SquawkRadio

And I haven't had any wine, so I can only hope I know what I'm talking about.

Putting aside for now that Connie has equated contemporary writing with ba... writing (and she'd damned well better be talking about sheep), I remember a time back in the early to mid-90s when a lot of my fellow category authors suddenly started writing historicals because we were all told by our agents that that was where the big money could be made. I remember Patricia Coughlin wrote some wonderful historicals, as did Dixie Browning (my hero), and some others who I can't off the top of my head recall. (I'd have to go open a bunch of book boxes and I'm too lazy, not to mention I'm supposed to be working.) My then-agent told me I should write historical, too, and when I assured her there was no freakin' way, she directed me to Loretta Chase. Naturally, after reading LORD OF SCOUNDRELS, I knew I'd be way, WAY out of my league in historicals, so that pretty much cemented the decision for me to stay in contemporary right there. I don't care if the contemp market bottoms out egregiously. I can only write contemorary, and that's that. I admire anyone who can cross lines, in or out of genre, but to quote that great 20th century philosopher, Bob Dylan, "It ain't me, babe." (Was it Bob Dylan who said that? Remember, I cut my teeth on the Archies and Barry Manilow, so what the hell do I know?)

ANYway, what happened was that many of us category authors went to historical and saw that our category income was infinitely better, so few of us stayed. (Remember, this was back in the EARLY 90s, when category writers were still seeing some seriously decent income.) And then a bunch of historical writers found out how much we category writers made, and we saw this big rush (well, okay, maybe a mini-rush) of historical authors suddenly popping up in the category lines. I think several of them stayed and did very well there and are still thriving. The secret, in my opinion, is that if you genuinely love the genre or subgenre into which you move, and you have a great story to tell there, you'll succeed quite nicely. But if you're only going there to make money, foggedabbuddit. (Yes, as a matter of fact, I DID live in New Jersey for a time.) Your lack of passion will come through, and you'll ultimately flounder.

This is such a weird business, and I always laugh when I meet doctors and lawyers who want to leave their profession and join mine. Oh, yeah, it's great going for months with NO income and having NO benefits and NO healthcare and NO retirement and NO certainty that I'll still be employed once the next contract is up. Who wouldn't want to sign up for this gig? You absolutely have to love what you're writing, regardless of what it is, and you can't do it because you're looking for the big bucks. There aren't many bucks to be had in this business, and they're becoming more and more scarce with every year. That said, however, we do want to make a good living, to provide for ourselves and our families. So we have to think commercially, and if that means making changes, so be it. Just be sure you still love what you write when you make the change.

THAT said, knowing a bit about Connie's contemp project, and knowing how much she loves it, and how anxious she is to write it, and how incredibly jazzed she is to be doing it--and, oh, all RIGHT, how freaking talented she is--I'm sure she's going to zoom right to the top.

One thing I've learned after seventeen years of doing this is that the market is cyclical. I don't doubt that historical will swing back to the top with a vengeance at some point, and will probably morph into something different from what it is now. At that time, contemporary may become the doormat to the past. I'll just have to hope I'm the doormat at the house of some fabulously successful historical writer.

And now you know the real reason why I hang around with these guys.

Okay. Let's say a historical author (let's say she's a stunning Irish-Scandinavian hybrid of an indeterminate but probably fairly young age, who can bench press 95 pounds and plays a mean game of tennis but indulges her softer, gentler side as a master gardener and cook of no mean accomplishment) gets to a certain level and sticks there, not for one or two books but for five or six. Since one of her (few) failings is an inordinate sense of her own worth, this pisses her off. She wants to reach a large audience. She has things she wants to say. Stories she wants to tell. She likes a crowd. Mostly crowded around her!!

Now, she loves writing historicals but there are SEVERE limitations on the sort of historicals that are being published. Her one ill-fated attempt at writing a historical set in another country convinced her early on that if she intended to write as more than a hobby, she would have to toe the geographical lines. So she looks at her options and they all have a contemporary face. If she writes a contemporary she can write a suspense novel, a mystery, a women's fiction novel, a chick-lit, a straight romance... She can set her characters in the Midwest, or in a trip to Italy, explore the wine country of California, install them in a London apartment. If she stays in historicals she stuck about the Regency or Victorian era-- venturing out of England only at her own publishing peril. (Okay, she's also a bit of a coward. Cowards can be good writers!)

And perhaps she's a bit naive. Still there is no denying that contemporary stories *successfully* use a far greater range of plots, tone and settings than those in the historical market. So, hoping to grow that illusive bigger readership, she pops off. Wish her luck. She knows she's going to need it. At least, er, I assume she does.

Now, having said that, there are contemporary authors who return to writing historicals. I know that Catherine Anderson has a historical story in the November 2005 NAL anthology that I'm in and I believe she's interested in doing more. But then, she came from a historical background and probably got homesick. I know I expect to. Anyone else know of authors who started in contemporary going historical? Curious.

