Juno Books

I have a request in to Peguin Subrights Dept. and have to call an agent (the author is evidently out of the country) Tuesday (no eddress) for two novellas. Since the length of these will take up a large chunk of word count, I’m afraid to start contacting many of the authors of shorter stories. If a ‘big chunk” comes in, some smaller chunks may have to go. I have notified one author of a “definite want” and sent a contract to her agent. I’m trying to track down another author. I’ve emailed the editor of the publication the story was originally in — no response after 4 days. If I never hear, I imagine the “Human Rolodex” (aka Ellen Datlow) will have this one’s eddress. (But she’s still in New Zealand.)

Realizing this is a holiday weekend, Wiscon, and the end of the academic year, I am trying to be patient. Naturally *I* think selection is something of an honour and that anyone would leap at the chance. On the other hand, more realistically, this is a new anthology for a type of fiction that doesn’t anthologize much, from a small press’s new imprint. Perhaps I shouldn’t expect leaps?

Other than story selection, the waiting means I can’t really say anything about the process or the whys and wherefores. Be a bit unfair to mention a story (or even mention a plot or hook) before I notify the author and get a contract out.

Not having those (in all cases lengthy) novellas will help the overall quality of the anthology. There can be more stories and greater variety.

Sure, there were a couple I do think deserved recogniton as “bests”, but as anyone who edits one of these types of compiliations will tell you, there are almost always a couple that will “get away” because you can’t get re-print rights.

Reading these “romance genre” anthologies also gave me a good handle on the writing ability of a number of writers. There are those I’ll keep an eye open for in the future. There were many more who may be able to write (and sell) novels, but aren’t all that accomplished at shorter length.

As I choose stories for the BEST NEW PARANORMAL ROMANCE antho, I’m inquiring, in many cases about re-print rights to stories — actually novellas — from the “traditional” side of romance first (before checking with authors who obviously hold their own rights). This is for two reasons: length and rights. These are lengthy novellas that take up a large chunk of book. Obviously not all can be used. As for rights…

The sf/f folks are long used to “year’s bests.” They understand that such tomes are useful and helpful in selling books. I didn’t expect those from the romance field to be as welcoming, but hope to win them over…someday. I also expected there to be problems with re-print rights. Unlike sf/f — where contracts often make exceptions for “year’s bests” as far as exclusive use — the romance field is not only unaccustomed to such practices, what they do practice is feudal.

The big dog in the romance barnyard is, of course, Harlequin. I always knew that writing for Harlequin was often close to indentured servitude, but I didn’t understand, I guess, just how bad it was. On one novella I inquired about, they not only hold exclusive worldwide rights to it…they hold them for *seven* years. And, evidently, this is customary.

I have an email in to Penguin about re-printing a Berkley story. No reply yet, but I don’t expect it to be positive.

I hope the best of the “traditional romance” writers are not shut out of this anthology, but it is beginning to appear that chances are they will be

So, anyway…skip forward to the mid-1990s when I started working with horror and dark erotica. I probably came across one of the earlier Laurell K. Hamilton books not long thereafter and wasn’t terribly impressed. Those first paperbacks were not exceedingly well produced and LKH was not exactly a polished writer. Besides, who wanted to read this vampire romance stuff?

Another fast forward to the World Fantasy Con in the fall of 1998. I was on an erotica panel and Cecilia Tan of Circlet Press enthusiastically mentioned that LKH wrote great sex scenes. She was right.

Coincidentally, I’d started reviewing for Publishers Weekly a few months before WFC. I was doing mostly horror, but there were far more guys than females reviewing genre and since I was (a) female and (b) associated with dark erotica, I started getting quite a few vampire romances and the like. I started thinking about what made this stuff so appealing.

Next scene: At Dragon*Con 2001, I was on a midnight panel with Laurel Hamilton that turned out to be just the two of us and a couple hundred of her fans. (By then I’d caught up with what she was writing.) These readers knew *all* her books and were intensely interested in her characters.

I continued reviewing (and, along with other sf/f/h, reviewing a lot of “vampire romance” and eventually fantasy romance) and thinking. LKH continued becoming a best-selling author and being responsible for a bevy of “Hamiltonesque” writers. I interviewed her in 2003 for “The Spook”. In the course of the interview, Hamilton mentioned that Robert E. Howard had inspired her writing. (You can download that interview from the site.) Her comment made a lot of sense and gave me the final clue I needed to figure out just what it was about “paranormal romance” that was making it so popular…

Adventure — these books were adventure stories for women. Conan and Anita Blake have quite a bit in common.

