lower shipping charges), and my Uruguayan pesos didn’t buy too many dollars back during the big recession we had in 2002. Now I’ve got access to a pretty good library system and my salary is in pounds (yeah, not *that* great these days), so I’m trying a lot more of other stuff, especially non fiction, knowing that I can just drop books after 20 pages if they don’t interest me. Unfortunately, I’m also reading less than I did, as I have less time and more other things competing for it.

8. What was “Romanceland” like — if it even existed — when you started out in 2002?

At the time, Romanceland for me was just the All About Romance boards and the yahoo groups associated with them. I know there were other places I didn’t frequent, but they were along similar lines… message boards and email lists. The romance blogosphere just didn’t exist. The only other romance-related blog I was aware of was the one that Laurie, from AAR, had just started. In fact, it was hers that gave me the idea of starting one myself. Wendy the Superlibrarian started hers soon after, but that was it for quite a while. For the first year or so, I didn’t get more than a couple of comments from romance readers (which might be why I don’t particularly care about traffic figures, even today).

In terms of the discussions themselves, the biggest difference that comes to mind is that now there is a general acceptance about the value of negative reviews that just wasn’t all that general back then. These days pretty much all authors accept that readers and reviewers have the right not to like their books and say so (even if there are still arguments about the appropriate tone to use), but in 2002 there was a lot more of the “how dare you!!!!” attitude, both from authors and other readers.

9. What has surprised you the most about how the online romance community has changed since 2002?

Its meteoric growth. New blogs and sites pop up practically every day, and whatever sort of involvement you want, you’ll be able to find a place for yourself.

10. What has made you the most happy about the way Romanceland has changed since 2002?

The sheer size and variety of it now, and the fact that there are plenty of places where I can get the level and depth of analysis of issues that I like (including your blog, and I’m not just saying that because you’re interviewing me *g*). The one internet kerfuffle I’m still pissed off about after all these years is one that happened in AAR’s message boards. There was a group of posters who’d have the most wonderful, in-depth discussions, which I relished reading (I’d actually save their posts to read when I had time to enjoy them properly), but they were basically ran off the boards by a group of idiots that complained that they were hogging the discussion and that their posts were too long and made them feel dumb (some people now deny that’s how it was, but those are my memories of the episode, and I’m sticking to them. People actually did say that the posts made them feel dumb). Of course, these days, those great posters would just set up their own blogs and they’d be pretty easy to find, but back then, I had no way of finding out where they’d gone and it was really annoying.

11. Are you dismayed at all by any of the changes in the online romance community?

Oh, dear, I feel like I’m picking on AAR, but here goes. I find the us-vs-them mentality towards blogs that I perceive in their boards quite upsetting. Just to make myself completely clear, this is not something that’s coming from the people who run them, but from several frequent and long-time posters. I’ve been visiting forever and ever, years before I even started my blog (gosh, come to think of it, I think I was actually in my teens when I first followed LLB over from The Romance Reader!), and it’s always been a big part of my reading life, so it’s sad to be made to feel unwelcome by a minority of loud twits.

12. What, if anything, do you feel is missing in the online romance community? How do you foresee it growing in the next decade?

That’s a tough one. I don’t think I’ve ever consciously realised anything was missing in the romance community until it (whatever “it” was) showed up. I suppose I’d like a bit more of an international perspective, sometimes. Most of the bloggers I’m aware of live in the English-speaking world (even me, now!), and I’d love to hear more from, oh, I don’t know, all those people who read Mills & Boon in India, or whoever’s reading the Spanish translations of single titles I see when I go back to Latin America.

How do I foresee the community growing? Well, “growing” is the operative word here. It will only keep growing. There might be more formats (like a lot of the discussion has moved to twitter now), but it will still be there years from now.

