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.

That Daily Mail Article again

As it's a week since that stupid, inaccurate - fictitious - article  about the RNA Summer party  I should mention that as well as organising the brilliant 'This is What A Romantic Novelist Looks Like' campaign and page on Facebook. Kate Johnson also wrote to the Daily Mail protesting at the 'mistakes' their columnist Claudia Connell made.  Her letter and her photograph - proof if anyone needed it that  the description of  RNA members as having blue rinses and twin sets and pearls  was distinctly wide  of the mark - was published yesterday - see above.  Brilliantly done  Kate - congratulations.


My only concern is that now I'm sure the DM thinks it has rectified the problem and provided a new balance - well, no, not in my book.  Kate has her point made and her picture in the paper but  where is Ms Connell's explanation/apology for creating such a fiction in the first place?  Where is there any indication of awareness of the 158 members of the This is What A Romantic Novelist Looks Like - not to mention the hundreds of other members of the RNA /all romantic novelists slighted or ignored in the original  article. And why were the comments on that article closed at 24 replies when  people  still wanted to comment - criticising the inaccuracie ?

 I'm so tired of lazy,inaccurate, bigoted reporting  - on any subject - that resorts to using old, worn-out stereotypes without any concer as to whether they are  still - or ever were - maccurate and relevant. Why do journalists always drag out images of Barbara Cartland and Catherine Cookson to illustrate a profession in which neither lady has been active for over ten years?   What next? Illustrating an article on the present day Members of Parliament with images of  Harold Wilson or Margaret Thatcher? 

Hopefully the point has been made - to this newspaper at least. But I'll be watching with interest for the next article/comment/report on anything to do with romantic fiction or romantic novelists  and I'll not be surprised if some of the same old, same old surfaces again -  the words bodice-rippers, slushy stories, "heroines swooning with alarming frequency and heroes, with names like Troy and Cassius"  repeated ad nauseam. Probably illustrated with photos of Barbara Cartland ..  .sigh!


But at least Kate  - and everyone else who joined the This Is What A Romantic Novelist Looks Like pages - have  scored a well honed point - we can hope that it is just the start of a change in the way this wonderful, successful, bestselling form of fiction and the  fabulouswriters who create it are portrayed.

Dear MS Connell

Remember Ms Claudia Connell's  not too accurate article?

Well, it's got some romance novelists riled. And quite rightly so, because they are far from getting their blue rinse yet! (Do hairdressers even do that any more... surely it's got to be a dying fashion?). So much so Kate Johnson aka Cat Marsters urges us to post photos on our blogs and to advertise it everywhere!

So - Ms Connell  -  This is what a romantic novelist looks like -

And this -  Kate Johnson

and this - Julie Cohen

And  Talli Roland

And  3 for the price of one Heidi Rice, Sharon Kendrick, Brigid Coady

And Jan Jones (with  Roger/Gill Sanderson)

I could go on but I have a book - sorry - an 'M&B Bodice Ripper'-  to write - so on Twitter   - and Facebook too

PS If  in amongst bthese great pics, you find a Romantic Novelist who does have a blue rinse - please let me know. I'll offer a copy of one of my books as a prize!

And here's another journalist's point of view - well worth reading

Claudia Connell Journalist of the Year - NOT

The Blue Rinse and Bodice Rippers: In twin-sets and pearls meet the ladies behind Britain's steamiest novels
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1389272/The-Blue-Rinse-Bodice-Rippers-In-twin-sets-pearls-meet-ladies-Britains-steamiest-novels.html#ixzz1MzzoPlx7

I didn't go to the Romantic Novelists' Association summer party. Pressure of dreadlines, and life prevented me from that. But I have been to more RNA events than I can count.  Once, over ten years ago, I was at a RNA Awards Ceremony that was described as being  an assembly of the 'blue rinse brigade'. I was astounded then at the ignorance and pure stupidity of the reporter who described the  gathering of illustrious writers so  untruthfully.

