Should've Been a Rock Star
...then I could have written about love and been taken seriously
Well, I found a girl, beautiful and sweet
Oh, I never knew you were the someone waiting for me
Something in the way she moves
Attracts me like no other lover
If I could, baby, I’d give you my world
How can I when you won’t take it from me
What I got — full stock of thoughts and dreams that scatter
And you pull them all together
If you leave me, you’ll make me cry
When I think of you saying goodbye
Oh, the sky turns to a deeper blue
That’s, that’s how I’d feel if I lost you
Sometimes I think about you, baby. Sometimes I cry about you. Sometimes I wanna wrap my coat around you. Sometimes I wanna keep you warm
I won’t go on any further. Above lyrics from cheesy, beach-read, chicklit books.
LIE.
Actually, they’re lyrics from rock giants: The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Fleetwood Mac, U2, Mr Sheeran etc. I could have written millions more words from Chicago and Aerosmith, Bon Jovi, Ozzy Osbourne… you’ll notice the high male head count. It struck me a while ago while I was singing along to Brian Johnson (no relation – I wish) in the car in a standstill on the M62 just how many rock songs are about love, you know the thing that makes the world go around (and something that has the power to save the world). I wouldn’t like to guess a figure, but I bet if you look at Bowie’s hits, Machine Head’s, Dio’s, Creed’s, you’ll find a high percentage of their beautiful, heartfelt lyrics are all about love.
Wonder if anyone goes up to Jon Bon Jovi at a party and says ‘So what do you do? Oh you’re a rock star! You don’t write those drippy/soppy/swoonworthy love songs do you – har har?’ followed by a peal of condescending laughter. Quite a few of us romance writers have had that kind of interchange with the party knobhead. Maybe rock stars have more credibility with leather and long hair. Or being men (the very thought!). But I really don’t get it. Why are love songs so revered and romance writers so reduced? Aren’t we on the same side? And why isn’t all this shit stopping faster than it should?
My head hit the desk once again with the Christmas newspaper round ups of all the books you SHOULD read because they’re respectable: crime and literary, historical, some more crime, drier than a nun’s crotch biographies about Field Marshal Kill-Happy/The Twelfth Man in Space/Nick Clegg, and even more literary. Barely a romance, unless written by a celeb writer because a TV profile lifts them away from us riff-raff (even if it’s really been written by a riff-raff ghost writer). What is it that (some, not all - we have our champions) newspaper review compilers fear about us romance writers appearing on their pages? Do they think we will leak a poison that will melt their ink and lessen their sales? Do they distance themselves from us in the fear that we will somehow blot their reputation as serious periodicals? Why are they policing what their readers read? Do they not realise that someone who reads the Times/Observer might also read popular fiction? I do and I both read and write PF. And isn’t it very insulting to their readers to judge them as non-discerning, unable to choose for themselves their reading material of choice? One of my biggest readers is a Dame and the Lord Lieutenant of South Yorkshire and I’d consider her pretty discerning. And every author friend of mine reads romfic and the classics and crime… they read across the genres. They’re bright women, because you have to be to do this job, driven, disciplined, educated, astute, serious businesswomen and more resilient than a rhino’s backside coated in Teflon. We don’t just fanny about on our computers writing silly little stories inbetween doing needlepoint pictures of kittens. This is a cut-throat, hard-assed, profession and definitely not one for wimps. And sadly we have to fight for our oxygen in the marketplace more fiercely than the writers in many genres.
Hilariously/bafflingly a couple of years ago one of those papers did a summer round up of recommended reads for the beach and featured books such as the life story of Nigel Farage. I’m sure it’s interesting, far be it from me to ever slag off a book choice especially as I love a good life story … but my point is that there was not one of ‘our’ books on the list. Not one. And when I’m on the top deck of a ship collecting data on what people are reading on holiday, I am faced with, more often than not, a sea (excuse pun) of popular fiction titles. Rarely see a ‘Genghis Khan’s Favourite Battles’ or ‘Forgotten Flags of Europe’.
(Ideal Beach Reads for the Sunbed)
(Riveting, eh!)
Did I say I didn’t get it? Then double that.
Our romfic writers give the marketplace books enjoyed by their millions. Books that prop people up and give them hope and maybe guidance because they’re often about people like them negotiating life. Romfic books give readers respite when they are hooked up to chemotherapy drips. Sometimes they give pure, simple and unadulterated entertainment without anything deeper, which is probably the aim of most of us: to write something for people to enjoy, so it’s always an unexpected bonus when someone harvests their own bounty from our words. ‘Making one think’ is not just for high literary fiction books, our stories often hit on a deeper level too. All of us romfickers have a cache of letters from people telling us that our books have changed their outlook/lives. I have too many in my stocks to say, ‘I left my husband because of you’ (absolutely true, not saying this for effect). And not just women, of course, we have plenty of male readers too. I count one of my most famous as Dave Myers – the Hairy Biker – who loved me (and Lee Child) on Audio. He’d ring me and talk about them and I soon realised he knew more about my books than I did (ahem… below, in his biography by his wife).