13. What are some blogs you enjoy reading?

I follow a ridiculous number of blogs, but my absolute favourites are Dear Author, The Book Smugglers, Wendy the Superlibrarian, KristieJ’s , jmc’s, and Aneca’s World . I’ve also got a few on my Google reader that haven’t been too active for a while, in the perpetual hope they’ll start blogging regularly again. Those include Jennie’s B(ook)log, ReneeW, Tara Marie, And yours. I did mention I enjoy yours, right? [Thank you, Rosario, for reading the fine print in the RRR interview contract.]

14. I don’t notice you making many comments on other blogs — although I am happy to see you on Twitter. Why not?

Oh, but I do comment, only not as much as I used to, I’m afraid. I’m always too late now! Since I travel quite a lot, most of my blog reading (and I do follow quite a few, just see above) is now done on my phone, and I just don’t find that conducive to writing comments. I can do the “I  liked that book, too!” kind of thing there, but not proper comments. I’ll often mark posts as unread to comment the next time I’m at a normal computer, but by that time, the discussion has either moved on or someone has made the point I wanted to make, so I just let it go.

15. One of your all time favorite authors is Nora Roberts. What are your favorite books by Nora? Have you found her books have changed over time? In what ways?

My top fave is one that doesn’t come up a lot, Midnight Bayou. [Rosario's review here.] Strong, interesting heroine, beta, dreamy hero, atmospheric setting and a really unique paranormal subplot. I also have a soft spot for Born in Fire (it was my first Nora ever, and the romance is almost a prototype of the Eve and Roarke relationship, which I also love) [Rosario's reread review here.]  and Birthright [Rosario's review here].

Nora’s books I feel have changed less than the genre as a whole, but that’s because her books always felt more modern and up-to-date, and the others have only been closing the gap in that respect. Back in the 90s, when anyone made the argument that the reason even contemporary heroines in their 30s had to be virgins was that otherwise they wouldn’t sell, I always brought up Nora’s success. *Her* heroines didn’t need to find contrived excuses to be virgins, and that didn’t make her sell any fewer books!

16. What is a new favorite author or book?

I’ve found plenty of wonderful new authors in the past few years, but Meljean Brook is the clear standout. Her Guardian series is amazing, with both excellent romances and a world that is fascinating and complex, yet completely coherent. Oh. And great writing. My favourite thing about the writing is that not everything is spelt out, and you feel like the author trusts your intelligence enough to understand.

17. How long do you think you will keep writing romance reviews?

Until I stop enjoying it and it becomes a chore, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon!

Thank you, Rosario!!

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Goals, Objectives and Blogging

Mar 20

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging | 6 Comments

Have you looked at a college course syllabus lately? They have “goals” and “objectives”. The goals are the general intentions of the course, while the objectives are the concrete things that students will learn. The objectives are specific ways to meet the goal.

So in an Intro to Philosophy course, a goal might be something abstract, like “students will gain a greater appreciation of the history of Western philosophical thought”, and an objective would be something narrower, and measurable, like “students will be able to describe the difference between rationalism and empiricism”.

There is a lot of advice online about blogging, sometimes an overwhelming amount. It tends to focus on objectives (usually referred to as “strategies”). I find that much of the advice and strategizing is irrelevant to my goals. It helps me to have my goals in mind when I consider whether to spend time reading what someone has written about a strategy.

I know some of you are reading this and thinking “I don’t have ANY goals with regard to blogging. I just do what’s fun and what I feel like.”

I think that as human beings we act for reasons, which are a kind of intention or goal. When most people say “I don’t have a blogging goal”, I interpret that as “I don’t think about goals.” But there is a difference between not thinking about goals and not having a goal.

Blogging is a human activity, and as such, it is purposeful. The only things we “do” that aren’t purposeful are things like breathing and blinking. So when someone says “I have no blogging goals”, I interpret that as “My goal is not to get bogged down by blogging and to keep it spontaneous and fun.” People who say they don’t have any goals usually do have them, and if you look closely, they also have strategies they use to meet them. For example, the person who says “I have no blogging goals” usually won’t read a post like this when it shows up in her reader. Not reading posts about blogging goals is an objective which serves to meet your goal of not thinking about your blogging and keeping it spontaneous and fun.

