I don’t read romances, but I love reading my sister-in-law Wendy’s blog about the field. It turns out Wendy has the Goldberg family touch for creating controversy. The other day, Wendy wrote about her disappointment with Romancing the Blog, a blog of web columnists who explore the romance genre.
I love the idea of RTB. I want the excitement I felt at first to
continue. No, actually, I want there to
be a reason for that excitement. When
RTB launched it quickly became my first web stop of the day. I couldn’t wait to see who posted and what
they had to say. Now it’s something I
get around to, more from habit that interest. Sylvia’s post
about the online romance community was the first column that held my attention
in…I can’t remember when.I don’t expect the earth to move
everytime I click on a blog, any blog. But, with all possibilites RTB promises,
I expect them to deliver more often than not. That’s it. The almost unvarnished truth.
Her post seems pretty tame to me, but it apparently sparked a blogstorm of controversy and led novelist Alison Kent to reveal herself as one of RTB’s anonymous founders. Helen Kay writes today about the brouhaha (don’t you just love that word? It’s like a diabolical villain’s laugh…"Today, Mr. Bond, I will rule the world! BrouHAHA!").
Congrats to Wendy for
having the guts to blog about RTB even though she knew it put her butt on the
line. She’s a grown-up and can speak for herself but I do want to say something
– despite what some comments have suggested, she didn’t do it just to be
controversial. She did it because she is excited about the concept of RTB and
wants it to be successful and, yes, sometimes that means RTB needs to be
controversial too. She pointed out it also needs to be diverse and relevant and
interesting. Constructive criticisms not snarkiness. She is allowed to have an
opinion and should be able to do so without having her motives questioned.
Now I think it’s time for Wendy to talk about fanfiction, vanity presses, the LA Times Book Review, and people who call themselves "pre-published authors."
Fanfic and vanity presses are your babies, Lee. Or, I as like to think of them, copy right infringement and pay for play, but whatever. Anyway, you are welcome to them.
The L.A. Times Book Review? We’ll see how that works out.
“Pre-published” don’t get me started.
Apparently I missed the memo or meeting on that issue: I thought, inherent in its nature, the blog was supposed to be unvarnished, uncensored, without apology; as Truman Capote would say: Blood and hair on them, those walls.
But civilized? Oh, do leave such niceties to the professional, objective (erummmm, uh, yeah) news media.
And if you do decide to muscle on The L.A. Times Book Review make sure you announce it: I’ll sell tickets and brings bags of sawdust to scatter in the wake, to sop up the pools of spilled blood.