While that is true, in general, women’s art is seen with some disdain regardless of what it is, how well it’s done, or in what cultural/societal conditions it’s made, I’ll save you the feminist rant. For now. You’re welcome.

Complaints about genre romance are generally phrased as “romance is trash,” not “I don’t like romance because I think it’s trash.” I’m told these two different phrasings make a significant difference in reaction to some people, but come on. We all know they’re exactly alike.³

While these complaints prick my soul a little, they’re valid. I’m not even going to get into the male wish-fulfillment fantasies of pulp novels and comic books: spycraft, cowboys, space captains, superheroes, anything sporting a Boris Vallejo cover, and sportsball,⁴ because a good half⁵ of what’s classified as⁶ romance is objectively trash.

Now, I’ve tried to write straight-up smut because that’s where the money is and rent’s gotta get paid. The two people who read it said I’d done it very well, had my usual depth, and was very distinctly my voice. It was, in fact, some of my best work, and there’s some measure of very smart, intellectual erotica out there. But it made me feel oogey, and if my own smut could make me oogey when I was 45 and as horny as a 17-year-old boy, it’s bad. So I tucked that away in my external hard drive, never to be seen again.⁷

I even tried to write a clean (no sex) reverse harem book, because that’s a popular subsubgenre (“clean” or “wholesome” is its own thing), but the concept made me feel oogey for an entirely different reason.⁸

De gustibus non est disputandum, sure, but objective truth can be applied to some of it:

• short
• minimal plot
• no characterization
• graphic, unusual sex is its raison d’être
• badly put together because speed is the priority
• many published in a quick timeframe
• may or may not cause problems akin to other addiction problems
• may or may not be used as a replacement for real-life sex

They don’t have to be art. They just have to make money. People who read a lot⁹ will devour their favorite genres and tropes, and go looking for more like it’s meth. Dinosaur erotica obviously must have a wide audience, but nobody’s ’fessing up to reading them, much less fangirling over them outside niche fora.

Then there’s Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey.

These are hotly debated, denigrated, and defended, but, I would argue, somewhere in the middle of trash and not-trash.

I don’t know what’s special about these books, what sparked such devotion to them. I always say people choose a book for its trope (to be addressed in a later post) first and summary second, but they re-read an author for his/her voice, so I have to presume that other than the trope, something about the way Stephenie Meyer and E.L. James strung the words together spoke to them.

Or maybe it was the sex. I don’t know.

Disclaimer: I have not read any of these books except the first Twilight book, which I thought was an entertaining popcorn read, but didn’t spur me to read the rest.

Not-trash:

• long, saga-like
• some characterization, with plausible motivations
• decent construction
• thought and care put into it, even if the author wasn’t terribly skilled at it

Trash:

• cipher heroine¹⁰
• plot is to serve the sex¹¹
• sex isn’t very well written (so I’ve heard)
• caused minor to severe real-world problems akin to other addiction problems

Beyond technical and societal issues, I can’t speak to its non/trashiness because see above de gustibus non est disputandum, or, in more recent parlance, “I know it when I see it.” Even this entire post could be classed as preference, simping, and apologetics, but whatever. I know what I like, and dinosaur erotica is not it.

Although I consider myself a romance author,¹² other people don’t.¹³ However, there are a lot of people find romance contemptuous, are loud about it, and it bothers me that I’ve lumped myself in with the stuff I don’t write, don’t like, and don’t respect.

Long ago, I started telling people I write soap operas, which got the point across (“Yeah, there’s probably sex in it, but it’s a long story with lots of drama.”¹⁴), but that stopped working as soon as I said it to a twenty-something valet when he asked what I do, and he said, “What’s a soap opera?” Eh, people don’t respect those, either.

What am I looking for here, though? What is the point of this post?

Hell if I know.

Rush lyrics play a large part in The Proviso, so much so that the female counterpart of the title-ish character calls it out:¹ “Neil Peart wrote my hymns and Rush is my choir.”