I think part of the issue is the word “goal” and what it connotes in our culture. We think it means conscious, striving, effortful, competitive, “work-related”, maybe monetized. But when I go on vacation, my goal is to relax and not think about anything. That’s a goal, but it’s quite the opposite of effortful and tiring and competitive.

Anyway, it occurred to me as I was reading the agenda for the Book Blogger Convention in New York in May (which looks great and which I would love to attend), that several of the panels did not interest me, because they meet objectives for goals I don’t have as a blogger. For example, the panel on marketing or the panel on the relationship between authors and blogger.

I recall having an email exchange with a fellow blogger and talking about stats. It quickly became apparent that all I cared about was subscribers and comments (number and quality) and all she cared about were number of hits and her placement in search engine rankings. It hit me that we had different goals. Mine was more focused on building community, which means repeat visitors and comments, and hers was more on visibility and reach. To meet my goal, I have to do certain things, and to meet her goal, she has to do different things. Or we might do the same things, but to meet different goals. So she might have a contest to generate interest in her blog and increase her numbers, and I might do a contest for a friend who has written a book, or to thank my readers helping me answer a particular question.

For someone more interested in community, it is more important that those people who are valuable contributors keep coming back. Not losing (good) contributors is the focus. For someone interested in, say, monetizing their blog, it is going to be important to see those numbers grow. This might mean paying more attention to what posts generate a lot of interest and hits. It won’t matter quite as much whether the same people keep coming back, but whether more and more people do. For someone who wants to be acknowledged as an expert in her blogging field, being on top of news is going to be very important. To meet that goal she’ll have the objective of doing timely links posts, and to meet that objective she’ll have to be on line a lot, to gather the news via Twitter, feeds, etc.

And these goals aren’t mutually exclusive. Building a good community is a way of growing in numbers, for example, which is a way to better monetize.

I don’t think about my blogging goals every day or every post. But I find it helpful to take a step back and ask myself about them every so often. Recently, when I changed the blog’s name, I realized that I had goals that the blog could help me meet, goals which are outside of the blog itself. Specifically, I could use this blog as a place to think out loud about issues in philosophy of fiction, a subject none of my real world colleagues work on. This will help with both teaching and research. So one issue I became more conscious of is the difference between goals for the blog, versus goals that the blog can help me achieve. (And they are not always compatible: my posts on philosophy of fiction tend not to generate a lot of discussion!) Now my thinking about “blog goals” encompasses both.

Reflecting on blog goals helps me to shuck interest in things that waste time, it helps with focus, it helps with crafting a clear blog identity, it helps minimize the stressful feeling that I should be doing “more”, and it helps with identifying the difference between blogs I merely enjoy versus blogs I want to learn from and emulate. As blogging goals change — and they do — raising my head out of a particular post and looking at the big picture helps clarify and solidify that change (at least for the moment, since goals will likely change again, and again). I recommend it!

HaMPO: Help A Moral Philosopher Out: Live Blogging An Academic Conference, Ethics of

Mar 14

Posted by Jessica in Academia, Blogs and blogging, Ethics | 22 Comments

Welcome to my new feature, HaMPO, in which someone who has a PhD and 10 years professional experience in her field cannot answer what should be a pretty simple question:

Is it ok to blog an academic conference?

We are coming up on the National Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association annual meeting. Last year, I blogged several sessions. I ran into a few “issues”:

1. I got a point in one presenter’s paper wrong. I edited the post. But I only knew this because I had sent her a link to the post. She likely would not have seen it otherwise.
2. One presenter took me to task for not getting her permission. I removed my discussion of her paper from the blog at her request.
3. Some of the blog commenters got a little heated/dismissive in their remarks on papers they disagreed with, not exactly keeping to the tone of academic discourse

Last year there was a big issue at Cold Spring Harbor Lab when bloggers live blogged a conference there. Apparently CSHL has a set of clear rules for journalists, which include getting permission from the speakers in advance, but bloggers kind of went in under the radar. Now the rules are the same for bloggers and journalists (a more detailed discussion here). While I think the worries about live blogging even a restricted conference like the Biology of Genomes are overstated, and the benefits of blogging the presentations understated, the issues with presentations at CSHL might be a little different than issues at PCA. In particular, the CSHL conference is billed as a small forum for researchers to present work in progress in a particular kind of supportive environment. I would think you could attend another conference if you didn’t like the restrictions.