I had always thought that time had changed - and as a women I always believed that  as we have  fought for and enjoyed an improvement in the lot of woimen in general then individual women would  respect the achievements of other women, even in fields they don't aspire to themselves. Or even if they couldn't admire  these achievements wouldn't actually slant a report on them so badly that instead of an accurate report it became at best something closer to fiction, at worst a  lazy report  of such sterotypes that it is an out and out lie.

Heroines swooning 'with alarming frequency and heroes, with names like Troy and Cassius, must have permanent bad backs from forever scooping fair maidens into their manly arms' - er?  Which planet is this woman on?  I can't recall the last time any of my heroines swooned - and I had a boat named The Troy in The Good Greek Wife? Is that what she's thinking of? Does she think 'boat' spells - er  'boy'???

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1389272/The-Blue-Rinse-Bodice-Rippers-In-twin-sets-pearls-meet-ladies-Britains-steamiest-novels.html#ixzz1N09ZcZwP

So - as I said, I wasn't at the RNA Party this time but I know plenty of people who were.  So - try this report by organiser  and author Jan Jones on her blog here  - please note the phtographs of elegant and some very youthful authors -  not a blue rinse in sight. Or even a pearl.


Then try the RNA's official blog - with more photographs  - here

Or the Minxes of Romance  blog here

I'm still looking for a blue rinse - perhaps the reporter  - determined to be accurate and truthful (? ) was a little bit colour-blind and spotted so many glamorous blondes that she thought had blue hair.

Or perhaps the photographer  who was supposed to be capturing the event for her  - see the Minxes' blog - fell asleep and she had to rely on her none to accurate memories.

Perhaps.  Or perhaps she wanted to make a 'joke' and set out determined to make the event fit into it even if it didn't.

And in order to do so, she has called up the image of the late lamented Barbara Cartland from beyond the grave - a lady who wrote her last book and breathed her last  on this earth eleven years ago.  And who was never the typical romantic novelist even when she was alive.

I can't even bring myself to waste my time going through the nonsense in this article - I have much beter  things to do with that time, like  "writing endless schmaltz that always followed the same formula: girl meets boy, boy behaves like arrogant brute, girl hates boy, boy shows soft side, girl falls for boy and they all live happily ever after."

 Oh - so that's what I'm supposed to be doing!
But apart from noting  the fact that the whole tone of this article is pretty ageist, in order to show you the total inaccuracy of  this reporters 'facts'  can I just quote this one, hopelessly unreliable comment:

Key to the success of any romance writer in the UK, steamy or otherwise, is getting the supermarkets to stock your work, as the average reader of dreamy romantic literature doesn’t tend to set foot in Waterstone’s or download to a Kindle.

Er?  Has she been in any Waterstones branch lately?  Looked at the shelves?
Or  looked at the Kindle rankings of so many, many romantic novels on Amazon?

Or read  this article - published in the very same  paper for which she has written this fiction - ahem  - report  - only  four months ago?

Sales of bodice-ripping e-books soar as women use digital readers to hide their romantic novels
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1343270/Amazon-Kindle-Sales-bodice-ripping-e-books-soar.html#ixzz1N03wDV3n

No - I thought not. But I do detect the same sneering-and-making-a-good-story-out-of-things-even-if they-don't-fit-the-facts- tone here in an article that refuses to acknowledge that many readers are young, busy, up to date with ebooks etc - and want their reading choices delivered in this way. Not because they want to hide the covers.

It seems another reporter is determined to twist the facts the way they want them to be for the article they are determined to write.

But I've wasted enough of my time on this inacurate tosh - all I can suggest Ms Connell is that you have such an amazing skill with fiction that perhaps your should try for the RNA's New Writers' Scheme. Or perhaps it's a case of - to   misquote the  comment often (equally erroneously) used about teachers - Those who can, write romantic fiction. Those who can't 'report' it.

So all I ask of my readers is that you take a look at this article in all its glory - then consider the great blogs and photos I've also linked with - and decide for yourself whether everything you read in the papers is really true!