Yet … as much as even the most poverty-stricken among us can get the message of “Subdivisions” thanks to ubiquitous teen TV dramas, kids who grow up in subdivisions aren’t.

Poor, I mean.

Poverty and people who think in Poor also have a large presence in The Proviso. Only one of the six leads grew up with money, and he doesn’t find money interesting or important, which is a manifestation of his privilege. The only other one who didn’t grow up poor grew up in … a subdivision. In San Diego. In the 80s. In the exact misery of the song.

Even though I referenced “Subdivisions” in The Proviso consistent with its intended message (Chapter 22 “Misfit So Alone,” Chapter 87 “Far Unlit Unknown”), I also subverted it because my heroine, the one to whom Rush speaks so deeply, lives in such abject poverty in a falling-down relic of 19th-century gothic revival in such a backwater of a town that the particular flavor of hell of growing up in a subdivision is, for her, a dream come true—or better yet, a dream she never thought to dream at all because her future is

pre-decided

Now, the subdivision she is suddenly dropped in the middle of isn’t a rich one, either. It’s old, mid-1960s, in a sprawling ranch that tries to look French provincial, a house that still has Mamie pink tile and Formica in its kitchen and bathrooms, and sits at the very back of the developed land, waiting for the day it gets razed and replaced with closely set mcmansions. There are newer houses farther away from her upgraded home, and so there’s a clubhouse with a pool.

The house and neighborhood are not glamorous. They’re not even of the caliber of the Toronto subdivisions referenced in the song. She’s savvy enough to know that the house is wildly out of date, even if someone did attempt to modernize it with avocado green shag carpet and a harvest gold refrigerator, and the fact that the trust-fund guy she’s married to is fine with Walmart flat-pack furniture isn’t normal, nor should it be—but to her, the whole setup is magical.

But not overwhelming.

After all, you can take a poor country girl off the farm and plop her in a society matron’s living room, but there’s gonna be an immediate need for a therapist. The mint-ish 1960s ranch is as big a step up the socioeconomic culture scale as any mature person could handle. The mcmansion comes next.

This isn’t just about peer pressure. It’s a law of social survival. The song argues that in these kind of controlled environments, individuality isn’t just discouraged, it’s actually a liability. And that message, it became an anthem for a generation of outsiders. It speaks directly to the deep-seated adolescent fear of being different, of being rejected for not living up to the unspoken standard. —Neil Peart

So the next time “Subdivisions” comes on the radio, we can nod and give the generic middle-class North American teen his angsty due, but then remember that one person’s prison is another person’s paradise.

by Angel & the Mambokats
Genre(s): American Afro Cuban jazz,¹ Afro Cuban soul,² mambo, Latin, dance, ballroom
Mood: vintage/retro, midcentury

★★★

You can take with as many grains of salt with this review as you want because I really, really just love it all. I’m particular about voices. Some elevate my soul. Some make me curl up in a ball in a corner with my hands over my ears and make me rock back and forth crying.³ If your voice sucks, it won’t matter to me how good the tune is.

Angel’s voice is deep, rich, smooth, and smoky, but growly when it needs to be. The orchestration is exquisite and the production values are clean. It’s very sexy, sinuous, but it’s overshadowed by its main purpose, which is to get you to dance, which, in Magdalene, I point out, is just sex on your feet with your clothes on in public.⁴

The whole vibe is a retro midcentury ballroom or urban dance club where people go to dress up and get sweaty, to see and be seen, to drink champagne and nibble on hors d’oeuvres, to act like you don’t have a care in the world for a few hours. If you do have cares, Angel will make you forget them.

In short, the man set himself a task to do something niche⁵ and lovely, and he does his job very, very well.⁶

★★★

I first heard of Angel & the Mambokats watching Benji and Heidi’s dance routine on So You Think You Can Dance in 2006, which, as we all know, was just 2 years ago.