But back to PCA. There are no formal rules, so attendees like me will have to figure out for ourselves what is appropriate and what isn’t. Could a Bloggers’ Code of Ethics help?

Well, there’s this section:

Minimize Harm
Ethical bloggers treat sources and subjects as human beings deserving of respect.
Bloggers should:
• Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of information is not a license for arrogance.
• Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone’s privacy.

Here’s an excerpt on harm from another Code, from Upstart: The Magazine for Aspring Journalists

9. Consider the possible effects of every post you make

Bloggers should not set out to be intentionally hurtful to other individuals in the course of their blogging, in fact the ethical blogger should take steps to minimise harm to others wherever possible. Pro-blogger Jaime McD suggests that bloggers should adhere to the Golden Rule when blogging, namely, treat others as you would be treated yourself.

We can note first that both these codes map blogging ethics onto journalist ethics. I am not sure that is appropriate, especially for blogs like this one. So, for example, I may have special duties as a blogging academic that have nothing to do with journalism, or special duties relating to feminism, or literature as a public good, etc.

Could blogging about conference presentations cause harm? Four possibilities come to mind:

1. Maybe someone reading this blog will scoop the presenter’s WIP, stealing her thesis and getting an article into print first. The presenter loses a publication and time spent on research. This could affect her chances for getting tenure (this would not be an issue for presenters who are presenting published or forthcoming work, of course).

2. Blog commenters are harshly critical of the presenter, in a way no one in an academic audience would be. They write things like, “That is just stupid” or “What a dumbass!”. It is hurtful to the presenter — not a reaction she was prepared for, and she worries it will devalue her work if it is the first thing that shows up in a Google search.

3. It is not the presenter’s best work. In fact, it is really not ready for prime time. She hates the idea that it is online for posterity, when she plans to radically alter or abandon the research post conference.

4. The Golden Rule bit from the second code: suppose I gave a paper that, because of 1, 2, or 3, I did not want blogged. Would I expect any bloggers present to obtain my permission?

Moving away from harm, another way of looking at this is in terms of ownership of the material. The “consent” requirement suggests a kind of ownership. That is, as a blogger, I don’t have the right to do with that material what I want. It’s the presenter’s.

Most of these issues could be resolved by obtaining the speakers’ permission. I don’t think, after my experience last year, that I can assume consent. I also don’t think that sitting in the front row and typing furiously alerts the presenters to my intentions clearly enough that I could be confident they that have given tacit consent by not stopping me.

But then, how would consent be obtained? Hand everyone a business card after the conference, telling them about the blog and assuming they will tell me? Ask them directly? Email them?

I confess I hate the consent idea, mostly because it is time consuming enough to write the blogs, never mind chasing all of these people down, and partly because I do feel I shouldn’t have to obtain consent for reporting on something I experienced in a public forum. How is this different from tweeting about a rock concert (“they just played my favorite song, and they botched it!”). can a rock band really say “I was only playing to Providence. I didn’t want the whole world to know how we played that night!”

If I go ahead without consent, should at least give them a card or email them the URL and invite them to make corrections if necessary?

What about counterbalancing ethical concerns? Are there any ethical arguments in favor of blogging the conference? I tend to be skeptical about this in terms of my little blog, but here goes. Possibly the goods of disseminating information, and any ancillary goods that come from that, like contacts being made (someone reads this blog, finds out Julie Juniper is working on her topic, they get in touch, they collaborate or develop some other mutually beneficial exchange), or academics who were not able to attend the conference (maybe they were ill or couldn’t afford it) getting to stay updated in their field a bit, or nonacademics, i.e. most readers of RRR, benefiting by getting a glimpse into a different way of approaching their favorite books, and enjoying this or learning from it.

