CAROL BURNSIDE / ANNIE RAYBURN

>Personal preferences

My preference is to have open door love scenes in both what I read and what I write. Not always, but generally. If you notice, I said LOVE scenes, not just sex. In a romance, love scenes have emotion, tenderness, and feelings growing because it’s a story of two people falling in love, the ups and down, trials and conflicts or meshing two people into a couple. I’m a big fan of emotional conflicts. I also like a little humor here and there because too much angst is tiring.

Friends and family and even setting factor hugely in my books because no one lives in a vacuum. Even an orphan and former foster child grows up to have co-workers and friends in their life. (Claire – current heroine in KiTA.) I enjoy having secondary characters who both enrich and complicate my hero and heroine’s lives. In addition, the interaction is a great way to show personality strengths and weaknesses, and divulge backstory in small doses.

I love the traditional plot lines of secret babies, marriages of convenience, friends to lovers, bad boy/good girl (and vice versa). I like my heroes alpha, but not overbearing and mean. I like strong-willed and soft-hearted heroines.So, taking all this into consideration, I settled on Silhouette Special Edition as my target line. (How nice that I like to read them too!) Their guidelines say:

Sounds right up my alley, don’t you think? That was my conclusion.

So you see there’s a lot of factors that were taken into consideration in this decision. The fit feels right, I love the stories about the people my mind creates and the lives they live in their quest to find love, and that’s why I write what I write.

* http://www.eharlequin.com/cms/learntowrite/ltwArticle.jhtml?pageID=021101wu18001

>Factoring in market and trend

In the world of romantic fiction, there’s always going to be talk of one sub-genre or another’s sales doing well or declining. There will always be some authors who jump on the “what’s hot” bandwagon. Some of them will actually sell and make money. Others will keep jumping to the latest trend. To my way of thinking, whether or not some of those people who sell to trend LOVE what they’re writing is another thing entirely. But I digress.

While I wouldn’t recommend letting the market dictate what you will write, a strong indicator of what’s selling in romance is publisher Harlequin/Silhouette. They’ve been around for decades and it’s not like they’re going out of business any time soon, though they do have their ups and downs. Writers panic when a line closes and there’s doomsday talk that runs rampant around the various groups and loops. But there’s usually another line or two to take it’s place. Sometimes several open before they close one. The choices are mind-boggling.

While the hot commodity right now (if you’ll pardon the pun) is erotic romance, H/S continues to have several lines that don’t have sex scenes in them at all, or “closed-door” love scenes, and they sell well. Inspirational romance sales are on the increase and a new line has opened up – inspirational romantic suspense. Depending on who you talk to, historical sales are either on the rise or declining. Personally, I think it depends on the content and era in history. Paranormal romance is huge. So you see, the choices are many.

Reading wise, any or all of those mentioned may grace my bookshelves from time to time, but a steady diet of any of them doesn’t interest me either. Overwhelmingly, I like present day romances, which is why I settled on writing contemporary romance.

H/S has many contemporary lines that sell very well, so when you’re targeting series romance, that kind of a decision isn’t definitive enough. You have to know not only the type of romance, but the specific line you’re most likely to sell to. (Some people, if prolific enough, can target more than one line.) This brings me to Part 3: Personal preferences.

To be continued…

>The choice is an important one.

On one of the private loops I frequent, there was a recent discussion about what an author has to write to sell a romance, what sub-genres are selling, that kind of thing. The fear seemed to be that you had to write extreme erotica these days in order to sell a book. What developed out of that conversation is a 3-part series.

That conversation got me to thinking that some writers could make knee-jerk decisions, based on some perceived market trend that could set them back years in the quest for publication. Thank God, I’m a much more methodical decision maker, (although my husband doesn’t always think that’s a positive thing).

For instance, on a recent trip to the office supply store, I was trying to decide on a wireless mouse. Who knew they came in such shapes, sizes, colors, and such a variety of prices, not to mention laser vs. optical and USB driven vs. a larger, more unwieldy receiver? Hubby would’ve have bought the one recommended by the salesperson and left. Me? There were too many choices to believe that salesperson had picked out the perfect one for me. Turns out he hadn’t. I liked another brand with a USB pen receiver that fits inside the mouse when not in use, saving the battery. It’s more portable, compact, and the fit was comfortable in my hand. Would the recommended mouse have worked? I’m sure it would. I probably could have used it for years. But this one was much more suited to ME and my needs.

If we’re willing to take such care choosing items we use on a regular basis, why then would we take any less care in considering what kind of book we want to spend hours, days, weeks, even months of our time writing?

I began reading at the age of three and can’t ever remember a world without it. I’ve read too many books in my lifetime to even begin to remember them all. As an adult, I’ve enjoyed the occasional thriller, cozy mystery or family saga, but they had to have an element of romance in them to truly hold my attention. When I first decided to learn the craft of writing, I needed to make a decision as to which area to target in order to concentrate on and try to excel in that area. So, for me, that decision of what to write was never about genre. It never occurred to me to write anything but romance because it was so ingrained in my reading, TV and movie choices. The question was: What kind of romance?

And that brings me to Part 2: Factoring in market and trend.

To be continued…