Even when you do get some editorial, sometimes it is as if the author of the piece feels the need to distance themselves from their own content, frame it as something they’d not be personally interested in, cushion it in sniffy language. I’ve mentioned the word ‘swoonworthy’ already, but ‘beach read’, ‘cheesy’, ‘bubblegum’… ‘froth’. I was once described in an article as ‘cuddly author’. I bet John Mortimer was never described like that. It was a nice piece, flattering, but that phrase just smacked of that ‘lesser author’ thing, not to be taken as seriously as someone who murders people on page, even though I have done in my books (I dump one drug dealer in a wheely bin). Our novels are every bit as deftly plotted as a crime novel but just because we leave people with hope at the end does not mean the pages are coated in candy floss. Often, as mine are, they are about life in all its shades of light and dark. Chuck a bit of love in a rock song and it becomes an anthem… so why is it so different with a book? God I’d love to do a PhD in this!
The book club programmes on the TV too often feature those novel choices that reflect well on the presenter. The irony is that some of those book club presenters actually write romantic fiction. But do they feature the genre on their programmes? Nope – they want to write it and have it bought by the masses but not admit they might have a romfic on their bedside table. Why is there no shame in writing it, but shame in reading it? Don’t get it.
Everybody and their mother wants to be an author today have you noticed? It’s becoming almost obligatory for celebs to be introduced as such on chat shows – and with top billing in the list: ‘My next guest is an author, actress, model…’) But for celebs it is a by-product of their day job, for us it is the everything.
Our writing community is a generous one. Our best writer mates are often our biggest rivals. When two novelists have a book out on the same day, you will most likely find them promoting each other as well as themselves. Maybe it would be nice if a celeb realised that ‘sharing the love’ (pun intended) would be a good practice to adopt. Bathe in the spotlight of the One Show (we all would) but also it would be nice to use the platform to say, ‘…And I’ve just finished reading a book by X which you should give a try’. That cross-pollination is kind and essential in these leaner times when good, solid authors are struggling for exposure. We can make this work better than it does already. Dunno why these book programmes don’t feature the authors who their viewers devour by the millions as well as their showbiz mates who have ‘written’ a book. When I was a wannabe, I wanted to hear the stories of real authors who had laboured over every word. I still do – authors love hearing how other authors write, how they build up their careers from the ground up. I wanted to hear from authors whose lives have coloured their stories.
Why does this grading of books and novelists exist? How can a literary fiction author sell 200 books and a romfic author sell 250,000 but yet they are viewed as ‘lesser’? Don’t get it, did I say? Why is something popular devalued, shouldn’t it work the other way around? And, dare I… yep, because I can’t be bothered holding in something we all think, if that popular fiction is written by a bloke… why is it somehow more respectable? Many even reclassified as ‘uplit’? Even if it would be seen as pure romfic if written by his twin sister. In short you are doubly buggered if you are female and write romfic. I’m trebly buggered because I’m a working class northern. Though, if the situation demands it, I can use cutlery.
The lit prizes lists… forget having us on there. However there is to be a new romance fiction award at the Nibbies and I’m just hoping and praying it does feature books that people love and read and want because we have got too used to being given some scraps with a right hand only for the left to snatch them back.
The honours lists are more likely to feature those authors who have written highbrow novels. They might only have a couple to their name but they’ve got a CBE/Victoria Cross for services to literature. You know, it didn’t strike me until Jenny Colgan wrote about the late and great Sophie Kinsella and Jenny’s anger and disappointment that even though her dear friend sold over 50 MILLION books, she didn’t get so much as a sniff at an MBE, no honorary doctorate that some universities seem to give away to any passing author who has a crime/lit book out. Sophie said that it didn’t matter, but it mattered to Jenny and I don’t blame her. Doesn’t that tell you a lot about this industry? Sophie Kinsella was a behemoth, loved and enjoyed all over the globe and yet… not even a Blue Peter badge. That made me so incredibly sad and yep, angry too. What about her services to literature? Wouldn’t any university have been proud to have her as one of their honoraries? Seems not. Don’t get it. You can read Jenny’s beautiful piece here.
Honours, in my book anyway, aren’t sweet if they have to be hunted down. Kind of defeats the object don’t you think? So wouldn’t it be special if the pickers widened the scope of their binoculars, honoured the authors who had been educated at their universities and spin millions of pounds for the publishing industry. I’d call that quite an achievement. Those great writers in our midst who give so much pleasure to their readers should appear on those TV shows, in the palace bowing for a badge, on the lit prize shortlists and most definitely on the book round ups of recommended reads. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again (might even get a tattoo of this) WE DO NOT WRITE LESSER BOOKS.
The tide is turning but at a pace of one degree per year, it really is NOT fast enough. What can we do about it?