One penultimate question: I was slightly dismayed by some of the comments last year. This is a “worlds colliding” thing. No comment was beyond the pale in terms of blogging, but when I put my academic hat on, I was uncomfortable. Should I issue a warning on the post? Wade in and defend the presenter? Close comments? (the last of these would defeat most of the purpose of blogging the conference, though).

And a final one two: does it matter how detailed the blog posts are (maybe I can defuse criticism and reap the benefits if I merely summarize briefly)? And does it matter, ethically speaking, if I offer my own critique (positive and negative) of the paper?

PS. I’ve blogged about this before, but as you can see, I am still unsettled. Also, I was joking about HaMPO being a new feature. It’s not. But I would love your opinions on this!

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The “hot men” segment of the romance bloggerverse

Mar 9

Posted by Jessica in Blogs and blogging | 37 Comments

Just a few random observations. But here is one thing I am NOT saying. And I am going to bold it and set it out so there is no confusion:

I am NOT criticizing romance readers for whom fantasy is a part — even a large part — of their engagement with the romance genre.

I think almost everyone who reads romance recognizes at least some fantasy element is operating for them at least some of the time. It may be as simple as “I don’t have to think for the moment about the stresses/challenges in my life as a mom/engineer/wife/doctor/CEO/caretaker/NASCAR driver/backyard chicken tamer” or “I don’t have to worry these characters will end up miserable or dead”.

But there are two kinds of fantasy engagement with romance, especially romance novel heroes, or real men who are supposed to represent them, that are fairly prevalent on line that I wanted to point out in this post.

1. Treating the characters as “real” in some sense outside the text

My first romance novel experience as an adult was J.R. Ward’s Lover Revealed. It was published in March 2007, which coincided with my spring break. I wanted to read some pulp fiction, something I had not had time to do for years, so I grabbed it off the drugstore shelf while on vacation in Florida. I was immediately hooked, and went to the author’s forums to check them out. I noticed right away the tendency of the “Cellies” to treat the characters as real. They gushed over the heroes, fantasized about them, used erotic pictures of men supposed to represent the BDB for their signatures, and generally interacted with the novels in a way that felt very alien to me.

Here are a couple of the ground rules at the J.R. Ward message boards, which give a sense of the tendencies to which some Cellies are prone:

10. Brother/Angel Ownership- There is NO Brother or Angel ownership. It will not be tolerated. The board is here for everyone to enjoy spending time with each other, J.R. Ward, and the Brotherhood. Let’s remember the Brothers’ books are written for everyone’s enjoyment.

11. Role-playing- There is to be NO role-playing here on the boards. It’s a form of copyright infringement and will not be tolerated.

Recently, another paranormal romance author, Karen Marie Moning, had to issue an Official Facebook Statement, and create official Facebook characters, because unofficial Facebook characters were harassing each other.

For those of you who wrote to tell me that my “unofficial” characters were being unkind to each other in ways that disturbed you, and that these unofficial Facebook pages—rather than making you interested in the books, were making you actively dislike the series and my characters—you now have a safe place to visit.

Lots of romance websites devote some or all of their time to this kind of fantasy. For example, DIK Ladies Rule is premised on the idea that bloggers can fantasize about bringing romance novel heroes to a desert island. Their tagline is “the island where women can go to escape their every day lives … where their favorite books are waiting … and the heroes are naked.”

And lots of other blogs fantasize in this way, too, such as Reviews by Jessewave, Leontine’s Book Realm, Smexy Books (with a page on “Smexy’s boyfriends”, with romance novel heroes). There’s even a Build Your Own Book Boyfriend meme. [I don't mean to single anyone out. I just randomly picked these, as examples. There are many more I could have chosen.]

2. Fantasizing about the cover models, about real men who might resemble the characters in the text, or about handsome men (especially actors) in general, as part of the romance reader discourse. For example, Penelope’s Romance Reviews, which has a “Beard of the Day”, and “Most Romantic Beard” posts, The Naughty Bits, Lust in Time, etc.

