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Tuesday, August 25, 2009

This is Why I Love My Industry!

I love writing romance. I love reading romance. I love the escapist quality (although I find that in all genres, really), I love the settings, I love the love-conquers-all theme. I'm just feeling the love, I suppose.

That was really brought home to me over the weekend when I attended a book signing at The Book Exchange in Port Clinton, a nearby town. Attending (amongst others) were Tori Carrington, Mandy M. Roth and Shiloh Walker. It was a fun event - the authors were approachable, they chatted and took pictures and were just generally having fun. With readers, with book store employees, with one another. I sampled Tony's baklava (ooooh, bahhhhhkalavaaaaaa), learned that Mandy lives very close to me and that Shiloh was recovering from a week at a couple of amusement parks. It was a fun atmosphere, and isn't that what a book signing (or any appearance) should be? Yeah, I think so, too!

A couple weeks ago I was at another book signing - literary authors and a few non-fiction authors thrown in. Totally. Different. Atmosphere. And, I was ashamed to be an aspiring author because of the actions of a few authors there. They were horrible to their fans. Flat out mean, judgmental and argumentative with people who bought their books. Were the fans out of line? I don't think so. The 'offensive' comment from one fan was (seriously), "I love this series. Are you planning to write any more?" And the author may as well have taken the poor guy to the woodshed. He yelled - seriously, yelled! - that whether he chose to continue with the series or not was his choice and no 'ignorant reader' was going to force him to do anything. Uh, overreact much?

Which brings me to my point. Romance authors are approachable. They're normal people with fun senses of humor who are lucky enough to do something they love and get paid for it. I'm proud to be an aspiring romance author. I'm proud to be a writer and I'm so glad that the men and women (at least those I've met) already published in the genre are approachable, friendly and generally nice to the people who cut their paychecks - the fans. Let us all remember that the fans of romance are the people who keep us in pens, ink and paper!

Posted By: Kristina Knight @ 9:06:35 PM