Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

Darn It, Who Cares!

My name is Lauren Dane and I write romance. What’s more is that I like to read it too.

I’m not ashamed of romance. I’m not ashamed of romance covers. I would read any damned thing I wanted to on the bus and I don’t give a monnkey’s wet patootie if some stranger across the aisle from me thinks I’m dumb or filled with cooties because I have girl parts or thinks they’re smarter than I am because they read something else.

I was a hard person before I came to romance, by the way. But in the big scheme of things, trying to will the rest of the world to respect romance is at the bottom of my list. Because I don’t care. I don’t. I like what I do. I like what I read. I’m not so very well adjusted, not really, but I just don’t care if people don’t like romance.

I don’t care because firstly, preferences are the lifeblood of the universe. It’s why I could LIVE on Thai food and my dude hates it. As for the haters? Well there are people in this world who MUST have something to put down to feel up. You know that person, right? I’m all happy to snark around and joke and make fun of the look on Gywneth Paltrow’s face (does her diet include just sucking lemons all day or what? And please, some explain to me how you need to work out three hours a day to say thin when you’re on a macrobiotic diet? I tell you, I’d be sucking down twinkies and french fries by the cartload if I had to work out three hours a day. Whoops, tangent!)

So there will always be people who don’t haven enough self esteem and belief in their own abilities so they stand around and snicker about romance on their livejournal or blog or at a conference or on the bus. shrug. Whatever.

No one is going to make me feel like I have to apologize for writing an HEA if I want to. Not everything I write is romance of course, but everything I’ve sold is, LOL. And if you don’t like it, that’s totally okay because every week there are oodles of books of all kinds to choose from. Why anyone obsesses about things they don’t like and don’t read is not something I quite grasp, but I think it gets back to the whole “some people need to tear down to feel better” and okay.

We don’t all have to like the same thing. I hate Pretty Woman. HATE IT! I hate the movie, I find it insulting. But I don’t care that it’s so well loved by millions of others and I still quite like Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. It’s just fine and dandy that other people find joy in it. I hate Gone With The Wind too, by the way. I also hate eggs. I wish I liked them though because omelettes seem like they’d be very tasty (tangent again)

Anyhoodle – this gets back to PREFERENCES and FILTERS. Your preferences do not mean more than mine and vice versa. We might be different, and different does not equal bad. Read what you like. It’s sooooo very simple. Don’t read what you don’t like. Again, very simple unless you are in school and reading what you don’t like is a regular occurrence.

Anyway, not everything has to be the most important book in the world. It’s okay to like and write popular fiction. And it’s also, just a fact, IMO, that romance is always going to be made fun of so I think trying to make people who will always find a reason not to like us, like us, is a waste of time. The important people, namely our readers, like us just fine. I’m just too old to care that some random person on the bus snickers when they see the cover of my book.

To all our readers in the US – enjoy your Independence Day!! And to everyone – have a great weekend.

Lauren
www.laurendane.com