I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel. I'm a heart-breaker and I don't care much for rules n' such. Being an independent writer, this means I don't have a big publishing house telling me how to mash my stories into neat little boxes to fit happy reader expectations.
I get to be raw. I get to live on the edge. I get to take left turns without rewriting my entire story to satisfy a crowd.
In my PRETTY IN PINK, Duckie would have gotten the girl.
I would want it no other way.
This puts me in a bit of a pickle when it comes to genre romance, since there are certain reader expectations a writer can only ignore at his or her own risk. I like the idea of falling in love book after book, story after story, but I don't like the idea that they all have to fit a basic A-B-C plot. There's no straight line in love and romance, and I like to explore every road that gets me there, even when (especially when) I need to color outside the lines to do so. So... I can either write formulaic, happy fairy tales... or I can get down and dirty with a little romantic realism and make love happen where I least expect it.
In other words, do I write to sell books, or write books I would love to read?
What to do... what to do?
I like to be real in my work because I think that makes things more interesting. I write flawed characters because I enjoy the struggle to mold them into something we can all care about and root for. Sometimes they mess up. Sometimes they mess up big-time.
Sometimes they don't even have the audacity to be ashamed about it.
In the case of GROUPIE/ROCK STAR, which hit the best-selling list in the Kindle Store for Women's Contemporary Fiction this week, I write about a polyamorous bad boy rocker. His addiction to attention and sex wreak havoc on his relationship with a quote-unquote normal girl who had the misfortune of falling in love with him even when he couldn't offer her anything - much less an exclusive commitment.
He's like any other commitment-phobe, only with plenty of opportunity to indulge his more primal, lustful nature to keep him at arm's length with the world. He makes no promises, he just takes what he wants when he wants it, damn the consequences. In other words... he's truly a bad boy rocker, collecting a jar of hearts right along with the notches on his bedpost.
Y'all watched Rock of Love. You feel me. When you love someone famous, he's already in a relationship with the entire world. You go into it with the idea you're going to share him on some level. That's just the way it is.
His dual nature of being a romantic hero and an opportunistic player makes him loads of fun to write. I get to tear him down, I get to build him up. He's quite pliable because he's unpredictable. He could be a one-dimensional cheater who doesn't really care about women (see PICTURE POSTCARDS,) but instead he's that wounded bad boy who needs to be loved so much he feels unworthy of the attention at his core. He wrestles with his love of women, his love of love and romance and with the idea he will never live up to anyone's expectations. So he self-destructs like many bad boys so many of us have found ourselves loving despite ourselves. And, if we're really young and naive, we want to save them - we want to be The One who turns it all around through nothing but indefatigable will. Hence why my heroine can't let him go, even when she meets someone older and more stable, who is willing to give her his world.
Just like my heroine Andy, I - and the readers who have come to love this story - flip-flop between sexy, dangerous Vanni and stable, gentlemanly Graham all the way through the saga. This is especially true in book two (ROCK STAR) where I get into why Vanni is so wounded. This happens as he messes up everything and sinks to an almost irredeemable level, along with everyone else who make mistake after mistake trying to force the hand of fate to deliver their own happy ending.
I am unabashed and unashamed as I keep that HEA (happily ever after) on a stick out in front of us all while I crowbar Vanni especially into the romantic hero people want him to be from the beginning.
(He's a fixer-upper. What can I say?)
As such, Groupie/Rock Star - while *technically* a romance novel centered around this main relationship - breaks a ton of "rules" along the way.
So before you invest the $5.99, here's some things you should know.
If your need for a HEA is more important than the road to get you there, you probably shouldn't buy this particular bundle. These are the first two parts of a long-suffering trilogy. It comes with a lot of angst as we all wait patiently for resolution through the first two WTF-cliffhanger novels included in the bundle. I wanted to write the HEA at the end of GROUPIE, honestly I did. But Vanni wasn't ready. And I couldn't bring myself to pretend he was. It's taken me a lot more time to shoehorn any of this into a story that offers a satisfactory payoff no matter if you're on Team Vanni or Team Graham... but the third won't be out until at least February. If you're all about the "money shot" at the end of every book, save yourself time and money and read my rocker-fantasy short SAN FRANCISCO SERENADE instead.
If you hate "cheaters" and triangles, GROUPIE/ROCK STAR isn't for you. I know many who read romance want the "fantasy" and not "reality" - but the fact that the world of celebrity comes with a different set of rules is what made me WANT to write about it. If I'm going to write about a bad boy rocker, I'm going to lay it all bare... the good, the bad, and the ugly. In fact, the "cheater" criticism kind of amuses me, to be honest with you. Technically he's not really a cheater since he's not really promising exclusivity. I make no bones about it from the very beginning, in the very first chapter he is introduced. He came with a warning label, and these are the rules Andy accepts to be in the relationship. So if you need this guy to be more of a one-woman man than an unapologetic sex hound, save your money.
If you need a writer who caters to some paint-by-numbers formula to writing a romance novel, you should probably stay away from my books entirely. I can't always promise a HEA. Some have it. Some don't. Some are sweet. Some are tragic. Some are scandalous. And I'll never say which is which, because like River Song I believe life is more fun without spoilers. That's just how I roll. I'm a slave to the story, and can only produce what I would ultimately buy/believe when I, as the first reader, have it revealed to me. As an Indie, I have that luxury, which means I'm only going to sell the stories I myself would be happy to read.
And I don't like things tied up in a neat little bow every time. I like the emotional angst, the stomach-churning, toss-the-book-across-the-room, curse-the-writer, cry-and-wail and sometimes the not-know-how-it-all-turns out roller coaster of it all. I like ambiguity, I like WTF moments, and I like realism. I like getting down and dirty with flawed characters who aren't always likable, but somehow manage to be compelling anyway.
Love 'em or hate 'em, if you made it to the end of the book I've done my job.
Let me put it to you this way. I've been reading Harlequin novels almost as long as I've been watching soap operas. I don't remember many specific story lines from the HEA books, but I can recite Luke and Laura's push-and-pull history verbatim. I'm a Scorpio, tried and true. I like dark/gritty/naughty so I am unafraid to dig in the dirt.
You should have seen what my Barbies were doing in the 80s. It was scandalous. Cheating was the very least of what my characters would do.
Through my teen years I inhaled equal parts V.C. Andrews and Danielle Steel. I fed off of angst/drama/controversy/taboo that followed character over one specific relationship. I liked being uncomfortable and sad and strangely titillated when the story called for it. I trusted my writers to lead me wherever they wanted to go.
As a reader, as a writer, I believe story is king. I submit to it, heart and soul. I don't care about rules. I like not knowing where I'll end up. I love being surprised and having my expectations turned on a dime. As such I'll never be content to confine myself within the rigid structure of a white-cover romance novel. I want to dance across the line of what is expected and what is accepted.
People have said I'll have a hard time finding an audience because of this, especially with all the genre-hopping I'm known to do, but I don't think that's true. Each book comes with its own audience, one that can appreciate its virtues (and flaws) individually. I think there are people out there who are like me, who want to see stories delivered in a frank and honest way, even when I unearth the rotting corpses of societal taboos.
That is the writer I've always wanted to be, whether I sell hundreds or thousands of books... or millions. I apologize for none of it.
You may not like some of the twists and hairpin turns I take you on. And I may not always give the characters what we want for them, but I can promise I'll always give them what they need. Most of all... I promise to make the ride worthwhile for those who embrace the total abandon of story. We're in this together, you and I.
We may not get there in one piece (or one novel,) but we'll get there... together.
Happy reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment