Blond heroes

Upfront aside: On Amazon, Breaking Dawn is getting trashed for typos and grammatical errors and spelling errors, like… “blond” versus “blonde.” I didn’t bother to ask if the different usage was gender-specific. So for those who might misunderstand my usage of both “blond” and “blonde” in my book, let me disclaim that “blond” (no “e”) is to describe a male and “blonde” (with “e”) is to describe a female (you can apply that to “brunet” and “brunette” as well). Just your regular ordinary Latin declension.

That out of the way, I want to know how many people really don’t like blond heroes. I don’t remember where I ran across some “fact” with “data” that proclaimed that blond heroes don’t sell well.

I’m reading a book now with a blond villain and crimony, now that that I have that swirling around in my brain, I recall a good majority of the books I’ve read that have a slimy villain, they’re all blond. Not fair!

I love ’em. This is because of Wulfgar in The Wolf and the Dove. And other particular contributors to my life experience.

Two questions:

1. Do you have any particular dislike of blond heroes?

2. Is there evidence that blond heroes don’t sell as well as dark ones?

An embarrassment of half-assed riches

See, the thing is, I keep getting these great ideas to blog about, but then I get distracted and they don’t gel and I have about 6 half-written posts in my drafts folder that kinda sorta mean something to me now, but not really. Prepare for leftovers, kiddies, because mommy’s tired and she doesn’t want to cook dinner.

Re: Ann Herendeen and Phyllida

This is what’s apparently called “good” gossip. I shall take the liberty of bragging.

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Caution: warning label ahead

MEMORANDUM

TO: LDS Fiction Publishers

FROM: MoJo

RE: Warning labels

Lest you think I was kidding about that warning label thingie I mentioned only about 16 times across various blogs over the weekend’s little dustup, I bring you a way to justify such a practice to yourself: Sales.

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Miss Jackson if you’re nasty

My subtitle says, “Religion. Money. Politics. Sex.” Okay, I think I’ve covered them all, but my tag cloud says I’m getting heavy on the religion side, so let’s hit the money for a while.

Over on Teleread, while looking for a post on ePub format (I know I read it the other day and I’ll address that in a future post), I found this gem: Top Ten Self-Publishing Myths. It’s all relevant to me, but I’m not going to post it all here. Copyright, you know. Go read, then come back!

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Kansas City: your basic geography

So the people over in Kansas City, Kansas, got a little huffy over a Jeopardy! question somewhere in the early ’90s. “Kansas City, Kansas, is a suburb of what city?” That would be Kansas City, Missouri, dingdingding.

This post is not for those who live here because we know there’s a Kansas City in Kansas and one in Missouri, too. We’re just tired of having to conduct extemporaneous geography lessons to people who think they know what they’re talking about.

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Kansas City: le sigh…

After viewing my KC photo gallery [dead link for now], a friend of mine said, “Oh, what a romantic city!”

Now, I love this town and yes, I have always thought there was a certain romance to it, but I never thought I’d hear someone not a native say it. I mean, that’s like saying Toledo is romantic. Maybe it is, but “romantic” isn’t the first thing I think of when I hear “Toledo, Ohio.”

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Reading against type

This morning I’m listening to Simply Red (flashbacks from freshman year at BYU) and the song “Money’s Too Tight to Mention” is a good song. If it weren’t, I wouldn’t have it in my library.

It also trashes things I believe in. Does it bother me? On some visceral level, yes, but that doesn’t make it difficult for me to listen to it and it certainly doesn’t keep me from listening. I’d miss a whole lot of good music (and that voice!) if I took umbrage at other people’s opinions and the way they state them (usually the way they state them is more off-putting than what they say).

So it started me thinking about how I read fiction,
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I rode this train for so long…why?

I have a buncha novels on my hard drive that have been sitting around collecting dust since, oh, 1990 some time, I guess. In ’93 I wrote one that got me an agent another that year that got me a contract—before they were shut down (because, according to the rumor at the time [get this] it was making too much money and it had been created to take a loss for tax purposes) (remember Kismet? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?); one in ’95 that got me an early-Saturday-morning phone call from Harlequin to pleasepleaseplease overnight the manuscript; and a fourth novel in ’98 that got me a different agent.

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Niches are nice, but…

I started a new book a couple of days ago. It’s easy when you start ripping off plots on purpose instead of trying to reinvent the wheel and then finding out someone else did it before you. First Hamlet, now the New Testament. Next thing you know, I’ll be rewriting Moby Dick.

Now, I can write for a Mormon audience. Or I can write for the romance audience. Or I can write for the general fiction audience (whatever that is). Well. I wrote for all three, because that’s what I like.

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What the hell is Mormon romance?

So I went a-seekin’ keywords for my website header information and, naturally, plugged “Mormon romance” into Google and what did I get? This:

Mormon romance novels seduce book buyers

Germane point:

“I realized that there was a big hole in the LDS market for women’s fiction and I felt like I could do better,” [author Anita] Stansfield said. “I couldn’t find anything to read that satisfied me.”

Several years ago Stansfield wrote about a woman recovering from breast cancer. An important part of the book was the woman’s relationship with her husband, which included their relations in the bedroom, Stansfield said.

The novel’s bedroom scene dealt sensitively and obscurely with the topic of sex, referring more to the woman’s feelings than the couple’s activities. And yet Stansfield doesn’t believe those scenes would make it through the editing process today.

“I know I couldn’t write that now. They have cracked down,” she said.

WTF?

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