Apologies for the delay in posting!

Anyway, onto the talk. Last week, I flew to LA for the Romantic Times Conference, and on the flight out, the airplane showed The Tourist, starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. A beautiful cast, on paper at least.

My flight companion Liz Maverick and I watched it, without the sound, and found it as execrably horrible as most, if not all, reviewers had said.

(Worse even was today when I realized Jolie affects this weird faintly European accent. Ugh!) There was zero charisma between the two of them, and we didn’t buy it for a second that either would fall in love with the other. Here is their first meet:

Now, we’ve all got our favorite swoony they MUST get together moments from book and film; why do some pairings work and others absolutely do not? It’s so hard to gauge, which is where good authors have to come in; for example, I’ve just finished reading Elizabeth Hoyt‘s Notorious Pleasures where, on the first page, the heroine meets the purported hero while he is in the middle of schtupping a married woman. And, somehow, Hoyt convinces us that those two–Lady Perfect and Lord Shameless, as each tag the other–are perfect together.

In one of my favorite meetings, North & South‘s Margaret Hale meets John Thornton for the first time. She’s brave enough to stand up to him–and his temper–and even though during this scene it’s hard to imagine it, it’s not impossible to imagine that by the end they’ll have fallen in love.

What is similar between Margaret and John is their passionate protection of people, even if during this scene they are diametrically opposed.

But in The Tourist–to come back to that atrocity–there is no question, at their first meeting, that Depp’s character will do absolutely whatever Jolie’s character wants him to. There’s no tension, no will they, won’t they? about it.

It’s the question that keeps us reading or watching–will they or won’t they?–even when we can predict the outcome (reading romance, and all).

Who are your most electric pairings on screen or in book?

Megan Frampton

Too Many Dukes? Or Not Enough to Go Around?

There’s this pernicious statement that keeps popping up among authors of historical romance to the effect that In Real Life there were only a very small number of dukes and that historical romance as a genre has more dukes than ever existed in the entire universe and isn’t that just completely unrealistic?

I get a little hot under the collar every time I hear (read) someone say that because it misses the ENTIRE POINT. Which I will get to after I point out a few things.

A population explosion

Every genre of fiction is over-populated with its principal archetypes. There sure are a lot of detectives in mysteries. And Romantic Suspense seems to be dealing with an absolute deluge of serial killers. Throw in Thrillers and maybe you should be wondering about your neighbors. Because if you aren’t the serial killer on your block, then sure as heck someone else is. Right? Is he REALLY just taking out the garbage or is that body parts? And dukes in historical romance! You can’t swing a dead cat in 1815 without hitting a duke.

Give ’em The Boot!

If we follow the logic of the argument against dukes in historical romance, then we should ask the other genres to stop with the detectives and sleuths and serial killers. And elves, let’s do something about them too, because you know what? There are too damn many elves in High Fantasy. Don’t get me started on the dragons. Those don’t even really exist and they’re all over the place. They should leave town with the hero raised in poverty who is actually the King’s long lost son AND HE CAN DO MAGIC!!!

A Book is An Island

Here’s my problem with statements like there are too many dukes. It conflates the world of a book with the world of every other similar book. But each book, each story, is a world unto itself. That story is an island unto itself and when the bell tolls, it’s only for that book. In this book in which the hero is a duke, it doesn’t matter if there is another fictional duke in another book. It just doesn’t.

It’s up to the author to make him real in the story in which he is the hero.

Let’s Keep our Arguments Straight
The argument against dukes in historical romance conflates cliche and familiar tropes with the fictional world of the book. Those are two separate problems. A reader might well decide she’s tired of dukes in stories and wish for a story without one. But that is not the same problem as pointing out there are more fictional dukes than there ever have been IRL. That last one, in my opinion, is a big so what?

A duke in a story is a cliche if and only if he is written badly and without care. A story that doesn’t somewhere in its guts think about why the hero is a duke and then use that in subtle and non-subtle ways is a book that will probably feel cliche. And it won’t be because the hero is a duke. It will be because the author was lazy,

It’s also not the same problem as wishing there were historical romances without dukes. And, I’m happy to say, there are.

What do you think? Are you tired of dukes?

Too Many Dukes? Or Not Enough to Go Around?

There’s this pernicious statement that keeps popping up among authors of historical romance to the effect that In Real Life there were only a very small number of dukes and that historical romance as a genre has more dukes than ever existed in the entire universe and isn’t that just completely unrealistic?

I get a little hot under the collar every time I hear (read) someone say that because it misses the ENTIRE POINT. Which I will get to after I point out a few things.

A population explosion

Every genre of fiction is over-populated with its principal archetypes. There sure are a lot of detectives in fiction.

riskies@yahoo.com

Hey!