Hold that thought –

Lee Tobin McClain mentions in “Paranormal Romance: Secrets of the Female Fantastic” that traditional romance fiction differs from other genre fiction in three important ways:
(1) It is highly formulized but offers variations of that formula for differing readership tastes. Publishers research what readers want and respond.
(2) Since romance responds to these preferences, editorial influence is profound. Editors are involved in the author process. Some themes for series books begin with editors and are passed on to authors to fulfill within the strictures of the series “bible”. Thus there is “an oddly collective authorship” of author, editor, and reader. (Sure, there are series in other genres, but not this triumvirate of authorship.)
(3) Romantic formulae allow for safe exploration of gender “secrets”

(I don’t agree with all Tobin writes in the article and feel it is probably dated as well but still of interest.)

Recent paranormal romance — women’s adventure — adheres to this pattern in many ways, but also breaks away. Romance is, essentially, a love story between two people (until recently always a male and a female) with a happy ending. That’s not always true with modern pr — it is often darker and/or grittier, not always focused primarily on “love”, and, like dark erotica, explores sexual “secrets” and desires rather than just “gender secrets”. The women protagonists are strong but still finding themselves, or weaker and finding empowerment. One strain of traditional romance, the bodice-ripping male sexual domination of the past that is so abhorred by feminist scholars, is expressed in women’s adventure in more explicit scenarios of Dominance/submission in which the submissive female finds self-actualization. (Not that this meets with the approval of all.)

To cut to the chase: These paranormal romance books/stories are adventures for women. Women see romance as part of the adventure. The guys adventured with blood-drenched brawny swordsmen with sinewy muscles and big, uh, weapons. Wipe out a horde of bad guys, grab a princess who adores you or a convenient wench, make whoopee, and depart to slaughter more monsters (or many equivalents). James Bond was cosmopolitan, cool, deadly, and didn’t spent much time discussing philosophy with his girls. A FEMALE Bond might love ‘em and leave ‘em (although women’s adventure tends to seek soul mates rather than sequential lovers, but sequence sometimes leads to soul mate) but she’s going to talk to her lovers. She’s probably going to chat to her girlfriend (Ms. Moneypenny?) about her life and loves, too.

[10.25.07: Sorry you can no longer comment on this post. Too popular with spammers.]

When I first had the idea to do this blog, I thought I’d write about making decisions concerning stories for BEST NEW PARANORMAL ROMANCE. There were two problems with that: (1) It’s a little unfair to consider someone’s story in “public” and then decide you can’t take it. Ouch! Right? (2) It took awhile for my contract to come through and I could not legally contact authors until my own contract was in order.

So, I’m still going to write about some of the process, but in retrospect. I’ll also be discussing acquisitions, too.

* * *

Why “paranormal romance”?

I will freely admit I was never a romance reader. Outside of Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters I never cared for any sort of romance. The old-fashioned formula romance was especially unrewarding. I read practically everything else — especially sf and historical fiction — but not romance or westerns.

But I’m sure I was reading some of Andre Norton’s WITCH WORLD books as a kid and there was definitely a romantic elment to those book. I thought GLORY ROAD by Robert Heinlein was pretty romantic, too. That probably should tell me something about myself…or maybe it warped my young libido?

I also recall reading Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA and a couple of the other early St. Germain novels sometime in the late 1970s. The Count was rather mysteriously romantic and the historical settings were great. Although the label of “historical horror” is the most apt for these books they are also probably as close as I would get to what would later be known as “paranormal romance.”

Yarbro isn’t a bad place to start when looking at pr. Despite the much larger readership and cultural effect of Anne Rice’s INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, it was Yarbro who made the vampire a sexy guy. Intelligent, urbane, and a lot more civilized than most of the humans around him in any era, he treated his lady loves with respect and gave them passionate encounters (not that we ever knew exactly what he did for them…or to them…or with them…whatever it was they definitely enjoyed it.)

Enough for now.

Yeah, another blog. This one is specifically for news about Juno Books and to illumine the world about the process of editing a “year’s best”-type anthology. I thought it might be fun to share what’s going on in my admittedly strange and allegedly dim mind as I read and make selections. The process began some weeks ago, so we’ll have to catch up…