The randomly chosen winner of the ARC of Not Wicked Enough is . . . Kaetrin I’ve sent you an email but feel free to email me directly (carolyn AT carolynjewel.com) with your mailing address!

Normally, I don’t cross-post my own blog with this one, but I’m making an exception because this has me hopping mad.

Last night, I posted this on my blog:

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Go take a look at what Mr. Cale McCaskey has to tell us about Romance: The Problem with Romance

Women are, of course, quite familiar with arguments like his. They’ve been used for centuries to denigrate anything associated with women that would, if left unremarked, disprove the bias.

Basically, he’s saying that all Romance novels are inferior because if a book that might otherwise be called a romance is actually good, it’s necessarily anything but a romance. This is EXACTLY like the Victorian era physicians who performed an autopsy on a respected colleague only to discover that their colleague was a woman. When faced with the presence of female genitalia, they pronounced her a hermaphrodite. Because it just wasn’t possible for a WOMAN to have been successfully masquerading as a physician and to have been good at it, too.

Right. When the evidence contradicts you, redefine the world rather than adjust your assumptions.

I’m told he’s busy deleting comments he doesn’t like, so feel free to read his post and come comment here if you worry he’ll disagree with you and have to delete your comment in an attempt to keep his narrow world view safe from anything like truth or an open mind. [Risky Readers can comment here if they like.]

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• For him, Jane Eyre is a good novel so it’s not a Romance. (Forget the HEA)
• Pride and Prejudice is trash (Because he didn’t like it, never mind that it’s still being read, critiqued, analyzed, transformed into other media and used as inspiration 200 plus years later.)
• Those two Bronte sisters didn’t write anything besides Jane Eyre and [Wuthering Heights]. Forget Charlotte Bronte’s brilliant Villette (he might like it, though, because it’s not a romance.) And wait, wasn’t there THREE Bronte sisters? Why yes! There were. Ann Bronte wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which, OK, isn’t the greatest, but I’ve always thought it showed promise.

The intellectually challenged among us, which, I guess is anyone who reads romance, can comment about rainbows, unicorns and glitter. If you need help forming a coherent thought, I’m so sorry I’m too dumb to help you.

I am at RWA in Anaheim where internet access is limited. So I will only tell you now that I will have a real post for you next week.