That Daily Mail Article Again, Again - With Trish Morey

Following on from yesterday's post. I just discovered a comment from my fellow Presents author the fabulous Trish Morey.   This was such a great response and one I so agreed with that I thought I'd move it from the Comments section to this main part of the blog because I think it should be read by everyone - I'd like to say 'including the Daily Mail and their Columnist Claudia Cullen' - but I doubt very  much that  they will trouble to follow up on the real Romantic Novelists  who were so insulted and wrongly reported in the original article.

So here's Trish  -

Kate, thanks for posting the letter. I'm still shaking my head at the unprofessional attitude of the so-called "journalist". Maybe they should have sent a grown up to the event, rather than an adolescent who equates romance with sex and can't see beyond that. Although adolescent might be pushing it. The DM level of reporting actually reminded me of schoolboys who have just discovered the word "fart" in the dictionary.


I do applaud the "this is what a romance author looks like" postings, although I would like to add one rider - I don't think it matters two hoots what romance authors look like and how old they might be. No, I've never seen one with a blue rinse and in support hose, but would it actually matter?


When we write romance, it's not just about the sex, as any one of us knows. We're writing about real people and real life changing events (well, we've made them up, sure, but out of real material). And the reason our books are successful is that they touch a chord with the readers.


Why?


Because we authors have experiences these same things. We have gone through the joy of birth, the tragedy of death, the agony of a loved one fading away. We have suffered through cancers and miscarriages and road crashes and remember being told to sit down before we hear news because we will fall down if we don't. We remember the thunderclap of hearing that news, we remember the impact it had on our hearts and our minds and our lives. And heaven forbid, we've made love. Maybe still do! Shocking.


Bottom line, we've lived. We've experienced all life has to throw at us and we've survived to tell the story, in a million different ways, all with a happy ending.


And yet, because we've lived, because we got the experience of a lifetime, or a goodly portion of it, because we're on the wrong side of twenty years old, somehow that makes us less worthy to write about the things we know?


Bollocks to that, I say. We write real stories for real women because we are real women.


The feeble hearted need not apply

Thank you Trish and Here! Here!  (Or should it be Hear Hear! ? I never know)
Trish's latest - The Heir From Nowehere is out in Presents

And as  - I hope  - my last comment on that stupid article (unless they publish an apology and a whole revised report - bets anyone?)  I just need to add that another comment I wholeheartedly agree with from another great friend and fabulous Romantic Novelist - Liz Fielding:

If the DM were moved to cut off the comment thread they clearly realised they'd boobed and - hopefully - won't make the mistake of irritating several hundred literate ladies again in a hurry.
Liz's first RIVA  story - Tempted by Trouble is out in the UK right now.