A lot of bloggers in romance will just do a post of good looking men in their underwear. When you think about it, what does that really have to do with romance novel reading? It seems connected to the way romance works as one kind of fantasy. If it were just about visualizing the text, then there would also be pictures of women, and ancestral estates, but there usually aren’t.

I tend to gravitate to bloggers who are more like me — fewer images in general, less emphasis on fantasy, more emphasis on romance as fiction.

This is not an invidious distinction. A lot of bloggers engage in multiple ways on their blogs with the genre: they’ll have the hot men, and then they’ll do a post on whitewashing of book covers, or the marginalization of GLBTQ romance, or they’ll write careful reviews. I think of Katiebabs as someone who “blogs across the board” like this. And any of the blogs mentioned above (so, for example, I get a lot of Apple news from Teddypig’s blog, and good reviews from Smexy Books, etc.). And while I would guess the “hot men” blogger may tend to focus on steamier books — “romantica” and the like — that’s not necessarily the case.

It’s also not an invidious distinction because there are bloggers like me who maybe don’t do much of it, but at least sometimes read those “hot men” posts or enjoy the images.

My personal tendency is to focus on my own preferred type of engagement. And my other tendency is to downplay the fantasy aspect, because it can feed pernicious stereotypes of the romance reader. But then, what doesn’t feed those stereotypes? As a professor who reads romance, I am a walking stereotype of a repressed bluestocking, right? Still, I think it would be interesting to think more about these types of overt fantasy engagements, because they are so obviously an important component of the way many women engage with romance. (And romance is not alone in this: speculative fiction is perhaps (?) the closest cousin to romance with regard to its fantasy function. Maybe this is connected to paranormal romance being the subgenre that jumped out when I was thinking about fantasy.)

I have read somewhere the notion that posting pictures of men in their undies (er, they probably don’t call them that, do they?) smacks of exploiting men. Certainly whole books have been written about the oppressive effects of the Adonis Complex, etc. I would have to think more about that.

On the other hand, from a feminist perspective, just as we sometimes talk about sexy romances and erotica as positive reclamation of women’s sexuality, maybe bloggers who are having fun with “hot men” — and they are having fun, a concept with which I am not especially familiar — are doing that too.

Then there’s just the personal comfort factor. The impetus for this post was actually finding images this week of full frontal male nudity in my Google reader, with no warning. I felt such bloggers had crossed a line, and deleted them from my reader.

It’s a testament to the diversity and flexibility and richness of the genre that any given text can serve many kinds of readers and many kinds of engagement.

Interview With A Croatian Feminist, Anarchist, Speculative Fiction Writer, and Avid Genre Fiction Reader

Mar 7

Posted by Jessica in Academia, Blogs and blogging, Feminist contentions, Genre musings | 6 Comments

Milena Benini, a regular reader of this blog, won my last contest. When I realized I had to send her prize to Croatia, I let out a blood curdling scream and hid my wallet,  took the opportunity to ask her a few questions. It turns out Milena is, in her words, an

anarchist, blogger, cat-feeder, cook, dog-minder, editor, feminist, fire-horse, human being, illustrator, journalist, mum, mum, reader, Sagittarius, theoretician, translator, web-mistress, wife, woman.

I couldn’t fit all that on the address label, so Milena kindly agreed to answer a few questions for RRR. She’s also a writer of speculative fiction and has written a paper on the online romance community for her workplace, the Centre For Women’s Studies (more on both below).

1. Say a little about your blog and what you do there.

Well, my tag-line includes women, genre and politics. I have a whole group of posts about women I like and/or admire, particularly early sufragettes, but also some contemporary stars — anyone whose life and work I happen to appreciate. I usually try to post about them on their birthdays, with the idea that, some day, I’ll have a whole “feminist calendar”.

