The Answers to ABC
Dean and others seem to think I Knew How this was going to turn out, but no, not really.
I was surprised to discover AA Romance is almost exactly like any other category romance. In fact, I had a harder time messing with book C to hide the nationality/race than any of the category AA books I ran across on the web. (For those who don't know--category means books put out by publishers like Harlequin. Kimani is their AA line. Another word used to describe the type of books is series romance)
I messed around with a lot of books, but only put up the ones people sent me or I had permission to post. Of all the romance genres, historical is hard to hide, obviously, and paranormal is harder still. Erotic romance isn't so difficult, just those overinflated ummmm senses are always at work. It's amazing to me that people in erotic romances manage to get through their sex-free days without exploding, what with those hyperactive senses on high alert.
Tchah, you guys. I had to resort to begging a couple of friends.
Okay.
A = Ghost of A Chance by my pal, Flo Fitzpatrick, published by Kensington in 2004 as a Zebra Romance
Flo writes:
For the record? Nathaniel is an African-American male - mid-70's.
Kiely, the heroine, is white- early 30's.
Rafe, the hero, is Hispanic - also early 30's.
Lida Rose is a white female - mid-40's.
Billie is a white female - mid-70's.
Don is a ghost - and if the soul has race or ethnicity after death I think we're all going to be damn surprised.
Attention, editors. Buy books by Flo. Thank you. I want to read more.
B = Rock Star by Roslyn Hardy Holcombe.
Roslyn is African American, the book is published by Genesis, which is an AA imprint (hmmm, I looked the publisher up and found a lot of gossip. Uh oh)
Anyway, back to the book.
An Amazon reviewer wrote: ROCK STAR is a very nice love story that delves with the dynamics of falling in love with someone who is in a high profile position and the complications of living in a small town where everyone knows your business. The characters were very well developed and the issues involving interracial dating were realistic. The message of love in any color was beautiful.
Callie is black
Bryan is white
so. . .HA!
Read more about Roslyn and her books here.
BOOK C = Kisses to Go, by Irene Peterson, another Romance Unleashed author, and this is a Zebra book, in other words a mainstream romance.
The heroine is white and from Jersey, as in New Jersey. It could be argued Jersey girls are a race apart. (Callie isn't even as outrageous as Irene, though.)
The hero is named Ian and I think of Gaelic names--Bridget, Ian, Sean, Siobhan--as sounding very white. Maybe I'm wrong? Anyway, my blog, my call, so neener, neener.
The hero is white, British and his dialogue Very British-y. There is a secondary character who's a tall, black drag queen--the heroine's best friend. She's** one of my faves, actually.
________________________________________________
**Irene refers to the character as he, but I was taught by a strict friend to always refer to a drag queen in full dress as she. I'll bet it's one of those Rules that she/he enforced because she/he likes Rules, especially about etiquette.
Okay, went to look that up and on wiki (stop wincing, it's an okay source for popular culture. Sometimes.) it says:
Most drag queens prefer to be referred to as "she" while in drag and desire to stay completely in character. Some performers may be offended if they are referred to as "he" or by their legal name while in character. Drag performer RuPaul is one of the few exceptions to this rule, as he seems to be completely ambivalent to which pronoun is used to refer to him. In his words, "You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don't care!"
I was surprised to discover AA Romance is almost exactly like any other category romance. In fact, I had a harder time messing with book C to hide the nationality/race than any of the category AA books I ran across on the web. (For those who don't know--category means books put out by publishers like Harlequin. Kimani is their AA line. Another word used to describe the type of books is series romance)
I messed around with a lot of books, but only put up the ones people sent me or I had permission to post. Of all the romance genres, historical is hard to hide, obviously, and paranormal is harder still. Erotic romance isn't so difficult, just those overinflated ummmm senses are always at work. It's amazing to me that people in erotic romances manage to get through their sex-free days without exploding, what with those hyperactive senses on high alert.
Tchah, you guys. I had to resort to begging a couple of friends.
Okay.
A = Ghost of A Chance by my pal, Flo Fitzpatrick, published by Kensington in 2004 as a Zebra Romance
Flo writes:
For the record? Nathaniel is an African-American male - mid-70's.
Kiely, the heroine, is white- early 30's.
Rafe, the hero, is Hispanic - also early 30's.
Lida Rose is a white female - mid-40's.
Billie is a white female - mid-70's.
Don is a ghost - and if the soul has race or ethnicity after death I think we're all going to be damn surprised.
Attention, editors. Buy books by Flo. Thank you. I want to read more.
B = Rock Star by Roslyn Hardy Holcombe.
Roslyn is African American, the book is published by Genesis, which is an AA imprint (hmmm, I looked the publisher up and found a lot of gossip. Uh oh)
Anyway, back to the book.
An Amazon reviewer wrote: ROCK STAR is a very nice love story that delves with the dynamics of falling in love with someone who is in a high profile position and the complications of living in a small town where everyone knows your business. The characters were very well developed and the issues involving interracial dating were realistic. The message of love in any color was beautiful.
Callie is black
Bryan is white
so. . .HA!
Read more about Roslyn and her books here.
BOOK C = Kisses to Go, by Irene Peterson, another Romance Unleashed author, and this is a Zebra book, in other words a mainstream romance.
The heroine is white and from Jersey, as in New Jersey. It could be argued Jersey girls are a race apart. (Callie isn't even as outrageous as Irene, though.)
The hero is named Ian and I think of Gaelic names--Bridget, Ian, Sean, Siobhan--as sounding very white. Maybe I'm wrong? Anyway, my blog, my call, so neener, neener.
The hero is white, British and his dialogue Very British-y. There is a secondary character who's a tall, black drag queen--the heroine's best friend. She's** one of my faves, actually.
________________________________________________
**Irene refers to the character as he, but I was taught by a strict friend to always refer to a drag queen in full dress as she. I'll bet it's one of those Rules that she/he enforced because she/he likes Rules, especially about etiquette.
Okay, went to look that up and on wiki (stop wincing, it's an okay source for popular culture. Sometimes.) it says:
Most drag queens prefer to be referred to as "she" while in drag and desire to stay completely in character. Some performers may be offended if they are referred to as "he" or by their legal name while in character. Drag performer RuPaul is one of the few exceptions to this rule, as he seems to be completely ambivalent to which pronoun is used to refer to him. In his words, "You can call me he. You can call me she. You can call me Regis and Kathie Lee; I don't care!"
Well, at least I got the ethnicity of a single character right.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised by book B: I wouldn't normally expect that a book with that sort of POV problem would be published without an editor fixing it.
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