I love this stuff, so of course, I bought a bunch of Angel & the Mambokats stuff.

Now, I don’t know how it happened, but either I posted something on some social media platform and mentioned Angel & the Mambokats, and the titular Angel Ferreira messaged me or I messaged him to praise his work,⁷ but suddenly I got a phone/texting buddy. We don’t chat often, usually only when he wants to try out an online concert “venue” pay-per-view app or drops something new, which I did last night because he dropped something new.

Then I remembered that 3 years ago (I know this because my phone told me so), I told him I’d review Mambopussykat, which I never did.

Something I learned about Angel is that he was Madonna’s backup dancer on the Who’s That Girl tour. He’s my age but doesn’t look it. He’s a far better hustler than I am, for sure, but he’s also a showman and I’m an author who wants to stay in her garret and write⁸ unless an occasional cocktail party is involved.

Look, if you’re not into dancing, Latin ballroom, Latin music,⁹ or fun, this is not for you. Maybe. I think this guy could persuade you to at least try it.

★★★

Let me introduce you to Granny. Yes, she IS your granddad’s Oldsmobile. She looks like she’s been rode hard and put away wet, and, like any cranky old lady, she has her issues and she needs a bath (I’ll clean her up before you arrive), but relatively speaking, for a 23-year-old car, she’s awesome.

PROs

• 3.8-liter V6, thus much get-up-and-go
• only 174,000 miles
• dependable
• newish brakes <6 months
• newish tires <18 months
• lots of trunk room
• roomy interior
• quiet
• state-of-the-art cassette player
• clean title
• cheap to insure
• good gas mileage for tooling around, great gas mileage for road tripping
• runs cool
• great heater and defroster (the defroster squeals)
• back window defrost
• front-wheel drive
• GREAT SNOW CAR!!!
• power windows
• headliner has been replaced

CONS

• NO AIR CONDITIONING!!! (Now, look. That went out 10 years ago and I thought, “Not gonna spend a ton of money because she’s old and it’s only unbearably hot 3 months out of the year” [you’d think I’d learned after spending only 51 years here]. But if I’d gotten that done then, it would have amortized out at $70 year.)
• buzzing speakers
• fuel door spring is sprung (XY tax deduction did it), so it’s taped shut with clear packing tape (and I will throw in the roll of tape and dispenser for free!)
• front passenger window is off its track
• front passenger floor gets wet when it rains hard because of the above issue
• front passenger door is difficult to open from the outside
• driver’s door power panel fell off and is now Gorilla-glued together
• driver’s door handle (inside) has been replaced (by me) (not well)
• ashtray drawer is sprung (XY did that too)
• cigarette lighter plug doesn’t work
• back windows go down only half way (stupid child “safety” features)
• horn only works at 2:17 p.m. the third Sunday of May, August, November if you hold your mouth right
• shifter indicator doesn’t land in the right spot (i.e., you’re in D but it says N)
• various dents and dings and scratches (the poor teenage girl who hit me was very happy when I told her to forget about it and go about her merry business—she still had to explain HER dent to her parents, though)
• doesn’t lock, like, at all (but … would you really care?)
• she looks like shit and she needs a bath

I am Granny’s 3rd owner. I have been driving her for 20 years, 16 of which I worked at home. When I stopped having to drive to a job, she had about 150,000 miles. She now has 174,000 miles. 25,000 miles. 16 years. Do the math.

She once did a straight-through round trip from Kansas City to Twin Falls, Idaho in 4 days. That was an adventure, let me tell you, but I got a husband out of it.

I believe that was the second or third cross-country trip she’s made, but it’s been 20 years. Why do you expect me to remember everything?!

My point: She can take mountain passes like a champ and yes, I’d trust her to road trip now, but husband says no.

Now, far be it from me to tell you why you need to buy my beloved Granny car, but she is a steal at $500. If I were a frugal young stay-at-home mom and needed a second car for doctor visits and grocery shopping and whatnot, Granny would be perfect. After all, she’s just been tooling around the metro a couple of times a week for the last 16 years.