I also write about genres; my primary focus is SF (interpreted as Speculative Fiction, not just sci-fi), but I also talk about mysteries and romances. Oh, and I published a novel at the blog, because I wanted to see how that would be accepted in Croatia. It’s a fantasy novel with a strong romantic element, although I wouldn’t call it exactly a romance. :)

I sometimes also talk about politics, although that’s mostly related to open-source issues and stuff like that, as well as women’s issues, and sometimes anarchism.

1b. Can you say more about your position on open source?

Writing this on a computer running Ubuntu and having given away a novel under a CC license, I think I can safely say that I am very much in favour of open source. FOSS has a pretty strong community in Croatia, although, as is the case everywhere, I think, a lot of people tend to keep away from it out of habit, or fear of the unknown. There is also the fact that people are often suspicious about things they get for free, because we’re very much conditioned to think that worth can only be measured in money. But there is also a growing number of people who can see the value of things like open source or creative commons. Mostly thanks to Cory Doctorow, probably. :)

2. Is there any way for those who do not read Croatian to read it? I tried Google translator but … unless you are in fact a drunk monkey at the keyboard, I cannot believe it does your words justice.

Oh, yes, Google translator is an endless source of humour, but very little correct translation. Unfortunately, I don’t think that there’s a simple way to resolve this.

3. How long have you been reading romance novels? What are your favorites?

Just about all my life. There is a very famous Croatian author, Marija Juric Zagorka, who wrote about a dozen historical romances — and they’re real monster-novels, one of six and one of twelve tomes! — and that’s where I started. Then I went on to the classics such as Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. When I started reading in English, I also passed through a — I suppose I should blush now — Kathleen E. Woodiwiss period. In my defense, I was very young at the time. :) . Then there was Georgette Heyer, of course!

I love Loretta Chase, Patricia Gaffney, Jennifer Crusie for the humour, and I also enjoy Jacqueline Carey’s Kushiel series, especially the first trilogy; Robin McKinley is also among my favourites… oh, there are too many to mention them all. I’ll also read anything with vampires in it — I even read Twilight! Research purposes and all that (I’m writing a book about parallels between vampire and spy fiction) — but, unfortunately, there aren’t that many really good vampire romances.

4. Do you read in English? Translations?

I read mostly in English, especially since translations of romances are few and far between in Croatia, not to mention usually more expensive (smaller print runs make for expensive books!). Furthermore, nowadays, I read a lot on my mobile phone, and there are almost no e-books in Croatian.

As for Croatian romances, I’m afraid the answer is — not any more. Apart from Zagorka, whom I have already mentioned (she was–and still is — probably the best-loved Croatian female author of all times, a very interesting woman who managed to also be a proto-feminist and one of the first female journalists in this part of Europe, and when she got poor in her old age her fans got together to feed and clothe her — a fascinating story, really), there was one woman who was pretty famous as a romance author some thirty years ago, but she stopped writing about a decade ago.

Oh, and there is one woman who writes under an English pseudonym and, allegedly, has a dayjob as a waitress. But we’re a small country (only 4.5 million people) and books are not a good way to make a living. In addition, romances are still mostly despised — even when there are actual romances translated, they’re never marketed as such. SEP is marketed as general fiction in Croatia, and Nora Roberts is invariably shelved in the mystery section.

5. What are some attitudes towards romance novels you’ve encountered?

Well, I have to stress that mine is not a typical situation: I am very much a part of the SF community — which is a lot stronger in Croatia than the romance community — and I don’t have any problems there, because we’re all outsiders together, in a way. And people in the SF community — at least here in Croatia — are not afraid of romance novels; in fact, there are several people who also read them, and when I post about romance novels, people generally react favourably.

Also, at the Centre for Women’s Studies, my interest in any genre was always welcomed, but they are all great women anyway.

6. Can you say a little more about the speculative fiction community in Croatia?

I think it’s more or less the same everywhere: SF-fans are viewed as those strange people who walk around with false pointy ears and recite poetry in Klingon. Even if you don’t speak a word of Klingon, you get marked as such once you publicly proclaim your interest in SF…

In Croatia, the SF community is something of an exception in its attitude towards women: for example, our national SF-award, SFera, has the largest percentage of female award-winners of all Croatian literary awards. I understand that this is something of an anomaly, caused probably by the fact that our fandom was started by grownups and not teenagers, so the more mature outlook rubbed off on the following generations.

