I’ll admit that whenever I read a description of a heroine whose lips are too wide and too full for fashion, I think that we’re supposed to imagine Marilyn-, Bellucci-, or Jolie-esque lips, but the unfortunate image that hops into my mind is something like this:

Or something featured on AwfulPlasticSurgery.com.

*and I only was reminded of this because of a conversation between Lorelie Brown and Zoe Archer on Twitter. So you have them to blame thank.

Almost a year ago, I drove up to Seattle to tape an interview for Project Paranormal. Though I rehearsed my Guardian spiel all the way up I-5, as soon as the camera turned on I became a blithering idiot. (True story. I’m sure you’ll see the evidence of it soon.)

And driving all the way down, I obsessed over my idiocy, and all of the things I said that were dumb — but most of all, over the one thing I forgot to say.

One of the interview questions was something like: What would be the most difficult superpower for a character to have? and I said, Having the ability to read lies and truth. Because it would be very, very difficult to go through life always knowing the truth about how people feel about you, or how they genuinely thought, because we all have ugly thoughts, we all have ugly feelings — and most of us try not to inflict them on other people. But what if you always knew, anyway? I think that it’d be so painful, you’d have to erect impenetrable emotional shields just to get through the day.

And even though I was babbling on, I forgot to add this: But I also think that’s what romance is all about. It’s about finding that someone who you can be absolutely honest with, about finding that person who will accept everything about you, and who doesn’t need to lie, because they’ve taken both the good and the bad, and they love you for both. It’s about being honest, and about trusting that they won’t hurt you, even though they have the power to do so.

So when the interview finally came out, I was going to say all of this on my blog — a clarification of sorts. But today, Ilona Andrews said the same thing over at Odd Shots, only she said it better (and coming from an amazing writer … okay, I teared up. She blindsided me, and the shields weren’t up. Damn her.)

And I have to say, that is exactly what I’m striving for with every single romance I write. Honesty, acceptance, trust…which are often much, much harder to come by than love.

In paranormal romance, typically it is the male who can smell the female’s arousal. But researchers have shown that it’s the chick who can detect the dude’s desire. From Fox News:

Women Can Smell a Man’s Sexual Intentions

Chen and her colleagues asked 20 heterosexual guys to stop wearing deodorant and scented products for a few days.

Then they told the men to put small pads in their armpits as they watched pornographic videos and became aroused. (The researchers confirmed, using electrodes, that the images did the job.)

Later, the guys were asked to exchange those pads for fresh pads to collect the sweat they produced when they weren’t aroused.

Then the researchers recruited 19 brave women to smell the men’s pads while undergoing brain scans.

I hope those women were paid well.

I’ve already forgotten where I saw this linked from because I was running through my Google Reader so quickly this morning*, but Carrie Vaughn has an excellent series of posts on Urban Fantasy.

From the second post, “When Things Go Wrong”:

6. The book has a strong woman character. But only one. You’d think a genre that supposedly celebrates kick-ass women ought to be able to have more than one per series. You’d think a genre that’s supposed to be all about empowering women would be able to pass the Bechdel Test more often. The test: The story in question has 1) at least two women, 2) who talk to each other, 3) about something other than men.

Word. Not all of my pet peeves match Vaughn’s, but that is one I’m noticing more and more (or I would, if I was reading enough.)

Post 1 — Post 2 — Post 3

*As soon as I remember, I’ll give proper credit. And, it was Literary Escapism. Of course.

(but not the last words I’ll be writing, because I’m hoping to get another couple of pages in before I hit the hay)

I just ran across something that made me realize that I’m not bothered when generalizations are used to criticize the romance (or other) genres. For example, “So many alpha men!” We all have our preferences, and not all of them run the same way, and we all seek out books that we think we will like according to our individual tastes.

I am bothered when generalizations are used to criticize a specific book/relationship. “This romance sucks! Yet another alpha man! Why couldn’t she be with a beta hero?”

Especially when it ignores a) the heroine’s character, b) the success/failure of the romance and the chemistry (or lack thereof) as described in the book. (If it ignores that particular heroine would walk all over a hero who wasn’t alpha, for example.) The problem is, of course, separating a dislike for alpha heroes and that the book didn’t work according to personal taste — and recognizing that the book just doesn’t work. Sometimes, an asshole alpha and a TSTL doormat have a romance that does work, because they are made for each other — but that doesn’t mean the book is good, because…well, asshole and TSTL.

I do have a soft spot for betas, but I find myself wishing less for certain trends in romance than just finding the individual book that works on its own terms, no matter what category the characters fall in to.

Taste and technique. Here’s to hoping that in 2009, all of the books we read (and write) will hit our sweet spots in both categories (or if not, that one aspect of it will hit your sweet spot so hard, that you don’t mind so much about the other).

So, obviously, it takes me a while to get around to anything lately. I’ve been thinking about this since I read a comment by Nora Roberts at Dear Author (in response to Jane Litte’s article Let’s Talk About Sex (and Love,  and then Sex Again) which posed the question of how/why/what it’ll take for romance to be accepted in the same way as a show like Bones, where the sexual tension and romantic subplots aren’t belittled):

when writers and readers talk about the hawt, hawt, hawt, then it becomes about the hawt–and not about the sex within the context of the story. It’s that the detractors and the media will jump on, while they disregard all the rest.

I don’t want to be known as a writer of hawt books. I want to be known as a good writer–whose books contain well written love scenes as well as good characterization, strong dialogue, a solid story, etc.

And my reaction was kind of like: nod, frown, nod, frown, nod, frown. Because I agree: to talk about how hawt books are when speaking with someone unfamiliar with the genre moves the focus completely onto the hawtness. But within the genre — hell, even on this blog — I like using “hawt” and to mention the heat level. The term “hawt,” IMO, has become a shorthand for “explicit” that also distances me, as a person/author/reader, from the eroticism of the novel.

I probably have to explain that. (Long post coming up after the cut.)