I love her, but my husband is making me get rid of her. Now we have 3 cars and a truck for 2 drivers and he just doesn’t love Granny the way I love Granny. He says he doesn’t want to pay the pittance in insurance and license/registration for her anymore. Also, my neighbors give me the side-eye, but they’ve only been doing that for 14 years. Also also, my tax deductions are embarrassed that I pick them up in it. Fine. Walk home.

You must understand. I adore my Granny car. I would keep her and drive her until the wheels fell off (not likely, since they’re practically new), but it is time to let her go bless a family who needs a cheap ride with only minor problems (so far as I know). I’m only asking $500, which hurts because to me she is priceless.

If you take her home, you must promise me you will not change her name. Her name is Granny. And I love her. Maybe you will too.

As I was writing Paso Doble, I kept finding myself associating my characters’ meals at tapas bars with romance. Small bites in small dishes. Tasting. A meal of hors d’oeuvres, eaten slowly, from a lover’s hand. I wanted to be able to do that.

As Victoria (from Paso Doble) told Giselle (from The Proviso):

Eating with a man, especially if you let him feed you, let him watch you savor the flavors, is like making love in public. I seduced my husband that way. Feed him. Let him feed you. In, out. It’s a promise more binding than kissing. Sex makes life. Food sustains life. You can see them as chores or you can find joy in them. That’s the choice you make.

I wanted to be able to do that. Except … I don’t like food. I don’t find joy in it. I’ve never found there to be anything about food to find joy in. No, it’s not something I can do, or at least, not right now. I find a food I like and I will eat it for days. Variety is not a requirement for me; efficiency is. Food is the thorn in my paw. It is a chore. It’s the enemy.

And then, for our 14th wedding anniversary, Dude surprised me by taking me to a tapas bar, La Bodega on Southwest Boulevard. We were both nervous. He’s only a little more adventurous than I am and we didn’t want to waste money on food we weren’t sure we were going to like. But tapas are a huge part of my universe’s mythos, so Dude wanted to honor that and, fingers crossed, it might turn out okay.

It was one of the most profound visceral experiences I have ever had, as significant as my rollercoaster enlightenment. The waiter came by to ask me how it was and as I was telling him, I teared up.

For the first time in my life, I found joy in food. Profound joy.

I don’t want to go there too often, though. Joy needs to be parceled out so as not to make it banal. But I’ve found that sort of profound joy twice this year (which is pretty much twice more than most other years), and both of them were because Dude gave me something new to try.

Rollercoaster and appetizers. Sometimes it’s the oddest things.

La Bodega
703 SW Boulevard
KCMO 64108
816.472.8272
La Bodega Facebook
La Bodega Twitter

What do you think it retails for? $5,000? $7,000? That’s what Donald Trump pays for his designer suits. [beat] [audience boos]

$10,000? No. It retails for $12,495.00. [beat] [audience boos]

But I paid $12.50 for it. Why? Because it’s ugly. I went to Goodwill and I had so much to choose from, an abundance of jackets, but I chose this one. Why? Because it was the most attractive one there. [beat] [audience laughs]

Would you wear this jacket outside the house? No. Nobody with good taste would. It’s warm, I’ll give you that. And roomy. Look how roomy it is. It’s well made. It is an Armani, after all. But it’s ugly. Not only wouldn’t you wear this outside the house, you wouldn’t wear it to a job interview.