CONNIE BROCKWAY

Okay, so now that I've taunted you guys with my life this weekend, I shall tell you what I did. I spent Saturday down on the river in the bitter, bitter, BITTER freaking cold, watching airplanes and fireworks. We have this little thing in my part of Kentucky called The Kentucky Derby. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's two weeks away. Which means for two weeks, this city is going to be overrun by all manner of "Get the Tourist Dollar" activities. Except that what they haven't figured out is that the tourists don't get here until just before the Derby (you can tell when they arrive by driving past the airport and seeing all the private jets parked there), so most of it winds up being "Get the Local Dollar" activities. They got plenty of this local's dollars over the weekend, lemme tell ya. And "Thunder Over Louisville" is just the beginning. Soon there will be bed races, rat races (literally--for a tiny trophy full of Froot Loops), waiters racing with glasses of wine (the Run for the Rose--wine, I mean, since that last e should have an accent, but I'm too 'puter challenged to figure out how to do it), parades, hot air balloons being lit up, celebrity-packed parties, you name it. And I'm going to go to ALL of them. (Well, okay, for the celebrity-packed parties, I'll be in the crowd of fans roped off to the side who are star-gazing, but that's beside the point. It IS.)

Cool girl indeed.

Holy cow, you guys were busy with the blogging this weekend while some of us (i.e. ME) were off having a life. Thanks for carrying the load. (And I'll be polite and not say anything about what it was a load of.)

I, too, have to laugh at this concept of "cool girls," since I was the library aide in high school and worked on the yearbook staff and never wore the right shoes or listened to the right music. (The first 45 I ever bought was the Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" and the first album I ever bought was Barry Manilow. 'Nuff said.) In junior high, I was the one being thrown into the showers by the cool girls at the end of gym class and had to go to Spanish all soaking wet. So if I'm with the "cool girls" now, someone, for God's sake, help me find the exit. And even now, my glasses prescription is so thick (even with the lightweight lenses) that my optha...opta...oppo...my eye doctor once told me, "Wow. If you'd been born a thousand years ago, you would have been the village blind girl." My date to the prom was a guy I barely knew who had broken up with his girlfriend two weeks before the prom and was trawling for a date with ANYone (and two weeks before the prom, I was still date-free). On prom night, he ended up hooking up with one of my best friends, and they're now married with two kids.

So let's just put that "popular, cool" thing right out of our heads, shall we? It's pain that makes artists good. In this company, I think it's safe to say we've had more than our share. Come all ye acne-ridden peasants to our feast. We'll have much to talk about.

Elizabeth Bevarly

Cool?! I was one of the high school newspaper editors, fer chrissake. Never even went to prom-- and the mortifying thing was that I would have gone in a heartbeat had someone, ANYONE, asked me. They didn't.

Now that I think about it, it was at about this time that I started populating my imagination with sardonic, masterful heroes who realized how ravishing nerd-girls could be.

And if anyone should mistakenly think that somewhere in the interim I segued in cooldom-- here's a picture taken of me this afternoon. Caught napping at the Minnesota Arboretum. I know, I know... beyond cool.

Does anyone besides me remember just how awful high school was? Sometimes I get a fleeting sense that someone is intimidated by talking to me (Shakespeare professor, New York Times bestselling writer, bla bla bla). This always surprises me because I had the ego so thoroughly kicked out of me in school that I just don't see myself as the least intimidating.

Back then I was plump, miserable and sported a red afro. Both boys who showed signs of dating me in my senior year, including the boy who took me to the senior prom, are now out and gay. Has anyone read the book FAT GIRL? I just finished it, and while the author had much greater and more tragic reasons for her misery, that book came the closest I've seen to depicting just how ungodly it is to be a young person who is not physically perfect in this country.

Many of us got email expressing concerns about the purpose of Squawk Radio, and there was a great riff on one of the bbs which said it best. A reader suggested that we were like the the cool-girl clique who sat at their own table in high school. She asked if she came over, would she feel like acne-ridden freshman who sits at the cool-girls' table and they stop talking, really talking, and get polite?

Eloisa, Teresa and I responded in much the same way: wow, you mean we're the cool girls?

Eloisa said, "Can I just say that I grew up in a small town in Minnesota (population 2000), and I was plump, red-haired, too weird and unpopular for words...and I LOVE the idea of being at the cool-girl table? Can we keep this up, guys? Eloisa....finally made it, umpteen years too late."

I added, "Here's the thing -- if you don't come over to talk to us, we're not the cool girls, we're the nerds with the pocket protecters and the taped glasses. And may I say, in my former life I was a drafter and I have already worn pocket protectors and taped glasses. I also know how to use a protractor and both an engineering and architectural scale. Does that make you comfortable enough for you to drop in on us ... or will you never come over now because you don't want to hang around with the dweebs?"

And Teresa said it best, "Honey, if you think we're like the cool-girl clique in high school, then you've obviously never seen our yearbook photos *g*. Someone once said that behind every writer is a weird little kid and that is so true! If you comment, will I be nicer to you than I will to Connie, Eloisa, Christina, Lisa or Elizabeth? Um, probably. But that's only because I've had a few years to practice being rude and disrespectful to them. And I know they love it! Our goal with the blog is simply to have fun and to discuss some fun things and some serious things and to have a place to vent when one of us is just dying to verbalize an opinion and our families and friends are giving us that glazed look that says, "Go away, you weird little kid." Hope you'll pop in. You can sit at my lunch table anyday! Hugs, Teresa "Harriet the Spy" Medeiros"

I'm sure our other three Squawkers may have had similar experiences. (Guys?)

So Connie has fixed it so everyone can comment and until we're hit by spammers, you'll be able to add your insights so that everyone can enjoy them. This is a learning experience for us, so stick with us and we'll get it figured out!