Dear Readers,


I now consider this blog to be my Juvenelia. Have fun perusing the archives, and find me at my new haunt, here.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

It's Been A While, Readers

I'm inspired to blog again after a few fallow weeks because the school year is winding down, the heat is cranking up, and I spent the past few days at the Backspace Writer's Conference where I spent time with the lovely Debbie of Write on Target.

Presenters included John Searles, who is the Books editor at Cosmo, David Morell, who wrote the first Rambo novel, and most pertinent to this blog, the amazing Jerry Gross, who invented** "The Gothic Romance" and the "Regency Romance" as paperback categories--what a genius! He explained to us the "formula" for Gorthic Romance covers, and I did a little google image searching to reveal that he was totally right. Check these out and see what they have in common, and which famous works of fiction they all allude to!

(images from mysteryfile.com, flickr.com, kleinletters.com, biblio.com)

**UPDATE I forgot to tell you the story of HOW he invented this category. Basically, he found a dog-eared, lovingly re-read copy of Rebecca on his mom's bedside. She said "they don't make em like this anymore," and a lightbulb went off above his head. the end!

It was a fun conference for me because I am knee-deep in revisions on my current WIP (I hope to be waist-deep later in the week) so I didn't need to shmooze editors or anything like that, but just soak up the words of wisdom and get psyched for this whole writing thing.

We heard some inspirational panels from writers who had gotten the nastiest kinds of rejections early on in their careers, but persevered and blah blah blah.

How have you all been doing? Any of my regular readers also dabble in fiction-writing? Anyone long to see this gothic romances back in print?

2 comments:

  1. Totally. I ate up those books when I was little; the library down the street had tons and tons of musty old paperbacks just like that, stacked in two tall spinny books display shelving units... I read them all.

    And I dabble in writing them, too, although I've never bothered to pull together a full manuscript. I've been thinking about it more and more lately, though...

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  2. Hi there! When I was writing my thesis (I have a degree in architecture) I realized I was in totally the wrong field (after nine years of school) and titled it: Architecture as a Literary Phenomenon. It was a study of how literature and architecture had influenced each other in England and the United States during the Gothic Revival (ark) and the period of Gothic literature. I read tons of novels and short stories, from Udolpho to Usher, and I uncovered all the patterns, in the plots, the story development, the characters... What fun it was!
    Love your blog, btw!

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