Yet that’s what most of you, our working women today, have to choose from: ugly, uglier, and ugliest. [beat] [audience laughs]

You work hard to feed your families, to keep a roof over your heads. You sacrifice your needs for your children the best you can. You might go without eating because you gave the last of it to your children, without sleeping because you’re working two jobs to make what a man would make with one job, without love because you’re too tired to invest yourself in a relationship with a person who loves you. But no matter what you sacrifice, it’s never enough, is it? [beat] [audience shouts NO]

The light bill has to be paid. You’re living paycheck-to-paycheck because you aren’t being paid the same as the men and you look for a future where you fight to be paid what you deserve. You’re more qualified. You’re being overlooked and overworked. You decide—because you are a powerful woman who can set her own path [beat] [audience cheers]

—to find a new job. A better job. A job you deserve where you will be valued and paid what a man would be paid for the same job. You have an interview and now you have a dilemma: You don’t have appropriate interview clothes. You spent the last you had to feed your children and your next paycheck isn’t until next Friday.

So you borrow a few dollars and head to the thrift store to find an interview outfit. You look and look and look and you realize that your best option is … this.

This well-made designer jacket that retails for $12,500 but was given to Goodwill because it’s ugly and does not project the image of the powerful women you really are. It doesn’t say, “I deserve this job because I’m the best qualified.” It says, “I’m a schlub.” It doesn’t say, “I deserve this job because I’m calm, cool, and collected and can manage crises extraordinarily well.” It says, “I’m useless.”

You know the value of a dollar. You have to because you aren’t making as much as men do for the same job, and minimum wage just isn’t enough to feed your family anymore. I have dedicated my life to ensuring that all hardworking Americans have the chance to succeed, no matter their circumstances.

I have led the charge for equal pay for equal work. [beat]

I have expanded access to early childhood education and healthcare. [beat]

I have worked tirelessly to raise the minimum wage and advocate for out-of-work Americans because I believe that every American should have the right to achieve economic security and income opportunity. [beat]

You’ve been in this ugly jacket for too long. You deserve better than this jacket. You deserve to be paid what men are paid for the same job and you deserve better than minimum wage!

“Tess … ” She stopped cold at the breath of a whisper, her heart slamming into her ribs so hard she thought it would fall out right there on the table and flop around. She turned slowly—so slowly.

She opened her mouth to scream at him for ambushing her, but she realized just in time that he was as stunned as she was.

And he was beautiful. More beautiful than he had been when he was nineteen. More beautiful than he was the night he’d left her. Yet nothing about him had changed.

His hair was still a mass of long mahogany-red waves past his shoulders. Bunches of hair at his temples had been braided into tiny plaits fastened behind his head. His earrings were medium-sized gold hoops. His stark art deco sun tattoo still spread its rays down along his neck, chin, and jaw. His shirt was blousy white linen floating untucked over oxblood leathers, the ties at the neck hanging loose. His wrist tattoos were on full display. Then she looked at his hands.

He was wearing his wedding ring.

She blinked and looked down at her own left hand. There they were: the circuit board wrist tattoo that matched his and the diamond he’d presented to her in an elaborate, public proposal. Because why do it privately when you could put on a show?

She looked back up at him, knowing all her heartbreak and joy and sorrow and love for him were written all over her face—and it was reflected in his.

“This is exactly what I wanted to avoid,” Sebastian drawled with great irritation. “If some people had picked up her phone!”

She should’ve picked up the phone.

Tess didn’t move—couldn’t—but Étienne could and did, skirting his chair and striding toward her with that look, the pirate king, the one who wouldn’t be denied.

She sighed when he slid his big hands around her face, tilted it back, and brought her up to him for a kiss that scorched her soul.

It was magical. He was magical.

She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, feeling his tongue, so familiar, so talented. Tasting him as he had always tasted with an undernote of Dr. Pepper. She whimpered into his mouth when the pressure lightened, but he only tilted his head and went after her at a different angle. Sensation shot downward, and she moaned softly, ready to spend the next few hours feeling his bare chest against her naked breast, his legs twined with hers, his body inside hers, stroking her and assuaging this ache for him she’d never been able to contain.

“GET A FUCKING ROOM!” Sebastian roared, standing and pounding the table. “You two drive me fucking insane!”

They parted. Slowly. So slowly.

