Write better books!

I had an email this morning. Nothing unusual in that – I get a lot of emails. This one was from a reader. Again, not unusual. But the truth is that I didn’t realise it was a message from a reader at first.

You see, it was headed, like this posting ‘Write better books!’ To be honest, at not quite 7am I looked at the heading and I thought it was some sort of advert – use this programme/follow this course/read this book – and write better books!

It wasn’t. It was - well I can only call it a complaint – a complaint and an exhortation all in one. I was being told, by a reader – we’ll call her X - to write better books. X doesn’t like the ones I’m writing. My stories never go anywhere. She keeps hoping I will improve but I never do.

Well X is entitled to her opinion. You can’t, as they say, please all of the people all of the time. I don’t expect to. Naturally I’m sorry that my books don’t speak to this particular reader, especially as she is, she says, a regular Harlequin Presents reader. So am I. I'm a regular reader of all the HMB lines - and I’d be lying if I said that every single book by every single author in any line speaks to me and I love every last word they publish. Some authors really hit the spot with me as a reader – some miss it by inches, metres – miles . . .

And the ones who miss by miles, I don’t buy. End of story. Their stories are not for me so I don’t read them.

I don’t write to them and tell them to buck their ideas up, change their style of writing for me, and write what I want them to write. Choice. That’s what the world of publishing is based on. Choice. Horses for courses. Different strokes for different folks. If you don’t like my books – don’t read them - buy them - I can live with that. There are plenty of people who love what I write – thousands - hundreds of thousands. If they stopped buying I might worry.

But I don’t think I could write in any very different way. I wouldn't want to. I write as I do - that’s me. That’s Kate Walker.

So I thought, fine. X doesn’t like my books. She’s one of those ‘not for me’ readers. Like I said, I can live with that. Well, I could if I thought she had really had a problem with my books. You see, the next line, after telling me that of all the Presents authors I’m the one who needs to have better stories, tells me that: “Your hero is always rich, and you think you should pair him off with a cry baby who does nothing but whine and cry about something all through the book.”

Excuse me? I know it’s early in the morning. I’ve only started my first cup of coffee and the brain cell isn’t totally awake yet but . . .

Let me re-read that.

Your hero is always rich . . .

Er – I thought you said you read all the Presents every month, X? The Presents hero is always rich – it’s a fact – it’s one of the premises on which the series is built. Name me a Presents book in which the hero isn’t affluent. What about the mini series – Mistress to a Millionaire – The Greek Tycoons – are these guys scrabbling around for a penny or two?

That’s what Presents sells on – it’s what the editors openly declare the line is all about: ‘Meet sophisticated men of the world and captivating women in glamorous, international settings.
When did you last read a Presents novel that didn’t have a rich hero?

But it was the last bit that got me -
. . . and you think you should pair him off with a cry baby who does nothing but whine and cry about something all through the book.

Okay, now I admit I’m confused. I’m trying to think of ‘cry babies I have written.’ To be honest, I’m struggling. I’m not a fan of reading about cry babies myself. I don’t enjoy stories in which the heroine is defeated before she starts, who gives in to everything the hero demands, telling herself she has no choice when it’s blatantly obvious that she does have a choice. A heroine I can’t believe in in the 21st century. I certainly don’t set out to write them. What would be the point of creating a heroine I don’t like? A heroine I can’t think of as just that – a heroine – someone worth writing about.

But then if I find an author who writes those sorts of books then I don’t buy them. I just leave them on the shelves for other people to read them.

Well X is entitled to her opinions. And she’s taken great pains to let me know what they are. I have always said that I reply to every reader’s letter I receive so I shall write back to her. Politely. (Which she was not) I shall tell her that I’m sorry my books don’t appeal to her but that this is how I write. And that actually X, yours is the first and only letter like this I’ve received. And I’m going to continue to write for the hundreds of thousands who are buying my books because they like what they find in them.

And I should warn you all – if you don’t like tears in a romance then the truth is that there’s a moment in The Italian’s Forced Bride when Alice, the heroine does dissolve into tears. Where:

Hot tears flooded her eyes, and spilled out down her cheeks and soaked into the white cotton of the pillow cases.

But there’s a damn good reason why she does break down at this point. I think she’s entitled to her tears. And from all the other letters I’ve had about this book, many of my readers are in tears, or at least blinking hard at that point too.

I write for them. And I’ll continue to do so. Readers who don't like my books can just leave them on the shelves - That suits me fine.