7. What is the difference between “SFF” and “speculative fiction”?

Well, “speculative fiction” is the broader term. People first began using it when the borderlines between genres started getting blurred — particularly in the seventies, with New Wave — and it’s getting more and more used today because it’s often impossible to tell if something is science fiction or fantasy. When you look at people like China Mieville, for example, it’s impossible to define him as “science fiction” or “fantasy” or “horror”: there are elements of all three in his work. And “speculative fiction” is a nice umbrella-term for all the genres that, at heart, start from the question “what if”. A lot of people who are interested in one thing are also interested in another, whether as readers, writers, or both. So it makes a lot more sense to use one name for the whole thing.

8. Can you name a couple of your favorites in mystery and speculative fiction?

In mystery, I am a great admirer of the grandes dames — Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, Ngaio Marsh — and from the newer authors, I have to single out Martha Grimes, who is doing weird and fantastic and wonderful things while staying strictly within her genre. And SF is my first love, so the list is very long… Terry Pratchett, Roger Zelazny, Ursula K. Le Guin and Michael Moorcock for the classics; Charlie Stross, Ken MacLeod and Cory Doctorow for the new voices; Steven Brust as an all together great guy; ditto for Neil Gaiman. And Robin Mckinley and Melissa Michaels, who also do strange and wonderful things. I think I better stop now…

9. Is there a Croatian romance community?

Not really, I’m afraid. There are two or three blogs that cover romance as one of their interests, but only one blog that I know of that focuses exclusively on romance. And in the “real life” sense, there’s nothing.

10. What did you say in the article you wrote?

Well, it’s basically an overview of the development of the romance community on the Internet, and it includes a (very) short history of the genre itself. The article will be published a special edition of the Centre’s magazine “Treca” (The Third, in female form — Croatian is much more gender-specific than English). There was a whole semester devoted to popular culture intersecting with feminist issues, and my article is part of that.

I tried to show that the Internet has given an opportunity to smart, educated women who like romance to get together and discuss their genre in a way which was difficult before the Internet. And I also tried to outline the way in which the genre has started looking at itself, after long being the object of fascination and disgust for outsiders. I find this somewhat similar to what happened in SF — at one point, SF fans got fed up with outsiders telling them what their genre was like, and started developing their own theory, combining it with the “official” academic approaches and reaching new and exciting things. And now we see a similar process at work in the romance community, which has to deal with the added problem of romance being, to a very large extent, a “female” genre, which is often the reason why it gets so much criticism, regardless of whether the bias is shown openly or not.

The thing is, although genre lit in general has not been overlooked in Croatian academic circles, romance is usually almost completely left out in such analyses, or is dealt with in a very offhandish manner. That’s why I was trying to give people a place to start, especially young women. I mentioned your analysis of ethics in Patricia Gaffney as an example of how romance can be approached not as a phenomenon, but rather as literature.

11. What is the Centre for Women’s Studies?

Well, it’s so far the only such place in Croatia, because our academic community is not really too keen on feminism, at least not in the upper echelons, where decisions are made. The Centre organises all kinds of educational programmes, publishes books, holds workshops, etc. One of the things I do is maintain their web-site, and there are at least some pages in English, so you can take a look if you want.

12. How about a blurb for your book?

Yes, I published a novel at the blog, because I wanted to see how that would be accepted in Croatia. It’s a fantasy novel with a strong romantic element, although I wouldn’t call it exactly  romance. :)

Kalaide, priestess of the Moon, is trying to hold her home together in the midst of war when a strange prisoner is brought: Enaor, an Elder, who lost his family, his city, and almost his sanity in the war for which he blames Kalaide’s gods — and his own brother. With the unnatural winter gripping the land, the two must form an unexpected alliance in order to survive… and maybe, just maybe, save the world as well.

Hvala, Milena! Thank you!

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