“I did not sleep with her,” he whispered, dropping his forehead on hers, his chest heaving.

“I know.” That surprised him, and she was strangely gratified.

“Mon cœur,” he breathed.

“I love you, too,” she whispered back, equally out of breath. Then she gulped. “But love isn’t enough.”

He drew away from her, dropped his head back, gripped the back of her chair so hard it creaked. His chest heaved.

But somebody began to clap. A golf clap. Hushed. Mocking.

Someone else joined in. Then someone else.

Her heart was breaking—again—but she couldn’t hide her smile. Nor, it seemed, could he.

“Étienne!” Sebastian snapped. “Get your ass in this seat right now. Tess, siddown. Somebody has to be the adult in the room. As per usual.”

“We need to talk,” Étienne murmured, looking at her with those heartbreaking—heartbroken—ice blue eyes.

She nodded. “I know.”

“To a therapist! I do have other things to do, you know!”

Étienne tossed Sebastian a bland smile over his shoulder. “Keep it up. You know we like to put on a show.”

Sebastian snarled but sat, and somebody began to chuckle.

He turned back to her. “You drew those for me?”

Tess, as in love as she had been at seventeen, could only nod. “I draw everything for you.”

Dude and I went to see this movie for his birthday. I haven’t been interested in reading the books because a) I’m not a thriller/mystery fan and b) haven’t had time to devote to sampling genres I’m not usually interested in. I’m still not interested in reading the books, because I either read the book or see the movie, but not both. (I got burned in the Bonfire of the Vanities.) I am interested in seeing the Swedish version.

mraynes at Exponent II has an excellent post up about the exposition of misogyny in the book/movie.

Ironically, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo phenomenon is a prime example of how our society hides from the culture of violence against women. In the original Swedish version, Stieg Larsson titled the book “Man som hatar kvinnor” or “Men who hate women.” Believing that such a title would turn readers off, American publishers renamed the book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, changing the emphasis away from violent misogyny to the physical body of the (anti)heroine. This alone speaks volumes about our society. Instead of dealing with the discomfort that in fact, some men do hate women, publishers felt that the only way to sell books was to objectify and sexualize the female protagonist.

Please read the whole post.

This brought to mind a blog post by a Cale McCaskey, ostensibly ripping on romance novels, but really ripping on women, and after I read mraynes’s post, I realized: This is the mindset. Taken by itself, his opinion is irrelevant and he’s a woman-hating man who is single and likely to remain that way.

However, how many WOMEN have I heard over the years say the same thing with regard to romance novels and the women who read them? To hear WOMEN talk about the women who read romance novels, we’re all a bunch of fat Peggy Bundys who, instead of earning advanced degrees, becoming Important People, tending to our hearths with the efficiency of Martha Stewart or a Mormon cupcake baker on Ritalin, or fighting against [patriarchy, white privilege, male privilege, rape culture, insert philosophy of choice].

It is not rapists and abusers alone who silence and hide victims. It is we, society, in our unwillingness to stare evil in the face, name it, and confront it. Until we acknowledge culpability within our culture of violence against women, our daughters, sisters and ourselves will be at risk.

Some men hate women. But so do some very vocal women. Women need to look to themselves concerning their own misogyny.

It was just me and Astrid again this week. Here we go:

Astrid Cruz aka @artistikem “Piano”: You certainly know how to rip a girl’s heart out, don’t you, woman?

And so here’s what it did for me: a portion of Chapter 67, The Proviso, “Dulcissime,” which you will have to buy to read, because it could be considered a spoiler for one plot point (even though I didn’t go out of my way to make that a huge reveal to the reader. If the reader figures it out beforehand, great. If not, great).

Thank you!

It was just me and Astrid this week. Here we go:

Astrid Cruz aka @artistikem “Ghost”: Oh. My. Goodness. That gave me chills. Y’all must read this.

And so here’s what it did for me: Stay, Chapter 34: A Good Crop of Wheat.

Thank you!